The Sawbones Book: The Hilarious, Horrifying Road to Modern Medicine

Book Title: The Sawbones Book: The Hilarious, Horrifying Road to Modern Medicine

Book Author: Justin McElroy, Sydnee McElroy, Teylor Smirl (Illustrator)

Publication Information: San Francisco, CA, Weldon Owen Inc, 2018, 216 pp., $16.28, hardcover

Sawbones the book was based on the podcast: Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine.¹ The podcast, which is an extremely popular podcast with excellent ratings on iTunes, is a weekly humorous and informative account of all the missteps we in the medical profession have taken over the years in our quest to cure people of disease. The book and podcast were created by family physician Sydnee McElroy, MD, an assistant professor at Marshall Family Health in West Virginia, and her husband, Justin McElroy, a podcaster, actor, and former video game journalist. Sydnee’s younger sister, Teylor Smirl, an illustrator and comic book artist, illustrated the book. As a family physician interested in medical history, a graphic novel enthusiast, and a loyal listener of the Sawbones podcast since 2014, the year after the podcast began, I was eager for the book to be published, and was certainly not disappointed when I finally had the opportunity to read it.

The book and podcast are a combination of engaging and factual bits of medical history mostly presented by Sydnee, interspersed with usually hilarious side commentary by Justin. The book compiles many of the more notable (and illustratable) stories into a single concise volume. Although by no means a comprehensive account of medical history throughout the ages, the weekly podcast, now ongoing for 6 years, does indeed cover quite a few topics from trepanation to black salve. For the podcast each week, Sydnee often takes suggestions from listeners, to come up with a topic for the week that she then researches and tells a story about. Each week, Justin listens to the story Sydnee is telling in real time, and interjects his very nonmedical thoughts and comments. As you can imagine, the back and forth between husband and wife is very entertaining. The layout and design of the book are a reflection of the interactions Sydnee and Justin have on the podcast, with sidebars by Justin, intermittent “Justin vs Sydnee” text bubbles, and Sydnee’s Fun Medical Facts/Syndee’s Medical History Corner footers. To the reader familiar with the podcast, the voices of Sydnee and Justin can be clearly heard while reading through the pages of the book. The book has a bit of a graphic novel style, but with much more text, and as Justin often says on the podcast, it has a very “old timey” feel, which is perfect.

The book is divided into an introduction and four chapters: The Unnerving, The Gross, The Weird, and The Awesome. Each chapter includes a “The Doctor Is In” section, where Sydnee, just as she does in the podcast occasionally, answers specific short questions emailed or tweeted in by listeners. The book also includes some old photos, advertisements, and paintings, often adapted by Teylor, that complement the stories.

Although this is not a text meant to be used for medical education purposes, the book, just like the podcast, is exceedingly entertaining, and just as the podcast is easy and fun to listen to, so too is the book easy and fun to read. However, as a bonus, the reader also learns a bit of medical history in the process, and as almost every medical historian will tell you, in order to really understand modern medicine, one must know a bit about the history of medicine as well. Sydnee states often and emphatically that she is not a medical historian, and while this is true, she is, as many family doctors are, talented at taking the obscure and sometimes difficult to understand truth, and weaving it into an interesting and digestible story that physicians and nonphysicians alike can easily absorb. In the end, the true value of the podcast and the book lies in the fact that they make medical history accessible and fun for everyone. Finally, for family medicine educators and learners—those of us who have always been interested in medical history but usually too busy seeing patients, spending time with family, or in our rare bits of free time reading actual medical texts and listening to AAFP podcasts, the podcast and the book provide a humorous and engaging—albeit slightly disorganized—introduction into the world of medical history.