The complete works

 

 

  • The double monster

  • The horn of a dilemma

  • Killed by a corkscrew

  • Saved for posterity

  • Two spoonsful of brain on the pillow

  • The deserter

  • The largest tumor on record

  • Honking like a goose

  • Sugar is good for your teeth

  • The wandering musket ball

  • The dreadful opening

  • How to treat hay fever?

  • The fire-proof man

  • Boiling water and birch twigs

  • A rotten trick

  • Plum stone colick

  • Mass delusions

  • Champagne ad libitum

  • A head of wheat in the bladder

  • Eye eye

  • Dancing testicles

  • The incredible shrinking man

  • Worms in the nose

  • A beetroot up the bottom

  • The miller’s tale

  • Replete of vermin

  • Scared to death?

  • The redoubtable Mrs H

  • Inexpressibly loathsome and sickening

  • The man who coughed up a knife

  • The glow-in-the-dark Easter feast

  • The human piggy bank

  • A difficult labour

  • A suicidal machine

  • Death by cucumber

  • The man with three testicles

  • The stomach eel

  • Jaundice and night blindness

  • Cured by a lightning bolt

  • ‘Powder a Toad’ – Wesley’s Primitive Physick

  • Lost and found

  • An intestinal… mouse?

  • Mütter’s operation – plastic surgery, 19th-century style

  • The boy who vomited his own twin

  • The man with a tooth in his ear

  • Leeches for everybody

  • Oshkosh, by gosh

  • The mystery of the exploding teeth

  • The man who ate chalk

  • Trees do not grow in humans

  • Killed by shaving

  • The electric spectacles

  • Medicinal pancakes

  • Penis in a bottle

  • A ludicrous mistake

  • More astonishing than true

  • The woman whose skin turned blue

  • Benjamin Rush in The Lancet

  • Dragging his bowels after him

  • A medical duel

  • Fruit, feathers and hair

  • Suffocated by a fish

  • A dismal tail

  • Putting a patient to sleep (without anaesthetic)

  • A medical old wives’ tale

  • The woman who turned to soap

  • Killed by a cough

  • Dead or alive at will

  • The seven-foot tumour

  • Unfortunate injury of the decade

  • Don’t mess with an electric eel

  • Impaled on a stake

  • Dead from too much pie

  • Sober up the nineteenth-century way

  • A Victorian hospital Christmas

  • The hidden dangers of a Victorian Christmas

  • The perils of the Christmas pudding

  • Death by Christmas dinner

  • A beetle in the bladder

  • There was an old woman who swallowed a fork…

  • Somewhat silly in his manner

  • All hail the strawberry

  • The man with the rubber jaw

  • The case of the missing pen

  • The perforated private

  • Is that it?

  • Nothing to worry about

  • Struck dumb

  • Bleeding you well

  • In praise of temperance

  • Pipe dreams

  • The eye-brush

  • The owl-eyed girl

  • Medicine or marinade?

  • Trouble at t’mill

  • The worst job in the world?

  • The do-it-yourself hernia operation

  • Saliva and crow’s vomit

  • Glass half-empty

  • A case for Dr Coffin

4 thoughts on “The complete works”

  1. Larry Drown

    Thank you for publishing this excellent and fascinating blog.

    Many of us, myself included, often long for the “good old days”. Here are many examples of certain unpleasant shortcomings of medical practice in those times.

    Reply
  3. Jessica Miller

    Thank you so much for the time you have put into making this type of infomation readable and easy to access.

    “Back in the day” they sure did not have the luxuries we now have: pain killers, ICU and the knowledge etc.

    As a person who has experienced accidents equal to several you have mentioned (horse related, some things do not change), I am especially grateful for our modern advances.

    Thank you for all you do. The website was great fun while healing. Keep up the good works.

    Reply
  4. Jessica Miller

    I am hoping all is going well in your neighborhood. I was wondering if it is possible that you have ever come across some situations in your researches, similar as to what we are dealing with now but smaller, that had been documented and hopefully on a positive note, “contained”?

    Reply

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