Why children should never wear hats
I recently came across a charming little medical book aimed at children, and first published in Germany in the 18th […]
Hidden dangers
Medical shenanigans
Busted! A medical plagiarist exposed
The index for Volume 5 of The Lancet, published in 1824, contains this intriguing entry: Indexes are not often used
Horrifying operations
A painful way to ‘cure’ a stammer
On April 1st 1841 Thomas Young, a labourer at a forge, walked into the Metropolitan Free Hospital in London and
Bewildering research
A dissertation on pus
In 1785 the great English surgeon John Hunter and his Scottish colleague George Fordyce set up a medical society, the
Mysterious illnesses, Prodigies and monsters
Centipedes in your bacon
Some truly bizarre goings-on were reported at the Exeter meeting of the Provincial Surgical and Medical Association in 1842. A
Hidden dangers, Unusual treatments
Catching a disease through an electric wire
Here’s something to get unnecessarily worried about: apparently it’s possible to catch a disease through an electric wire! As reported
Unusual treatments
In event of drowning, blow smoke up bottom
Samuel Auguste André David Tissot was an eminent Swiss physician of the eighteenth century, best known as the author of
Mysterious illnesses
The Swiss disease
News of a strange malady, unique to the inhabitants of a single country, comes from the edition of The Medical
Notable deaths
Death of a 152-year-old (or was he?)
William Harvey is deservedly one of the most famous physicians who ever lived. His demonstration that the heart is a
The combustible countess
Spontaneous human combustion became a fashionable topic in the early nineteenth century, when a number of sensational presumed cases were