Sawbones ― The Hilarious, Horrifying Road to Modern Medicine

A compelling, often hilarious and occasionally horrifying exploration of how modern medicine came to be!

Wondering whether eating powdered mummies might be just the thing to cure your ills? Tempted by those vintage ads suggesting you wear radioactive underpants for virility? Ever considered drilling a hole in your head to deal with those pesky headaches? Probably not. But for thousands of years, people have done things like this—and things that make radioactive underpants seem downright sensible! In their hit podcast, Sawbones, Sydnee and Justin McElroy breakdown the weird and wonderful way we got to modern healthcare. And some of the terrifying detours along the way.

Every week, Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin amaze, amuse, and gross out (depending on the week) hundreds of thousands of avid listeners to their podcast, Sawbones. Consistently rated a top podcast on iTunes, with over 15 million total downloads, this rollicking journey through thousands of years of medical mishaps and miracles is not only hilarious but downright educational. While you may never even consider applying boiled weasel to your forehead (once the height of sophistication when it came to headache cures), you will almost certainly face some questionable medical advice in your everyday life (we’re looking at you, raw water!) and be better able to figure out if this is a miracle cure (it’s not) or a scam.

Table of Contents:
Part One: The Unnerving
The Resurrection Men
Fun w Galvanism
Weird Weight Loss
Miracle Cure: Opium
Black Plague
Heroes of Misguided Medicine: Pliny the Elder
Erectile Dysfunction
The Doctor Is In: Listener Questions Answered
Don’t Drill a Hole in Your Head

Part Two: The Gross
Mummy Medicine
The Guthole Bromance
The Unkillable Phineas Gage
Max Drank Poopy Water
Heroes of Misguided Medicine: Robert Liston
Golden Showers of Health
Miracle Cure-All: Radium
Dr. John Romulus Brinkley
The Doctor Is In Q&A
Just (Four) Humour Me
The Camel Dung Miracle

Part Three: The Weird
The Dancing Plague
Bad Medicine: Tobacco for Health
The Seasick-Proof Saloon
Miracle Cure-All: Vinegar
The Doctor Is In Q&A
Heroes of Misguided Medicine

Part Four: The Awesome
The Poison Squad
Bad Medicine: Self Experimentation
Eat Your Chocolate!
Heroes of Misguided Medicine
Parrot Fever
Miracle Cure-All: Honey
The Miraculous Polio Vaccine
The Doctor Is In

Sydnee McElroy has a BS in biology (2005) and an MD (2009) from Marshall University. She currently is a practicing licensed family physician and an assistant professor of medical education with Marshall.

Justin McElroy is a 15-year journalism veteran with two awards from the Ohio Associated Press for business writing. He has served as the managing editor of AOL’s Joystiq and Vox Media’s Polygon (of which he’s also a founder).

Justin and Sydnee are the hosts of Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine, and between them have created a bevy of different podcasts, including My Brother, My Brother and Me (currently being adapted into a TV series by NBC Universal’s Seeso network) which have attracted 60 million total downloads. Their other shows include Still Buffering: A Sister’s Guide to Teens Through the Ages, The Adventure Zone (a D&D podcast, with a forthcoming graphic novel) and Quality Control, a game review podcast.

Teylor Smirl is a graduate of New York’s School of the Visual Arts whose work has been featured in comics such as Amazing Forest as well as her own series, Flightless Birds. As Sydnee’s sister, she is part of the ever-growing McElroy (and family) podcasting empire, co-hosting Still Buffering with Sydnee and their youngest sister, Rileigh.