In November 1774 the following extraordinary case was presented to the French Academy of Surgery, and subsequently reported in Paul Eve’s A Collection of remarkable cases in Surgery (1857):
André Bazile, a galley-slave, aged 38 years, a man of ravenous appetite, who would often eat chalk, plaster or earth, with his food, was received into the Marine Hospital of Brest, … Read more
Every experienced midwife will have a story about the patient who didn’t even realise she was pregnant until she went into labour. So-called cryptic pregnancies are fairly common – a spectacular example occurred a few years ago when a British soldier on active duty in Afghanistan suddenly went into labour and gave birth at the infirmary of Camp Bastion.
In … Read more
Some stories are just too good to be true. This astonishing tale appeared in the Medical and Surgical Reporter in 1867, repeating an unlikely-sounding yarn first reported in a Canadian newspaper, and involving a Dr Hamilton from Hamilton City in Ontario:
Some weeks since the advice of Dr. Hamilton was procured in the case of a young lad who was … Read more
An alarming case was revealed to a meeting of the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London in November 1815, and reported in the Transactions of the society early the following year. It provides a good example of the fact that new medicines often carry dramatically unexpected side-effects. A Dr Albers of Bremen reported the following:
The skin of a woman, … Read more
In 1733 a book about depression and mental health was published in Dublin: The English Malady; or, A Treatise of Nervous Diseases of All Kinds, as Spleen, Vapours, Lowness of Spirits, Hypochondriacal and Hysterical Distemper. The author, George Cheyne – born a Scot, though he moved to London – was convinced that the English were uniquely prone to depressive … Read more
You know those stories about old soldiers who suddenly develop mysterious back pain in their eighties, and discover that it’s caused by a bullet from the Second World War still deeply embedded in tissue? Most of them are true. Foreign bodies are often well tolerated by the body, and can lie dormant for decades before causing any problems.
This story, … Read more
Today’s likely tale comes from the Canada Medical Journal, where it appeared in 1870. Dr Chagnon from the wonderfully-named St Pie in Quebec submitted this curiosity, with tongue firmly in cheek:
In July, 1868, came to my office a woman with the following history: Two days previous, during a thunder storm, she, according to her own expression, swallowed the … Read more
Mr J.S. Webster, a surgeon from East Dereham, wrote to the London Medical Journal in 1787 to pass on an unusual case he had encountered in his practice among the poor and needy of Norfolk.
Helen Bunnett, or, as she is commonly called, the owl-eyed girl, is thirteen years old, of a fair complexion, with brown hair, and has … Read more
Occupational diseases are those associated with a particular profession. The first to be identified was a type of scrotal tumour which disproportionately affected chimney-sweeps: the connection was made in 1775 by Percivall Pott.
There are many well-known examples: miners developing the lung disease silicosis; phossy jaw, a disease suffered by match-makers, the result of exposure to phosphorus; and … Read more
In June 1842 the Provincial Medical Journal devoted no less than ten pages to a long essay by the physician Sir Henry Marsh – an eminent namesake of the contemporary neurosurgeon, who was a leading light in Irish medicine and became physician to Queen Victoria. What subject could be so important that a leading journal would make it the main … Read more
