Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 2 (of 2)

Long before pills and prescriptions, doctors believed healing lived in the blood of Executioners and the fat of hanged men. This second volume of Wootton's landmark history ventures into the strangest chapter of medicine: the era when pharmacies stocked vipers, bear bile, powdered skull, and excrement alongside herbs. Wootton traces how ancient Egyptians, Romans, and medieval healers arrived at the radical conclusion that consuming animal parts could transfer their vigor to human patients. A lion's heart for courage, a viper's flesh for vitality, human blood for epilepsy, the dung of various beasts for ailments from constipation to plague. These were not fringe remedies but mainstream pharmacology practiced for centuries. Through Wootton's meticulous research, Volume 2 becomes an archaeology of wrong assumptions that somehow carried medicine forward for millennia, revealing the bizarre logic that connected the animal kingdom to the human body. For readers fascinated by the history of science, the oddity of past beliefs, or the long road from alchemy to anatomy, this volume offers an unforgettable tour through the apothecary's cabinet of curiosities.