Bottoms Up!: A Pathologist's Essays on Medicine and the Humanities


Bottoms Up!: A Pathologist's Essays on Medicine and the Humanities
Southern Illinois University Press; 1st edition | November 1, 1987 | ISBN-10: 0809314193 | 360 pages | PDF | 7.01 MB

The reader will note,” Dr. Ober explains, “that psychopathology occupies a prominent place in these essays—melancholia, masochism, hysteria, autoerotic asphyxia, and other dinner table topics.” The book opens with a brisk discussion of flagellation—studded with rare illustrations. Like all of the essays in the book, this is an illuminating chapter, scholarly and good natured at the same time, and one that gives rise to speculation concerning human nature and human history.
Ober provides medical answers to many mysteries. In a discussion of infertility in the Bible, he speculates medically as to why Onan and his older brother Er died during coitus. In the eyes of the doctor, these biblical antiheros may deserve our pity, but not our scorn. He also explains the role of Reuben’s man­drakes in fertilizing the barren Rachel. Equally fascinating is his discussion of the mandrake, a wondrous weed and sire of legend and superstition.



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