This book "reveals how efforts to establish an exact border between quackery and legitimate therapeutic practices and medications have largely failed, and details the reasons for this failure. Digging beneath the surface, the book uncovers the history of allegedly fraudulent therapies including pain medications, obesity and asthma cures, gastrointestinal remedies, virility treatments, and panaceas for diseases such as arthritis, asthma, diabetes,...

We all want to be healthy, live longer and avoid cancer, but too many of us are being scammed by sciencey-sounding crooks and nonsense marketing. Dr Brad McKay, GP and experienced Australian science communicator, has watched how misinformation and 'alternative facts' have come to permeate every facet of our lives, causing many of us to turn away from academic expertise and instead look to social media influencers and dodgy websites to guide our health...

In the late nineteenth century, costumed performers roamed rural America entertaining people and selling vast quatities of medicinal preparations. Usually neither beneficial nor healthy, their elixirs ofter contained opium, cocaine, mercury, and grain alcohol. In the late 19th century, costumed performers dressed as Indians and exotic witch doctors roamed rural America entertaining people and selling vast quantities of medicinal preparations. Usually...

En Mi año de descanso y relajación, Ottessa Moshfegh hace de Manhattan el epicentro de una civilización, la del año 2000, dominada por la apatía. Como una oscura bella durmiente, la narradora de esta novela decide encerrarse durante un año en su piso de una de las zonas más exclusivas de Nueva York, asistida por una herencia ingente y por una gran cantidad de fármacos, para dedicarse a dormir y ver películas de Whoopi Goldberg y Harrison...