The perils of toast
A cautionary tale from the Medical Facts and Observations, published in 1795: On Tuesday, the 25th of March last, a […]
Hidden dangers
Hidden dangers
Hidden dangers
It makes you go blind, you know
Nineteenth-century medical journals were much preoccupied with the sin of self-harm. One authority on mental illnesses even suggested that masturbation
Hidden dangers
Cycling will give you heart disease
March 1895, and in the pages of The Lancet, Dr George Herschell is worried. Very worried. Cycling, rationally pursued, is
Hidden dangers
Why children should never wear hats
I recently came across a charming little medical book aimed at children, and first published in Germany in the 18th
Hidden dangers, Unusual treatments
Catching a disease through an electric wire
Here’s something to get unnecessarily worried about: apparently it’s possible to catch a disease through an electric wire! As reported
The combustible countess
Spontaneous human combustion became a fashionable topic in the early nineteenth century, when a number of sensational presumed cases were
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
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
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