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The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse: A Chronicle of Medical Mysteries, Curious Remedies,and Bizarre but True Healing Folklore  Written by Nancy Butcher
Indulge in 208 pages Rated 2.5/5.0, based on 10 reviews. Buy from Amazon:
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Reviews Very disappointed
Rating: 2/5
I have long enjoyed medical mysteries in the genre of Oliver Sack's "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" and "The Beetle of Aphrodite" by Howell and Ford, and was the mood for a good read in the same genre. This book, despite its clever title and good cover art was a sore disappointment. The author is a correspondent for [...], and while I find that a nice online site for finding recipes and general information, I don't expect to get that style from a published book. The book has little snippets of information, with seemingly no source material -- no backstories are added and often no names are involved -- the diseases are described but they aren't presented as mysteries at all. It reads like a catalogue rather than a book, and although there is a bibliography in the back, the feeling is that the author got all her information online, from questionable sources -- and you can get much the same info in an hour or two surfing on the web. The several pages devoted to bizarre sexual terms especially doesn't seem to fall under a medical mystery. Don't bother with this one. Really. I Wish It Was Longer
Rating: 3/5
I enjoyed reading this book very much. It was a conversation piece for my co-workers and me. I do, however, wish that it was longer and a little more detailed. Also, I feel Chapter 5 on Sexual Maladies could have been left out, Tripe -- If I could give ZERO stars, I would.
Rating: 1/5
This was a waste of time and money. If I had recourse to read another book, I would have, but unfortunately this was all I had on hand in the hour or so that it took to read this disgrace to publishinghouses everywhere. I could have found a better-written and more entertaining book by scouring the pages of an elementary school Scholastic book-club order form. It is unconscionable that any good editor took a look at this and let it pass through to printing in such a state.
Just as a child writes a story in crayon about their dog and scurries off to show mommy, Nancy Butcher has thrown together all the internet research she could muster in a print form and declared for all the world to see "Look, I have built a book!"
When picking up a book about medical maladies, I expect a scholarly approach. I expect footnotes and references. Nancy Butcher gives me websites. This entire book seems to be culled from the misinformed and fallible pages of the internet, with not a reputable medical book to back it up. Where one would expect even an elementary discussion of the mechanisms that cause these maladies (in addition to Butcher's amusing anecdotes), she instead leaves me with the impression that her inner monologue while writing went something like "Eww!Gross! Let me include this!" Additionally, her fixation on sexual dysfunction gets rather old, and if not for this factor, I would gladly have passed the book on to a 10-year-old child, at whose reading level this book seems to sit. Ultimately, perhaps it was my fault, for I should have had the sense not to order a book sight unseen. I've learned my lesson, and now peruse all of my books in a real bookstore before buying online. Less In-depth than I had hoped
Rating: 3/5
I'm not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. That being said, I was disappointed with this book's lack of depth. Many of the descriptions read like an unfinished thought. If you have any previous interest in "Strange Diseases and Conditions," you already know too much to count this book as a worthy investment. Not unlike a previous reviewer, I too was dissapointed by the copious references to websites. I am also curious as to why the author did not illustrate more examples, rather than directing the reader elsewhere. On the upside, it was a shockingly easy and quick read. The strange case of the published book.
Rating: 1/5
If you buy this book thinking that you are going to get the sort of insight into medical conditions that you would get from Oliver Sacks, you are going to be massively dissapointed. This book is best characterized as a thin and cursory catalog of some of the more unusual medical conditions around. As such, I guess it has a place, but there is little in it that merits the time to read it. I was left wondering how she found a publisher to print it. |
