The last time you got sick, you reached for something without even thinking — a pill, a syrup, a phone at two in the morning. Now take all of it away: no pharmacy, no doctor, no idea that germs exist. For almost the entire history of your species, that is exactly where you would have been, and what your ancestors did next is far stranger than simply suffering.
You’ll meet a sick chimpanzee who cured herself with the bitterest plant in the forest, and Neanderthals whose dental plaque still holds traces of poplar, the tree behind aspirin’s natural painkiller. You’ll see a 14,000-year-old cavity scraped clean with a flint point, 9,000-year-old teeth drilled with flint-tipped tools, and a 31,000-year-old amputation from Borneo that the patient survived for years. Along the way, Ötzi the Iceman’s fungus kit and tattoos reveal how prehistoric people treated pain. Then you’ll discover the most powerful ancient medicine of all, and why you still reach for it every time you fall ill.
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