Medical journals have a fascinating history. One early journal, The Lancet, was founded in 1823 and its first Editor, London surgeon Thomas Wakley (1795-1862), had...
The anonymous privately-printed book, Some Account of Lord Boringdon’s Accident, describes in deferential terms a case of aspiration of a foreign body and its sequelae....
It’s mid 1944. The allies have landed at Normandy, the Germans have abandoned Rome and are retreating from the Russians on the eastern front. The...
Draffin’s rods or bipods are a well-known ENT instrument. Before their invention in 1951, the attendant anaesthetist or nurse was obliged to support the mouthgag...
News of the first successful public demonstration of general anaesthesia in Boston, Massachusetts in October 1846 reached Britain in mid-December of that year. James Robinson,...
Bringing light into darkness can also be a task for the physician. With the advent of endoscopy (initially by reflecting light into body cavities), new...
Poor working conditions, long hours, low pay - and the prospect of a dangerous and disfiguring osteonecrosis of the jaw. These were the triggers for...
Joseph‑Ignace Guillotin. The politician and physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814) was so disgusted by brutal head and shoulder injuries sustained in ‘failed attempts’ by drunken axe-wielding...
“None of today’s young doctors can start to imagine the feeling of professional helplessness and despair that prevailed before the invention of the laryngeal mirror....
A legendary ‘parotid adenoma’: teaching aid or trophy? A wander through the glass cases of the newly refurbished Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of...
In Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, Timon urges prostitutes to spread syphilis throughout Athens. He implores the whores, Phrynia and Timandra, to: Consumptions* sow In hollow...
In the pre-antibiotic era, purulent otitis media often resulted in a permanent eardrum perforation with hearing loss. In addition to pig or fish bladders, eggshell...