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Stories

  • Article

The search for a cure for endometriosis

Discover how a white American doctor’s experimental operations on black female slaves laid the foundations for modern gynaecological surgery.

  • Article

The mystery of the malignant brain

In 1884 a neurologist successfully used a patient’s symptoms, plus a new kind of map, to locate a brain tumour. Discover how his best-laid plans for treatment worked out.

  • Article

The anatomy of a brain dissection

Dissecting the brain after death not only helps confirm a diagnosis, but it can also teach us so much more about the symptoms and causes of brain diseases and how to treat them.

  • Article

Coleridge’s hypochondria

An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.

All stories (5)

Images

  • A surgeon using an electrical device to externally track a hidden bullet inside a patient's body. Wood engraving, ca. 1890.
  • A physician rushes into an operating theatre, exclaiming that there has been an error in diagnosis; unfortunately, the patient is already lying there, opened up. Colour photomechanical reproduction of a lithograph, c. 1900.
  • Surgeons examining a Mauser bullet in a man's chest via the use of an X-ray. Halftone, 1900, after W. Small.
  • A physician examining a urine flask. Oil painting by Gerard Thomas.
  • A physician examining a urine flask. Oil painting by Gerard Thomas.
  • A physician-virtuoso in his cabinet, examining a flask of urine brought by a lady. Oil painting by a painter in the circle of Gerard Thomas, early 18th century.
  • A physician-virtuoso in his cabinet, examining a flask of urine brought by a lady. Oil painting by a painter in the circle of Gerard Thomas, early 18th century.
  • A physician-virtuoso in his cabinet, examining a flask of urine brought by a lady. Oil painting by a painter in the circle of Gerard Thomas, early 18th century.
  • A physician-virtuoso in his cabinet, examining a flask of urine brought by a lady. Oil painting by a painter in the circle of Gerard Thomas, early 18th century.
  • A physician-virtuoso in his cabinet, examining a flask of urine brought by a lady. Oil painting by a painter in the circle of Gerard Thomas, early 18th century.
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