Worms in the nose

worms in the nose

In 1783 the Medical Commentaries received a striking communication on a curious subject: worms in the nose.  It came from a surgeon based in Jamaica, Mr Thomas Kilgour: 

A Gentleman of Montego-bay in Jamaica, aged twenty-six, of a middle stature, and robust make, about the middle of July 1777, complained for three days, of a slight obtuse pain, in his Read more

The miller’s tale

Account of the man with his arm torn offIn 1737 the Philosophical Transactions published a medical case so remarkable that it was still being quoted in journals well over a century later. It was reported by John Belchier, a surgeon at Guy’s Hospital in London and a Fellow of the Royal Society. The Gentleman’s Magazine from 1745 contains this anecdote about him:

One Stephen Wright, who, as a Read more

Scared to death?

Remarkable incidentThe invention of the guillotine in 1789 coincided with a dark era in French history.  The phase of the revolution known as the Terror saw tens of thousands executed by the device, which remained the French executioner’s weapon of choice until the twentieth century. The medical aspects of the guillotine provoked a number of journal articles, in particular discussing how … Read more

Inexpressibly loathsome and sickening

Worms after deathUnlikely tales were often swallowed unquestioningly by the editors of medical journals in the nineteenth century, so it was a welcome corrective to find this preface to a case report published in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in 1854:

An esteemed correspondent has sent us an account of “a most extraordinary case,” which he says he “clipped from a Read more