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The father of handwashing

Doctors performing autopsies and then delivering babies – with not a hint of soap in between – was the grim recipe producing a lot of motherless offspring in the 1800s. But one man’s gargantuan efforts to upend accepted medical thinking turned the tide.

  • Article

Getting under the skin

Before the invention of X-ray in 1895 there was really only one way to accurately study the human body, and that was to cut it open.

  • Article

Duelling doctors

An enduring enthusiasm for 18th-century gentlemen to defend their ‘honour’ by duelling placed doctors in a delicate position. Specially when they faced being shot themselves.

  • Article

The case of the cancerous stomach

Steak and schnitzel were on the menu again after Theodor Billroth successfully excised a woman’s stomach cancer in 1881. Remarkably, today’s surgeons still perform the same procedure, with slight modifications.

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Images

  • 20th century autopsy, 1905.
  • Invitation to Charles II autopsy.
  • Johann Adam Kulmus about to perform an autopsy with autopsy instruments lying on a table in the foreground
  • A reclining man, possibly on an autopsy table, with dissected neck and top of chest. Coloured drawing.
  • The fallibility of the senses: above, justice, fame and deceit; below, doctors conducting an autopsy on a cadaver, surrounded by onlookers. Engraving, 1692.
  • An autopsy on an investor in the Dutch speculation boom of 1720 reveals that he had died of an excess of air, representing lack of value in the shares. Etching, 1720.
  • An autopsy on an investor in the Dutch speculation boom of 1720 reveals that he had died of an excess of air, representing lack of value in the shares. Etching, 1720.
  • La faune des cadavres : application de l'entomologie à la médecine légale / par P. Mégnin.
  • La faune des cadavres : application de l'entomologie à la médecine légale / par P. Mégnin.
  • La faune des cadavres : application de l'entomologie à la médecine légale / par P. Mégnin.
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