Featured articles

Scour Dr. Pembroke’s journals and essays for more true tales of the brutal, depraved and twisted examples of medical history…

18Aug 20203 Dec 2025

Eyes and Needles – Part 2

(If you’d like to catch up, ‘Medicine Macabre – Eyes and Needles – Part 1’ can be found here) Alas. If the readership…

Eyes and Needles – Part 1

Let me pose a question: how much do you value the sight of your loved ones? How much stock do you place…

The General’s Leg

The American Civil War, like any conflict, produced a cast of both famous and infamous characters and personalities throughout its brutal…

Testimonials

“Never before have I witnessed a more ghastly aberration of medical science than what I experienced here today… with such flagrant disregard for protocol, safety or even basic standards of cleanliness… it is unknown if upon his slab a single life has been saved within this travesty he calls a practice… This doctor, if he can even be provided this title, is a brutal figure of barbarism and grotesque morbidity, the likes of which I have never seen in all my years of surgical enterprise…. He should be run from the establishment with all haste and prosecuted to the full extent of the law…”

-Sir Astley Cooper, 1832

“Do not book for children’s parties…”

-Anon

“Anyone who wishes to trephine, should they themselves be trephined in turn… why therefore Dr. Pembroke felt it important to drill three times in a row on a perfectly healthy patient is simply beyond me…”

Medical History

Electrifying Medicine Pt. 4 – Memory Loss

18 Dec 20173 Dec 2025

Onxyfeld, Late Winter 1872 (Want to catch up on this series? Find Electrifying Medicine part 1 here, part 2 here and part 3 here) In our last article we witnessed first-hand…

Medical History

Electrifying Medicine Pt. 3 – Reanimation

17 Dec 20173 Dec 2025

(In our last installment, we studied galvanism and the practice of electrocuting tiny adorable frogs. This week we're electrocuting dead people. Enjoy!) The date is the 18th of January, 1803.…

Medical History

Electrifying Medicine Pt. 2 – Italian Frog Legs

16 Dec 20173 Dec 2025

Onxyfeld, Late Winter 1872 Welcome to the Enlightenment! The era in which we learned the mass of the earth, invented the steam engine, really invested ourselves in colonialism, and most…

Pembroke's Remedies

Dr. Pembroke’s Remedies – Galvanic Viagra of the 1850’s

11 Dec 20173 Dec 2025

Imagine if you will: you are visiting an old friend for the evening, with the intention of getting wrecked on brandy and discussing Important Matters, such as the price of New Guinea…

Medical History

Electrifying Medicine Pt. 1 – Stingrays and Storms

11 Dec 20173 Dec 2025

Onxyfeld, Late Winter 1872 Many of you are familiar with the lamentably popular 1818 piece of pulp named Frankenstein. Unknown to most, what it actually chronicles is how at the turn of…

Medical History…

Dr. Pembroke’s Remedies – Blowing Vapours

9 Dec 201716 Oct 2018

Join Dr. J.D. Pembroke as he studies the many curious, ridiculous and sometimes downright confusing medical methods by which mankind has sought to heal itself with over the years. It’s…

Medical History

The Resurrection Men, Pt 4 – Execution

1 Dec 20173 Dec 2025

Up the close and doun the stair, But and ben wi' Burke and Hare. Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief, Knox the boy that buys the beef. —19th-century Edinburgh skipping…

Medical History

The Resurrection Men, Pt 3 – Punishment

1 Dec 20173 Dec 2025

‘These men perform miracles, for they “raise the dead”, they are slave dealers, for they sell men ; they are amusing, for they furnish subjects for conversation; scientific, for they…

Medical History

The Resurrection Men, Pt 2 – Protection

29 Nov 20173 Dec 2025

Last week we began a brief study into the trade and industry of the infamous "body-snatchers," those supposedly immoral and low collection of misfits who bravely and nobly provided the…

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