The hearing-aid chair
John Harrison Curtis was a prominent nineteenth-century specialist in diseases of the eyes and ears who became an intimate of […]
Your cooker will give you typhoid
There’s a menace lurking in your kitchen. From The Lancet, 1868: When the attention of the Academy of Sciences of
The woman who could read with her stomach
Catalepsy is a strange condition in which the patient keeps a fixed, rigid posture, even one which looks abnormal and
Unfortunate predicaments, Unusual treatments
A bit of a headache
One of the things that all first-aiders should know is that blades or other penetrating objects should never be removed from
Unusual treatments
Heart disease? Have you tried using a swing?
We’ve already established that skipping ropes should be avoided at all costs, but it’s not all bad news for those who
Unfortunate predicaments
The man who fought a duel in his sleep
If you’ve ever shared a house with a habitual sleepwalker, you may be familiar with the strange experience of having
Unfortunate predicaments
Give that man a medal
On June 29th 1865 Jacques Roellinger, a private in ‘B’ Company of the New York Volunteers, asked to be released
Unusual treatments
Hemlock and millipedes
In September 1762 Ann James, a fifty-five-year-old woman from Boughton Monchelsea in Kent, came to the attention of Josiah Colebroke,
Mysterious illnesses, Prodigies and monsters
The worm: a horror story
Sometimes in early medical journals a case history begins conventionally enough, before turning into something startlingly unexpected. This is from
Unusual treatments
Curing conjunctivitis with frogspawn
Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689) was one of the most celebrated English physicians of the seventeenth century. His Observationes Medicae (Medical Observations,