Typhoid Mary

Mary Mallon [foreground above] was born in Northern Ireland in 1869 but emigrated to the USA in ‘84. She worked as a cook in New York, where, within two weeks of her first employment, the residents developed typhoid fever. After this, each family for whom Mary worked invariably became ill with typhoid. Wherever Mary went outbreaks followed her. When one family she worked for rented a house in Oyster Bay for the summer, six of the eleven people in the house came down with typhoid, a disease said by local doctors to be “unusual” at that time.

Typhoid researcher George Soper was hired to investigate. He published his results saying he believed soft clams might be the source of the outbreak and that:

No one knew her whereabouts but eventually Soper traced her to an active outbreak in a Park Avenue penthouse. When Soper approached Mallon she adamantly rejected his request for urine and stool samples.

The New York City Health Department sent Dr. Sara Josephine Baker to talk to Mary but still she refused to cooperate, believing she was being persecuted because she was an immigrant. A few days later, Baker arrived at Mary’s workplace with several police officers who took her into custody. Cultures of Mary’s urine and stools, taken forcibly with the help of prison matrons, revealed that her gallbladder was teeming with typhoid salmonella. She refused to have her gallbladder extracted or to give up her occupation as cook, maintaining stubbornly that she did not carry any disease. 

She was held in isolation for three years until, in 1910, she agreed that she “[was] prepared to change her occupation, and would give assurance by affidavit that she would upon her release take such hygienic precautions as would protect those with whom she came in contact”. Upon release, Mallon was given a job as a laundress, which paid lower wages, so she changed her name to Mary Brown and returned to her previous occupation as a cook. For the next five years, she went through a series of kitchens, spreading illness and death, keeping one step ahead of Soper.

In 1915, a serious epidemic of typhoid erupted among the staff of a hospital, with twenty five cases and two deaths. City health authorities investigated, learning that a portly Irish-American woman had suddenly disappeared from the kitchen help. The police tracked her to an estate on Long Island. Mary spent the rest of her life in quarantine until, aged 69, she died of pneumonia.

Robert Liston

Robert Liston was an nineteenth century pioneering Scottish surgeon who, in one surgery, achieved a 300% mortality rate. Liston was famous for the speed with which he was able to carry out procedures, which was pivotal in a time before anaesthetics, when speed made all the difference in terms of pain and survival. Indeed, he is described as “the fastest knife in the West End. He could amputate a leg in 21⁄2 minutes”. Indeed … he is said to have been able to perform the removal of a limb in … in 28 seconds”.

However, in his most famous surgery Liston’s patient, who’s leg had been amputated in under 21⁄2 minutes, died afterwards in hospital, and, whilst carrying out the procedure, Liston also managed to cut off the fingers of his assistant, who also died later of gangrene, and, Liston also slashed through the coat tails of a distinguished surgical spectator, who was so terrified that the knife had pierced his vitals he dropped dead from fright. This was the only operation in history with a 300% mortality.

Another noteworthy surgery performed by Liston is one in which he quickly and successfully amputated the leg of his patient but, in his enthusiasm, also managed to amputate the man’s testicles.

How about no.

Slow down, dude! It's not a race!

United States Navy surgical and amputation kit, circa 1860 Wood; brass; nickel plated steel; velvet

These instruments were used by Union Navy Assistant Surgeon and 1861 Harvard Medical School graduate Charles Thatcher Hubbard aboard the USS Unadilla during the American Civil War. The ship and its surgeon participated in the capture of Fort Walker and Fort Beauregard in Port Royal Sound, South Carolina and the blockade of Charlestown.

No but really. I totally squealed when this came up on my screen. My dad looked over from where he's over on the phone and mouthed "What the Hell?" 

Delicious.

Obstetric phantom, Italy, 1701-1800: Manipulating the cloth ‘baby’ in the womb of this almost life-size model of the female torso shows how birth takes place. It also shows how abnormal positions of the child affect the process. The wood and leather model was used to teach medical students, and possibly midwives, about childbirth. Using instruments to intervene in delivering a live child was still quite rare in the 1700s. Caesarean sections were rarely attempted. The obstetric phantom came from the Hospital del Ceppo in Pistoia, near Florence, Italy. This is one of the earliest hospitals in Europe, founded in 1277.

Sometimes history is just fucking creepy.

Especially in those awkward places where history and science overlap. 

But, you know, historically we are really very bad at medical things and they tried so I for one am going to give this one to them.

(Still creepy though.)

John Wales January- Cut off his own feet to live- He enlisted in Company B of the 14th Illinois Cavalry and was captured in July, 1864

I was captured by six rebel soldiers, sent to Andersonville, and there kept until the fall of Atlanta made it necessary for us to be removed to prevent falling in the hands of the Union forces.

I soon learned from the surgeon, after a hasty examination, that I was victim of scurvy and gangrene and was removed to the gangrene hospital. My feet and ankles, five inches above the joints presented a livid, lifeless appearance, and soon the flesh began to slough off, and the surgeon, with a brutal oath, said I would soon die. But I was determined to live, and begged him to cut my feet off; telling him if he would do that I could live. He still refused; and, believing that my life depended on the removal of my feet, I secured an old pocket-knife (I have it now in my possession) and cut through the decaying flesh and severed the tendons. The feet were unjointed, leaving the bones protruding without a covering of flesh for five inches…. At the close of the war I was taken by the rebs to our lines at Wilmington, N.C., in April 1865, and when weighed learned that I had been reduced from 165 pounds (my weight when captured) to forty-five pounds. Six weeks after release, while on a boat enroute to New York, the bones of my right limb broke off at the end of the flesh. Six weeks later, while in the hospital on David’s Island, those of my left hand had become necrosid and broke off similarly. There is no record of any case in the world similar to mine.

That... does not sound pleasant.

War and Prosthetics

OH FUCK YES.

Look at that junk. Goddamn delicious.