Occasionally a single operation is deemed so impressive that it goes down in history under the name of the surgeon who performed it. In 1817 the English surgeon Sir Astley Cooper astonished his colleagues by tying a ligature around the abdominal aorta, the largest blood vessel of the abdomen, to treat a patient with an aneurysm of the iliac artery. … Read more
Category: Horrifying operations
Attempted suicide by spoon
When Dr Samuel White, a doctor from the town of Hudson in upstate New York, took on this case in 1806 he got more than he bargained for. He reported the unusual circumstances in The Medical Repository the following year:
May 22nd, 1806, George Macy, aged twenty-six, became a patient of mine, with a rheumatic white swelling of the left … Read more
The soldier operated on himself
Isidor Glück was a Hungarian surgeon who emigrated to London and then the United States in the early 1850s. As a supporter of the failed revolution led by his compatriot Lajos Kossuth in 1848 he had little option but to leave his homeland, and spent the rest of his life in exile. In 1855 he was invited to give a … Read more
The sad case of Hoo Loo
Great surgeons are usually remembered for their successes rather than their failures. Sir Astley Cooper, one of the preeminent figures of early 19th-century medicine, had many notable successes – such as his operation for popliteal aneurysm, in which he saved the leg of a cab driver by tying a ligature around a major blood vessel. But one … Read more
Like an elastic ball
The great French surgeon Guillaume Dupuytren was known to his unfortunate juniors as ‘the Napoleon of surgery’ and ‘the brigand of the Hôtel Dieu’, the Paris hospital where he reigned supreme. While he was a difficult character, he was also very good. His name is mainly associated today with Dupuytren’s Contracture, a condition which causes the fingers to curve … Read more
Amputating the bowels
Browsing an 1869 edition of The Lancet I stumbled across a short news article with this promising headline:
A cutting from an American paper gives us an account of a remarkable operation for umbilical hernia, in which the operator, Dr. G. D. Beebe, found it necessary to cut away between four and five feet of sphacelated small intestine.
‘Sphacelated’ is … Read more
Saved for posterity
In 1875 the American surgeon Charles Brigham recorded this wince-inducing case from his practice in San Francisco. The details are contained in a volume he published the following year, Surgical Cases with Illustrations. It’s a notable book, one of the earliest to feature extensive photographs of the cases described. Until the mid-19th century, most medical illustrations were engravings … Read more
The dreadful opening
In 1807 the Philadelphia Medical Museum was sent an extraordinary case report by a local doctor who had been ‘sent it by a friend’. Neither he nor anybody else appeared to know who had written the report, so its authenticity is doubtful – but the events it describes were certainly worth reproducing:
In the evening of the 26th of September, … Read more
A head of wheat in the bladder
In December 1871 Dr B. B. Leonard, a general practitioner from West Liberty, Ohio, was summoned to examine ‘J.J.’, a 41-year-old farm worker from a neighbouring village. This is what he subsequently reported to the Cincinnati Lancet and Observer:
On the 3rd of July, Mr. J was binding wheat in the field, and when about half way through his … Read more
A beetroot up the bottom
On the 19th of May, 1846, a Dr Harris from Harrisville in Virginia was summoned to treat a young man who had got himself into a situation of some delicacy. This is how the doctor reported the case to the Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery:
He had been suffering from an attack of piles, and having been informed … Read more