A difficult labour
This blog usually takes a fairly light-hearted approach to its subject: I tend to look for cases which arouse amusement as […]
Horrifying operations
Horrifying operations
Horrifying operations, Remarkable recoveries
Mütter’s operation – plastic surgery, 19th-century style
In 1855 the editor of the Western Lancet, Dr T. Wood, published an article in his own journal on the
Bewildering research, Horrifying operations, Remarkable recoveries
Putting a patient to sleep (without anaesthetic)
Have you ever wondered how patients in the era before anaesthetics were persuaded to undergo excruciatingly painful operations? The answer
Horrifying operations, Remarkable recoveries
The man with the rubber jaw
Maxillofacial surgeons are some of the most ridiculously overqualified people on the planet. In the UK it is compulsory for
Horrifying operations, Unusual treatments
Bleeding you well
More from Lorenz Heister’s surgical textbook Chirurgie, published in 1718, on which I have written before. The practice of bloodletting,
The eye-brush
Scarification is a medical practice which was popular until the early nineteenth century and which thankfully has now been consigned
Horrifying operations
The do-it-yourself hernia operation
In the nineteenth century medical attention was a luxury which had to be paid for, and which not all could
Horrifying operations, Unfortunate predicaments
Glass half-empty
The remarkable headline above graced the pages of the American Journal of the Medical Sciences in April 1849. In case
Horrifying operations, Unfortunate predicaments
Almost to the ground
An article from an 1831 edition of the London Medical Gazette begins unpromisingly: Enlargement of the testes, scrotal tumors, and hydrocele,
Horrifying operations
Speaking of tongues
The Scottish surgeon James Syme (1799-1870) has been described as the boldest and most original operator of the end of