A dangerous weapon
The Northern Journal of Medicine was a short-lived periodical which appeared for only two years before being acquired by a […]
Notable deaths
Notable deaths
Notable deaths, Unfortunate predicaments
An enormous eater
Albert Vander Veer was a distinguished New York surgeon of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A Civil War
Twice bitten
On February 23rd, 1872, the Philadelphia Post published a breathtakingly crass news story: A thrilling scene occurred on Wednesday in
Notable deaths
The colonic carpentry kit
The ‘foreign correspondence’ pages of one 1861 issue of the Medical Times contain an eclectic selection of stories. The first
Notable deaths, Primitive equipment
Death of an earl
On a warm August afternoon a man in his fifties is enjoying a game of bowls in the affluent English
The stone-swallower
Eighteenth-century authors were fond of giving their books ridiculously long titles – often so lengthy that they weren’t titles at
Mysterious illnesses, Notable deaths
The man with a snake in his heart
I was fascinated to stumble across this seventeenth-century autopsy report in an old edition of the British Medical Journal. It
Notable deaths
Shot by a toasting fork
This is one of my favourite nineteenth-century cases, which I originally intended to include in my forthcoming book but which
Notable deaths
Killed by his false teeth
People who wear dentures sometimes lose them, as you might mislay a pair of glasses, but it’s rare to do
The venomous boot
Here’s a tall tale from 1856, published in The Medical Times and Gazette: Some interesting experiments were made at the