Here’s an entertaining snippet from Guy’s Medical Jurisprudence from 1812, concerning a young man who really didn’t want to be in the army:
Phineas Adams, a soldier in the Somerset Militia, aged 18 years, was confined in jail for desertion.
This barely does the poor lad justice – he was only imprisoned after numerous attempts to be invalided out of … Read more
In 1851 a physician from Ohio, Dr P.J. Buckner, was at a meeting of the State Medical Society when he got chatting to a colleague, Charles Beach. Dr Beach told him of a case so extraordinary that Buckner decided to travel 220 miles to see the patient for himself. He was determined to get visual proof, so – naturally enough … Read more
Here’s a cracking ‘news in brief’ item from an 1851 edition of The Lancet:
A few days back a curious case occurred at a roadside inn, known by the name of the “Rummer”, a few miles from Norwich.
Stoke Cross, to be precise. The Rummer Inn was a venerable watering hole which finally closed in 1957. If it helps … Read more
In 1781 an eminent Scottish doctor, Thomas Simson, reported this unusual case in the pages of the Medical Museum:
A girl about twelve years of age, who had been long troubled with colick pains, was last year under my management. She complained of pains fixed in one part about two inches below the short ribs of the left side, … Read more
In 1783 the Medical Commentaries received a striking communication on a curious subject: worms in the nose. It came from a surgeon based in Jamaica, Mr Thomas Kilgour:
A Gentleman of Montego-bay in Jamaica, aged twenty-six, of a middle stature, and robust make, about the middle of July 1777, complained for three days, of a slight obtuse pain, in his … Read more
In September 1842 a young man called William Howard went to the army recruiting depot at Coventry, hoping to join the 35th Infantry Regiment. As is usual on these occasions, he was examined by the medical officer, one Dr Macann. The good doctor had a surprise in store, as he later reported to the Provincial Medical Journal and Retrospect … Read more
Earlier this week a reader of this blog introduced me to a term I hadn’t encountered before: the ‘bosom serpent’. The phrase apparently originated in the study of folklore, and describes an ancient tradition of stories in which the human digestive tract is colonised by other animals. These are typically snakes – as you’d expect – but also … Read more
English is littered with words which were originally medical in their application but which have found broader or figurative usage. Melancholic, sanguine and phlegmatic are three good examples – all deriving from the terms for specific bodily fluids and the temperaments associated with them.
Another is jaundiced, often used to mean ‘hostile’ or ‘prejudiced’, but which entered the … Read more
As regular readers of this blog may be aware, early medical journals often carried tales of unlikely creatures found living inside the human body. Examples include beetles found in the bladder, millipedes and winged insects in the stomach, and the curious case of the girl with spiders in her eyes.
This is, however, the only case I’ve found which … Read more
Update: this story will be featured in my new book, The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth and Other Curiosities from the History of Medicine, available in late 2018. For more information click here.
Here’s an engaging little mystery which first appeared in the pages of Dental Cosmos – the first American scholarly journal for dentists – in 1860. … Read more
