Medicine of yore

A number of years ago, this typist visited the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret in London. Set in the charming timber-frame attic of an old English Baroque church in Southwark, the museum provided a fascinating window into medical practices of yore.

For example:

Q. How were surgical procedures conducted in the days before anaesthetics?
A. Fast. An amputation could be carried out in less than a minute.

Q. How were surgeons trained before the end of the 19th century?
A. Through apprenticeship - in the same way that butchers, bakers and candlestick makers were trained. Physicians went to university.

Q. What was the purpose of the herb Quassia?
A. When combined with sulphuric acid, it was a cure for drunkeness and, if combined with enough
H2SO4, undoubtedly a cure for life.

Q. And the herb root galangal?
A. A drug to encourage flatulence.

Also discovered were rules for the taking in of patients at St.Thomas' Hospital, London, in the 18th century. They are presented in order of priority.

1. Evidence of ability to pay for burial shroud and other expenses.
2. Explain when distemper commenced
3. Explain nature/symptoms of distemper
4. Show that distemper is not incurable
5. Pay 2s 6d if cleane, 5s if foule (venereal disease)
6. Foule patients straying from venereal wards will be expelled.

Other notes of toe-curling interest were gynaecologic tools such as the cervical dilator - "a metal instrument with eight prongs that moved out from central point by adjusting screws at end." Ouch.

Also amusing was the desired outcome for a patient receiving cupping and scarification, or bloodletting: "Faintness, skin pallid, heart beat reduced, fever cooled, restlessness replaced with shock-like state." Bleeding a patient of a quart over two days usually did the trick.