Up the spout
One of the things that strikes me every time I look at a medical journal published between about 1850 and […]
Remarkable recoveries
Mysterious illnesses, Remarkable recoveries, Unfortunate predicaments
Evacuated with a spoon
In 1836 a doctor from rural Ireland, J.L. McCarthy, encountered a highly unusual case which he then reported to The
She cut off her nose with a carving knife
The image above shows the Jardin Royal (Royal Garden) in Paris – misleadingly named, since although it included a botanical
Unfortunate predicaments
The ear maggots
On Saturday, May 19th 1849 the Westminster Medical Society held one of its regular meetings. Here is an extract from
Mysterious illnesses
The girl whose sweat turned black
Here’s a landmark case from the Philosophical Transactions, reported by the Plymouth surgeon James Yonge in 1709: A girl 16
A nineteenth-century hacking scandal
In November 1870 a London surgeon took the unusual step of writing anonymously to The Times to complain about his
The spider’s web cure
Until the nineteenth century, spider’s web was often used as a folk remedy for superficial lacerations. The great tensile strength
Prodigies and monsters
The forty-foot tapeworm
Medical journals do not often publish articles by undergraduates these days, but an 1847 edition of the Southern Medical and
Medical shenanigans
A festive night in a Victorian emergency department
Christmas is always a difficult time of year for practitioners of emergency medicine. In the UK, accident and emergency departments
Unfortunate predicaments
Pegged out
In 1865 a young eye surgeon from Gloucester, Robert Brudenell Carter, sent a series of case reports for publication in