In June 1873 a respectable American medical journal, The Clinic, published a ‘news in brief’ story which had been culled from a local newspaper in New Jersey. It was evidently reproduced more for entertainment than for its scientific value, since it was prefaced by the ironic comment ‘We give the following for what it is worth.’ Its veracity … Read more
Category: Prodigies and monsters
The forty-foot tapeworm
Medical journals do not often publish articles by undergraduates these days, but an 1847 edition of the Southern Medical and Surgical Journal included a short paper by one John D. Twiggs, described simply as a ‘student of medicine’. Mr Twiggs (we cannot call him ‘Dr’) betrays his inexperience in a certain lack of professional scepticism; but he certainly had an … Read more
The man with 87 children
The English physician Samuel Merriman (1771-1852) was a leading authority on midwifery and the diseases of pregnancy. His best-known work, published in 1814, was Synopsis of the Various Kinds of Difficult Parturition, a treatise on the dangers of childbirth which was translated into several languages. In an engaging section on multiple births he includes a couple of wonderful anecdotes.… Read more
The double monster
The phenomenon of conjoined twins was poorly understood until the twentieth century. Though even the earliest medical journals contain reports of many cases, the predominant tone is one of horror and even fear rather than compassion or detached interest. Right up until the end of the nineteenth century, words such as ‘monster’ or ‘monstrosity’ were commonly used to describe them, … Read more
The fire-proof man
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
Inexpressibly loathsome and sickening
Unlikely tales were often swallowed unquestioningly by the editors of medical journals in the nineteenth century, so it was a welcome corrective to find this preface to a case report published in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in 1854:
An esteemed correspondent has sent us an account of “a most extraordinary case,” which he says he “clipped from a … Read more
The human piggy bank
Eels seem to have featured regularly in this blog, for some reason. First there was the physician who had a shocking experience with an electric eel, and more recently we’ve had the dubious tale of the boy with an eel in his stomach.
Here’s another story involving an ingested eel, and much more besides. In 1826 The London Medical … Read more
The boy who vomited his own twin
This delightful case was reported in the London Medical and Surgical Journal in 1835, having previously appeared in a Greek journal, the Sother. The original article was by a Dr Ardoin – a Frenchman, it appears, in practice in Greece. His patient was a young boy called Demetrius Stamatelli:
On the 19th July last, when M. Ardoin was called … Read more
The woman who turned to soap
In February 1846 a group of gravediggers in New York had a truly spooky experience when they were asked to disinter a body from a burial ground on the corner of Broadway and Twelfth Street (a site now occupied by a branch of Pret a Manger – make of that what you will).
Their story was reported in the New … Read more
Don’t mess with an electric eel
Few creatures have provided such enduring fascination to the medical profession as the electric eel (Electrophorus electricus), a creature capable of delivering an electric shock of up to 850 volts (and 1 amp) on demand. Though remarkable, they are not unique: several other species of electric fish are known, including the electric catfish found in the Nile (… Read more