The perils of a sneeze

A few months ago I wrote about the criminal who was lucky to recover after inhaling a fake gold earring. By chance I’ve just come across another case report written by the same Victorian surgeon, Bernard Pitts. Not a well-known figure, principally because he wrote little and shunned publicity. But he seems to have been a very good … Read more

A late arrival

Charles Delucena Meigs (1792-1869) was an American obstetrician of some eminence. His textbook Obstetrics, the Science and Art was influential and remained in print for many years.

Perhaps the most notorious passage of this work is a section he added to the 1856 edition, explaining his opposition to the use of anaesthesia in childbirth. Chloroform (and, in the US, ether) … Read more