Read an excerpt from "Death By Shakespeare"

William Shakespeare's birthday is traditionally celebrated on April 23, though all we know for certain is that he was baptized on April 26, 1564.

But we're confident that he died on a different April 23 — so sharing this book excerpt today seems fitting either way.

In Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts, chemist-turned-author Kathryn Harkup takes us back to a darker era in medicine, one in which patients realistically didn't expect to be healed and in which symptoms, not the diseases themselves, were addressed.

You can read a passage from Death By Shakespeare at Literary Hub, and if you'd like to continue reading about the Bard, here are some (mostly lighter) pieces from the archives.

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