A thorough, informative history of the many eccentric narratives that make these quack sciences so interesting and important...
A sharp compendium of the stranger developments in 19th-century medicine that have influenced how we care for ourselves today.
In parallel to the discovery of germs, X-ray technology and the novel idea of sterilized surgery, there developed a branch of pseudoscience called alternative, or irregular, medicine. The irregular practices were aligned by their democratic belief in a common understanding of medicine for the benefit of the people—i.e., wellness that did not rely on institutionalized, elitist doctors. After all, the accepted practices of the establishment included painful, “heroic” treatments like bloodletting, induced vomiting and blistering, which were believed to draw the disease out of a person. Other accepted ministrations were chemical purgatives that contained mercury, arsenic and antimony. Among the alternative methods that historian Janik (Apple: A Global History, 2011, etc.) highlights are holistic practices like hydropathy and botanic medicine, which stressed the curative and hygienic qualities of water, as well as natural, plant-based solutions. While the methods of hydropathy and botanic medicine were ambitious and well-meaning, these methods were also mostly incorrect. Among the irregular practices that proved most reliable and scientific was the chiropractic technique, which is still practiced today. On the other hand, phrenology, homeopathy and mesmerism all fit the description of “quack” science for their bizarre practices—e.g., measuring skull variations to determine intellectual and emotional attributes, ingesting diluted doses of harmful tinctures and controlling the flow of nervous fluids with magnets. These practices proved highly lucrative for many of their founders and inspired throngs of followers and fellow practitioners, much to the dismay of the distinguished physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, who persistently railed against the pseudoscience community for challenging the academy. Perhaps most importantly, Janik asserts the role of women in administering remedies—mothers were the chief doctors of local communities—and developing the successful irregular methods into what we now consider conventional medicine.
A thorough, informative history of the many eccentric narratives that make these quack sciences so interesting and important to modern medicine.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0807022085
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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