United Kingdom

Dr James Graham trained in medicine and although he never graduated, he became a self-styled doctor who promoted unusual cures, pioneered sex therapy, and opened a Temple of Health. He began his medical career by setting up an apothecary in Doncaster, Yorkshire. Then in 1770, he left for America where he traveled around the middle…

Eighteenth and nineteenth-century bonesetters were like today’s chiropractors, osteopaths, and physical therapists rolled into one. They practiced joint manipulation and fixed musculoskeletal injuries using manual force. Because eighteenth and nineteenth-century bonesetters were cheaper than regular physicians and because they could be easily found within local communities there are a lot of stories, both good and…

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was called “the father of American literature,”[1] by William Faulkner and noted to “unhesitatingly be called ‘all-American’”[2] partly because of his famous novels that include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequel,…

Thomas Neill Cream, also known as the Lambeth Poisoner, was a Scottish-Canadian serial killer of the late 1800s. His first known victims lived in the United States and the rest were residents of Great Britain. However, there is also the possibility some of his victims lived in Canada.

Elisha Perkins was a United States physician and inventor who created a fraudulent medical device to cure inflammation, rheumatism, and pain. His story begins when he was born on 16 January 1741 in Norwich, Connecticut to and Mary Bushnell II and Joseph Perkins, who had graduated from Yale College in 1727 and practiced medicine in…