Mysterious illnesses

The forgetful sailor

Thomas Morris / 10th September 2017

In 1832 a surgeon serving aboard a British Navy vessel in the Mediterranean, David Burnes, sent an unusual case history […]

Thomas Morris / 27th August 2017

A short news item published in 1843 by the Gazette Médicale de Paris contains the sort of case that would

According to an old journalistic adage, if a newspaper headline contains a question the correct answer is always ‘no’. For

In 1886 a physician from Glasgow, Dr George Beatson, wrote to the British Medical Journal with a rather unusual tale.

In 1813 the editor of The Medical and Physical Journal, Samuel Fothergill, accepted for publication a paper by John Spence,

At a meeting of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society in 1852, London physicians were treated to the following tale,

This was the front page story in The Lancet on July 11th 1835. It’s a glorious case, but I think

In 1873 The Medical Times and Register published an unusual case report from one Joseph G. Richardson, a doctor from

Thomas Morris / 11th February 2017

Invalid diets could be unusual in the nineteenth century – and often included regular doses of strong liquor. But even

Thomas Morris / 2nd February 2017

I was fascinated to stumble across this seventeenth-century autopsy report in an old edition of the British Medical Journal. It