The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JAN 5, 2004

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.