Res Medica (E-Journal)
Not a member yet
481 research outputs found
Sort by
Rehabilitation Services for the Injured
Get PDFBased on a Dissertation read before the Royal Medical Society on Friday, 23rd October, 1964Not until the start of the 20th century did the organisation of rehabilitation services on a comprehensive scale develop. In this, Britain played a leading role largely due to the influence and leadership of one great man—Sir Robert Jones. Robert Jones was selected in the 1890’s to organise the first unified accident service in Great Britain, which was set up to deal with the injuries sustained by the large body of men employed in the construction of Manchester Ship Canal. The social conscience of the time did not include rehabilitation per se in the accident service, but the experience gained there by the young surgeon bore fruit in the First World War when as a famous orthopaedic surgeon, he was given the task of organising special military hospitals with full rehabilitation facilities
Dissection: A Fate worse than Death?
Get PDFThe teaching of Anatomy in medical schools has significantly declined, and doubts have been raised over whether or not doctors of today are fully equipped with anatomical knowledge required to practice safely. The history of anatomy teaching has changed enormously over centuries, and donating your body to medical science after death is very different today, compared with the body snatching and exhumations of the 18th and 19th centuries. With stories of public outcry, theft and outright murder, the history of anatomical education is a fascinating one. History has made an abundance of significant anatomical discoveries, is it not fundamental that medical students today are aware of the great lengths that our peers went to in order to obtain such pioneering discoveries
Modern Concepts of Breast Carcinoma
Get PDFTwenty years ago, it was generally considered that breast cancer was readily accessible to radical surgery and that radical surgery had more to offer here than perhaps anywhere else in the body. In the intervening years, this pseudo-complacency has suffered a series of rude shocks, until to-day the pendulum has swung full distance and radical mastectomy plays but a minor role in the treatment of carcinoma of the breast. The now obvious gaps in our armamentarium have been filled by X-ray therapy, with or without local surgery, by the use of the sex endocrines and the cortico-steroids and by what may be termed “ physiological” operations on various endocrine glands
Bronchogenic Carcinoma: Some Aspects of its Aetiology and Prevention
Get PDFFifty years ago, bronchogenic carcinoma was a rare disease; to-day it is the most frequently encountered intra-thoracic neoplasm and it is one of the commonest of all the killing tumours. It still bears a grave prognosis despite the advances in surgical and diagnostic technique which allow the treatment to be begun much earlier than was possible in former days. The general public, let alone the medical profession, is becoming increasingly alarmed by this condition, not only on account of its lethal character, but because of the correlation between it and the almost universal habit of cigarette smoking. Questions of ethics and sociology, of politics and economics, of industry and international relations are some of the problems closely interwoven in the suspected aetiology and in the hoped-for prevention of bronchogenic carcinoma
Poisoning by British Plants
Get PDFThe properties of poisonous plants have been recognised for thousands of years. To-day we see the active constituents of some such plants, accurately determined and concentrated in tablets and mixtures, used in the practice of therapeutics.Cases of poisoning by plants though now uncommon, do still occur occasionally. Various factors are responsible for the drop in incidence over the last century. The general standard of living has been raised and people no longer require to supplement their diet with roots and fruits on pain of starvation, when mistakes are liable to occur. Better education combined with suspicions as to the wholesomeness of various fruits provides a barrier against reckless indulgence. Farming is carried out intensively and crops arc cleaner than before, thus reducing possible contamination of grain. The potential murderer or suicide now has the vast range of dangerous drugs to choose from provided he can obtain them. Many of the plants themselves have now a limited distribution. The using of any available land for grazing or ploughing and the drainage of marshes, burning of scrub and felling of timber has reduced the available habitats
The Use of Controls in the Assessment of Clinical Evidence
Get PDFThe prize-winning essay from the B.M.A. Essay Competition for Provisionally Registered General Practitioners. 1961. The essay is abridged.The incorporation of standards or controls into clinical experimentation has become, over the past decade, a widely accepted practice. So much so that there is a danger that the medical profession in general may become uncritical of the practical and, more important, the ethical problems involved. The subject should be under constant review.Are controls really necessary? How best can they be employed? How is the resulting evidence to be assessed? Under what circumstances can the use of controls be justified on ethical grounds
Congenital Dislocation of the Hip
Get PDFBased on a Dissertation read before the Society on January 19th. 1962.The subject of Congenital Dislocation of the hip (C.D.H.) is so vast and complicated that anyone who attempts to correlate the known facts and numerous hypotheses into a neat, compact monograph, is doomed to failure before he starts. One of the main difficulties is the almost universal disagreement about the various aspects of the disease, whether of aetiology, pathology, diagnosis or treatment. In these pages, I shall confine myself to discussing some of the active steps one can take in the prevention and cure of the condition
Henry VIII
Get PDFFrom a Dissertation to the Royal Medical Society by G. DevonaldThis short article could have been aptly subtitled Sex, Syphilis and Sores, because this accurately conveys the impression that most people have of Henry VIII. Mention his name, and a lecherous look comes into a person’s eye and he immediately makes some remark about Henry’s six wives and his syphilis. So much good and so much evil has been written about him that he must be the most controversial king in British history. Dickens described him as “a blot of blood and grease”, yet others have thought him to be the paragon of all the virtues. Religious convictions obviously played their part in colouring the opinions of earlier writers, Henry being Bluff King Hal, the merry, innocent monarch to the Protestant, and a cruel, sadistic ogre to the Catholic. The truth is that both sides were partly right. When Henry came to the throne he was considered to be the most intelligent, most tolerant and most athletic of all European kings. He was kind, considerate and reasonable, even Erasmus thought that his crowning heralded a Golden Age in the English Renaissance. Yet during his early forties a change came over him and he became an irritable, selfish, suspicious tyrant. At that time Castilian, the French ambassador described him as “the most dangerous and cruel man in the world”
Book Reviews
Get PDFTHE GROW T H A N D DEVELOPMENT OF THE PREMATU RE LY BORN INFANT. C. M. Drillien. Pp. 376. Price 50/-. E. & S. Livingstone, Edinburgh, 1963.This book describes the layout and planning of a survey to determine the effect of various factors on the baby of low birth weight. It goes on to set out the differences in the effects of many of these on the premature and normal control groups studied. There is a multitude of data on the problems of prematurity, but for the student not adept at “table scanning" it would be helpful to have a comprehensive summary of the main findings. In all, this is a book for the specialist, but the introductory chapter concerning definition and aims of the study, and also the difficulties and planning of such a survey make useful reading for the relatively uninitiated.R J H Mc