Disgusting Diseases takes up exactly where Horrid Histories leaves off, to present a wonderful colourful and yucky smorgasbord of disease and all the nasty, horrid, unpleasant and downright ghastly bits and pieces you never ever, really never ever, wanted to know about all the awful things that can happen to your body.
But to begin at the beginning, it is all our ancestors fault, you know the ones who stopped hunting for meat and foraging for green things and nuts, and decided to start farming, herding animals and generally disturbing the natural order of things. Until they changed this order, humans were virtually disease free. It was only once they became more sophisticated that bacteria, parasites, worms, lice and viruses really began to enjoy living on us, in us and with us, so much so that after they had eaten their fill, we died!
This wonderfully horrid book looks at Poo, going back to before the time of toilets, recent disease such as Ebola, Mad Cow’s disease and some of the absolutely unimaginable, by modern day standards, cures for disease and conditions such as epilepsy. Pliny the Elder, who appears quite a lot in ancient information, believed that drinking the blood of a newly slain Roman Gladiator and then eating one slice of their liver for breakfast for nine days, was the definite cure for epilepsy. Why, one has to wonder!
The Black Death (1346-1353) was a plague that killed millions of people in Britain and Europe and created a wide range of ‘cures’, none of which worked, as they had absolutely no idea it was caused by a flea, a psycho flea to be exact, although that is not its scientific name. Only about 30% of the British and European population survived!
Each of the sections within the book are full of the most intriguing and interesting facts about disease that will appeal to the heart and soul of all young people, as it is they whom the authors are targeting, as they are the age range who truly enjoy the YUCKY side of things, when it comes down to getting gruesome with facts.
The final section is of course Death, The End (?) for those who want to know all about what happens at The End! a condition for which so far there is no cure.
Gross, gruesome, horrible and strangely hypnotic, even if you don’t really want to read any more, you will find that you have to have just another look at perhaps the next chapter.
Enjoy your journey back through history to when often the cure was often far, far worse than the disease.
