The winged ones: insects in the stomach
In 1824 the Transactions of the Association of Fellows and Licentiates of the King and Queen’s College of Physicians in […]
Unusual treatments
Leeches: for external and internal use
If there’s one thing that everybody knows about early medicine, it’s the fact that doctors loved to use leeches. Attaching
Mysterious illnesses
The perpetual patient
In 1872 a case reported in The Lancet made quite a stir in the international journals. For once, it concerned
Primitive equipment
Nil by mouth
John Hunter was one of the great medics of the eighteenth century. His name lives on today in the Hunterian
Unusual treatments
Brain of hare and turd of dog
Digging around in an 1851 edition of The Monthly Journal of Medical Science, I stumbled across a long and rather
Unusual treatments
Wrapped in a dead sheep
One of the difficulties of surgery, even today, is keeping the patient’s body temperature at a safe level. Core temperatures
Horrifying operations, Unusual treatments
A fright for sore eyes
Bright sunlight has long been known to be bad for the eyes. Prolonged exposure to UV radiation can cause a range
Horrifying operations
The original Lead Belly
A weighty matter was reported in the Maryland and Virginia Medical Journal in 1860: One of the most extraordinary operations
Unusual treatments
Medicated cigarettes: the new panacea
Nineteenth-century opinion on the subject of smoking was sharply divided. On the one hand there were many prominent doctors who
Horrifying operations, Unusual treatments
The port-wine enema
Alcoholic drinks were an important part of the physician’s armoury until surprisingly recently. In the early years of the twentieth