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, […]
I began writing this blog while researching my first book The Matter of the Heart, a popular history of heart surgery, which was published by Bodley Head in June 2017. I spent many hours reading early medical journals and found that they were full of extraordinary and often scarcely believable stories, which though irrelevant to the book seemed too good to waste. In my spare time I collected some of the most quirky, bizarre or surprising cases I encountered and published them online for others to enjoy.
The blog quickly picked up a following, and its stories were featured on other websites including Listverse and BBC Future. Eventually a selection of my favourite cases became the basis for my second book The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth.
I am no longer adding new stories to the several hundred already published – but they are collected here for you to enjoy. A complete list can be found here.
In my last post I wrote about an impressive operation performed in 1888 by the American surgeon George Ryerson Fowler, […]
At the age of 14, George Ryerson Fowler ran away from his parents’ home in Jamaica and stowed away on
Henry Fryer was a surgeon from the market town of Stamford in Lincolnshire. When he died in 1823 he left
One of the most famous of all medical marvels is the case of Phineas Gage, the American railroad worker who
Things have been quiet here for the last couple of months. I’ve been busy with a few other projects, including
This spectacular case was published in the Medical Press and Circular, a leading Irish journal, in 1866. The author Dr
In 1803 a surgeon from Dumbarton in Scotland, Alexander Hunter, wrote to the London Medical and Physical Journal to report
Pretty much any substance you care to mention has, at one time or another, been touted as a cure for
A few months ago I wrote about the criminal who was lucky to recover after inhaling a fake gold earring.
The Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, first published in 1773, was one of the earliest journals intended as a regular digest