This pocket handbook of medical advice draws together the most bizarre and disgusting cures recommended by healers to their patients from Ancient Greece to the twentieth century. It features such delightful treatments as gargling sugared snail juice for a sore throat (from 1920s Lincolnshire), soothing a child's teething pains with a dab of cocaine (c19th), and curing a lovesick man by dressing as a haggard version of his beloved and hurling abuse at him. Covering disease, surgery, cosmetics, keeping fit and curing madness, it offers a fascinating - and undeniably grim - view of the tortuous ways in which our ancestors tried to stay in shape.