Years ago I remember watching a TV documentary about the Royal Navy Field Gun Competition, a yearly tournament in which rival teams of gunners race to disassemble and transport a large and immensely heavy antique field gun across an obstacle course, before reassembling and firing it – a process which commemorates a similar feat achieved in combat during the … Read more
Category: Remarkable recoveries
Mütter’s operation – plastic surgery, 19th-century style
In 1855 the editor of the Western Lancet, Dr T. Wood, published an article in his own journal on the subject of plastic (reconstructive) surgery. This clinical sub-discipline was still in its infancy, but a handful of surgeons had achieved wonders in treating severely disfigured patients. The leading American expert was Thomas Dent Mütter, who had spent a … Read more
Oshkosh, by gosh
Here’s a spectacular head injury (and recovery) reported in the Transactions of the Wisconsin State Medical Society in 1869. This lucky, lucky man survived an accident which left him with a large portion of his brain hanging out of his skull. The unusual case was reported by Dr Linde of Oshkosh, Wisconsin – a city perhaps best known today as … Read more
Trees do not grow in humans
In June 1879 the Chicago Telegraph made quite a splash with a story published under this headline:
Probably the most wonderful phenomenon that has ever come under the observation of the medical fraternity of this city developed itself at the Montcalm House, on Erie street, in the person of a boy named Herbert G. Schwartz. Schwartz senior is a farmer, … Read more
Dragging his bowels after him
Medics and their journals have always loved a curiosity, however long ago it occurred. This case was reported in the Medical and Surgical Journal in 1871, more than a century after the ghastly events it relates had taken place:
John Stetson, aged thirty-eight, farmer, also accustomed to slaughter cattle, July 19, 1768, in a paroxysm of insanity secreted himself in … Read more
Putting a patient to sleep (without anaesthetic)
Have you ever wondered how patients in the era before anaesthetics were persuaded to undergo excruciatingly painful operations? The answer – fairly obviously – is ‘with great difficulty’. Some brave souls were able to grit their teeth and bear it, and others made things simpler for the surgeon (and themselves) by simply passing out from the pain.
Most difficult to … Read more
Impaled on a stake
How about this for a lucky escape? It’s the sort of grisly farm accident which might be featured in a medical documentary like 24 Hours in A&E, with one significant difference. Anybody unlucky enough to be impaled by a stake today could expect major surgery and a lengthy hospital stay – but this patient made a total recovery after … Read more
The man with the rubber jaw
Maxillofacial surgeons are some of the most ridiculously overqualified people on the planet. In the UK it is compulsory for them to hold degrees in both medicine and dentistry, and they can only practise after well over a decade of training. This enviable expertise equips them to undertake a wide range of procedures on the face, jaws and neck. Since … Read more
The perforated private
In 1777 a local surgeon wrote to the Medical and Philosophical Commentaries to pass on a story he had heard from a former patient. It concerns an officer in the East India Company who had been injured during the siege of Janna. I can find no trace of a siege of this name, but the dates suggest it may have … Read more
Medicine or marinade?
Early nineteenth-century doctors had some funny ideas about treating infectious disease. Before the discovery of microbes, next to nothing was known about what caused infections, or how to cure them. For many years, physicians believed that stimulating the outer surfaces of the body would have an effect. Several methods of doing so were employed: cupping, in which partially-evacuated glasses were … Read more