The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine

Horrible histories for adults, these gruesome, bizarre and often hilarious medical case histories trace the evolution of modern medicine and the astonishing resilience of human life, both in body and spirit!

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.

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

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.

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

Replete with tales such as "the human pincushion" and "suffocated by a fish", The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth is a bewildering walk through medical history that will astonish readers. This book proves that truth is indeed stranger--and more stomach-churning--than fiction. Between the toasting forks projectiles and deadly dentures, there are lessons a-plenty on how not to die.

This delightfully bizarre compendium of medical mishaps will certainly tickle you--what's not to love about exploding teeth?--but something deeper is at work. Morris offers a wryly generous view of the fallibilities of the body and psyche (read: the sailor who wouldn't stop swallowing knives) and doctors' inventive, often heroic attempts to remedy same, as medical science developed. At heart, this is an exploration of our humanity, in all its absurdity and valour.

Dawn Raffel, author of The Strange Case of Dr. Couney

The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth is such a weirdly wonderful tour through the history of medicine - from wandering bullets to apparently evil cucumbers - that on one level it's just pure fun to read. But Thomas Morris' intelligent story telling also makes it a fascinating look at medical history with all its mistakes, superstitions, and eventual understanding of the ever mysterious human body.

A wonderfully gruesome tour of inexplicable illnesses, questionable remedies, jaw-dropping operations and recoveries that defy logic... a fascinating window into the world of medical oddities... This tour of strange and unbelievable medical cases from history is funny and terrifying in equal measure.

A particularly fascinating reminder of medical advancement… Morris has combed through old medical journals and compiled a trove of the most bizarre, disgusting — and compelling — cases from the early 17th to the turn of the 20th century. It’s like medical rubbernecking.

The clinical cases Morris has collected, creating what amounts to a medical version of Ripley's Believe It or Not!, are often intriguing, occasionally disgusting, sometimes tragic, but always weird… Morris offers a most peculiar jaunt through medical history.

A gruesome but weirdly compelling trip through several centuries of quack cures, horrific operations, and bizarre accidents.

[A] series of case studies from our research past that will remind you that we are never as smart as we think. Morris uses images of old documents, and citations from physicians of the past, in way that makes the book both real, grounded—and a lot of fun.

Science Friday, Best Science Books of 2018

Morris repeatedly encountered the intriguing and the bizarre. The human aspects of the cases Morris describes are as important as the strictly medical. As well as many self-inflicted tribulations there are a number of hair-raising emergencies.

Brilliant, hypnotic, compelling. A great book.

Thomas Morris is a writer and historian. His first book, The Matter of the Heart, a critically-acclaimed history of heart surgery, was published in 2017 and won an RSL Jerwood Award for non-fiction. His second, The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth, was chosen by Mental Floss as one of the best books of 2018. He was previously a BBC radio producer for 18 years, and his freelance journalism has appeared in publications including The Times, The Lancet and the TLS.

"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.

A History of the Heart in Eleven Operations

The Matter of the Heart

The story of the human heart told through 11 ground-breaking operations

Thrilling ... Significant and often immersive… The “dizzying” story of heart surgery is every bit as important as that of the nuclear, computer or rocket ages. And now it has been given the history it deserves

The research that has gone into this book is simply staggering, and Morris has achieved much more than a history of heart operations… It is a study of human beings driven by Olympian ambition and bottomless curiosity. It is, in the end, a book about wonder. And a wonderful book.

Gripping... The Matter of the Heart details the breathtaking advances that have been made in the past 100 years.

Thomas Morris has written not a history of medical ideas about the heart, but a history of heart surgery... The stories come quickly: fluent, wry, admiring ... Morris has made something unique: a history less of people than of procedures, but lively, enthusiastic and brimming with detail ... anything but boring.

I recommend the book to all who are fascinated by the medical world...a thoroughly engaging history.

Fascinating and compelling... There are also remarkable tales of survival against the odds perseverance, ingenuity and awe-inspiring feats... Morris deftly constructs an engaging narrative that covers a vast range of material

With the cut and thrust of cardiac surgery now demystified, we forget that venturing into the thoracic cavity once seemed as daunting as polar exploration. Or more so: as Thomas Morris reveals in this stirring chronicle, even touching a beating heart was long viewed as impossible… Told through 11 pivotal operations, it's a tale of ingenuity... It's rich, too, in alarming details — not least, the injections of strychnine and whisky that featured in early surgery

Thomas Morris does for the history of cardiac surgery what The Right Stuff and Hidden Figures did for the space race... The book is - appropriately - pulse-thumpingly gripping and will be enjoyed by anyone who, in any sense of the phrase, has a heart.

Tremendous. An exhilarating sweep through ancient history and contemporary practice in surgery of the heart. It’s rich in extraordinary detail and stories that will amaze you. A wonderful book.

Standing outside this precious and pressured world, Morris provides an even-handed and honest survey of the pioneers and their breakthroughs… intelligent

[A] new book on the history of pioneering heart operations. The story begins with a second world war US army surgeon working to remove shrapnel from soldiers' chests in a shed in the Cotswolds and ends with the surreal prospect of the 3D printing of hearts.

Magnificent… Thomas Morris provides us with a thoughtful, engaging and rigorous account of how cardiac surgeons through history have sought to undo the ravages wrought on the heart… The results are a triumph of both the human imagination, emotional resilience and supreme self-confidence… It is peppered with vibrant anecdotes as well as biographical accounts of the individuals who made these important contributions

Skillfully detailed… He spares us nothing and in gripping stories delivers everything you would want to know about his superbly chosen subject

[Thomas Morris] succeeds where many such experts have failed in distilling the complexity of this organ into a highly readable and fascinating narrative… in 350 easy-to-read pages ... [he] captur[es] the majesty and pace of more than 80 years of scientific innovation ... the degree to which this book has been researched is breathtaking.

A history of heart surgery reveals how horrifyingly improvised early operations were.

Crammed full of compelling characters and dramatic scenes, this book gets to the heart of a fascinating matter and demonstrates why it matters so much.

'Thrilling... The “dizzying” story of heart surgery is every bit as important as that of the nuclear, computer or rocket ages. And now it has been given the history it deserves' James McConnachie, Sunday Times 
 
For thousands of years the human heart remained the deepest of mysteries; both home to the soul and an organ too complex to touch, let alone operate on. Then, in the late nineteenth century, medics began going where no one had dared go before. 
 
In eleven landmark operations, Thomas Morris tells us stories of triumph, reckless bravery, swaggering arrogance, jealousy and rivalry, and incredible ingenuity, from the trail-blazing ‘blue baby’ procedure to the first human heart transplant. The Matter of the Heart gives us a view over the surgeon’s shoulder, showing us the heart’s inner workings and failings. It describes both a human story and a history of risk-taking that has ultimately saved millions of lives.

Thomas Morris

This meticulous non-fiction account of a once-famous murder mystery has all the shocks and surprises of the best crime fiction

The plot of this real-life murder mystery had as many twists and turns as an Agatha Christie whodunit

In The Dublin Railway Murder, Thomas Morris unpacks this baffling case with the taut, just-the-facts spareness of the best police procedurals...[He] deftly peppers the narrative with historical context...An intriguing and compelling true crime whodunit as well.

As compelling a read as any fiction thriller

Written like a whodunit and wearing its vast research into Victorian Dublin ever so lightly, Thomas Morris's wholly factual murder mystery is easily one of the most entertaining page-turners I've read this year. It's a compelling, evocative, thrilling must-read, and proof, if further proof is ever required, that fact is often so much stranger - not to mention more entertaining - than fiction

Illuminates a fascinating Victorian culture and society. And, most importantly for the silent man at the centre of this story, Morris's painstaking investigation of this perplexing crime and its far-reaching consequences ensures that George Little is no longer forgotten.

The Dublin Railway Murder is a true-crime masterclass: meticulous, vivid and as compelling as any thriller...beautifully reconstructs mid-19th century Dublin, while never easing up on the pace. Brilliantly done throughout.

If, like me, you love everything Kate Summerscale writes, you'll lap up this compelling murder mystery...Morris draws us beautifully into his expert reconstruction of this baffling case.

The sensational true story of a Victorian murder mystery

A thrilling investigation of a true Victorian crime at Dublin railway station, shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2022. 
 
Dublin, November 1856: George Little, the chief cashier of the Broadstone railway terminus, is found dead, lying in a pool of blood beneath his desk. 
 
Yet there is no sign of a murder weapon and the office door is locked, apparently from the inside. Thousands of pounds in gold and silver are left untouched at the scene of the crime. 
 
Augustus Guy, Ireland's most experienced detective, teams up with Dublin's leading lawyer to investigate the murder - but the case defies all explanation. Then a local woman comes forward, claiming to know the killer...

Thomas Morris

Praise for The Dublin Railway Murder

This meticulous non-fiction account of a once-famous murder mystery has all the shocks and surprises of the best crime fiction

The plot of this real-life murder mystery had as many twists and turns as an Agatha Christie whodunit

In The Dublin Railway Murder, Thomas Morris unpacks this baffling case with the taut, just-the-facts spareness of the best police procedurals...[He] deftly peppers the narrative with historical context...An i ...

This meticulous non-fiction account of a once-famous murder mystery has all the shocks and surprises of the best crime fiction

The plot of this real-life murder mystery had as many twists and turns as an Agatha Christie whodunit

In The Dublin Railway Murder, Thomas Morris unpacks this baffling case with the taut, just-the-facts spareness of the best police procedurals...[He] deftly peppers the narrative with historical context...An i ...

This meticulous non-fiction account of a once-famous murder mystery has all the shocks and surprises of the best crime fiction

The plot of this real-life murder mystery had as many twists and turns as an Agatha Christie whodunit

In The Dublin Railway Murder, Thomas Morris unpacks this baffling case with the taut, just-the-facts spareness of the best police procedurals...[He] deftly peppers the narrative with historical context...An i ...

Books by Thomas Morris

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