A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities / Jan Bondeson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bondeson, Jan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medicine--Anecdotes.

Medicine.

Medicine--Miscellanea.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (272 p.) : 71 halftones

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, New York : Cornell University Press, [1997]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Long ago, curiosities were arranged in cabinets for display: a dried mermaid might be next to a giant's shinbone, the skeletons of conjoined twins beside an Egyptian mummy. In ten essays, Jan Bondeson brings a physician's diagnostic skills to various unexpected, gruesome, and extraordinary aspects of the history of medicine: spontaneous human combustion, colonies of snakes and frogs living in a person's stomach, kings and emperors devoured by lice, vicious tribes of tailed men, and the Two-Headed Boy of Bengal.Bondeson tells the story of Mary Toft, who gained notoriety in 1726 when she allegedly gave birth to seventeen rabbits. King George I, the Prince of Wales, and the court physicians attributed these monstrous births to a "maternal impression" because Mary had longed for a meal of rabbit while pregnant. Bondeson explains that the fallacy of maternal impressions, conspicuous in the novels of Goethe, Sir Walter Scott, and Charles Dickens, has ancient roots in Chinese and Babylonian manuscripts.Bondeson also presents the tragic case of Julia Pastrana, a Mexican Indian woman with thick hair growing over her body and a massive overgrowth of the gums that gave her a simian or ape-like appearance. Called the Ape Woman, she was exhibited all over the world. After her death in 1860, Julia's husband, who had also been her impresario, had her body mummified and continued to exhibit it throughout Europe. Bondeson tracked the mummy down and managed to diagnose Julia Pastrana's condition as the result of a rare genetic syndrome.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Spontaneous Human Combustion

The Bosom Serpent

The Riddle of the Lousy Disease

Giants in the Earth

Apparent Death and Premature Burial

Mary Toft, the Rabbit Breeder

Maternal Impressions

Tailed People

Three Remarkable Specimens in the Hunterian Museum

The Strange Story of Julia Pastrana

Note on Sources

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 21. Dez 2019)

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781501733451

1501733451

OCLC:

1121052441