One of the things that strikes me every time I look at a medical journal published between about 1850 and 1900 is quite how dangerous the early railways were. More or less every issue contains a report of a major accident in which passengers were killed, or railway workers maimed or injured after wholly avoidable mishaps. Safety standards were non-existent, … Read more
Category: Remarkable recoveries
Evacuated with a spoon
In 1836 a doctor from rural Ireland, J.L. McCarthy, encountered a highly unusual case which he then reported to The Lancet. The journal deemed it worthy of publication, although it is unlikely that many of its readers would ever need to know how to treat a patient suffering from this particular complaint:
On Thursday, the 8th instant, I was … Read more
A bayonet through the head
In June 1809 a French military surgeon, M. Fardeau, read a paper at a meeting of the Société de Médecine de Paris. I can find little information about M. Fardeau, but he evidently served with distinction in the Napoleonic Wars, being rewarded with membership of the Légion d’honneur for his efforts.
During the War of the Fourth Coalition Fardeau accompanied … Read more
Mother knows best
Sometimes doctors don’t have all the answers. Here’s a case in which the medics actually gave up on their patient, who was then cured by her own mother. This story is taken from Dr S.D. Gross’s Practical Treatise on Foreign Bodies in the Air-Passages, a doorstopper of a book published in 1854. Dr Gross devotes an entire chapter to … Read more
A most fortunate escape
Here’s a tale of misadventure so stupid that it wouldn’t be out of place in the annual Darwin Awards. This case was reported to the Ohio Medical and Surgical Journal in 1849 by a Dr William Lindsay.
On the 27th of Nov., 1844, he [Dr Linsday] was called to see the young man who was the subject of the accident, … Read more
The spear and the eucalyptus tree
In 1891 The Lancet printed this case report by Andrew Ross, a doctor who some years earlier had been practising in the small Australian settlement of Molong in New South Wales:
On Dec. 25th a messenger arrived requesting my attendance on one “Harry,” an aboriginal, who had, in an encounter with another of the race, arising through some quarrel over … Read more
A most remarkable accident
Here’s a case from The Medical Museum published in 1764 – more than seventy years after the patient had been treated and cured. To be fair to the tardy journal editor, it is a pretty unusual story:
A most remarkable accident befell a young man near Hall in Saxony, whose name was Andreas Rudleff, being about twenty-six years of age, … Read more
A hopeless case?
In 1868 the Richmond Medical Journal reported an extraordinary accident which had befallen a 9-year-old boy at a cotton press in Missouri. Since few of my readers are likely to have an instant mental image of one of these pieces of machinery, here’s a quick description.
A cotton press was a substantial contraption typically made from oak beams. Its function … Read more
Cured by a nightmare
Here’s a strange little tale which – unusually for this blog – does not involve a single doctor, since the patient recovered from a long-standing medical condition as the result of a dream. It comes from a short paper which was read at a meeting of the Royal Society on February 4th 1748 by one of its Fellows, Archdeacon … Read more
In one side and out the other
Volume 6 of the Medical Facts and Observations, published in London in 1795, includes four cases submitted by a Dr Henry Yates Carter, who described himself as “surgeon at Kettley, near Wellington, in Shropshire”. He was no mere country doctor: he had studied medicine in America and practised on the battlefields of the Revolution before returning to England in … Read more