Member Review
Review by
Media/Journalist 157704
Let the title of author Sam Kean's book be a warning to you: this book contains stories about medical procedures that are not for the squeamish. In one chapter, The Icepick Surgeon pulls back the historical curtain on doctors who used ice picks to penetrate living brains to lobotomize patients and supposedly "cure" them. One such unfortunate was young Rosemary Kennedy, sister to the late President John F. Kennedy. Her father arranged the operation in a misguided attempt to stop her seizures and mood swings, only to leave her permanently disabled and unable to speak coherently.
Other accounts of medical and scientific experiments and procedures are equally horrific: the deliberate infection of Black men in Tuskegee with syphilis; monstrous abuses committed by the Nazis; cruelty to animals (an entire chapter I couldn't read) and more.
Publisher's Weekly gave the book a starred review for its thought-provoking commentary on people who may (or may not) have been moral people, but who did terrible and even criminal things. It's well-written and fascinating, and for that, I give it four stars. But it was too disturbing for me to finish.
Other accounts of medical and scientific experiments and procedures are equally horrific: the deliberate infection of Black men in Tuskegee with syphilis; monstrous abuses committed by the Nazis; cruelty to animals (an entire chapter I couldn't read) and more.
Publisher's Weekly gave the book a starred review for its thought-provoking commentary on people who may (or may not) have been moral people, but who did terrible and even criminal things. It's well-written and fascinating, and for that, I give it four stars. But it was too disturbing for me to finish.
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