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, […]
Unusual treatments
Primitive equipment
Fishing line and marine sponges: the operating theatre of 1888
In 1888 the great American surgeon Rudolph Matas saved the life of a patient who had been shot in the
Hidden dangers
That’s one way to give up smoking
The museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in Dublin, contains the picture of a man whose face was eaten away
Unfortunate predicaments
Dear oh dear
In 1829 a fifty-year-old labourer, John Marsh, was knocked down and run over by a cart laden with bricks. He
Prodigies and monsters
The child that cried in the womb
Remarkable news reaches The Medico-Chirurgical Review (June 1822) from Prussia: Crying of the Foetus in Utero. A lady, during pregnancy, had experienced some distresses of
Dodgy predictions
Wrong
The Athenaeum tries a spot of prognostication in 1854: If we may judge by our library table, homoeopathy is not in
Hidden dangers, Mysterious illnesses
Injured by the imagination
Forget drinking in pregnancy; here’s something far more dangerous. From the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1695: A lady was
Hidden dangers
Skipping-ropes: the silent killer
April 29th, 1905, and the ‘Minor Comments’ section of the Journal of the American Medical Association has a stark warning: Even
Mysterious illnesses
A case of hiccups
Towards the end of May 1797 Miss A.B., a young woman from the Isle of Man, was afflicted by a
Mysterious illnesses
The case of the poisonous pheasants
In the month of February, 1791, several persons in Philadelphia were seized, in about three hours after dining upon pheasants,