Mysterious illnesses

The Swiss disease

News of a strange malady, unique to the inhabitants of a single country, comes from the edition of The Medical […]

Catalepsy is a strange condition in which the patient keeps a fixed, rigid posture, even one which looks abnormal and

Sometimes in early medical journals a case history begins conventionally enough, before turning into something startlingly unexpected. This is from

Forget drinking in pregnancy; here’s something far more dangerous. From the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1695: A lady was

Towards the end of May 1797 Miss A.B., a young woman from the Isle of Man, was afflicted by a

In the month of February, 1791, several persons in Philadelphia were seized, in about three hours after dining upon pheasants,

The first issue of Medical Observations and Enquiries, a medical journal founded in London in 1757, contains this sad little tale: