Wrong

The Athenaeum tries a spot of prognostication in 1854:

If we may judge by our library table, homoeopathy is not in 1854 what it was in 1851.  However frequently new delusions arise to occupy the human mind, there is a sure and  inevitable law by which the old ones die.

Homoeopathy is evidently hastening towards that limbo of forgetfulness into Read more

Injured by the imagination

imagination

Forget drinking in pregnancy; here’s something far more dangerous.  From the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1695:

A lady was delivered of a girl, with a wound in her breast, above 4 fingers long, extended obliquely downwards, over the whole breast.  I found not only the wound outwardly in the skin, but after a nearer examination, I perceived Read more

Skipping-ropes: the silent killer

April 29th, 1905, and the ‘Minor Comments’ section of the Journal of the American Medical Association has a stark warning:

Skipping rope

Even among the apparently milder forms of children’s athletics there are some that are capable of producing injury or are even deadly at times.  The newspapers have recently reported the death from heart failure of three children in a skipping-rope Read more

A case of hiccups

Hiccups

Towards the end of May 1797 Miss A.B., a young woman from the Isle of Man, was afflicted by a particularly tenacious bout of hiccups.  It sounded

like the panting which occurs after violent exercise, or like an aspirate pronunciation of the interjection Ha!  The pulse, respiration and speech were not in the least disturbed….It was very loud at times, Read more

The case of the poisonous pheasants

pheasants

In the month of February, 1791, several persons in Philadelphia were seized, in about three hours after dining upon pheasants, with giddiness, violent flushing of heat and cold in the face and head, sickness at stomach, and repeated vomiting.

Some of the afflicted Philadelphians became delirious, or lost the power of speech.  Some recovered after taking emetics to flush out … Read more