Hemlock and millipedes
In September 1762 Ann James, a fifty-five-year-old woman from Boughton Monchelsea in Kent, came to the attention of Josiah Colebroke, […]
Unusual treatments
Medicine
Mysterious illnesses, Prodigies and monsters
The worm: a horror story
Sometimes in early medical journals a case history begins conventionally enough, before turning into something startlingly unexpected. This is from
Unusual treatments
Curing conjunctivitis with frogspawn
Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689) was one of the most celebrated English physicians of the seventeenth century. His Observationes Medicae (Medical Observations,
Primitive equipment
Fishing line and marine sponges: the operating theatre of 1888
In 1888 the great American surgeon Rudolph Matas saved the life of a patient who had been shot in the
Hidden dangers
That’s one way to give up smoking
The museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in Dublin, contains the picture of a man whose face was eaten away
Unfortunate predicaments
Dear oh dear
In 1829 a fifty-year-old labourer, John Marsh, was knocked down and run over by a cart laden with bricks. He
Prodigies and monsters
The child that cried in the womb
Remarkable news reaches The Medico-Chirurgical Review (June 1822) from Prussia: Crying of the Foetus in Utero. A lady, during pregnancy, had experienced some distresses of
Dodgy predictions
Wrong
The Athenaeum tries a spot of prognostication in 1854: If we may judge by our library table, homoeopathy is not in
Hidden dangers, Mysterious illnesses
Injured by the imagination
Forget drinking in pregnancy; here’s something far more dangerous. From the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1695: A lady was
Hidden dangers
Skipping-ropes: the silent killer
April 29th, 1905, and the ‘Minor Comments’ section of the Journal of the American Medical Association has a stark warning: Even