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Thomas Morris

thomas-morris.uk

Thomas Morris is the award-winning author of Blood on the Thames, The Dublin Railway Murder, The Matter of the Heart and The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth.

HistoryScience

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Posts
512 from 29 Jun 2015 to 7 Apr 2026
Posting
now and then (1 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 1

  1. New book announced: Blood on the Thames

2021 14

  1. A tale of two inventions
  2. A shot in the dark
  3. Metal in her mammaries
  4. So much chaff called brains
  5. Cover story
  6. Painfully obvious
  7. The cabbage catastrophe
  8. The carrot cataplasm
  9. The perils of a sneeze
  10. The miller’s daughter
  11. A late arrival
  12. An uncommon injury
  13. A cautionary tale
  14. Under the skin

2020 13

  1. Libel and lithotomy
  2. Difficult to swallow
  3. Moulded to the lid
  4. Resuscitated by a Romanov
  5. Death by onanism
  6. The golden pin
  7. The surgeon and the smugglers
  8. The woman with two wombs
  9. The galley slave and the barrel hoop
  10. Specific gravity
  11. A gallon a day keeps the doctor away
  12. An unusual route
  13. The bacon factory eyelid transplant

2019 39

  1. A mystery diagnosis
  2. The heart surgeon and the Nazis
  3. The boy with two skulls
  4. A real-life murder mystery from old Dublin
  5. Emergency coffee
  6. Revolutions in surgery
  7. Removed without the least difficulty
  8. A pane in the eye
  9. A triumph of surgery
  10. Nobody nose
  11. Do no harm
  12. Pricked it all over with a fine needle
  13. Conversation with a ghost
  14. Hit in the face with a cow’s stomach
  15. The privy spider
  16. Off the scale
  17. The bottom feeder
  18. An English emigrant to Canada
  19. Magnifique! Delicieux!
  20. The stone bullet
  21. Bruit force
  22. A near miss
  23. The safety valve
  24. Millipede meningitis
  25. Ulysse Trélat and an implausible discovery
  26. A watch spring, a bean and a clove of garlic
  27. The lemonade enema
  28. The practical joke
  29. Jules Cloquet: the surgeon as artist
  30. Britain’s first heart surgeon
  31. A wonderful accumulation
  32. The missing member
  33. The electric centipede
  34. The first caesarean in Ireland
  35. An infinite number of worms
  36. A knotty problem
  37. Eighth time lucky
  38. The child who swallowed a pin
  39. Four lambs and two puppies

2018 61

  1. Claws for concern
  2. The tin box
  3. The spoon swallower
  4. Odds bodkins
  5. The baby who was bathed in a tumbler
  6. He swallowed a serpent
  7. Bedtime stories
  8. Stand well back
  9. The fiery finger
  10. Shafted
  11. A remarkable dislocation
  12. Divine’s intervention
  13. The viper’s kiss
  14. Commercial break
  15. The pork cylinder
  16. Shear bad luck
  17. An immense plug of wood
  18. Scalpel, suture and Swedish turnips
  19. Occupational hazard
  20. Frightened to death
  21. Jumping over a broomstick
  22. Degloved by a donkey
  23. The stomach snail
  24. Fourteen fingers
  25. A likely story
  26. Point-blank range
  27. “Oh, I’ll tell you another time”
  28. A disarming experience
  29. An unusual method
  30. The greatest phenomenon that nature has known
  31. Born under a manger
  32. A practical joke
  33. The wandering needle
  34. Get Out Of Jail Free
  35. Irritating the genitals by various means
  36. Finish what you started
  37. Extraordinary and probably unique
  38. A curious surgical case
  39. She swallowed a mouse
  40. An extraordinary quantity of worms
  41. Revealed: the cure for hiccups
  42. More than common danger
  43. The trumpeter and the walking stick
  44. The dislocated neck
  45. Cosmetic(s) surgery
  46. Asleep while she gave birth
  47. The poison taker
  48. Rare and peculiar
  49. William Harvey at the Royal College of Physicians
  50. The ear drill
  51. Mr Trought’s tobacco enema
  52. Plagiarising the past
  53. An enormous concretion
  54. The spermatorrhoea alarm
  55. Hooked
  56. Making a mark
  57. Show and tell
  58. The lithophagus
  59. Born in a cesspit
  60. A harrowing incident
  61. A week entombed in a snowdrift

2017 109

  1. A dangerous weapon
  2. The bladder shrimp
  3. The eye magnet
  4. The pea pod polyp
  5. The foot-long bladder stone
  6. The lucky Prussian
  7. In hospital for 34 years
  8. All at sea
  9. A dangerous hobby
  10. The pigeon’s rump cure
  11. An enormous eater
  12. The very hungry schoolboy
  13. Mr Dendy’s egg-cup case
  14. The most eccentric physician who ever lived
  15. The man with two penises
  16. An interesting and remarkable accident
  17. Cured by a collision
  18. The accidental hysterectomy
  19. Media vita in morte sumus
  20. Twice bitten
  21. Cones and bones
  22. Normal for Norfolk
  23. Falling pregnant
  24. An arrow escape
  25. The forgetful sailor
  26. He sliced his penis in two
  27. Fifty years ahead of his time
  28. Not getting his hands dirty
  29. A span in length
  30. An unfortunate couple
  31. An unwelcome visitor
  32. Going for a dance
  33. The boy who choked on his gold
  34. A forgotten thing
  35. The colonic carpentry kit
  36. The healing power of nature
  37. Death of an earl
  38. The slugs and the porcupine
  39. The 43-year pregnancy
  40. The other Horatio Nelson
  41. The cheese knife lobotomy
  42. The seventy-year-old mother-to-be
  43. A receipt for making a rupture
  44. The man whose intestines twinkled like stars
  45. The case of the drunken Dutchman’s guts
  46. If you can’t find a surgeon…
  47. The lawn-tennis elbow
  48. A flaming nuisance
  49. A dubious paper
  50. Hook, line and Liston
  51. The amphibious infant
  52. The champagne cure
  53. The monk with a perfume bottle stuck up his bottom
  54. Robot hearts
  55. The lancer lanced
  56. A strange tale
  57. The ‘first’ heart transplant
  58. An abominable, disgusting habit
  59. The long road to recovery
  60. Publication day!
  61. Pins and needles
  62. The golden padlock
  63. The human clarinet
  64. An extraordinary surgical operation
  65. Like finding a needle in a pharynx
  66. An abnormal secretion
  67. The boy who got his wick stuck in a candlestick
  68. A freak accident
  69. Painful news from the Bobbin Factory
  70. A large portion of chin
  71. An unwanted buzz cut
  72. The egested intestine
  73. Pitched upon a pitchfork
  74. Death by barley
  75. An X-ray vision
  76. A chainsaw to the spine
  77. Spirits go straight to your head
  78. Broken glass and boiled cabbage
  79. The eye fungus
  80. The man who peed a bullet
  81. Cart to heart
  82. Hip hip
  83. A fishy business
  84. The stone-swallower
  85. The bone-breaking sneeze
  86. The dentist who made the blind see
  87. The snuff-eating nose centipede
  88. Deafened by a kiss
  89. A leech on the eyeball
  90. The mystery of the poisonous neckerchief
  91. Sleeping with the fishes
  92. The tapeworm trap
  93. The tin whistle
  94. The turpentine vapour bath
  95. The dislocated eyeball
  96. The self-opening coffin
  97. The punctured bowel
  98. The tooth ant
  99. Bled dry
  100. Quails and beer
  101. Better late than never
  102. The man with a snake in his heart
  103. Firearm fires forearm
  104. Up the spout
  105. Evacuated with a spoon
  106. She cut off her nose with a carving knife
  107. The ear maggots
  108. The girl whose sweat turned black
  109. A nineteenth-century hacking scandal

2016 136

  1. The spider’s web cure
  2. The forty-foot tapeworm
  3. A festive night in a Victorian emergency department
  4. Pegged out
  5. Shot by a toasting fork
  6. A bayonet through the head
  7. A high pain threshold
  8. Killed by his false teeth
  9. The venomous boot
  10. Bunged up
  11. Reeking from the jaw of the living animal
  12. Pregnant with a toothbrush
  13. The exploding scrotum
  14. A window in his chest
  15. Mother knows best
  16. Attempted suicide by spoon
  17. A most fortunate escape
  18. The soldier operated on himself
  19. The spear and the eucalyptus tree
  20. Rings on his fingers
  21. An unexpected discovery
  22. A most remarkable accident
  23. A leech in the throat
  24. Incorrigible
  25. A hopeless case?
  26. The perils of being a writer
  27. Cured by a nightmare
  28. A pin in the ear
  29. Sheathed in a pig’s gut
  30. The missing pencil
  31. The woman who peed through her nose
  32. Toast and herbs
  33. In one side and out the other
  34. Severed, replaced, reunited
  35. The woman who vomited pins
  36. Snake poo salesman
  37. She needs a finger
  38. Flies in his eyes
  39. The King of Smokers
  40. The poet’s skull and a boy’s bowels
  41. On flatulence and Darwin
  42. The man with 87 children
  43. The fractured penis
  44. The cure of Thomas Tipple
  45. Reattached with a sticking plaster
  46. The missing tobacco pipe
  47. The extra jaw
  48. Conceived by a bullet
  49. The mysterious bullet in the heart
  50. Brolly painful
  51. The sad case of Hoo Loo
  52. The sleepwalker
  53. A saw head
  54. Rattlesnakes and brandy
  55. A fork up the anus
  56. Like an elastic ball
  57. The man with the wax face
  58. A diplomatic disaster
  59. The amputee obstacle course
  60. Bolt from the blue
  61. Amputating the bowels
  62. Occupation: glass and nail eater
  63. A case for Dr Bell
  64. Death from peas
  65. The double monster
  66. The horn of a dilemma
  67. Killed by a corkscrew
  68. Saved for posterity
  69. Two spoonsful of brain on the pillow
  70. The deserter
  71. The largest tumor on record
  72. Honking like a goose
  73. Sugar is good for your teeth
  74. The wandering musket ball
  75. The dreadful opening
  76. How to treat hay fever?
  77. The fire-proof man
  78. Boiling water and birch twigs
  79. A rotten trick
  80. Plum stone colick
  81. Mass delusions
  82. Champagne ad libitum
  83. A head of wheat in the bladder
  84. Eye eye
  85. Dancing testicles
  86. The incredible shrinking man
  87. Worms in the nose
  88. A beetroot up the bottom
  89. The miller’s tale
  90. Replete of vermin
  91. Scared to death?
  92. The redoubtable Mrs H
  93. Inexpressibly loathsome and sickening
  94. The man who coughed up a knife
  95. The glow-in-the-dark Easter feast
  96. The human piggy bank
  97. A difficult labour
  98. A suicidal machine
  99. Death by cucumber
  100. The man with three testicles
  101. The stomach eel
  102. Jaundice and night blindness
  103. Cured by a lightning bolt
  104. ‘Powder a Toad’ – Wesley’s Primitive Physick
  105. Lost and found
  106. An intestinal… mouse?
  107. Mütter’s operation – plastic surgery, 19th-century style
  108. The boy who vomited his own twin
  109. The man with a tooth in his ear
  110. Leeches for everybody
  111. Oshkosh, by gosh
  112. The mystery of the exploding teeth
  113. The man who ate chalk
  114. Trees do not grow in humans
  115. Killed by shaving
  116. The electric spectacles
  117. Medicinal pancakes
  118. Penis in a bottle
  119. A ludicrous mistake
  120. More astonishing than true
  121. The woman whose skin turned blue
  122. Benjamin Rush in The Lancet
  123. Dragging his bowels after him
  124. A medical duel
  125. Fruit, feathers and hair
  126. Suffocated by a fish
  127. A dismal tail
  128. Putting a patient to sleep (without anaesthetic)
  129. A medical old wives’ tale
  130. The woman who turned to soap
  131. Killed by a cough
  132. Dead or alive at will
  133. The seven-foot tumour
  134. Unfortunate injury of the decade
  135. Don’t mess with an electric eel
  136. Impaled on a stake

2015 139

  1. Dead from too much pie
  2. Sober up the nineteenth-century way
  3. A Victorian hospital Christmas
  4. The hidden dangers of a Victorian Christmas
  5. The perils of the Christmas pudding
  6. Death by Christmas dinner
  7. A beetle in the bladder
  8. There was an old woman who swallowed a fork…
  9. Somewhat silly in his manner
  10. All hail the strawberry
  11. The man with the rubber jaw
  12. The case of the missing pen
  13. The perforated private
  14. Is that it?
  15. Nothing to worry about
  16. Struck dumb
  17. Bleeding you well
  18. In praise of temperance
  19. Pipe dreams
  20. The eye-brush
  21. The owl-eyed girl
  22. Medicine or marinade?
  23. Trouble at t’mill
  24. The worst job in the world?
  25. The do-it-yourself hernia operation
  26. Saliva and crow’s vomit
  27. Glass half-empty
  28. A case for Dr Coffin
  29. The electric scalpel
  30. An ‘unnatural propensity’ and its perils
  31. Don’t try this at home
  32. Lettuce, a Class A drug
  33. Aleing all day, and oiling all night
  34. Brained by a bull
  35. Stay of execution?
  36. Almost to the ground
  37. The case of the luminous patients
  38. Speaking of tongues
  39. Electrical anaesthesia
  40. Lively and clean on the palate
  41. Medicated chocolate? No thanks
  42. The child with Bonaparte in his eyes
  43. An exercise in futility
  44. Sand, to be taken twice daily
  45. The perils of toast
  46. Hard to stomach
  47. Heal thyself
  48. Death by cold water
  49. A fatal nose job
  50. The bird and the bees
  51. Roger ‘two urinals’ Clerk
  52. The mystery of the poisonous cheese
  53. Le hundred-up club
  54. Nutmegs is the best spice for students
  55. The supernumerary leg
  56. Monsieur Mangetout
  57. Put a bandage on it
  58. The black sheep
  59. Poisoning pooches in the park
  60. Portrait of a quack
  61. Medical qualifications: optional
  62. The self-inflicted lithotomy
  63. Chess and phrenology
  64. Do no harm – unless it’s a criminal
  65. A 19th-century doctor’s guide to etiquette
  66. Such is the fortitude of females
  67. The rocket man
  68. The cod-liver oil binge
  69. The self-performed caesarian
  70. Worms on the pillow
  71. Opium – perfect for babies
  72. All flesh is grass
  73. Fingers crossed
  74. All’s well that ends well
  75. It makes you go blind, you know
  76. Mummies and rhubarb
  77. Adventures in digestion
  78. The dreadful mortification
  79. The winged ones: insects in the stomach
  80. Leeches: for external and internal use
  81. The perpetual patient
  82. Nil by mouth
  83. Brain of hare and turd of dog
  84. Wrapped in a dead sheep
  85. A fright for sore eyes
  86. The original Lead Belly
  87. Medicated cigarettes: the new panacea
  88. The port-wine enema
  89. The human pincushion
  90. Cycling will give you heart disease
  91. Wine, the great healer
  92. Anaesthesia for lions (and bears)
  93. The guillotine – life after death?
  94. The woman who could smell with her feet
  95. Spiders in her eyes
  96. Breaking news: swallowing knives is bad for you
  97. The petrol cocktail: a cure for cholera
  98. Smoking’s good for you – as long as you’re a priest
  99. Why children should never wear hats
  100. Busted! A medical plagiarist exposed
  101. A painful way to ‘cure’ a stammer
  102. A dissertation on pus
  103. Centipedes in your bacon
  104. Catching a disease through an electric wire
  105. In event of drowning, blow smoke up bottom
  106. The Swiss disease
  107. Death of a 152-year-old (or was he?)
  108. The combustible countess
  109. At least it got rid of the tapeworm…
  110. A bad use for good wine
  111. Half man, half snake
  112. Difficulty getting it down
  113. A bracing cure for madness
  114. The twelve-hour tonsillectomy
  115. Mercury snuff
  116. “Catch anything, darling?” “Only Granny”
  117. On leeches, and how to catch them
  118. John Keats: Ode to a Black Eye
  119. The hearing-aid chair
  120. Your cooker will give you typhoid
  121. The woman who could read with her stomach
  122. A bit of a headache
  123. Heart disease? Have you tried using a swing?
  124. The man who fought a duel in his sleep
  125. Give that man a medal
  126. Hemlock and millipedes
  127. The worm: a horror story
  128. Curing conjunctivitis with frogspawn
  129. Fishing line and marine sponges: the operating theatre of 1888
  130. That’s one way to give up smoking
  131. Dear oh dear
  132. The child that cried in the womb
  133. Wrong
  134. Injured by the imagination
  135. Skipping-ropes: the silent killer
  136. A case of hiccups
  137. The case of the poisonous pheasants
  138. The incredible sleeping woman
  139. King George’s heart