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User:Spinningspark/Work in progress/List of eccentric doctors

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  • Carl Tanzler (1877-1952) kept the dead body of Maria de Hoyos in his home for several years. He believed she was his true love revealed to him in a vision. He preserved her body by progressively coating it with wax and plaster and filling the internal space with rags. He was finally confronted by Maria's suspicious sister and prosecuted by the authorities.
  • Evan O'Neill Kane (1861–1932) removed his own appendix at the age of 60. He followed this up by repairing his own hernia at the age of 70. His habit of tatooing patients with his signature also earns him a place in this list.
  • Harold Shipman (1946–2004) was an infamous British serial killer. He is known to have murdered at least 218 of his patients, but the real total could be as high as 250. Most of his victims were elderly and killed with an overdose of painkillers. Shipman is the only British doctor to have been found guilty of murdering his patients and is the most prolific serial killer of all time.

Not sure if these two are eccentric or just criminal

  • John Bodkin Adams (1899–1983), an Irish-born British general practitioner, was convicted of fraud after 160 of his patients died under suspicious circumstances. He was a beneficiary in the wills of 132 of these and although put on trial for the murder of two of them, was acquitted on both occassions.
  • H. H. Holmes (1860–1896), alias Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was an American serial killer who built a hotel in Chicago with soundproof rooms for torturing his victims and a chute to the basement where he could dismember the bodies. He sold the skeletons and body parts through his contacts in the medical profession. After being caught he sold his confession to William Randolph Hearst's newspapers for $7,500.