Electrical anaesthesia
News of an exciting new anaesthetic reaches the Medical Times and Gazette in 1865: In a short article in the Lombardy Gazetta Medico, March […]
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.
News of an exciting new anaesthetic reaches the Medical Times and Gazette in 1865: In a short article in the Lombardy Gazetta Medico, March […]
In 1865 the Medical Times and Gazette published a series of articles entitled ‘Report on cheap wine’. There was some
This from the Medical Times and Gazette, published in 1869: From an interesting article on cacao and chocolate, by M. Marchand,
At least twice a year one or other of the newspapers prints a story about one of those mysterious apparitions
This blog usually deals with medical matters; but I couldn’t resist reproducing this article from the first number of the
The Annals of Medicine for 1799 contains a letter from a Dr Guthrie, an Scottish physician then working in St
A cautionary tale from the Medical Facts and Observations, published in 1795: On Tuesday, the 25th of March last, a
In 1823 The Lancet’s regular summary of goings-on at the London hospitals contained this interesting report of an early public
A curious book of remedies was published in London in 1700, entitled Dr. Lower’s, and several other Eminent Physicians, Receipts,
It used to be thought dangerous to give a hot horse cold water; when I first heard this canard as