One of the most famous of all medical marvels is the case of Phineas Gage, the American railroad worker who somehow survived having a large metal rod driven straight through his head. It’s a truly … | Continue reading
This case was reported in the Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital Reports – the in-house journal published by the London hospital of the same name – in 1879. The author of this article, William Steavenson… | Continue reading
Victorian society was famously paranoid about the dangers of masturbation. For teachers, priests and those with responsibility for young people, it was a question of morals and the corruption of yo… | Continue reading
This exceptional paper appeared in the Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal, a relatively minor publication, in 1888. Thanks to its sensational subject matter it was soon picked up by journals all … | Continue reading
It’s been a while! I haven’t managed to post on this blog in months, thanks to a work-in-progress, a true-crime book, which has been keeping me occupied for most of the last year. Now, however, I f… | Continue reading
My jaw hit the floor – in a metaphorical, not a literal, sense, although the latter circumstance would itself be worthy of an entry on this blog – when I came across this little story. It concerns … | Continue reading
This story of misadventure and an unusual resuscitation method seems particularly appropriate for what Twitter tells me is International Coffee Day. It was published in the Pacific Medical Journal … | Continue reading
Leonardo Fioravanti was a celebrated – and later infamous – Italian doctor of the sixteenth century. You’ll find little information about him online, which is a shame, because his was a fascinating… | Continue reading
I recently came across the online archives of the Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Journal, the in-house publication of the Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Society. The society was founded in Bristol around 1… | Continue reading
This painful case was recorded in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences in 1839. The author, Dr Isaac Hulse, was the surgeon in charge of the US Navy hospital in Pensacola, Florida: On the 7… | Continue reading
It is not often that an author in a major medical journal thinks it necessary to state that they are not mad. But in 1891 Dr W.J. Galbraith, Professor of Surgery at Omaha Medical College, writing i… | Continue reading
Here’s a medical short story with a sting in the tail, first told in the French Gazette des Hopitaux in October 1860. The author is a Monsieur de Saint-Laurent, a surgeon at the Hôpital Cochin in … | Continue reading
A sailor with serious injuries from a self-inflicted gunshot is unable to eat or drink - but his life is saved by regular lemonade enemas. | Continue reading
A French doctor has the surprise of his career when asked to treat a patient with a bladder stone -and instead discovers a mysterious 'pork cylinder'. | Continue reading
A French surgeon - and several of his colleagues - use an unusual method to remove a drinking glass from a patient's rectum. | Continue reading
A nineteenth-century patient surprises and horrifies his doctor by inserting a variety of strange objects inside his own urethra. | Continue reading