In 1868 the Medical and Surgical Reporter contained a report of an unusual case received from the physicians of the insane asylum at Zutphen, a town in the Netherlands.
The patient was a woman 64 years old, affected with lypemania…
Lypemania is an archaic term, meaning an excessive fondness for melancholy. Today a patient suffering from these symptoms would probably … Read more
Fans of nominative determination – the idea that a person’s name can have a bearing on their choice of career – may enjoy this little tale from the Virginia Medical Journal, reported in 1857. It concerns a urologist from Guy’s Hospital, one Mr Cock. Stop giggling at the back:
Mr. Cock, at Guy’s, has recently had more than one … Read more
A number of fruits and vegetables which are part of our regular diet were more prized in past centuries for their medicinal qualities. The strawberry is one of the gastronomic highlights of the British summer, but until the early 19th century the fruit was just as much cherished for its varied therapeutic uses. One Anglo-Saxon medical text contains this … Read more
Maxillofacial surgeons are some of the most ridiculously overqualified people on the planet. In the UK it is compulsory for them to hold degrees in both medicine and dentistry, and they can only practise after well over a decade of training. This enviable expertise equips them to undertake a wide range of procedures on the face, jaws and neck. Since … Read more
You know those stories about old soldiers who suddenly develop mysterious back pain in their eighties, and discover that it’s caused by a bullet from the Second World War still deeply embedded in tissue? Most of them are true. Foreign bodies are often well tolerated by the body, and can lie dormant for decades before causing any problems.
This story, … Read more
In 1777 a local surgeon wrote to the Medical and Philosophical Commentaries to pass on a story he had heard from a former patient. It concerns an officer in the East India Company who had been injured during the siege of Janna. I can find no trace of a siege of this name, but the dates suggest it may have … Read more
In 1842 a Scottish doctor, Edward Binns, published a fat volume under the snappy title The Anatomy of Sleep; or, the Art of Procuring Sound and Refreshing Slumber at Will. It’s a big book, with big ambitions: Dr Binns claims to be able to teach his readers a universally successful method which will reliably put even the confirmed insomniac … Read more
In 1833 the London Medical and Surgical Journal caused a bit of a stink with an article which was given the headline ‘Bad Effects of Smoking Tobacco’. Its controversial thesis was that smoking was, well, not very good for you:
The practice of smoking is now so general, that our atmosphere is strongly poisoned with of tobacco-smoke. The air is … Read more
Today’s likely tale comes from the Canada Medical Journal, where it appeared in 1870. Dr Chagnon from the wonderfully-named St Pie in Quebec submitted this curiosity, with tongue firmly in cheek:
In July, 1868, came to my office a woman with the following history: Two days previous, during a thunder storm, she, according to her own expression, swallowed the … Read more
More from Lorenz Heister’s surgical textbook Chirurgie, published in 1718, on which I have written before. The practice of bloodletting, also known as phlebotomy, was a staple treatment for millennia and still had influential advocates at the end of the nineteenth century. Most people will be aware that doctors used to bleed their patients, but fewer will be … Read more
