The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse: A Chronicle of Medical Mysteries, Curious Remedies, and Bizarre but True Healing Folklore [Paperback]

Nancy Butcher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2004 | ISBN-10: 1583331603 | ISBN-13: 978-1583331606 | Edition: 1

Did you know that bananas can cure warts; chewing on raw ginger can relieve nausea; sniffing vanilla can help suppress your appetite; or that raw potato can soothe a burn?

Healing is full of curious remedies-some based on time-honored folklore, others straight from the medical journals. Nancy Butcher has gathered together some of the most unusual natural cures that have been proven effective today, and even throws in some unbelievable and-thankfully-abandoned therapies from times past.

Filled with case histories of unique illnesses, historic documentation of strange medical practices, and the author's own insightful commentary, this book explains not only how to cure headaches, sleep better, and improve your sex life, but also that people with Cotard's syndrome actually believe they are dead.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Butcher, whose previous books had the more wholesome topics of weight loss and sleeping (101 Ways to Stop Eating After Dinner; 101 Ways to Fall Asleep), here delves into the dark corners of medicine to unearth weird maladies and surprising cures. More a gathering of medical trivia than an actual chronicle, her book jumps from topic to topic, covering obscure ailments such as "cat-eye syndrome" (a rare chromosomal disorder) and "jumping Frenchmen of Maine" (an ill-understood neurological disorder), as well as more familiar diseases such as Black Plague, Hansen's disease (leprosy) and rabies. For each disease, Butcher offers a short synopsis of its discovery and attempted cures. In addition to uncommon ailments, the book outlines medicines that took a long time to be accepted by the medical establishment, or that remained on the fringes of acceptability. Some of these, such as urine or aged frog eggs, are best left to history. Others may have uses in the modern world: Butcher offers a table of herbs, for example, that alleviate various aches and pains. Subsequent chapters cover parasites, mental illnesses, sexual dysfunctions, sleep-related maladies and strange beauty treatments (some Victorian women owed their milk-pale complexions to a careful ration of arsenic). Butcher's anecdotes read like a collection of personal notes without an overarching theme, and are thus best for browsing; the book contains enough bizarre, disgusting and amusing medical minutiae to keep readers turning pages. B&w illustrations.
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Review

...makes for entertaining (if often shocking) reading. -- New York Times, October 5, 2004

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Avery Trade; 1 edition (January 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583331603
• ISBN-13: 978-1583331606
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,561,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Vague writing, misleading title, March 13, 2004

By A Customer

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This review is from: The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse: A Chronicle of Medical Mysteries, Curious Remedies, and Bizarre but True Healing Folklore (Paperback)

This is the most vague "medical" book I've ever read. The book description is also misleading. I thought this would be a book solely based on strangely-named syndromes and bizarre remedies. Oh sure, there are a few hazy descriptions of those, but then I'm treated to endless pages on breast augmentation, Botox, and endless definitions of parasites?

Nothing in this book is described in detail. It reads more like, "I heard about this guy who heard about this girl who...." The author's attempts at humor are scattered on every page and become very irritating, especially when she keeps trying to reinforce that these are serious diseases/syndromes and should not be made light of. (And given that this IS a "medical" book, not a "humor" book, I don't really understand the "comedy" attempts.)

Also, did ANY of the information in this book come from an actual hard copy source? The internet sources are listed on almost every other page and don't lend to credibility.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, especially anyone in the medical field, as half of the information in this book is common knowledge to anyone interested in medicine already. The entirety of this book could have been condensed to a few webpage links and you would have received the same (and probably more straight-foward and detailed) information. With such a good premise, I don't really understand the "cop-out" feeling of this book.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Tripe -- If I could give ZERO stars, I would., March 17, 2005

By 

A. O. Dugo (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse: A Chronicle of Medical Mysteries, Curious Remedies, and Bizarre but True Healing Folklore (Paperback)

This was a waste of time and money. If I had recourse to read another book, I would have, but unfortunately this was all I had on hand in the hour or so that it took to read this disgrace to publishinghouses everywhere. I could have found a better-written and more entertaining book by scouring the pages of an elementary school Scholastic book-club order form. It is unconscionable that any good editor took a look at this and let it pass through to printing in such a state.
Just as a child writes a story in crayon about their dog and scurries off to show mommy, Nancy Butcher has thrown together all the internet research she could muster in a print form and declared for all the world to see "Look, I have built a book!"
When picking up a book about medical maladies, I expect a scholarly approach. I expect footnotes and references. Nancy Butcher gives me websites. This entire book seems to be culled from the misinformed and fallible pages of the internet, with not a reputable medical book to back it up. Where one would expect even an elementary discussion of the mechanisms that cause these maladies (in addition to Butcher's amusing anecdotes), she instead leaves me with the impression that her inner monologue while writing went something like "Eww!Gross! Let me include this!" Additionally, her fixation on sexual dysfunction gets rather old, and if not for this factor, I would gladly have passed the book on to a 10-year-old child, at whose reading level this book seems to sit. Ultimately, perhaps it was my fault, for I should have had the sense not to order a book sight unseen. I've learned my lesson, and now peruse all of my books in a real bookstore before buying online.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The strange case of the published book., April 3, 2004

By 

shr nfr "silver944" (Newton, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse: A Chronicle of Medical Mysteries, Curious Remedies, and Bizarre but True Healing Folklore (Paperback)

If you buy this book thinking that you are going to get the sort of insight into medical conditions that you would get from Oliver Sacks, you are going to be massively dissapointed. This book is best characterized as a thin and cursory catalog of some of the more unusual medical conditions around. As such, I guess it has a place, but there is little in it that merits the time to read it. I was left wondering how she found a publisher to print it.