I’ve been a fan of House, M.D. for a long time now, so when a book about medical mysteries popped up at the library, I just had to read it. While there’s not as much drama as House has, The Deadly Dinner Party and Other Medical Detective Stories is, if not an enjoyable read, certainly a fascinating one. And I couldn’t say enjoyable because read all the accounts of food poisoning might make you fearful of everything in your fridge.
Edlow’s short tales start with a patient or more who come down with a mysterious but dangerous set of symptoms. Tests are run, but there’s always some detective work needed to track down the cause of the infection, whether it’s a cider press that didn’t pasteurize their cider or a local dairy that was putting way too much vitamin D in their milk.
There are some very length tangents into medical history in the middle–sometimes more than one–where Edlow tells you more than you ever wanted to know about, say, botulism or the hepatic vein. Edlow’s depth of knowledge is amazing. If you have the patience for it, this is a very interesting book.
The other thing I noticed about the stories was that some of them are a bit dated. The stories span the last 40 years, which makes me wonder how Edlow went about collecting his stories. As I read, it sounded like a bunch of doctors sitting around trying to top each other with the weirdest cases they’d ever had except with some of the medical jargon edited out. Still, I learned more (and from better sources) than I do from House.