A History Of Medicine In Twelve Objects by Dr Carol Cooper: Forget granny pants – try lead-lined knickers

A History Of Medicine In Twelve Objects by Dr Carol Cooper (Aurum £18.99, 304pp)

The History of Medicine in Twelve Objects is available now from the Mail Bookshop

In recent years we’ve got used to the sight of people wearing masks in public, something that would have seemed outlandish a mere decade ago. 

But, as Dr Carol Cooper reveals in this fascinating survey of medical milestones, there is very little new under the sun when it comes to keeping the human body safely ticking over.

At the time of the Black Death 600 years ago, doctors’ PPE comprised a creepy headpiece and mask with a waxed hood, glass eyepiece and a long beak-like structure with nostrils. This was topped off with a black wax cloak and thick goatskin gloves.

The idea wasn’t to terrify patients but rather to protect the physician from this deadly pestilence. So it is strange to report that six centuries later, surgeons had forgotten all about the importance of protection. 

It took until the 1920s for surgeons, who by now had a reasonable grasp of microbes, to start wearing masks as a matter of course. Even then there was a sizeable minority who preferred to do things the old-fashioned germy way.

Dr Cooper is very good on the accidental nature of some medical inventions. The stethoscope was dreamt up by one cautious French medic in Napoleonic times who was embarrassed at having to listen to the chest of a curvaceous young lady patient. 

In desperation he picked up a notebook and rolled it into a tube before applying it to the woman’s chest. To his delight, this allowed him to hear her heart more clearly than when he simply pressed his ear against her breasts, sparing everyone’s blushes.

PPE?: Black Death doctors wore a headpiece and mask with a waxed hood, glass eyepiece and a long beak-like structure with nostrils

Then there are all the remarkable doctors and scientists who worked night and day experimenting on themselves to discover the secrets of X-rays and radium. Many, like Marie Curie, were rewarded with both the Nobel Prize and cancer. 

In Britain, John Hall-Edwards, a Birmingham doctor who discovered how to make his body transparent with X-rays, ended up with his left arm and right hand amputated thanks to the tumours that subsequently appeared.

Non-doctors, by contrast, were less enthusiastic about this prospect of X-rays making the world see-through. Public speculation was rife that peeping toms would use the rays for peering through women’s knickers. 

In response, one enterprising London manufacturer began producing lead lined underwear.

Although none of this material is new, Dr Cooper has cleverly organised it around 12 iconic and handsomely illustrated medical objects, from the hypodermic syringe to the obstetric forceps. 

The result is sometimes gruesome, frequently fascinating and, on occasions, very funny indeed.