March, 2016 - Thomas Morris

The man who coughed up a knife

Here’s an arresting story from 1870, reported to the Chicago Medical Times by a Dr J.F. Snyder: James Thompson, sixty […]

An essay by Dr Robert Graves of Dublin, published in The London Medical and Surgical Journal in 1835, contains this

Eels seem to have featured regularly in this blog, for some reason. First there was the physician who had a

This blog usually takes a fairly light-hearted approach to its subject: I tend to look for cases which arouse amusement as

In 1837 The Lancet reported a cause of death previously unknown in the annals of medical science. Its report begins:

In 1763 a doctor from Malling in Kent, identifying himself only as ‘W.P.’, reported this strange case in The Medical

In September 1842 a young man called William Howard went to the army recruiting depot at Coventry, hoping to join

Earlier this week a reader of this blog introduced me to a term I hadn’t encountered before: the ‘bosom serpent’.

English is littered with words which were originally medical in their application but which have found broader or figurative usage.

On April 16th 1828 a ship called the New York sailed from its eponymous home port destined for Liverpool. She