In 1844 the great surgeon Robert Liston gave an influential series of lectures at University College London on the technique of surgery. The second lecture in this series, concerning operations on the neck, includes this unusual case: Occasionally you find very curious foreign bodies lodged in the throat. The following case came under my notice … Continue reading Hook, line and Liston
Category: Remarkable recoveries
The lancer lanced
On November 9th 1869 a private from the 5th Royal Irish Lancers, ‘Richard F.’, arrived at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley, a large military hospital on the south coast of England. He had been evacuated from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, where he had been serving with the British forces before being invalided out of … Continue reading The lancer lanced
A strange tale
Today’s tale is a ‘news in brief’ item published by The Medical Standard in 1895: Drs. Hart and Watts of the Bellevue Hospital staff report a case in which a machinist working at a wire machine heard something snap and felt a violent pain in his arm. The pain became so intense that he was … Continue reading A strange tale
The long road to recovery
Today’s post is something of a rarity, since it comes from a medical journal which only existed for a year, and was read by a very select group of physicians. The Confederate States Medical and Surgical Journal was published between January 1864 and February 1865, towards the end of the American Civil War. It was … Continue reading The long road to recovery
An extraordinary surgical operation
Last week I came across an article which took my breath away. It was published in 1858, in an American journal, the Medical and Surgical Reporter, and it describes an operation of such audacity and skill that I can’t believe it isn’t better known. This is how it was reported: At the request of a … Continue reading An extraordinary surgical operation
Like finding a needle in a pharynx
In November 1828 several English-language journals picked up a case which had appeared in the Revue Medicale, a French medical journal, the previous month. It begins promisingly: A man, aged twenty-five years, was irritating his nostril with a needle… As you do. …when by some accident he suffered it to enter the nostril through which … Continue reading Like finding a needle in a pharynx
An unwanted buzz cut
In 1869 The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal reported the following unusual case which had taken place a few years earlier in California: On our recent tour through Mendocino county, we made the acquaintance of B. F. Chase, a foreman in the Caspar mill, who received a wound in July, 1864, the nature of which, … Continue reading An unwanted buzz cut
Pitched upon a pitchfork
After countless hours reading dreadful stories in medical journals I’m rarely shocked by a case, but this one [no need to stop reading – there’s a happy ending!] really gave me pause for thought. It was reported in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences in 1853, by one Dr. Sargent from Worcester, Massachusetts: A … Continue reading Pitched upon a pitchfork
Spirits go straight to your head
I recently stumbled across this intriguing snippet in John Cooke’s A Treatise on Nervous Diseases (1824): I am informed by Mr. Carlisle, that “a few years since a man was brought dead into the Westminster Hospital who had just drunk a quart of gin for a wager. The evidences of death being quite conclusive, he was immediately examined; and … Continue reading Spirits go straight to your head
The man who peed a bullet
Gunshot wounds have always been a particular challenge for the medic. Some of the oldest surgical manuals contain advice on removing balls or bullets lodged superficially – it was often possible to remove missiles from soft tissue or bone near the skin. But if they had penetrated deeper into body cavities or damaged internal organs … Continue reading The man who peed a bullet