Lily’s Reviews > Bleed, Blister, Puke, and Purge: The Dirty Secrets Behind Early American Medicine > Status Update

Kind of love that this ends with the straw on the camels back sort of event 😵

I'm technically finished, I'll update tomorrow but this book was definetly a ride! The amount of *audacity* of the physicians/doctors/experimentalists (because let's face it, they were given the chance to PLAY doctor.) My info dumping personality was for the drama

They would go amputation to amputation without washing the saw :')

Also some people just amputated because they could. The Civil War was just one big medical experiment

Okay.
-chloroform was used as a party drug. Also they discovered it trying to make cheap pesticides
-anesthesia was considered satanic. "Men should just endure the pain." Oop

Some of these older surgeries were crazy. Not to mention the absurd romanticization of blood letting.

So much blood letting.

So in the 1700's, you didn't have to pass your classes to get a diploma/license. You could just....buy it. Buy it and practice medicine on people

Soooooo...Hospitals were originally designed to heal the poor, because physician house calls were costly and considered a privilege. They were unsanitary, but like, at least it was there?

This practice was literally created during Benjamin Franklin time...How far we've fallen :')

Free non-fiction borrow from Hoopla!

15% through and we've already talked about poop and cannibalism. Old medicine is wild, and not safe for work.