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What the Apothecary Ordered: Questionable Cures Through the Ages
This pocket handbook of medical advice draws together the most bizarre and disgusting cures recommended by healers to their patients from Ancient Greece to the twentieth century. It features such delightful treatments as gargling sugared snail juice for a sore throat (from 1920s Lincolnshire), soothing a child's teething pains with a dab of cocaine (c19th), and curing a lovesick man by dressing as a haggard version of his beloved and hurling abuse at him. Covering disease, surgery, cosmetics, keeping fit and curing madness, it offers a fascinating - and undeniably grim - view of the tortuous ways in which our ancestors tried to stay in shape.
144 pages, Hardcover
First published August 9, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 9, 2015
Not at all what I was hoping it would be. This book is literally just quotations from various medical sources of various quality levels from various times in history, with absolutely no context added at all. Which is actually really needed to make sense of what's being said here, unless your only goal is to gawk at medicine past. For example, one of the cures is for "felon and catarrh in the hand" and I have no idea what that could possibly be in modern terms. Likewise, I would have liked to have known which quotes represented prevailing medical wisdom, which were the pet theories of respectable physicians, which were folk remedies, and which were simple quackery. And again, I generally have no idea. I got even more frustrated with this book when I went to the author's website and found an article where she states that an image of a medical ad that she uses without comment in this book is a likely fake. (For the record, it's the picture of the tapeworm pills.) I know the pictures are meant for color more than information, but knowing that at least one thing in the book is something the author herself doesn't believe is true makes me uncomfortable about the rest of it, too.
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February 4, 2017
A compendium of weird cures for ailments that range from the annoying to the most severe that have come from all over the world throughout the ages.
What the Apothecary Ordered is best served in paper format-either hardcover or paperback-as it is not a book to be read from cover to cover, but instead delved in to at interim stages. I would suggest it was not a complete work of such cures, but more inclusive of the weirder ones, and perhaps the ones that we of the 21st Century would scoff at the most. It also comes with illustrations of real-life posters and advertisements wherein these so-called cures were announced to the world, mostly based on little evidence.
I would suggest it not in eBook format but as a paper copy itself, though honestly I would assume that there were far greater variants of this book out there that offer a larger selection. It is a good starter for those who think they may be interested in this kind of thing.
What the Apothecary Ordered is best served in paper format-either hardcover or paperback-as it is not a book to be read from cover to cover, but instead delved in to at interim stages. I would suggest it was not a complete work of such cures, but more inclusive of the weirder ones, and perhaps the ones that we of the 21st Century would scoff at the most. It also comes with illustrations of real-life posters and advertisements wherein these so-called cures were announced to the world, mostly based on little evidence.
I would suggest it not in eBook format but as a paper copy itself, though honestly I would assume that there were far greater variants of this book out there that offer a larger selection. It is a good starter for those who think they may be interested in this kind of thing.
October 24, 2017
A wonderful little book to keep in the toilet, or give to your GP for Christmas. Lots of fun!
February 1, 2025
Very interesting and questionable methods.
February 18, 2015
I was so eager to receive my copy of “What the Apothecary Ordered: Questionable Cures through the Ages” (or WTAO, so I won’t need a dubious ointment for tendonitis); so much so that I chose to read it before I played my long-awaited remastered “Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask” game! I cracked the book, read the Editor’s note, and my heart sank.
Synopsis
The book is true to the title; there are a plethora of medical “cures” within its pages, spanning centuries of “knowledge” as acquired by those who developed them. The book is broken down into five chapters:
1. Desperate Remedies
2. All is Vanity
3. Embarrassing Bodies
4. Family Matters
5. Tired and Emotional
In terms of following the chapter headings and the divisions of the “cures”, I really cannot find a complaint. Unfortunately, it is how the book is written that keeps me from finding this pocket guide worth anything more than a rental from a library.
Content
As mentioned above, it was the Editor’s Note that gave me pause. Specifically, this paragraph:
As the cures detailed in the following pages are gathered from numerous works originating in different times and places, you will encounter inconsistencies of spelling and unexpected punctuation. I feel it is not my place to ‘correct’ language that was accurate in the context of its time, and shall leave the writers to speak in their own voices. Some were educated at the finest European universities; some gathered together the knowledge relied upon within their communities. And, of course, there were (as there are now) some keen to make a fast buck from people’s very real health and beauty anxieties.
It seems harmless enough, sure, but jumping from Shakespearean to Victorian English is only the first part of the episodic confusion. From there are the archaic terms and/or descriptions of illnesses for which the remedies. For instance, there is a treatment for “Ague” (1890); further along within the same chapter are concoctions for “Felon and Catarrh in the Hand” (1882) and “Against Phthisick” (1685). While I understand that everyone who chooses to read this book has a different knowledge base and thus has the potential to understand the descriptions more than I, the reality is that WTAO should be written to the lowest common denominator.
Further compounding the issue is the lack of any exposition for the treatments listed. While each entry has a recipe, instructions for preparation, and directions for use, you really are not gleaning much from this writing. I wish that the author had included a little more detail about the effects of each, how long each one was used before something “better” (and I use that term loosely) was developed, and where the concoction was primarily used (i.e. – the USA, Europe, only Britain, and so forth).
Final Say
When you combine the lack of extensive detail with the choice of keeping the recipes in their original verbiage and context, you will find yourself repeatedly needing to check a dictionary for a definition of each archaic term for an illness. While I am a strong advocate of learning new words and expanding your vocabulary, having to reference a secondary source to just comprehend the text is quickly tiring. At the very least an effort should have been made to include a translation below the verbatim treatment to increase the comprehension of the reader. As it stands, you are purchasing a $10 book that has one page per recipe, the paragraph centered (which sometimes only comprise one or two sentences), with the name of the source and the year in which it was printed.
If you want a book with minimal detail and a mediocre comprehension capability, then “What the Apothecary Ordered: Questionable Cures through the Ages” fits the bill. Be prepared to invest in a dictionary, or keep a laptop nearby to search for terms. As a starter text to send you down the road on studying historical “medicine”, WTAO can serve that capacity, also. This is not a reference book, and sadly, it is why I feel that you would be better off borrowing a copy and saving yourself $10.
Synopsis
The book is true to the title; there are a plethora of medical “cures” within its pages, spanning centuries of “knowledge” as acquired by those who developed them. The book is broken down into five chapters:
1. Desperate Remedies
2. All is Vanity
3. Embarrassing Bodies
4. Family Matters
5. Tired and Emotional
In terms of following the chapter headings and the divisions of the “cures”, I really cannot find a complaint. Unfortunately, it is how the book is written that keeps me from finding this pocket guide worth anything more than a rental from a library.
Content
As mentioned above, it was the Editor’s Note that gave me pause. Specifically, this paragraph:
As the cures detailed in the following pages are gathered from numerous works originating in different times and places, you will encounter inconsistencies of spelling and unexpected punctuation. I feel it is not my place to ‘correct’ language that was accurate in the context of its time, and shall leave the writers to speak in their own voices. Some were educated at the finest European universities; some gathered together the knowledge relied upon within their communities. And, of course, there were (as there are now) some keen to make a fast buck from people’s very real health and beauty anxieties.
It seems harmless enough, sure, but jumping from Shakespearean to Victorian English is only the first part of the episodic confusion. From there are the archaic terms and/or descriptions of illnesses for which the remedies. For instance, there is a treatment for “Ague” (1890); further along within the same chapter are concoctions for “Felon and Catarrh in the Hand” (1882) and “Against Phthisick” (1685). While I understand that everyone who chooses to read this book has a different knowledge base and thus has the potential to understand the descriptions more than I, the reality is that WTAO should be written to the lowest common denominator.
Further compounding the issue is the lack of any exposition for the treatments listed. While each entry has a recipe, instructions for preparation, and directions for use, you really are not gleaning much from this writing. I wish that the author had included a little more detail about the effects of each, how long each one was used before something “better” (and I use that term loosely) was developed, and where the concoction was primarily used (i.e. – the USA, Europe, only Britain, and so forth).
Final Say
When you combine the lack of extensive detail with the choice of keeping the recipes in their original verbiage and context, you will find yourself repeatedly needing to check a dictionary for a definition of each archaic term for an illness. While I am a strong advocate of learning new words and expanding your vocabulary, having to reference a secondary source to just comprehend the text is quickly tiring. At the very least an effort should have been made to include a translation below the verbatim treatment to increase the comprehension of the reader. As it stands, you are purchasing a $10 book that has one page per recipe, the paragraph centered (which sometimes only comprise one or two sentences), with the name of the source and the year in which it was printed.
If you want a book with minimal detail and a mediocre comprehension capability, then “What the Apothecary Ordered: Questionable Cures through the Ages” fits the bill. Be prepared to invest in a dictionary, or keep a laptop nearby to search for terms. As a starter text to send you down the road on studying historical “medicine”, WTAO can serve that capacity, also. This is not a reference book, and sadly, it is why I feel that you would be better off borrowing a copy and saving yourself $10.
July 13, 2015
Hmm, I tried to explain this book’s style to my husband and he summarized it as “a clip show in book form”, which nails the issue. There was some interesting material here but other than the introduction, not a word of this is original writing so much as a compilation of quotes and pictures documenting various questionable treatments. Much of the material is drawn from the 1700-1800s but there are some quotes from Pliny the Elder and some early 20th century advertisements for patent medicines and devices. I really wanted some additional explanation or text to bind the quotes together. Not quite what I was expecting but not terrible.
January 23, 2015
This was a fun little book about "medicine" through the ages. I was hoping to learn a bit more about why certain cures where applied or believed to work, however this was merely a collection of snippets from old medicine books, without much explanation.
October 29, 2015
You would need to be a little curious to enjoy this read!
January 15, 2015
Full review available from http://wp.me/p4JCbo-2n
January 12, 2015
Just a collection of uncommented recipes - disappointing
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews