The mystery of the exploding teeth and other curiosities from the history of medicine - Thomas Morris

"Delightfully horrifying."--Popular Science
One of Mental Floss's Best Books of 2018
One of Science Friday's Best Science Books of 2018



A mysterious epidemic of dental explosions

A teenage boy who got his wick stuck in a candlestick...

A remarkable woman who, like a human fountain, spurted urine from virtually every orifice...

These are just a few of the anecdotal gems that have until now lain undiscovered in medical journals for centuries. This fascinating collection of historical curiosities explores some of the strangest cases that have perplexed doctors across the world.

From seventeenth-century Holland to Tsarist Russia, from rural Canada to a whaler in the Pacific, many are monuments to human stupidity - such as the sailor who swallowed dozens of penknives to amuse his shipmates, or the chemistry student who in 1850 arrived at a hospital in New York with his penis trapped inside a bottle, having unwisely decided to relieve himself into a vessel containing highly reactive potassium. Others demonstrate exceptional surgical ingenuity long before the advent of anaesthesia - such as a daring nineteenth-century operation to remove a metal fragment from beneath a conscious patient's heart.
We also hear of the weird, often hilarious remedies employed by physicians of yore - from crow's vomit to port-wine enemas - the hazards of such everyday objects as cucumbers and false teeth, and miraculous recovery from apparently terminal injuries.

Blending fascinating history with lacerating wit, The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth will take you on a tour of some of the funniest, strangest and most wince-inducing corners of medical history.

Thomas Morris worked for the BBC for seventeen years making programmes for Radio 4 and Radio 3. For five years he was the producer of In Our Time, and previously worked on Front Row, Open Book and The Film Programme. His freelance journalism has appeared in publications including The Times, The Lancet and The Cricketer.
In 2015 he was awarded a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for non-fiction. He lives in London.

Delightfully horrifying.
Popular Science

A delightful romp through a myriad of entertaining, arcane and obscure medical anecdotes. Fascinating and entertaining... a curious window into a vitalistic era of medical practice.
Wall Street Journal - Adrian Woolfson

A witty account of bizarre medical tales from history. Read it, weep and be very grateful for modern medicine.
Daily Express

Blending fascinating history with cutting wit, surgical historian Thomas Morris mines the medical journals and explores some of the strangest cases that have perplexed doctors across the world.
Big Issue

A Ripley-esque collection of 'compellingly disgusting, hilarious, or downright bizarre' medical oddities... accompanied by the author's witty and often humorous, colloquial commentary.
Kirkus Reviews