Category:
Brain Damage
Brain Damage
Empty Tank, Empty Head
Original article here.
Her obituary, curiously enough, makes no mention of this brush with fame.
Posted By: Paul - Mon Oct 13, 2014 -
Comments (3)
Category: Education, 1980s, Cars, Brain Damage
Causes of Lunacy
I love these reasons for being committed to the lunatic asylum, as given in this report for the year 1836.
"Repelled eruption" confused me, until I found this sentence from a text of the same era: "If the insanity succeeds the suppression of a cutaneous disease, of a fetter, an erysipelas, or any other repelled eruption, vesicatories are the means, par excellence : they are preferably applied upon the place where the disease at first existed."
And almost thirty years later, many of the "causes" were still present, as seen below in this report for the year 1891.
Browse through more reports here.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Sep 16, 2014 -
Comments (8)
Category: Experts and Authority Figures, Nineteenth Century, Brain Damage
Space Trainer
Original article here.
Original ad here.
Undoubtedly nicknamed "the vomit comet," like the famous edge-of-space jet flight trainer.
Used by "schools for the blind"...?!?
Posted By: Paul - Wed May 28, 2014 -
Comments (7)
Category: Toys, 1960s, Brain Damage, Nausea, Revulsion and Disgust
The Sadist
If the trailer (top) fascinates, the full movie follows.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Mar 16, 2013 -
Comments (4)
Category: Misbehavior, Rebellion, Acting-out and General Naughtiness, Movies, 1960s, Brain Damage
Drawings of the Insane
To accompany yesterday's poems by the mentally ill, here you will find many drawings by Russian psychiatric patients.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Feb 16, 2013 -
Comments (3)
Category: Outsider Art, Russia, Brain Damage
Freeing the Mind
The possibility of communicating with severely brain damaged patients with the use of brain scans has become reality. Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging or FMRI doctors were able to get answers to yes or no questions by asking apparently vegetative patients to think of playing tennis or walking around the house. Those 2 activities, when thought of, cause activity in different parts of the brain. One for yes and the other for no allowed one patient who has been in a vegetative state for 12 years to indicated he was not in pain and that he was aware he has a 7 year old niece. What a wonderful gift for these people and their families. Also, what great potential to help ALS and other paralyzed patients to communicate.
Posted By: Alex - Sun Nov 18, 2012 -
Comments (10)
Category: Brain Damage
The Method of the Nail
I came across an unusual article titled "The Good Old Method of the Nail" in an old medical journal. (Unfortunately I can't find an online version of it.) The article details the history of killing people by driving nails into their brain.
Apparently the 'method of the nail' used to be quite a popular homicide technique, because in the days before x-rays it was hard to tell that someone had a nail in their head. The victim's hair might hide the wound, so people, not seeing any obvious sign of injury or foul play, would often assume death occurred from natural causes.
The method of the nail is such an ancient technique that it's mentioned in the Bible, Book of Judges 4:21:
Then Jael, Heber's wife, took a nail of the tent, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.
It also pops up in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in "The Wife of Bath's Prologue," which includes a list of various ways wives kill their husbands:
And somme han drive nayles in hir brayn
Whyl that they slepte, and thus they han
hem slayn.
Whyl that they slepte, and thus they han
hem slayn.
Nor is the nail-in-the-head just a western phenomenon. It also has deep roots in Chinese culture. From the article:
The nail murder is one of the most famous motifs in Chinese crime literature. The oldest source is quoted in the casebook T'ang-yin pi-shih, where the solution is ascribed to Yen Tsun, a clever judge.
The point of these stories is always the same: the judge is baffled by the fact that although there are strong reasons for suspecting the wife, the body of the husband shows no signs of violence. The final discovery of the nail is elaborated in various ways.
The oldest version said that Yen Tsun found it because he noted that a swarm of flies congregated on one place on top of the dead man's skull...
In 1881, Stent recorded another version under the title 'The Double Nail Murders' in volume 10 of the China Review: When the coroner fails to discover any trace of violence on the victim's corpse, his own wife suggests to him that he look for a nail. When the judge has convicted the murdered man's widow on this evidence, he also has the coroner's wife brought to him, since her knowledge of such a subtle way of committing a murder seems suspicious to him. It transpires that the coroner is her second husband. The corpse of her first husband is exhumed, and a nail discovered inside the skull. Both women are executed.
The point of these stories is always the same: the judge is baffled by the fact that although there are strong reasons for suspecting the wife, the body of the husband shows no signs of violence. The final discovery of the nail is elaborated in various ways.
The oldest version said that Yen Tsun found it because he noted that a swarm of flies congregated on one place on top of the dead man's skull...
In 1881, Stent recorded another version under the title 'The Double Nail Murders' in volume 10 of the China Review: When the coroner fails to discover any trace of violence on the victim's corpse, his own wife suggests to him that he look for a nail. When the judge has convicted the murdered man's widow on this evidence, he also has the coroner's wife brought to him, since her knowledge of such a subtle way of committing a murder seems suspicious to him. It transpires that the coroner is her second husband. The corpse of her first husband is exhumed, and a nail discovered inside the skull. Both women are executed.
The image at the top is an x-ray from a 1973 case, in which a man used a hammer to drive an awl into his wife's head, explaining that he did it to "exorcise the evil soul that had taken its place in her head."
Posted By: Alex - Sat Sep 08, 2012 -
Comments (6)
Category: Crime, Brain, Brain Damage
Survey of Idiots
How farsighted our ancestors of 1848 were, to commission such a report! It's about time for another one, I think. It might help us deal with our current political, cultural, economic, interpersonal and environmental messes.
The report is fascinating reading from start to finish, giving a wonderful taxonomy of idiots, such as below.
Read your fill here. And please post your favorite quotes in the Comments.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Apr 29, 2012 -
Comments (10)
Category: Government, Nineteenth Century, Brain Damage
Follies of the Mad Men #180
[From Playboy magazine for September 1968. Click to enlarge.]
Our clothes make you look like the cliched madman who thinks he's Napoleon.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 27, 2012 -
Comments (4)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Fashion, 1960s, Brain Damage
Art School
This ad was a trap! If you were able to replicate this insane bird, you received a visit from the men in white coats with butterfly nets, not art teachers.
Original ad here. (Scroll down.)
Posted By: Paul - Sat Jan 14, 2012 -
Comments (2)
Category: Animals, Art, Education, Brain Damage
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |