I’ve been a nurse for 15 years. This means two things: I have seen and heard a lot of gross stuff and I have an incredibly dark sense of humor. The former, well… bodies are gross. They do gross things even when they’re working properly, so you can imagine things get exponentially more disgusting when they malfunction.

As to the latter… we’re privileged to see a lot of happy moments in healthcare but also some of the most tragic – the best of humanity but also the absolute worst – and the way we get through it is by finding humor where other people wouldn’t. We have to or we’d spend our whole shift locked in place, unable to do what we need to do to bring about the joyous moments.

As it turns out, the history of medicine is also a pretty even split between disgusting and darkly hilarious, and Dr. Sydnee McElroy and Justin McElroy, hosts of the Sawbones podcast, along with illustrator Teylor Smirl, are here to tell you all about it in Sawbones: the Horrifying, Hilarious Road to Modern Medicine (Weldon Owen), a cheeky, snarky, and incredibly informative summation of all the idiotic things people have decided were a good thing to do to themselves and others in the name of healing over the centuries.

I’ve spent half of my career as a toxicology nurse, so, as you might imagine, I’ve heard some pretty crazy shit, but the McElroys have gone spelunking in places that leave even me agape. Sterilized tape worms for weight loss, you say? An explanation for the waterproofing on the plague doctor’s leather robes? Certainly. Did you know that menstrual blood ruins crops and infects dog bites with incurable poison? Bad news. Parrot Fever? Dancing Plague? Bloodletting?

And let me tell you about the “Misguided Medicine Hall of Fame” – it’s amazing. And also hilarious.

One of the things I like most about Sawbones, however, is that it doesn’t only poke at what we’ve done wrong; it explores the development of treatments and technologies we use today from the tragedies, and much more rare triumphs, of the past, including a few treatments we use in updated form today.

Of course, most of what humanity (especially Europeans) did get right about the body and medicine for the majority of their history was pure, stupid luck… and we, as a species, are fortunate we didn’t kill ourselves off thousands of years ago.

This is one of those things we nurses laugh at all the time. We see a lot of evidence that it’s still amazing we don’t kill ourselves as a species off every day.

The McElroys make a fantastic writing team in large part because while Sydnee is a physician, Justin is a layperson and their tandem efforts result in a balance between medical and lay terminology that’s perfect for readers coming from either direction. It also means that readers can be confident in the information they’re getting, even when it’s presented in a humorous manner rather than an encyclopedic one.

Insets provide extra snippets of information for those who want additional details but allow those who’d rather not know the specifics of, say, modern fecal transplants, to move along. Other asides, such as the “Justin vs. Sydnee” blocks, bring readers into the conversation, making us feel like we’re part of a dinner table conversation, and that makes reading Sawbones feel like an intimate chat rather than a remote experience.

One of my favorite things about Sawbones is the art, a perfect combination of period photos/reproductions (one peep at the iron long and you’ll never even think about refusing a polio vaccine again) and Smirl’s new illustrations. Every illustration is demonstrative without being too graphic, adding to the information provided in the text and never going for the gross-out, though I’d make the argument that Sawbones isn’t for the faint of stomach regardless. It is about the history of medicine, which isn’t a topic for the squeamish.

Sawbones: The Horrifying, Hilarious Road to Modern Medicine by Dr. Sydnee McElroy and Justin McElroy and illustrated by Teylor Smirl (Weldon Owen) is out now and would make a great last-minute holiday gift for the medical folks or anatomists in your life.