num_pages: 400
description: A mysterious epidemic of dental explosionsA teenage boy who got his wick stuck in a candlestickA remarkable woman who like a human fountain spurted urine from virtually every orificeThese 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 patients heart. We also hear of the weird often hilarious remedies employed by physicians of yore  from crows vomit to port-wine enemas  the hazards of such everyday objects as cucumbers and false teeth and miraculous recovery from apparently terminal injuries.
language: English
title: Mystery Of Exploding Teeth
publisher: Bantam Press