In 1840 an American physician, Dr Pliny Earle, visited the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. He wrote an account of what he saw there, subsequently published in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences. It’s a document of great value, not least because he describes a number of exhibits which were destroyed when a … Read more
Author: Thomas Morris
Reattached with a sticking plaster
Today’s surgeons are quite adept at reattaching parts of the body when they have been severed. Fingers, hands and even entire arms have been successfully reunited with their owners. You might think that such feats were only made possible by the paraphernalia of the modern operating theatre: microscopes, superfine suture materials and so on. That’s not entirely true – here’s … Read more
The missing tobacco pipe
In 1855 The Lancet reported the proceedings of the most recent meeting of the London Medical Society. Here is one highlight:
Mr. Henry Smith showed a portion of tobacco pipe, nearly two inches in length, which he had extracted from behind the ear of a boy who, between two and three years previously, had fallen down whilst holding a long … Read more
The extra jaw
A short story, this one, but it packs quite a punch. In 1855 the Western Lancet published a letter from an anonymous army officer serving in the Crimea:
A curious thing occurred yesterday. A sapper was brought from the trenches with his jaw broken, and the doctor told me there was a piece of it sticking out an inch and … Read more
Conceived by a bullet
There are many cases of supposed virgin births in the early medical literature, but few are as wonderfully unlikely as this one published in The Lancet in early 1875:
The following rich gynaecological contribution is reported in the columns of the American Medical Weekly for Nov. 7th, 1874, by L. G. Capers, M.D., Vicksburg, Mississippi. On the 12th of May, … Read more
The mysterious bullet in the heart
In 1852 The Monthly Journal of Medical Science published a report from Burma, where British forces had just begun to fight the Second Anglo-Burmese War. They landed on April 12th and captured the city of Rangoon shortly afterwards, setting up a field hospital in a priest’s house requisitioned for the purpose. Six surgeons travelled with the army, and … Read more
Brolly painful
It’s a great headline, but I can’t take any credit for it.
When I was at school one of my contemporaries suffered an unfortunate injury. As he was bending over to pick something up, a friend thought it would be amusing to prod him in the bottom with a golf umbrella. The joker sadly misjudged the degree of force used, … Read more
The sad case of Hoo Loo
Great surgeons are usually remembered for their successes rather than their failures. Sir Astley Cooper, one of the preeminent figures of early 19th-century medicine, had many notable successes – such as his operation for popliteal aneurysm, in which he saved the leg of a cab driver by tying a ligature around a major blood vessel. But one … Read more
The sleepwalker
Those who have first-hand experience of somnambulism will know that sleepwalkers are often capable of surprisingly complex tasks. While most may do nothing more than get out of bed and walk into the next room, others can hold conversations or even drive cars before they regain consciousness. In 1856 The Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology published an article … Read more
A saw head
I’ve documented a few extraordinary injuries in this blog, but perhaps none as remarkable as this one. The New England Journal of Medicine for 1869 contains this arresting case, submitted by a Dr Wardwell from New Hampshire:
I was summoned by telegraph March 1st, 1869, to Berlin, New Hampshire, to attend Chester Bean, who had been injured by going under … Read more