Many years ago in Europe, people believed that an evil spirit was sweeping across the land. It killed people by the thousands. The deaths were agonizing and gruesome. Before long, the only sounds in the streets were the tolling of funeral bells and the wheels of carts carrying away the dead. Centuries later, several children in a small village in Peru became so frantic that they had to be tied to their beds. Some screamed in terror, while others foamed at the mouth. All of them had one thing in common: They had been bitten by vampire bats. After a woman last her ability to speak, tests revealed a dark spot in her brain. The good news? The spot was not a tumor. The bad news? The spot was a tapeworm, living in her brain. These and other true stories of medical mysteries and terrors await you inside Scary Medical Stories.
Excerpt: The human body is almost too amazing to be believed. Consider these facts: Our heart beats around 100,000 times a day, continuously pumping blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels. And we take more than 25,000 breaths a day. We do all this without even thinking about it. When we touch something, information about what we’ve touched races to our brain at about 240 miles an hour. And our brain holds five times more information than an entire set of encyclopedias. Our eyes can recognize close to one million different colors and shapes. A sneeze rockets dust out of our nose at nearly 100 miles an hour. Perhaps one of the most astounding things about the body is that it can repair itself. Except for our teeth, every bit of our body is living, growing tissue. More than 2 trillion new cells are formed in our body every day. So if we’re healthy, tissue can heal and rebuild itself when it’s broken or torn.
CUNY HSE Science Club 
So far from what I’ve read, I like how the stories I am reading about relates to real life. I feel like this is teaching me the part that was left out when I was younger. These stories from the 3 chapters i have read so far I cab realte to small pox because I always wondered what happened to the Pilgrims, Native americans and Aztecs to actually read what happen to them. It was a terrible disease that went around that we know today but treated so different and its quiet harmless now. Very interesting!
scary medical stories is a great book. i have not had a chance to read the whole book but with what i have read is great. i love reading about disease and what happpen during that time. once i read more about it. i will let you know more about it later.
Nancy, have you had a chance to finish this book? What else woud you like to tell potential readers about it?
It’s a very interesting book. I really enjoyed reading it. I learned a lot about diseases from hundreds of years ago and diseases thats going on now. One of the things I found interesting and made me think was when smallpox was out and deadly years ago and polio disease. Scientist found cures for it a few years later without the technology we have now. I wonder why till this day we havent found a cure for AIDS, HIV , and Cancer. it also kind of gives hope that one day they will. This book give you an open mind.
I really liked this book. It was so interesting, I could hardly put it down.
Reading this book helped me realize how much fear, death and destruction were caused by diseases like Polio and Rabies before vaccines were discovered to combat them.
Reading the story about Rabies, made me remember when I was young and was bitten by a dog. Because the dog was a stray, my older sister had to take me uptown on the subway every day for two weeks to get rabies vaccine shots. I’ll never know whether the dog was infected with the Rabies virus, but all I can say is that I’m grateful to the many scientists, like Louis Pasteur, who dedicate their lives to finding cures to deadly diseases.
Scary Medical Story. The book I am reading is a very good book. It tell me about true medical story in the pass that I never heard.
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This book is about nine scary stories that have existed through history and that everybody would like to know like: Ch.1) The BLACK DEATH – It took place mostly in Europe in 1347 in the Messina town in Italy, but it spread in many cities in Europe. It was abroad in the ships after the sailors/traders returned from a long trip from eastern Asia. It killed more than half of the population wherever it was transmitted. Ch. 2) Smallpox – It was an extremely contagious and deadly disease. Ch. 3) A deadly summer in Philadelphia – It took place on August 3,1793, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Yellow fever developed due to the lack of rain, increasing the mosquitoes’ reproduction, which transmitted the disease and also the new sanitation developed contributed to the illness killing many people because there was no cure for it. Ch. 4) Polio – In 1950 in the town of Wytheville in Virginia, a new epidemic broke out in the town called Polio. Ch. 5) the AIDS – In 1980 a new contagious disease AIDS was discovered, which was transmitted by blood transfusion, by sharing drug injections and by sexual contact mostly in the gay community. Ch. 6) The Fury of Rabies – In a village of the Amazon River in Peru, a new deadly illness was transmitted by vampire bats bites, which affected children mostly who later died due to no treatment. Later the French Scientist Luis Pasteur found a treatment for the Rabies (the one that it is still used). Ch.7) Hidden poisons at home – It is about some pesticide poisoning, and once we get in contact with them they are deadly. Ch.8) Creepy invaders – It is about worms and bugs that are dangerous parasites that live in our body and could make us sick or even kill us. Ch.9) The invisible killer – It is about carbon monoxide which is so dangerous that it can kill us silently.
My opinion about this book is that it was interesting from the start up until the end. I enjoyed it because every chapter it is so immersing that I could not stop until I finished. I learned how every disease had developed throughout time. The stories are so scary but at the same time it is helpful to know exactly what we already have a vague idea of or maybe any knowledge at all of the diseases. Some still exist like the AIDS, Rabies, hidden poisons at home, creepy invaders and the Invisible killer.
This book shows how important it is to be careful in order to prevent them. It is an engaging book. For me it was very sad to read about the Polio because about 30 years ago, one of my little brothers got it when he was two year old. The doctors said there was no cure for it and as result he died. I highly recommend this book to the people who like to read about true stories and to the parents to pay attention and be careful with their family, their children and friends. I know that at the end they will be thankful to read this book and find the truth about medical stories that perhaps like me for many of them, they had no idea about.
The book is a collection of essays about diseases and a few strange medical crimes. Maybe a better title would be “Strange Diseases and Odd Deaths.” I personally enjoyed the chapters because if there was one you didn’t like you can always skip it and go to another one and comeback when you need to read it later. The chapters are very short, most are between 10 and 15 pages, and the book is very small so you can really put it in your pocket, go to a bus stop read a chapter while you wait for the bus or when you are on the bus before class, which I am embarrassed to admit I did.
From this book, I learned that history repeats itself. There was a parallel to the persecution of the Jewish with the Black Death and the persecution of the gays with AIDS. The people who should read this book are people who love short essays or stories and those who love history or like to read articles about inspirational stories. It wasn’t long ago that we had the smallpox epidemic and the bird flu that killed 360 people and then swine flu, but if we compare that with the disease of the past like the 1918 flu it is just a drop in the pocket.
The “Scary Medical Stories” book is about all the historical and modern epidemics, and how people were affected by these diseases. Many years ago people had no idea about these diseases. They used to believe these diseases were evil spirits, black magic, vampire bats, etc. They randomly treated these diseases, which later became deathly and dangerous. Finally, in 1865 Louis Pasteur discovered “germs” and how they are built.
Our opinion about reading the book Scary Medical Stories is that we found it very interesting to know about the different diseases the human body contacts. Even after reading the book we found it very scary to know this!
We think that people should read this book because they will learn about disease. People will learn about the diseases that grow inside their body. Also, they will learn to save themselves from the disease that they learned about. People today should learn how these diseases affected people long ago.
This book gives you a brief history about medical diseases and about the history at the time of these calamities and how they began and how much they affected people around the world. No one knows for sure, but some reports claimed that the diseases nearly wiped out the entire city, tens of thousands of people died.
What we liked about this book and the stories is that they explain in such an easy way that it felt as if we were there. We learned that it is really important to wash new clothes and be aware of the surroundings, depending on the areas where we are at.
We recommend this book to anybody who wants to learn about how epidemics start and to avoid them in the future.
I have read this book and felt like watching different very interesting movies in every chapter. It has many short stories of the different scary diseases which explain where these diseases origin from, how it appeared on this planet, and how Drs. found the medicines for curing.
If you like to know all about these, never miss to read this book. This book is important to read is because it shows our one of the bad obstacle to live on this planet is diseases, so it is important to know everyone what the worst disease have occurred on this planet. Once you read this book you find what these diseases have played role on this planet. You will know how these diseases took human brothers and sisters’ lives too