In November 1828 several English-language journals picked up a case which had appeared in the Revue Medicale, a French medical journal, the previous month. It begins promisingly:
A man, aged twenty-five years, was irritating his nostril with a needle…
As you do.
…when by some accident he suffered it to enter the nostril through which it passed and fell … Read more
One night in May 1832 the duty medics at St Thomas’s Hospital in London suddenly had a particularly difficult case to deal with. It was subsequently reported in the London Medical and Surgical Journal:
Joseph B. aged 24, a Frenchman, of sanguine temperament, whilst partially inebriated, on the evening of May, in an hotel in Gracechurch Street, suddenly declared … Read more
In the early nineteenth century surgery was a primitive affair, generally limited to a few commonly performed operations. Most people know about agonising amputations, or the (possibly even more agonising) operations for bladder stones and mastectomy; others in the surgeon’s repertoire included basic procedures to remove cataracts or to release pressure in the skull. But here’s a truly astonishing case … Read more
My headline is somewhat misleading, for the ‘fungus’ referred to in today’s article, published in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal in 1823, has nothing to do with mushrooms. It’s a word which until the late nineteenth century was sometimes applied to certain forms of tumour. And in case you’re thinking that a story about eye cancer doesn’t sound much … Read more
On 18th January 1824 The Lancet reported an operation of extraordinary daring. It had taken place two days earlier at Guy’s Hospital in London, and the surgeon was the celebrated Sir Astley Cooper. At the age of 55 he was at the height of his powers, recently elevated to a baronetcy and basking in the glory of a succession … Read more
An edition of The Retrospect of Practical Medicine and Surgery from 1872 contains this remarkable tale, narrated by a London surgeon, Thomas Bryant:
On August 18, 1871, my friend Mr. Kelson Wright, of Kennington, asked me to see with him a case of strangulated hernia in an old, half-childish man, aged 71. He had been the subject of a right … Read more
Today’s medical journals pride themselves on their topicality, publishing the latest research as soon as it’s available – but those news values did not apply in 1845, when the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal agreed to publish a case report almost half a century old. It was sent to them by a retired surgeon, William Collyns, who had apparently found … Read more
The image above shows the Jardin Royal (Royal Garden) in Paris – misleadingly named, since although it included a botanical garden it was primarily an educational institution. In addition to botany, it offered classes in chemistry, anatomy and surgery.
One member of its faculty was the surgeon Pierre Dionis (c.1643-1718), who taught there for many years. He was also a … Read more
In 1878 an elderly surgeon from Birmingham, Dickinson Crompton, was persuaded to write a short article about his early career for Guy’s Hospital Reports, the house journal of Guy’s Hospital in London. He was then 73 and almost completely blind, reporting that
I am now getting cataracts in my eyes, and at the present moment do not see … Read more
Most of the injuries chronicled on this blog were caused by bad luck, and a few by misadventure; but here’s one which can only be attributed to rank stupidity. In 1852 The Half-Yearly Abstract of the Medical Sciences published this report from an Italian surgeon, Signor Riali:
In December, 1848, a peasant was admitted into the hospital of Orvieto, in … Read more
