Category Archives: History of medicine

Humbug is rife: cancer quackery, 1892 and 2015

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Bleach is among the dangerous fake ‘cures’ for cancer and other serious diseases being offered for sale to people in the UK, according to recent reports:

MMS is a 28% sodium chlorite solution, which is equivalent to industrial-strength bleach. When taken as directed it could cause severe nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, potentially leading to dehydration and reduced blood pressure. If the solution is diluted less than instructed, it could cause damage to the gut and red blood cells, potentially resulting in respiratory failure.

This so-called “miracle mineral solution” appears to target vulnerable people and those suffering serious illnesses who are asked to pay large sums of money for a product which not only doesn’t work but could be dangerous.

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A peculiar feeling of worms: giving voice to the shell-shocked

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In November 1914, a young Belgian solider called Adolf arrived in London. He was unable to move his legs but had no apparent physical injury that could explain his condition – he was shell-shocked.

Adolf was admitted to what was then the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, in Queen Square, London (now the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery) which had just started to admit soldiers with ‘any nervous ailment’ as well as those with injuries to their spinal cords or peripheral nerves.  A recent article that explores the original case notes of the 462 shell-shocked soldiers, including Adolf, treated there during World War 1 and its immediate aftermath includes quotes from the soldiers themselves – in some cases giving voice to the voiceless.

..so many had got back their voice in England……I have not spoken a word since I have been in England but one of my mates told me I said three words in Alexandria ……I could not cough or whistle but now I do both…

So wrote a 25-year-old Australian private who was prepared to risk paying his own fare home to Australia for the sake of getting treatment at Queen Square. Continue reading →

From typhoid to Spanish ‘flu: Conan Doyle and the war on disease

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We lost more from enteric [typhoid] than from the bullet in South Africa, and it is sad to think that nearly all could have been saved…..

So wrote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, physician and creator of Sherlock Holmes in 1924, in his autobiography ‘Memories and Adventures’. He is describing his experiences volunteering in Bloemfontein during the Boer War (1899-1902) in a field hospital where:

Coffins were out of the question, and the men were lowered in their brown blankets into shallow graves at the average rate of sixty a day……You could smell Bloemfontein long before you could see it.

Apparently fuelled by a desire to serve his country and a spirit of adventure, he had accepted an unofficial post in a private hospital.  Continue reading →

Smallpox in London: Stockwell, state planning and hospital ships

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In 1863, a smallpox outbreak hit London. The measures taken in the borough of Lambeth to control the spread of disease were remarkably successful, according to the annual report of its Medical Officer of Health, published as part of the Wellcome library’s vast digitisation project, London’s Pulse. In his report, Dr George Puckle describes how:  Continue reading →

Surgery in early 20C: less risk – and more

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Scientific advances such as anaesthesia meant that surgery in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries started to be seen as safe – but at the same time more risky. Surgeons, buoyed by early successes, started undertaking more risky procedures, in greater volumes,
accompanied by a media-fuelled moral panic about experimentation and vivisection. These apparent paradoxes are explored in a recent article that looks at attitudes to risk and responsibility by surgeons, their patients and the public, as well as the risks faced by the early women surgeons. Continue reading →

Dripping with melancholy: depression and historical heroes

In 2009, Alistair Campbell and Nigel Jones wrote A World Without: The Fantastic Five, asking what the world would be like if ‘five giants of history’ had been prevented by prejudice from making their enormous contributions. Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin and Marie Curie: all brilliant, all shapers of the modern world, all lived with significant mental health problems. Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon, said “His melancholy dripped from him as he walked”.

But could their illnesses actually have helped them in their work? Continue reading →

Calling the midwife in early 20C Derbyshire

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Mrs Blood, Dr Crook, Mrs Killer and Mrs Tipler – which would you choose to be your birth attendant?

These people all practised in Derbyshire early in the twentieth century. Dr Crook was a male GP, Frances Killer was a qualified, trained midwife, and Elizabeth Tipler was a ‘bona fide’ midwife – she had no training but was registered, and had some experience. Mrs Blood was one of a diminishing band of uncertified, untrained ‘handywomen’ who delivered babies and helped afterwards. Which had the best outcomes, for the mothers and babies they cared for? The answer is surprising and may also help explain why birth outcomes did not improve much at first after midwifery became a regulated profession in 1902. Continue reading →