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Medical Mysteries Across History

By: Roy Benaroch MD, The Great Courses
Narrated by: Roy Benaroch MD
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Publisher's Summary

In medical school, every patient is a teaching case - and every patient can be your teacher. For hundreds of years, medical students around the world have learned the secrets of medicine by looking at real cases, involving real people and featuring real symptoms. 

But what happens when those medical cases are a mystery? How do doctors diagnose illnesses and save lives using the best knowledge they have about health and disease? What differences (and similarities) are there between the ways doctors work today and the ways they worked thousands of years ago? 

In these 10 eye-opening lectures by a practicing doctor and medical educator, you’ll walk through a series of medical mystery cases ripped from history and involving well-known historical figures whose identities are nevertheless hidden from you. Every one of these cases (featuring presidents, scientists, singers, kings, and queens) requires you to use your detective skills to identify and diagnose the mystery patient just like the doctors that attended them. In the process, you’ll learn fascinating insights into medicine: both the medicine that was practiced thousands of years ago and the medicine doctors practice today. 

What are the historic and modern consequences of fever? How do doctors diagnose and treat cardiovascular disease and alcoholism? How does radiation and heavy metal poisoning affect the human body? What so-called “modern” diseases were actually documented in the ancient past? Solving these mystery cases will give you a new perspective on how the human body works - and on some world-changing figures whom you’ve never viewed from a doctor’s point of view.

©2019 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2020 Audible Originals, LLC.

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Great series

A really interesting and thoughtful series with great narration. Great to hear how a doctor thinks about patients and symptoms. Certainly worth listening to.

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Exceptional!

Roy's analysis of historical cases is truly fascinating! I was amazed to learn of these well-known people and the influence of their health on the sociocultural fabric. Definitely recommend this one.

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So interesting

Really enjoy listening to this
I learned so much!
Thank you for another excellent lecture

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Fascinating medical cases

A entertaining yet enlightening book on historical figures and probable causes of their death

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Thoroughly Enjoyable

Thoroughly enjoyable. Aimed at the layperson, but as someone with extensive history general knowledge and quite good medical literacy I found this quite basic. Nevertheless I enjoyed listening to a modern physician’s take on historical cases.

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Guess who died? - a medical quiz game.

Well, this "lecture" is mainly based on USA people of no significance, and some historical figures who are so easy to identify either by title of chapter or the first two minutes of dialogue, that the remainder of the chapter becomes irritating.

Alexander the Great suffered from pancreatitis and died in a diabetic coma..... the book is wrong.

As for the other obvious diagnoses, well it doesn't take a med student to know what is going on.
Just watch the first six series of HOUSE, and tips on being a diagnostician are easy.

This book, great background noise.

I've rated it generously as I consider others who won't be as smart, although they are willing to tackle History and Medicine at the same time.

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I enjoyed listening this audio

I loved this audiiobook, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book, many examples

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