Hugely entertaining and wildly offbeat, here is a book that combines engaging, humorous text with illustrations that at once set the tone of the book.
Mabel is on a battlefield in the middle of blood and guts. It is 1536 in France and the Siege of Turin rages around her. But how did she get here? It all starts when Mabel is home sick. Nothing good is on TV and it's raining outside. She is bored, bored, bored, and grumpy.
Then a slimy envelope with "The Guts of Human Life" written on it plops through the letter slot. The package contains a mysterious red CD-ROM. When she inserts it into the computer, Mabel is suddenly drawn into the past and through all sorts of hilarious, amazing, disgusting and TRUE adventures in the history of medicine.
Join Mabel as she learns how medical discoveries are made...
- Go back to the times before antibiotics or anesthetics, when bloodletting, leeches and spirits in the cosmos all played parts in healing. Meet Andreas Vesalius, the Father of Anatomy. Study digestion first-hand through a 6 inch gunshot hole in Alexis St Martin's stomach. Take a peek at germs in 1683 through the first microscope. Stumble upon the idea of vaccinations with Louis Pasteur as he tests his chickens for cholera. Watch Florence Nightingale fight germs and sickness with a revolutionary new idea: cleanliness. Drift gently into Alexander Fleming's germ plate with the mold spore that enables the discovery of penicillin.
Each page brings a new leap forward and a couple of stumbles backwards. Skip ahead to follow specific discoveries or go page by page. This is no dry regurgitation of historical fact, but a bold marriage of text and art, funny to the bone and providing a sizable dose of medical highlights from across the spectrum of time. An index is included so you can easily find your favorite ailment. Readers will return to the book time and again for the simple enjoyment it delivers.
