Troubled by toothache? Dogged by dipsomania? Perhaps you have been poisoned or find yourself with a bottle stuck up your bottom? This compendium of tried and tested (and terrifying) historical remedies is your go-to guide for how not to seek medical relief.

From smearing mouse-dung on your teeth to drinking sulphuric acid, and from mechanical chin-reducing contraptions to 'super-super-excellent' quack medicines, here are to be found the most bizarre and alarming remedies of the last two thousand years. Spanning Ancient Greece and twentieth-century Britain and America, What the Apothecary Ordered is full of the dangerous ministrations of 'healers' of yore. Everyday illnesses, beauty, surgery, sexual performance and madness Ð whatever the nature of the malady, within these pages the reader will find a cautionary tale about entrusting its treatment to the experts.