A tale of two inventions
In my last post I wrote about an impressive operation performed in 1888 by the American surgeon George Ryerson Fowler, […]
Primitive equipment
Under the skin
There’s a good chance that you’ll be at the sharp end of a hypodermic needle over the next few months
Horrifying operations, Primitive equipment, Remarkable recoveries
A triumph of surgery
In June 1898, British newspapers reported an exciting medical story under the headline ‘Triumph in Surgery’. Their source was a
Primitive equipment, Unusual treatments
The child who swallowed a pin
The eighteenth-century surgeon William Boys, although a distinguished clinician and Fellow of the Royal Society, was perhaps better known as
Horrifying operations, Primitive equipment
The ear drill
You’ve heard of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut; but what about a drill (or rather two drills) to
Primitive equipment
Plagiarising the past
In 1850 a doctor from New Buckenham in Norfolk, Horace Howard, submitted this short case report to The Lancet: The
Mysterious illnesses, Primitive equipment
The spermatorrhoea alarm
In 1843 the Provincial Medical Journal published a landmark paper by Dr W.H. Ranking from Suffolk. It was a ‘landmark’
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 other Horatio Nelson
The Canadian physician Henry Horatio Nelson was born six years after the Battle of Trafalgar, so it does not take
Primitive equipment
Nil by mouth
John Hunter was one of the great medics of the eighteenth century. His name lives on today in the Hunterian