The man whose intestines twinkled like stars
Every so often I read an old medical case that makes me wince and ask myself, “However did they recover […]
Remarkable recoveries
The case of the drunken Dutchman’s guts
On August 28th 1641 the 21-year-old English diarist John Evelyn visited the great university of Leiden in the Netherlands. He
Horrifying operations
If you can’t find a surgeon…
…employ a butcher. That, at least, is the advice implied by this unusual eighteenth-century case:The hamlet of Clogher in Co
The lawn-tennis elbow
It has been a bad week for injuries at Wimbledon, with two of the favourites for the men’s title exiting
Mysterious illnesses, Unfortunate predicaments
A flaming nuisance
In 1886 a physician from Glasgow, Dr George Beatson, wrote to the British Medical Journal with a rather unusual tale.
A dubious paper
In 1813 the editor of The Medical and Physical Journal, Samuel Fothergill, accepted for publication a paper by John Spence,
Remarkable recoveries, Unfortunate predicaments
Hook, line and Liston
In 1844 the great surgeon Robert Liston gave an influential series of lectures at University College London on the technique
Bewildering research, Prodigies and monsters
The amphibious infant
It is June 1873, and some very odd tidings are published in the latest edition of the Medical Notes and
Unusual treatments
The champagne cure
Pyaemia is a form of septicaemia (blood poisoning) in which a bacterial infection spreads from an abscess and becomes systemic.
The monk with a perfume bottle stuck up his bottom
Today’s dose of medical mishap is excerpted from an influential textbook published in 1837 by George Bushe, a surgeon who