Get your Goat

This history of medicine would be quite drab without the enormous rollcall of quacks and charlatans.  Sometimes the stories are so bizarre it's hard to believe they are true.  Today's self styled "doctor" is no exception.

Dr. John Romulus Brinkley (later to become John Richard Brinkley) lived from 1885-1942.  The son of a man who practiced as a medic in North Carolina during the Civil war, his father was married four times legally and had one other marriage that was anulled because John Brinkley Snr was underaged at the time.  John Jnr himself was born out of wedlock, to the niece of his father's current wife.

Wascally Wabbits

In September 1726 a young woman named Mary Toft, about 25 at the time, went into labour with her third child.  The pregnancy had been complicated.  Forced to undertake heavy work in the fields throughout she stated that she had suffered a great deal of pain and a month prior had passed several pieces of flesh and clots.

On the night Mary laboured in September her neigbour watched incredulously as Mary produced several pieces of animal flesh.  The neighbour showed these to Mary's mother in law, a midwife, who contacted John Howard a local surgeon and "man-midwife".

Sceptical, Howard attended Mary the following day.  Initially he found nothing. However Mary once again went into labour a few days later.  Howard returned and subsequently delivered three legs of a tabby cat, a rabbit leg and the intestines of a cat.