Heart disease? Have you tried using a swing?
We’ve already established that skipping ropes should be avoided at all costs, but it’s not all bad news for those who […]
Unusual treatments
July 2015
Unfortunate predicaments
The man who fought a duel in his sleep
If you’ve ever shared a house with a habitual sleepwalker, you may be familiar with the strange experience of having
Unfortunate predicaments
Give that man a medal
On June 29th 1865 Jacques Roellinger, a private in ‘B’ Company of the New York Volunteers, asked to be released
Unusual treatments
Hemlock and millipedes
In September 1762 Ann James, a fifty-five-year-old woman from Boughton Monchelsea in Kent, came to the attention of Josiah Colebroke,
Mysterious illnesses, Prodigies and monsters
The worm: a horror story
Sometimes in early medical journals a case history begins conventionally enough, before turning into something startlingly unexpected. This is from
Unusual treatments
Curing conjunctivitis with frogspawn
Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689) was one of the most celebrated English physicians of the seventeenth century. His Observationes Medicae (Medical Observations,
Primitive equipment
Fishing line and marine sponges: the operating theatre of 1888
In 1888 the great American surgeon Rudolph Matas saved the life of a patient who had been shot in the
Hidden dangers
That’s one way to give up smoking
The museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in Dublin, contains the picture of a man whose face was eaten away
Unfortunate predicaments
Dear oh dear
In 1829 a fifty-year-old labourer, John Marsh, was knocked down and run over by a cart laden with bricks. He
Prodigies and monsters
The child that cried in the womb
Remarkable news reaches The Medico-Chirurgical Review (June 1822) from Prussia: Crying of the Foetus in Utero. A lady, during pregnancy, had experienced some distresses of