Bizarre tales from annals of medicine

MEDICAL MATTERS:A little light relief from the doom and gloom

I’M AFRAID any intention to write about serious issues this week has disappeared underneath the mire of health service bad news stories. Waiting lists on the rise again, the likelihood of greater-than-expected financial cutbacks in December’s health budget, and a week full of dispiriting anecdotes from both patients and medical colleagues has taken its toll.

Time to turn to the bookshelf in search of some light relief. How about Bizarre Books– a compendium of classical oddities? I picked this up during the summer and haven't had a chance to read it, so I went straight to the chapter on health and medicine in search of inspiration.

The early 1900s saw a boom in bizarre medical titles. US author Sanford Bennett cannot be accused of lacking ambition with his 1912 offering Old Age: Its Cause and Prevention. Describing himself as the man who grew young at 70, Bennett promotes the use of an electric face mask to put a stop to ageing skin.

Readers waiting patiently for hernia surgery won't be in any hurry to leave the waiting list after a browse through Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured. Essentially a promo for Cluthe's improved support for inguinal hernia – and impressively in its 71st edition – we learn why some trusses "are a crime". I'm inclined to agree after seeing a picture of one spring-loaded device. "Due to the force of the springs around the waist, the pads dig against the pelvic bone with terrible pressure, sapping the vitality," the author says wincingly of a rival device.

Apologies to dog lovers but a 1933 title asks Cancer: Is the Dog the Cause?Samuel Cort is in no doubt about canine causation, writing "to keep a dog, to cuddle, fondle, stroke, kiss, or be kissed by a dog, is to invite disease and death". Maybe it was the effects of the Great Depression, because the same year we had 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs – Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs and Cosmetics.

Meanwhile, a 1929 title proclaimed: Let's Be Normal! The Psychologist Comes to His Senses. I bet that wasn't much help to bull market investors when the crash wiped them out.

Moving back to the 1800s we find a title unlikely to warrant a reprint in these obese times. How to Get Fatpresumably reflects the ravages of TB and other infections. The Dublin-published Electricity as a Cause of Cholera, or other Epidemicsby Sir James Murray suggests suspicions about the possible side effects of "the electric" were current(!).

From the Stump to the Limb, an 1890 publication, is described as an illustrated history and description of an artificial limb company and includes the testimonial: "The hand you made and sent me was received in first class condition . . . " And a book dedicated to "the nervous and bilious" has the unexpected title: The Art of Invigorating and Prolonging Life . . . To which is added The Pleasure of Making a Will. Definitely a good each-way bet by the author.

An 1896 publication, Cycling as a Cause of Heart Disease, probably wouldn't make the recommended reading list for today's students of preventive medicine. My favourite from this era has to be Eleven Years a Drunkard, or The Life of Thomas Doner, Having Lost Both Arms Through Intemperance, He Wrote this Book with His Teeth as a Warning to Others. I hope he made enough money from the book to settle his dental bills. If not, he may have found solace in Dentalogia: A Poem on the Disease of the Teeth and Their Proper Remedies.

Bizarre book titles have persisted right up to the present. The Inheritance of Hairy Ear Rimsis probably an appropriately named specialist genetics text – I can't see it breaking any sales records as a book aimed at those afflicted with excess aural hair growth. Let's hope the 1986 Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: A Personal Viewisn't an overly intimate treatise or that Hot Topics in Urologydoesn't cause those with a urinary tract infection to flinch at the thought. And My Prostate and Mesuggests a glandular overfamiliarity that may not be entirely appropriate. Finally, I wonder how many pages Memoirs of an Amnesiacran to?