Res Medica (E-Journal)
Not a member yet
481 research outputs found
Sort by
Cancer Research: Its History and Prospects
Get PDFOf all the invitations one has ever been privileged to receive, I wish you to know that the arrival of yourown was a special honour, and a special delight to accept—giving me, among other things, the opportunity to re-visit the house of our ancient Society, and to recall at close hand many happy occasions within these walls some thirty years ago. It was the time of the great Sir Alfred Ewing as Vice-Chancellor, and, in the Medical School, of Sir John Fraser and Sir David Wilkie of glorious memory,whose portraits adorn your walls. We generated then, as doubtless you generate now, abiding affection for Edinburgh and its University, and not only affection but I confess it, sentiment, for our Royal Medical Society. Reading the leading article in the second number of Res Medica, I have been greatly struck by its closing sentences: “At a time when religions, cultures and individuals are menaced by nuclear weapons and foreign ideologies, living traditions assume an importance never envisaged by their inaugurators. Let us then foster unity and friendship and be worthy heirs of our heritage.” This is the ever-renewing and ever more significant function of the Royal Medical Society, and I esteem the great honour of inaugurating your two hundred and twenty-second Session. I mention these things to show how it is and why, that I received your invitation with such pleasure and gratitude
Two Hundred Years Ago
Get PDFAn extract from the Senior President\u27s Valedictory Address delivered before the Society on Friday,6th March 1959.The setting is Edinburgh in the second half of the eighteenth century, the era of the post-chaise, the phaeton and the sedan-chair, when the North Bridge had just been opened to traffic and Princes Street was scarcely built. The hero is a typical Edinburgh medical student,Sylas Neville by name. This young man combined few virtues with not a few of the vices of his age. He was neither rich nor brilliant but might be classed as comfortably average at most accomplishments. Indeed the only work he left washis Diary, which is of great value to posterity in that part of it comprises a frank and detailed account of his five years in Edinburgh as a medical student.His story is of particular interest to us because, in 1775, rather by accident than design,Sylas Neville became a President of this Society-yet to become the Royal Medical Society
Res Medica
Get PDFThe George Bernard Shaw SyndromeBernard Shaw really believed that a medical degree was a licence to kill. In a famous tirade written in 1906, he triumphantly proved that all doctors are humbugs and morally, if not always legally, criminals. Not only that, but "to make matters worse, doctors arc hideously poor," and-just in case you happened not to appreciate what a terrible crime yours is he added that "the greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes is poverty, and our first duty, to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor." But Shaw must have felt that the great crime of poverty was not entirely the doctor\u27s fault for he had yet more telling ammunition to fire. In accusing the profession of being unscientific and unkind, he touched two of the points upon which doctors over half a century later remain most sensitive. So much for G.B.S
Congenial Maldevelopments as a Cause of Hydrocephalus
Get PDFThe incidence of congenital malformation is difficult to gauge accurately. In Philadelphia, in the late 1930\u27s, 2.9% of 7,478 cases of still-birth had malformations recorded on the death certificates. About the same time, a rate of 20.2% was derived from autopsy reports on 435 still-births in Edinburgh. The percentage of children who died in the neonatal period with abnormalities varied between 10.5% in Edinburgh, in Glasgow and 13% in Belfast. There has been no increase in the incidence of congenital defect recently.Hydrocephalus comes second to anencephaly as a cause of death from congenital abnormality.The rarity of malformations causing hydrocephalus makes elucidation of aetiology difficult. but significant correlation has been found in some instances
The Diagnostic Value of Pain
Get PDFBased on an Address delivered to the Royal Medical Society on Friday, 12th January 1960.Pain is usually the main lead, and often the only clue to diagnosis. For example angina of effort may be associated with a normal ECG at rest, while an ECG may frequently show evidence of myocardial ischaemia in patients who do not suffer from angina pectoris. The clinical history and the response to a controlled clinical trial may make the diagnosis certain, yet mistakes will be made, patients lives altered and their outlook upon the future warped, unless a careful analysis of the various aspects of pain is the rule. This analysis must be made exactly and without the bias of preconceived ideas
“Some Aspects of Functional Organisation in the Cerebral Cortex”
Get PDFStimulation of a sensory receptor initiates a nervous message, which, on arrival in the brain, undergoes modification; and may produce, in the mind, a related sensory experience. Some recent investigations on the vertebrate visual system have shed some light on the peripheral coding and central analysis of this kind of sensory message
Res Medica, Autumn 1963, Volume IV, Number 1
Get PDFTABLE OF CONTENTSPHYSICAL SIGNS IN THE CHEST: Professor J. Crofton SOME ASPECTS OF PYELONEPHRITIS: Dr. J. McC. MurdochRES MEDICASOME THOUGHTS ON THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE: J. CalvertTHE COMMON COLD: N. WrightA TRIBUTE TO E. &S. LIVINGSTONE 1863-1963: A.M. DavidsonBOOK REVIEW
The Common Cold
Get PDFOne of the prize-winning essays for the Lewis Cameron Undergraduate Prize 1962.The common cold is ubiquitous. It affects all races and occurs in all climates. It is not a killing disease, but figures suggest that colds cause a loss of several million man working hours each year. One estimate put the figure at forty million,1 another at eighty million: in either case the figure is large. Lindwell and Williams report in an investigation carried out on four groups of office workers, three in London and one in Newcastle, that 10.3% of all colds lead to an absence from work, on an average, of 2.6 days duration. It has been suggested that the common cold should be treated as a quarantable disease but it is obvious that if everybody spent an extra of 2.6 days, or longer, away from work twice a year the economic results would be devastating
The Design of the Organism
Get PDF— being part of an address given to the Society on 15th November, 1963Medical students and clinicians prefer — for different but equally good and acceptable reasons — to be presented with simple and easily comprehensible explanations of physiological and biochemical phenomena. But, as I have been saying to my students for years, the body was not designed for the convenience of the medical student or the clinician, if, indeed, it can be regarded as having been designed at all