Death by barley
Nineteenth-century medical journals are not short of ghastly occupational injuries. Factories, building sites and the new railways were frightening places, […]
Hidden dangers
Dodgy predictions
An X-ray vision
In December 1863 a New York physician, Samuel Ward Francis, sat down to write a letter to The Medical and Surgical
Horrifying operations
A chainsaw to the spine
In the early nineteenth century surgery was a primitive affair, generally limited to a few commonly performed operations. Most people
Remarkable recoveries
Spirits go straight to your head
I recently stumbled across this intriguing snippet in John Cooke’s A Treatise on Nervous Diseases (1824): I am informed by
Broken glass and boiled cabbage
Here’s a case reported in the London Medical Gazette in 1839 which we must file under ‘unbelievably stupid things done
Horrifying operations
The eye fungus
My headline is somewhat misleading, for the ‘fungus’ referred to in today’s article, published in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical
The man who peed a bullet
Gunshot wounds have always been a particular challenge for the medic. Some of the oldest surgical manuals contain advice on
Unfortunate predicaments
Cart to heart
In 1837 the Dublin Medical Journal published a short article by a Dr Lees entitled, simply, ‘Wounds of the Heart’.
Hip hip
On 18th January 1824 The Lancet reported an operation of extraordinary daring. It had taken place two days earlier at
Hidden dangers
A fishy business
In 1739 a surgeon from the village of Kelvedon in Essex wrote to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society