"What's new!?" A commemoration of the life and legacy of Sir Christopher Booth.

A video of the event held at the Royal College of Physicians, London, Thursday December 6th, 2012, is now available on YouTube. Speakers include the former Director of the Wellcome Trust, and current UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Mark Walport.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqoqPhrl_pA&feature=youtu.be

'Clinical Molecular Genetics in the UK c.1975–c.2000' is volume 48 in the Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine series. This latest volume is now freely available online (pdf).

'Migraine: Diagnosis, Treatment and Understanding c.1960–2010' is volume 49 in the Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine series. This latest volume is now freely available online (pdf).

We are delighted to announce the latest publication in our Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine oral history series, 'Technology, Techniques, and Technicians at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) c.1960-c.2000', is now available to download for free from this website.

'The Development of Narrative Practices in Medicine c.1960–c.2000' is the latest publication in our Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine series. You can download a copy - completely free of charge - from our website, here:

http://www.histmodbiomed.org/witsem/vol52

A photograph from Professor Tansey's recent visit to Russia.

The 29th February is known to be the traditional day on which women are allowed to propose to men; it is also the day on which many people finally celebrate a delayed, and apparently youthful, birthday. A friend of mine today celebrates his 24th birthday, although chronologically he is in his mid-90s.

The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group have been invited to present the next Big Question lecture: 'Drugs: Medical Marvels or Malevolent Molecules?'

We are working with members of Young Roots, a Heritage Lottery-funded project aimed at engaging young people with the medical history of East London. This event is being organised in association with our colleagues at Centre of the Cell, and the talk will be held in their Perrin Lecture Theatre on Tuesday, 1 April 2014, from 18:00 to 19:00. Tickets are free, but you must register in advance via Eventbrite:

For those with a British Journal of Hospital Medicine subscription, Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine volume 42, 'History of British Intensive Care, c. 1950-c.2000', has been reviewed in the current issue of BJHM (May 2012, Vol 73, No 5, pp 297).

Professor Tilli Tansey and Dr Apostolos Zarros are organising a Research Topic / eBook in collaboration with “Frontiers in Pharmacology” (IF = 4.418) on “Pharmaceutical innovation after World War II: from rational drug discovery to biopharmaceuticals”.

We're delighted to announce the winner of our 'Young Discoverers' public engagement day colouring competition is... Jumima Rahman.

Jumima is a Year 6 pupil at Globe Primary School, Bethnal Green and wins a £15 Amazon voucher. We were very impressed by her colourful peak-flow meter!

We were sad to hear of the death of Lord John Walton, the eminent neurologist, who so memorably chaired our Wellcome Witness Seminar on 'Clinical Research in Britain, 1950-1980'. Our thoughts are with his family.

Sir John Batten, who died recently (http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g92;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10400058/Sir-John-Batten.html) was a key contributor to our Witness Seminar on ‘Cystic fibrosis’ (CF).

Dr Jane Somerville on BBC Radio 4's 'Desert Island Disks'

Congratulations to Dr Jane Somerville on her appearance on BBC Radio 4's 'Desert Island Disks' on Sunday. Dr Somerville participated in the Wellcome Witness seminar on 'Early Heart Transplant Surgery in the UK' back in June 1997. A transcript of this meeting can be downloaded completely free of charge here:
Early Heart Transplant Surgery in the UK

Members of our Group are looking forward to attending the Workshop on the History of Human Genetics at The European Human Genetics Conference in Glasgow. We will be presenting a poster, and Professor Tansey giving the plenary lecture at 9am on Saturday 6th June.

Today (Wednesday 11th March) is national No Smoking Day. We are guest blogging for Wellcome Library, examining debates over smoking and health within the medical profession.

http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2015/03/ashes-to-ashes-doctors-debate-smoking/

The Physiological Society have written about our project on their website:

http://www.physoc.org/news/2012/hidden-voices-and-human-stories

We are delighted to announce that our own Professor Tilli Tansey OBE has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Medicine for her ‘outstanding achievements and distinguished career in the field of medical history’ by the University of Sheffield.  The degree will be conferred at a ceremony in January 2016. Tilli already holds BSc, PhD, and DSc degrees from Sheffield, plus a PhD from the University of London.

Professor Tilli Tansey recently received an honorary MD from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Sheffield, "awarded in recognition of her outstanding achievements and distinguished career in the field of medical history". Both the valediction from the Public Orator and Professor Tansey's reply emphasised the importance of the Wellcome Trust in encouraging her to transfer from the neuroscience research laboratory to medical history.

An image depicting the front covers of all fifty volumes in the series 'Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine'.

We were saddened to hear of the death of Dr W. Alan Jennings last month. Dr Jennings developed conformal radiotherapy at the Royal Northern Hospital, London. He was a founder member of the Hospital Physicists’ Association and became its President (1966–7).

Our Image of the Month depicts Dr Mark Weatherall, chairing our Wellcome Witness Seminar on 'Migraine: Diagnosis, Treatment and Understanding c.1960–2010'. 

Our image of the month shows Dr William Notcutt at our Wellcome Witness seminar ‘The Medicalization of Cannabis’. After qualifying from Birmingham University and working as a flying doctor in Lesotho, Dr Notcutt took up anaesthesia.

Our image of the month shows Professor Heather Cubie at our Wellcome Witness seminar on 'History of Cervical Cancer and the Role of the Human Papillomavirus, 1960-2000'.

Our Image of the Month shows Professor Margaret Esiri at our Wellcome Witness Seminar 'The Development of Brain Banks in the UK c.1970–c.2010'

Our Image of the Month shows Professor Roger Strasser at the Witness Seminar on ‘The Development of Rural Medicine 1970–2000’, the transcript of which is available in ‘Historical Perspectives on Rural Medicine’.

Our Image of the Month shows Professor Shirley Hodgson at the Witness Seminar on 'Clinical Genetics in Britain: Origins and Development' 

Our Image of the Month shows Professor Tony Coxon at the Witness Seminar 'History of the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles'.

With the cold, dark winter days still with us, our image of the month shows Prof Norman Rosenthal  and Prof Jo Arendt at our Witness Seminar on ‘The Recent History of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)’

Tilli Tansey contributed to the BBC Radio 4 programme 'The End of Drug Discovery'. Originally broadcast on Tuesday 22nd May, you can now listen to the recording via the BBC iPlayer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01hxh76/The_End_of_Drug_Discovery/

Positions vacant: we are looking to recruit a Senior/Research Assistant to join the team.

SCHOOL OF HISTORY – QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group

Research Assistant

Professor Tansey has co-edited a new book to mark the 100th anniversary of The Physiological Society formally admitting women as members.

'Women physiologists: Centenary celebrations and beyond' is available now. Further details can be found here.

We are delighted that our colleagues in the Library here at Queen Mary have chosen to showcase our 'Digital Collection' of research outputs on their Research Support Blog. The article emphasises the multimedia capabilities of Queen Mary Research Online (QMRO), using our material to highlight the potential of the institutional repository, and also our commitment to Open Access and ensuring that our material on the history of recent biomedicine will be available in perpetuity.

Professor Tilli Tansey and Dr Apostolos Zarros will be representing the Group when they present our poster (096) 'Physiology at the heart of modern biomedicine: evidence through oral testimonies' at Physiology 2016 in Dublin tomorrow (Friday 29/07/16). We wish all attendees an enjoyable and productive conference.

A photograph of Prof Tansey receiving her Honorary Fellowship of the faculty of the History and Philosophy of Medicine and Pharmacy, of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. The venue is Apothecaries’ Hall, City of London. Shown (l-r): The Master Apothecary, Dr John Moore-Gillon, Professor Tilli Tansey, President of the Faculty, Dr Tina Matthews.

The sad news has reached us of the death of Professor Robert Steiner. Professor Steiner was a distinguished pioneer radiologist, Professor of Diagnostic Radiology at the University of London from 1961 to 1983. He attended and contributed to our Wellcome Witness seminar on Peptic Ulcer, and ably chaired the meeting we held on NMR and MRI. He will be much missed by friends and colleagues alike.

Professor Tilli Tansey (QMUL School of History) was recently awarded the Paton Prize of the Physiological Society at a meeting to celebrate 100 years

Many congratulations to our own Professor Tilli Tansey! Awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours list.

Tilli was recognised for services to Research in the Medical Sciences & Public Understanding of Science. A wonderful and well-deserved accolade!

We are pleased to announce the publication of volume 47 in the Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine series, ‘Drugs Affecting 5-HT Systems’.

The new volume is available to download as a .pdf document, completely free of charge, from our website here.

We are pleased to announce the publication of Volume 45 in the Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine series, 'Palliative Medicine in the UK c.1970-2010'.

The new volume is available to download as a .pdf document, completely free of charge, from our website: here.

Laziness is the mother of good science. Creation comes from moments when you don’t have anything to do. When you have no teaching, and basic admin, and extra commitments are seen to interfere with research, what if you have strong motivation, and don’t know what to do? If you are teaching, you can fill your gaps by teaching, but researchers have to fill the gaps with thoughts.

Now I know that Defra have the prize-winning Twitter team. They use Twitter more skilfully than any other government department, which I think is really interesting. And I also know that the NFU (National  Farmers Union) put in place a Twitter mechanism and encourage their county chairs to use Twitter. These are really big changes – this technology didn’t exist in the early part of the period that we’re reviewing. But nevertheless it is about social engagement and it’s about trying to influence policy, which is based on something very complicated.

What dialysis did as regards the changing attitudes to patients: I remember clearly the business of sharing accommodation between males and females and we were having to defend ourselves to the matron. She was astonished that we had put a female patient with a male patient for dialysis. We said: ‘Do you want her to die or do you want her to live? It’s as simple as that.’ Dr Rosemarie Baillod, History of Dialysis in the UK: c. 1950-1980.

While we’re talking about the Christmas party for the children, which Ian’s talking about, I was organizer for that for I don’t know how many years... The main thing was we had these two entertainers called Naughty Uncle Wally and Aunty Wendy who would come in and they would do the bulk of it. The main problem I had was whether they would turn up... We also had Walt Disney cartoons – this is before television had cartoons on. We used to get those from the Rank Organisation in the Great West Road – they had a place there.

...we had to go up and be what was called ‘desensitized’... We had to go in to the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) office for two days and sit there while every term connected with sexual activities was told to us, because the project managers were concerned that when we all went out to do the interviews, we would come across all these sorts of things and we were not supposed to respond, obviously. We had to be separate from it. Do you remember that? Two days we were there.

I know that Henry Thompson (Surgical Officer, St Mark’s hospital) one day went to visit someone at home who wouldn’t agree to be screened, and Thompson was an Oxford blue boxer and the person that he went to visit was from an East End London boxing family.And he said that he would challenge the man who wouldn’t be screened to a boxing match and the purse would be the examination. So there were lots of stories like that from the early days when the surgeons really went out of their way to find these people.

One reason why this paper caused a paradigm shift was that the received wisdom was that light did not suppress melatonin in humans and that light did not affect circadian rhythms in humans. The received wisdom then was that social cues were the main synchronizers of human circadian rhythms, that humans had evolved in such a way, that we were so intelligent, that we had risen above control by the light/dark cycle.

I remember medicine before the NHS, I had my tonsils out for example. It was an unpleasant experience in a nursing home before the NHS. I remember my mother having to pay the bills of the doctors, and that sort of thing, and I remember my first essay at school, at the age of about six, I was asked to write an essay having been told that doctors were going to be nationalised. I wrote an essay in favour of it. So I’ve always been a great supporter of the NHS...

Screening for a genetic disease is often seen as genetic screening in the world out there. It’s not, it’s case identification. Neonatal screening is case identification for management, like screening for non-genetic diseases. What we’re talking about here is screening for identifying carriers in order to inform them of risk, to allow them to manage their risk. Prof Bernadette Modell, Clinical Molecular Genetics in the UK c.1975–c.2000

So if I go back perhaps over to the 5-HT3 work we did, that led to the development of anti-emetic drugs, and I think revolutionised the care of cancer patients. You’ve got to remember I never saw these patients. I heard the stories of transformed lives and so on, and they were great. What I did see though were at the time of an economic depression, was the reality of the fact that that work created jobs. I saw teams of people coming in both to the lab work and development work. I saw nurses being employed.

In terms of lessons learnt, it’s totally clear to me that at the beginning of the journey for anti-TNF antibodies... it seemed unachievable clinically to get the required amount of antibodies produced... I think the lesson to be learned from that for us as basic scientists interested in finding new ways to treat diseases is: don’t let yourself be talked down by people telling you, ‘Oh, we cannot make this into a drug.’ Professor Henning Walczak, The Recent History of Tumour Necrosis Factor (TNF).

What we were worried about was delivering our professional duty of care, and in other parts of medicine the professional duty of care focused largely on the individual was much better defined than with clinical genetics initially. We were feeling our way, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. And just to talk about giving bad news, in 1966 when I was a house officer, I told a patient who was having a biopsy for what might be Hodgkin disease, I think, I promised that I would tell her the result when she came back from the operation. My consultant was horrified.

A phenomenon was mentioned earlier today about the supposedly strange reaction of one of the original donor relatives who wished to visit the recipient in whom the heart of his daughter beat. It is, in fact, a common reaction. That aspect of organ transplantation has been present since its inception and is very much with us today.

At a clinical level one experience that stood out from my houseman days, we admitted patients usually overnight and in the morning had a ward round with the Consultant. And I was talking about this young African boy, he was about in his teens, and he’d come in and I said he was extremely uncooperative, he wouldn’t open his mouth, I couldn’t see what his throat looked like, and I couldn’t examine his abdomen because he was very uncooperative, and wouldn’t relax and so on.

The latest issue of Wellcome History focusses on medical history research at Queen Mary, University of London. A review of the recent National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) Witness Seminar can be found on pp. 22. A .pdf copy of the magazine is freely available to download here:
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Publications/Wellcome-History/index.htm

A Founder member of the History of Modern Biomedicine Group with Professor Tilli Tansey, the late Sir Christopher Booth, has been honoured by his alma mater, the university of St Andrews. A plaque was unveiled by Lady Booth outside the brand new lecture theatre bearing his name and honouring his outstanding achievements in medicine and beyond.

Research Fortnight invited Professor Tilli Tansey to write an article marking the centenary of the Medical Research Council. The text is available here:

http://bit.ly/182uNlG

We are delighted to announce that the 50th volume in the Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine series will be available shortly.

This special edition will contain a foreword written by the UK Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir Mark Walport, and will showcase highlights from over twenty years of the Witness Seminars.

We are pleased to announce that Dr Tom Quick has joined our project group for four months.

We are delighted to be presenting a poster highlighting selected aspects of our work at this year's William Harvey Day research showcase, on Tuesday 18th October. Our poster will be located in the Barts Pathology Museum, 3rd Floor, Robin Brook Centre, St Bartholomew's Hospital, West Smithfield, EC1A 7BE. Members of the team will be on-hand throughout the day, so please do come along - we look forward to meeting you. 

Further information on William Harvey Day is available here.