Roger ‘two urinals’ Clerk

How quacks were treated in the fourteenth centuryIn 1868 the Corporation of London published a slim volume entitled Memorials of London and London Life in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries.  It contained extracts from the archives of the City of London.  An editor at The Lancet read it, and found an anecdote which remained topical, half a millennium later:

One Roger Clerk professed to be Read more

The black sheep

a black sheepIn the days before the NHS, when physicians charged patients for their services, there was an unspoken agreement that members of the medical profession would waive their fees when the patient was a colleague or a member of their family.  In countries with no national health service this convention persisted for longer: in the late 20th century the American … Read more

Portrait of a quack

quacksIn 1804 The Medical and Physical Journal decided to name and shame some of London’s most notorious quacks.  One of the unscrupulous practitioners exposed to public humiliation was a certain Dr Day:

He was born in  Holland, though of German parents, of the name of Dies, which the Doctor has translated into the English synonym of Day, under which name Read more

Medical qualifications: optional

zeifertHere’s a report of a criminal trial at the Old Bailey from a little over a century ago which truly made me grateful for modern medicine – and in particular for the modern regulation of the profession.  In this case a doctor without any qualifications escaped with a slap on the wrist, despite having killed a patient.

On March 3… Read more

Do no harm – unless it’s a criminal

In 1875 the British Medical Journal had some fun digging around in the archives:

column for the curious

BARBAROUS PUNISHMENT: A SURGEON’S OCCUPATION. – 1720, March 29th. On Wednesday, Thomas Hayes, formerly the commander of a merchantman, stood in the pillory at Charing Cross, for the hour of twelve to one, when a surgeon, attended by the prison officers, got upon the pillory, when Read more

A 19th-century doctor’s guide to etiquette

Medical etiquetteIn the nineteenth century the medical profession had something of an image problem.  The archetype of the pompous or unscrupulous doctor was well established, and authors like Charles Dickens had much fun sending them up with satirical depictions which were painfully close to the mark.  In The Pickwick Papers, the young doctor Bob Sawyer uses a number of underhand … Read more

Busted! A medical plagiarist exposed

The index for Volume 5 of The Lancet, published in 1824, contains this intriguing entry:

piracy

Indexes are not often used to pursue feuds, but the story behind this entry was a bitter rivalry which lasted for several years.  So who was ‘Simon Pure’, and why had he aroused the wrath of the editor of The Lancet?  ‘Simon Pure’ … Read more