| Description Of Item | Press cutting of pages 158 to 159 from the Medical Times and Gazette, originally published 15 February 1862. Presents a case of hydatid in the brain, communicated by Dr [John] Burton, the medical officer to the Walsall Union Workhouse Infirmary (Staffordshire). A young woman was admitted to the infirmary a few times, first for venereal sores, then for vomiting and headache. It appeared she recovered before being readmitted a last time because of a return of the vomiting. The next day she complained of a headache as strong as before; she felt ‘as if she was going to become an idiot’. She died the same night, apparently without ‘struggle’. The report describes the whole case, including the treatments prescribed and the result of the autopsy (which discovered a four-lobed hydatid in the brain). As she was described as indulging in her ‘salacious temperament’ but was ‘not otherwise vicious’, Burton wondered if the ‘peculiar location’ of the tumour might have had ‘any weight in determining erotic habits of the girl’.
From the collection of Thomas Laycock. |