Have you ever woken up after a night on the town, not entirely sure how the evening ended? In 1850 this happened to a Belgian fisherman who soon found out that the evening had ended very badly indeed. This case was first reported in a French ophthalmic journal before being included in the later editions of William Mackenzie’s A … Read more
Month: April 2016
Dancing testicles
The runaway winner of the prize for Best Book Title of 1833, had such an award existed, would surely have been James Russell’s Observations on the Testicles. This monograph was the work of a distinguished Scottish professor who was the leading trainer of surgeons at a period when the Edinburgh medical faculty was arguably the greatest in … Read more
The incredible shrinking man
It must have been a slow news week when The Medical Record decided to print the following story in July 1874. Any journalist is familiar with the terror of an imminent deadline and acres of empty space that need to be filled, but I’d like to think I’d never be so desperate that I had to resort to filling it … Read more
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
A beetroot up the bottom
On the 19th of May, 1846, a Dr Harris from Harrisville in Virginia was summoned to treat a young man who had got himself into a situation of some delicacy. This is how the doctor reported the case to the Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery:
He had been suffering from an attack of piles, and having been informed … Read more
The miller’s tale
In 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
Replete of vermin
In 1869 Dr Felix Rubio, a physician in Colombia, wrote to the Medical Times and Gazette on the subject of carbolic acid. This substance, known today as phenol, was one of the first antiseptic compounds to be used in medicine – Sir Joseph Lister was an enthusiastic proponent. Since adopting its use, Dr Rubio had found it invaluable in Colombia, … Read more
Scared to death?
The 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
The redoubtable Mrs H
In 1857 the Nashville Journal of Medicine and Surgery reported this unusual case of childbirth. What is particularly remarkable about it is that the birth itself was straightforward, and both mother and child were completely healthy – but it still bears repeated telling. The mother was a Mrs H., a ‘stout, healthy woman’ of 25. She was the wife of … Read more
Inexpressibly loathsome and sickening
Unlikely 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