Here’s a tall tale from 1856, published in The Medical Times and Gazette:
Some interesting experiments were made at the Society of Arts last week by Dr. Chambers, to test the efficacy of a plant known as Guaco in Central America, or a plant nearly resembling it, as an antidote to the bite of numerous snakes.
The Society for … Read more
There were plenty of doctors in the nineteenth century who thought that smoking was good for you; so there’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary in this excerpt from an article published in the Medical Press and Circular in 1871:
So much, and often so much nonsense, is prated about the evils of tobacco that its virtues rarely get a … Read more
In 1824 King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu of Hawaii made a state visit to Britain. The kingdom of Hawaii had been established in 1795 and was known in Europe as the Sandwich Islands, a name given by Captain James Cook on his voyages in 1778. The king and queen arrived in May 1824, and toured London. They were due … Read more
Last night was a dramatic one in London, with electrical storms and flash floods. It’s been a bad year for deaths by lightning: Bangladesh has seen a near-record 261 fatalities so far in 2016, and there have been an unusual number of deaths and injuries in Europe. This week is Lightning Safety Awareness Week in the USA, where over 50 … Read more
In July 1842 the London Medical Gazette printed one of the most intriguing headlines in the history of the journal:
The story accompanying it was told by George Johnson, a physician’s assistant at King’s College Hospital in London. This is what he had to relate:
John Lydbury, aged 60, labourer, was brought to the hospital on Monday, June 27th, when … Read more
In 1828 The Lancet reported the antics of a person they called ‘the fire-proof man’, a Cuban with extraordinary abilities:
The French medical journal, La Clinique, gives an account of the experiments of M. Martinez, the fire-proof man, as he is called, who is now one of the principal objects of attraction at Paris. M. Martinez is not, like the … Read more
The invention of the guillotine in 1789 coincided with a dark era in French history. The phase of the revolution known as the Terror saw tens of thousands executed by the device, which remained the French executioner’s weapon of choice until the twentieth century. The medical aspects of the guillotine provoked a number of journal articles, in particular discussing how … Read more
In 1837 The Lancet reported a cause of death previously unknown in the annals of medical science. Its report begins:
The following is an account of the post mortem examination of the body of Mr. Robert Cocking, aged sixty-one, who fell with a suicidal machine called a parachute, from the cord of a balloon which ascended from Vauxhall Gardens, … Read more
In 1763 a doctor from Malling in Kent, identifying himself only as ‘W.P.’, reported this strange case in The Medical Museum. His patient had died, apparently from eating a vast number of cucumbers:
It may be necessary to observe, that this unhappy woman had all the symptoms of a bilious cholic, to the most extreme degree, from the time … Read more
Here’s a case which wouldn’t surprise a modern medic, but which caused considerable puzzlement when it occurred in the first half of the nineteenth century: a patient who died while being shaved. This tale, first reported in Marryat’s London Metropolitan Magazine, was cited by one Dr Joseph Comstock in a letter to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in … Read more