Samuel Gross was a giant of nineteenth-century American surgery, the author of numerous influential textbooks, including the first manual of pathological anatomy ever published in the United States. He is also the subject of one of the great American paintings, The Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins, which depicts him performing an operation on a young man’s femur.
One of Gross’s … Read more
The year is 1874, and American medics are deeply concerned about the activities of quacks and unlicensed doctors who are damaging the reputation of the profession. One particularly worrying case is reported by The Medical and Surgical Reporter:
The following account is sent us by a correspondent in Baltimore. It is needless to say that the two physicians were … Read more
Here’s a wince-inducing case published in the Dublin Medical Press in 1853, and contributed by a Dr Jameson:
Peter Nowlan, aged 30, a powerfully able and muscular man, a corn porter, was admitted into Mercer’s Hospital on the 3rd of November, at half past twelve at night. His wife informed me that he came home that evening at ten o’clock … Read more
In 1875 a physician from New York, Samuel Ward Francis, published a book called Curious Facts, Concerning Man and Nature. I say ‘book’, but it’s more of a pamphlet, a collection of disparate essays running to just 20 pages; this was the second volume in a series. Some of his articles express deep scepticism about Darwin’s theory of evolution, … Read more
An edition of The Retrospect of Practical Medicine and Surgery from 1872 contains this remarkable tale, narrated by a London surgeon, Thomas Bryant:
On August 18, 1871, my friend Mr. Kelson Wright, of Kennington, asked me to see with him a case of strangulated hernia in an old, half-childish man, aged 71. He had been the subject of a right … Read more
In June 1873 a respectable American medical journal, The Clinic, published a ‘news in brief’ story which had been culled from a local newspaper in New Jersey. It was evidently reproduced more for entertainment than for its scientific value, since it was prefaced by the ironic comment ‘We give the following for what it is worth.’ Its veracity … Read more
Most visitors to this blog will probably be aware that for centuries bloodletting played a central role in Western medicine. This is partly the result of the extraordinarily long-lasting influence of the Greek physician Galen, whose humoral theory underpinned medical practice until the Renaissance. Strangely, bleeding remained commonplace until much later, persisting well into the nineteenth century. I recently found … Read more
Invalid diets could be unusual in the nineteenth century – and often included regular doses of strong liquor. But even by the standards of the era, this example struck me as eccentric. In 1874 Charles Wotton, a doctor from King’s Langley in Hertfordshire, wrote to The Lancet to report this case:
C. R—, aged ten, after a drive on Friday, … Read more
Today’s medical journals pride themselves on their topicality, publishing the latest research as soon as it’s available – but those news values did not apply in 1845, when the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal agreed to publish a case report almost half a century old. It was sent to them by a retired surgeon, William Collyns, who had apparently found … Read more
I was fascinated to stumble across this seventeenth-century autopsy report in an old edition of the British Medical Journal. It was unearthed by Benjamin (later Sir Benjamin) Ward Richardson, one of the great figures of Victorian medicine. His name is less familiar today than that of his friend John Snow, the leading British exponent of early anaesthesia, but … Read more
