Millipede meningitis
Here’s a medical short story with a sting in the tail, first told in the French Gazette des Hopitaux in […]
Mysterious illnesses
Ulysse Trélat and an implausible discovery
Ulysse Trélat was a prominent French surgeon of the nineteenth century. He served as surgeon-in-chief to most of the major
Horrifying operations, Unfortunate predicaments
A watch spring, a bean and a clove of garlic
An 1868 issue of a French journal, the Bulletin général de thérapeutique médicale et chirurgical, contains this case report contributed
Remarkable recoveries
The lemonade enema
The following remarkable narrative was published in The Medical and Physical Journal in April 1812. The author, Stephen Love Hammick,
Mysterious illnesses
The practical joke
In 1873 a physician from St Louis, Dr Walter Coles, recorded a particularly unusual home visit he had recently been
Jules Cloquet: the surgeon as artist
The French surgeon Jules Germain Cloquet was a man of many talents. A member of the Paris Academy of Medicine,
Britain’s first heart surgeon
Earlier today I was interviewed on TalkRadio about a man I believe to have been Britain’s first heart surgeon –
Mysterious illnesses, Notable deaths
A wonderful accumulation
This notable case report was published in the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions in 1852. The author, John Marshall, was a young surgeon
Unfortunate predicaments
The missing member
A strange case of mistaken identity was reported in the Berliner klinische Wochenschrift in 1874, and subsequently translated in the
The electric centipede
In December 1831 The Lancet reported these strange goings-on in France: A farmer’s wife, twenty-eight years of age, residing in