Maxillofacial surgeons are some of the most ridiculously overqualified people on the planet. In the UK it is compulsory for them to hold degrees in both medicine and dentistry, and they can only practise after well over a decade of training. This enviable expertise equips them to undertake a wide range of procedures on the face, jaws and neck. Since … Read more
Month: December 2015
The case of the missing pen
You know those stories about old soldiers who suddenly develop mysterious back pain in their eighties, and discover that it’s caused by a bullet from the Second World War still deeply embedded in tissue? Most of them are true. Foreign bodies are often well tolerated by the body, and can lie dormant for decades before causing any problems.
This story, … Read more
The perforated private
In 1777 a local surgeon wrote to the Medical and Philosophical Commentaries to pass on a story he had heard from a former patient. It concerns an officer in the East India Company who had been injured during the siege of Janna. I can find no trace of a siege of this name, but the dates suggest it may have … Read more