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 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.

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”.

Compliments of the Season to all our website visitors. Our special anniversary 50th volume 'Monoclonal Antibodies to Migraine' is suitable for every doctor's Christmas stocking.

Our Image of the Month shows Dr Chris Derrett demonstrating the use of microscopes to the 'Young Discoverers' at our Public Engagement event at the Globe Primary School, Bethnal Green, London, on 30th March 2017.

Our Image of the Month shows Dr Sheila Callender at the Witness Seminar 'Intestinal Absorption'. 

Our image of the month shows Professor Josephine Arendt at our Wellcome Witness seminar on 'The Recent History of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)'.

Our Image of the Month shows Professor Bert Bakker at our Wellcome Witness Seminar 'Clinical Molecular Genetics in the UK c.1975–c.2000'.

Professor Bakker has also made memorable contributions to our Witness Seminar on 'Human Gene Mapping Workshops c.1973-c.1991'.

Our Image of the Month shows Professor Kate Bushby at the Witness Seminar on ‘The Therapeutic Implications of Muscular Dystrophy Genomics’.

Our Image of the Month shows Professor Michael Parker at our Wellcome Witness Seminar 'Medical Genetics: Development of Ethical Dimensions in Clinical Practice and Research'.

Our Image of the Month shows Professor Seth Love at the Witness Seminar 'The Development of Brain Banks in The UK 1970–2010'.

Our Image of the Month shows Professor Sir Marc Feldmann and Professor Sir Ravinder Nath (Tiny) Maini at the Witness Seminar 'The Recent History of Tumour Necrosis Factor (TNF)'

Our Image of the Month shows Sir Douglas Black at the Witness Seminar ‘Clinical Research in Britain, 1950–1980’.

To mark World Cancer Day (February 4th) our image of the month shows Professor Sir Kenneth Calman.

We have recently witnessed the eruption of what might be called 'Pyjamagate', when the headteacher of Skerne Park Academy in Darlington wrote to parents asking that they dress properly  when dropping off and collecting their children - too many were doing the school run in their nightwear, and she pleaded  for them to set good examples to their offspring. 

The Northwick Park Hospital was being designed... and there were two other things which were mentioned and thought about, but some of them never eventuated. One was the importance of isolation of people who are producing and shedding organisms which are resistant. We were in favour of having isolation rooms in the hospital, but this was very unfashionable and thought to be retrograde. The days when you had to worry about infection were in the past and not something which the 1970s hospital needed to concern itself with!

A large trolley was wheeled around the wards, which had the monitoring apparatus, the ECG, the blood gas analysis and so on, and much recording apparatus. Ron and I – I had the privilege of working with him then – were deemed the ‘death watch beetles’, because unfortunately we weren’t always successful. Dr Margaret Branthwaite, History of British Intensive Care, c.1950–c.2000

That was always a problem at Christmas because people would put a Christmas tree down. What would be the easiest way to put a Christmas tree into an 18ft gap, you would put it in root first so that the branches, but now the branches have opened up inside, refuse has gone inside and gone on top and added weight to those branches and now it becomes a blocked chute. So people keep putting refuse in so the refuse is piled up with a Christmas tree stopping it and someone has to unblock the chute.

Westminster had 42 major hospitals and clinics within its boundaries at the time and there were no clear guidelines and no definition of who did what with clinical wastes: they just all went in the bin. We had a number of instances where refuse collectors were covered with blood because blood bags would go in the bins and when the compression plate came down it sprayed them. We had needle stick injuries and everything else.

… I think we’ve found that the general public, when it becomes aware of post mortem brain research into autism, is very positive about that area of research and also about what they could contribute in terms of control tissue. I think the issues are much more with the autism community in the UK and overcoming some of the misconceptions and fears that are still very strong there. Ms Brenda Nally: The Development of Brain Banks in the UK c.1970–c.2010, pp. 33

...we did a series of studies, paid for in part by the Ministry of Health. It was most unusual in those days for the Department to admit that they didn’t know something and to pay us to find the answer, but the sad part was they never paid any attention to the answers that we provided.

... I got home and it was a Friday and The Lancet had arrived in my mail that day. I just picked it up and looked through it and there was a paper in it by Kay Tee Khaw, who was Professor of Clinical Gerontology in Cambridge, on seasonal changes in fibrinogen, which she thought might be due to seasonal infections or something, that allowed for temperature. I just suddenly thought, ‘That’s it! It’s air pollution that is changing fibrinogen. Fibrinogen makes the blood clot and blood clots cause heart attacks.

What was fascinating to me was that medical sociology had, again, no category for the actual experience of being ill. They did epidemiology, they did professionalization of medicine, they did organization of hospitals but…  being ill, simply wasn’t on the academic agenda at that point. Professor Arthur Frank: The Development of Narrative Practices in Medicine c.1960–c.2000, pp. 15

... the Pill might be causing thrombosis. With some difficulty I organized a national study, picking out all deaths within the childbearing age group that would occur in 1966. I had to wait for them to occur and follow them up. By that time I had recruited a team of field workers – we called them Derrick’s Dolls – they were personable, mostly young, doctors who visited the general practitioners to get the information at first hand, which the doctors appreciated. We got the cause of death from death certificates, and I used the same team to follow up the yellow card reports.

May I share one anecdote that reflects the naivety of the Genetic Nurses and Social Workers Association in the early days? We didn’t know what we were doing and it was decided that a constitution should be established for this new association. But no-one had ever done that before and one of the members of the group was a member of a sailing club and she went and got the constitution for the sailing club and they crossed out ‘sailing’ and put ‘genetic nursing’.

So amongst the other circadian rhythm disturbances one can think about, let me just briefly mention delayed sleep phase syndrome. This is when people have a terrible problem trying to get to sleep at night at a reasonable time and then of course they can’t get up the following day. And David Parkes at King’s and we, together, treated people with this delayed sleep phase syndrome with melatonin to advance them. It worked a treat.

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.