Since the beginning of time, humans have been searching for ways to make ourselves feel better fast. Unfortunately, history has shown that many of those ways — cannibalism, cocaine tooth drops, ingesting heavy metals — left us sick, broke, or both. Yet we keep looking for that fast cure.
Dr.
Lydia Kang, an author and a primary care physician in Omaha, Neb., is the co-author of
Quackery: A Brief History Of The Worst Ways To Cure Everything, which publishes Oct. 17. She talked to us recently about her new book, the gross things people have done through the centuries in search of health, and what it means for modern medicine.
