The PARTHIA was one of the first passenger ships entering service for Cunard from their pos-war building programme, launched on 25 Feb 1947 and making her maiden voyage, from Liverpool to New York, on 10 Apr 1948. In Jul 1961, following the decline of sea-travel to the USA, she was sold to the New Zealand Shipping Co, a P and O subsidiary, and renamed the REMURA, in 1965 sold on to the Eastern Australian Steamship Co and renamed the ARAMAC, and sold finally in 1969 when it to Kaohsiung for scrap.
Born, 1882; devised a vaccine treatment for tuberculosis during the first decade of the twentieth century; died, 1965.
Peter Dundas Grant worked for the Government Medical Service, Tanganyika (Tanzania), 1954-1962.
This organisation grew up as the result of a letter 'Doctors and Overpopulation' signed by 55 doctors, which appeared in The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, Jan 1972, which generated a large response from the profession. In order to 'function efficiently as a pressure group' a Management and a General Committee were established. The group was active until 1984 when the death of the chairman, George Morris, caused it to become rather less high profile. A 1987 membership drive failed to accrue more than a few members.
John Cary Gilson was a leading figure in the study of occupational lung diseases. During the Second World War, he was employed at the RAF Physiology Laboratory (later known as the Institute of Aviation Medicine), Farnborough. He helped to develop improved oxygen equipment for pilots and, by inventing a simple spring-loaded tape measure (measurements could be taken at the same tension so that they matched each other), he mastered the problem of measuring pilots to their uniforms. In 1946, Gilson joined the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Pneumoconiosis Research Unit (PRU) as deputy to Charles Fletcher. The unit had been established in Cardiff in 1945 to examine coal workers' pneumoconiosis: it discovered that pneumoconiosis was preventable if dust levels were monitored, and coal workers x-rayed regularly. It also ascertained that the disease was not disabling until a second complicating condition began to affect the lungs. A simple breathing test was designed to measure the degree of disability caused. Gilson himself was responsible for equipping a mobile x-ray van for use in the field. He was an expert in film reading and worked with the International Labour Office (ILO) to standardise the classification of radiographs of pneumonconioses. During the 1950s the Unit also began to study the effects of asbestos and of organic dusts such as those produced by cotton, flax and hemp, which cause occupational diseases such as byssinosis.
Biographical details of Surgeon Lt-Cmdr McGrath can be found in obituary notices in the British Medical Journal and The Lancet.
Brenda Morrison, MB, BS, MD, trained at the Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI), Newcastle-upon-Tyne, during the late 1930s, and her first house surgeon's job was in the Orthopaedic Department just after the outbreak of World War Two in 1939. She subsequently became the first Paediatric Registrar at the RVI. In 1949 she moved to Hammersmith Hospital. She later trained as a psychoanalyst.
As a result of severe overcrowding at the Essex County Asylum, Brentwood, suggestions for building a new asylum in the Colchester area were being made from 1902; the Severalls Estate was sold for the purpose by Colchester Corporation in 1903. The foundation stone for the New Asylum/Second Essex County Asylum was laid in June 1910, and the asylum was opened for patients in 1913. Substantial additional building works took place during the 1930s. Patient numbers started to decline from the 1940s and there were also staffing problems. The decision to close the hospital was made in 1994 and in 1997 patients were moved from the core asylum buildings to to other facilities in the area, although some services continue to be provided from peripheral units on the site.
From November 1982 to May 1985 the Economic and Social Research Council funded a study by Dr M P Dent of Staffordshire University School of Humanities and Social Sciences entitled 'Doctors and the Development of Hospital Computer Systems: a case study'. The study was conducted at an unnamed small acute hospital in Birmingham, and assessed the impact of a computer-based medical records system on the clinical work processes within an outpatient clinic, the decision-making processes involved, and the responses of the doctors to the computer system.
Unknown
Louisa Martindale was born in 1872. She was a keen proponent of women's rights and their admission to the professions on equal terms. She received her MB from the London School of Medicine for Women (Royal Free Hospital) in 1900 and subsequently studied on the continent. Her particular interest was the use of radiotherapy for gynaecological disorders although much of her practice was of a general medical and surgical nature. She practised in Hull and Berlin for 5 years before taking the M.D.Lond. and then moving to Brighton, where she was one of the founders of the New Sussex Hospital for Women and Children, of which she was an Honorary Consultant Surgeon for many years. During World War One, 1914-1918, she served with the Scottish Women's Hospital at Royaumont (France). In 1921 she moved to London and later settled permanently in consulting practice in Weymouth Street. She was involved in the establishment of the Marie Curie Hospital in 1924 of which she became an Honorary Consultant Surgeon. She was active in the Medical Women's Federation of which she became President in 1931. In that year she was also appointed C.B.E. She was elected F.R.C.O.G. in 1933. She was elected president of the Medical Women's International Association in 1937 and kept the organisation going throughout the Second World War, 1939-1945, promoting its revival in 1946. She died in her London home on 5 Feb 1966, aged 93. Fuller details of her life and career can be found in her autobiography A Woman Surgeon (Victor Gollanz, 1951), and the lengthy obituaries in the Lancet and British Medical Journal
Refer to collection.
J.H. Percival Bolton was a pharmacist based at 28 The Green, Winchmore Hill, London N21.
General Practitioner in Nairobi, Kenya; Senior Medical Officer Magadi Soda Co Ltd, Kenya; Medical Officer, Tanganyika Territory; MB, ChB, DTM&H, DPH; died, c 1994.
Mary Ethel Corry Knocker was the daughter of Colonel Cuthbert and Janie Knocker of Dover. Born 21 Sep 1883 at Woolwich, she married Hugh McCaskey Love in Los Angeles, California, USA, in 1921, and had one son, Cuthbert. She lived in the USA from 1921 until her death, 9 Dec 1970 at La Jolla, California.
Born, 1915; educated, University College and the School of Pharmacy, London; demonstratorship at the School of Pharmacy; Wellcome Research Laboratories,1939; research as a protozoologist, a career that led to involvement in numerous studies of tropical diseases, including malaria, trypanosomiasis and helminth infections, particularly investigations of possible chemotherapeutic strategies; directorship of the Wellcome Laboratories of Tropical Medicine, 1958-1963. Director of the Nuffield Laboratories for Comparative Medicine at the Zoological Society of London, 1964.
William Martindale (1840-1902) began trading in 1873. This business, situated in New Cavendish Street, central London, traded thereafter as W Martindale. In the 1890s William's son, William Harrison Martindale (1874-1932) assumed control of his father's firm and expanded the manufacturing side of the business. 1928 he rebuilt the New Cavendish Street premises and erected a factory in Chenies Mews behind University College Hospital. The business, W Martindale, was acquired by Savory and Moore Ltd in 1933, following which the retail operation at New Cavendish Street continued to trade as W Martindale until the mid-1970s.
Specialist in tropical medicine, serving with the RAMC in western and southern Africa in the early 1900s; author of a chapter on Malaria in The Practice of Medicine in the the Tropics edited by W Byam and R G Archibald, 1922 (London: Henry Frowde and Hodder and Stoughton) and Report on encephalitis lethargica: being an account of further enquiries into the epidemiology and clinical features of the disease, including an analysis of over 1,250 reports on cases notified in England and Wales during 1919 and 1920, together with a comprehensive bibliography of the subject with contributions by A Salusbury MacNalty and J R Perdrau, 1922 (London: HMSO).
Neville Samuel Finzi, MB, MRCS, LRCP, LSA, DRME (Camb), Hon FACR, Hon FFR (1965), was born on 25 Jun 1881, and recieved his medical training at University College London and Hospital. For much of his career he worked at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and became Director of the X-Ray Department and late Consulting Radiologist to the Radiotherapy and X-ray Diagnostic departments. He also held posts as Medical Officer to the Electrical Department of the Metropolitan Hospital and to the X-ray department of the German Hospital. From 1955-1956 he served as Master of the Society of Apothecaries. Finzi published various papers on the treatment of cancer by radium and X-rays and on ionic medication. In 1913 he published Radium Therapeutics (Frowde, London). He died 3 Apr 1968. The medical reports indicate that Dr Finzi also practised privately in Harley Street, London.
The International Society for Interferon and Cytokine Research (ISICR) is a non-profit organization of over 650 scientists devoted to research in the fields of interferon, cytokine and chemokine cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry and the clinical use of these biological response modifiers. Each year the ISICR sponsors an international meeting where scientists can present their latest findings to the world-wide scientific community.
Professor of Bacteriology, Leeds University; OBE, FRS, FRSE, HonFRCPath, MB, ChB, LLD; died c 1978.
For further biographical details, see Munk's Roll of the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians Volume V, pp 299-300, and obituaries in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet.
Born, [1900]; educated, University College and University Hospital, 1928; retirement general practice in Exeter, 1931; served as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1939-1945; invented two devices, designed to make nursing easier: the Exeter Nursing Aid and the Exeter Commode; died, 1977.
The Library accessions register describes the purchase as the contents of Nicholson's shop at 125 Hampstead Road, London NW 1. Originally taken into the Western Manuscripts Department, the collection was given the reference numbers MSS 5881-5908, but in October 1980 it was transferred to the newly-founded Contemporary Medical Archives Centre. The earliest item, a collection of medical and other receipts in Latin and English (130pp, c 1870) was found to be missing, as was a register of poisons sales (3 March 1960 - 15 October 1963). Remaining are prescription books, ledgers, memorandum books, day books, diaries and registers of poison sales, of Nicholson's and of predecessor firms, dating from 1893 to 1960.
Dr Mark Exworthy's project 'Understanding health variations and policy variations', was conducted under the Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC) Health Variations Programme, by Dr Exworthy and Dr Martin Powell between 1998 and 2000.
Donald Drysdale Anderson was a Medical Officer of Health on the West African Medical Staff in the early 1930s. He disappears from the Medical Directory and the Medical Register in 1935. He served in Mauritius and Mexico as well as Nigeria. This report was undertaken on the basis of rumours that certain towns on the Oyo and Abeokuta Provinces of Nigeria were endemic centres of yellow fever, to estimate the cost of sanitating these towns with a view to eradicating this disease. In the Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene for 1931, Anderson published an article 'On mosquito-borne disease in South Nigeria', presumably based on these same investigations.
Professor Oertel was Strathcona Professor of Pathology at McGill University, Canada, from 1919-1938, subsequently he retired to London. Further biographical details may be found in his obituaries in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet.
1911-1914 Demonstrator in Zoology, Birkbeck College London
1914 B.Sc London
1914-1918 Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
1918 Awarded Gedge Prize for essay 'On the Reaction of the Blood in the Body'
1919 Michael Foster Studentship
1919-1925 Demonstrator in Physiology, University of Cambridge
1921-1922 Acting Professor of Physiology, St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School
1923 Fundamentals of Biochemistry in Relation to Human Physiology
1925-1927 Assistant Professor for Medical Research (Biophysics), McGill University, Montreal
1927-1929 Working under Professor Krogh in Copenhagen
1929 Returns to teaching and supervising physiology in Cambridge
1930 The Materials of Life
1934 Lectures, Reading and Examinations
1939-1945 Civilian Lecturer to HM Forces
1948-1954 Professor of Physiology, University College of Ibadan, Nigeria
1954 Part-time Lecturer in Physiology, Regent Street Polytechnic and Chelsea College.
Janos (John) Plesch was born in Hungary and originally qualified in medicine in Budapest. After studying in Strasbourg he lived and worked in Berlin for over 30 years until he emigrated to England with his family in 1933. Further details of his career can be found in his autobiography Janos: the Story of a Doctor (Victor Gollancz, Ltd, London, 1947).
Prausnitz studied in England 1905-1908 (his mother was English), and in 1933 emigrated to England from Germany, where he had been Professor of Hygiene and Bacteriology at Breslau. He became a general practitioner at Ventnor, Isle of Wight. In 1939 he became a British citizen and added his mother's maiden name to his own. Further details of his career can be found in the obituary in GC/33/4, also Who Was Who Vol VI and obituaries in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet.
The following details have been extracted from the Medical Directory: 1902 MRCP LRCP (St Barts) 1904 MB 1905 MD (London) (Qualified for Gold Medal) Posts held: Resident Medical Officer, Royal Hospital for Diseases of the Chest House Physician, St Bartholomews Hospital Assistant Physician, South Eastern Hospital for Children, Sydenham Assistant County Medical Officer, Kent County Council Medical Referee, Ministry of Labour and National Service He appears to have been in general practice in Sydenham/Anerley. He retired in c 1968 and disappears from the Medical Directory in 1974.
It has not been possible to trace any information about R L Thompson beyond the facts which can be deduced from the internal evidence in these notebooks, i.e. that he was an undergraduate at Keble College Oxford and came from Warwick. He seems to have been at Oxford during the early 1920s, from the few loose dated items in GC/35/5. He does not seem to have become a doctor, as his name does not appear in the Medical Directory.
Dr Walter was a radiotherapeutic consultant in Sheffield, author of A Short Textbook of Radiotherapy (1950) and Cancer and Radiotherapy (1971). Further details of his career can be found in Munk's Roll, vol VII, and his obituary in the British Medical Journal.
In the early 1960s Dr Wolff appears to have gone to work in the USA, where he held posts at Johns Hopkins and in New York and Washington DC. His name disappears from the British Medical Directory and Medical Register in 1972, but was still in the index of the USA Medical Directory in 1979.
Moya Woodside was born in 1907. She was Honorary Secretary of the Belfast Branch of the Society for Constructive Birth Control when it was established in 1938, which she wrote a pamphlet on the history of family planning for the Edinburgh Brook Centre in 1984. Mrs Woodside is also noted for the collaboration with Dr Eliot Slater which resulted in the publication of Patterns of Marriage (Cassell and Co, London, 1951).
In 1927 C E Berry was appointed to the staff of the Wellcome Bureau of Scientific Research, which formed part of the Wellcome Laboratory of Tropical Medicine in 1946. He was Chief Technician until his retirement in 1958. The notebooks are undated, but probably date from Berry's early years at the WBSR, 1920s-1930s, and include loose notes inserted between the pages.
It has not been possible to discover any background details about the writer of this diary.
Educated Durham School and Trinity College Cambridge; George Henry Lewes Scholar in Physiology, 1904; Student then House Officer of UCH, 1906-1914; Graduated MD, 1908; MRCP Appointed to Staff of UCH, 1910; FRS, 1913; FRCP, 1915; War - joined Officers Training Corps and went to France as assistant to Sir John Bradford. Became consultant to BEF with rank of colonel. Research on morbid anatomy of gunshot wounds of thorax, 1914-1918; Twice mentioned in dispatches; returned to UCH as Consulting Physician and helped build up medical school, 1919; Member of Medical Research Council, 1939-1943; Member of Inter-departmental (Goodenough) Committee on Medical Schools, 1942; First Unit Director in University of London and first Professor of Medicine attached to the medical school at University College, Professor Emeritus of Medicine, University of London; Medical advisor to Beit memorial and Wellcome Trustees; Physiological papers mainly on the Journal of Physiology and Brain, medical papers on gunshot wounds of the chest; died, 1961.
Professor Robson lectured in pharmacology at Edinburgh, and in 1946 was appointed reader at Guy's Hospital Medical School. In 1950 he became Professor of Pharmacology at Guy's, where his research was primarily into endochrinology, reproductive physiology and pharmacology. With C A Keele and R S Stacey, he wrote Recent Advances in Pharmacology (1950).
Born London, 1907; Physician, Brompton Hospital 1939-1972; Physician, Hammersmith Hospital, Royal Postgraduate Medical School 1946-1972; Dean, Institute of Diseases of the Chest, London 1946-1960, Director of Studies 1950-1962, Professor of Medicine 1962-1972 (Emeritus); Editor, Thorax 1946-1959; Honorary Consultant in Diseases of the Chest to the Army 1953-1972; President, British Tuberculosis Association 1959-1961; President, Thoracic Society 1971-1972; died Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, 1999.
consultant physician at the British (now Royal) Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, 1935; physician to the Brompton Chest Hospital, 1939; served as Lieutenant-Colonel in charge of a medical division in Egypt, Second World War; founder member of a Medical Research Council Committee set up to study recently discovered drugs for the treatment of tuberculosis, 1946; first Dean and Director of Studies at the Institute of Diseases of the Chest at London University, 1947;
Professor of Medicine at London University;
Sir Douglas was Professor of Medicine at Manchester University and Physician at Manchester Royal Infirmary, 1959-1977, and Chief Scientist at the Department of Health and Social Security, 1973-1977. His publications include Sodium metabolism in health and disease (1952), Essentials of fluid balance (4th ed., 1967), The logic of medicine (1968), and Renal disease (1979). The Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine has a copy of the Black Report (1982) on Inequalities in Health, of which Liverpool University Archives holds a typescript with appendices which were not published.
Born at Guildford, 1901; Educated St Paul's School, London (after obtaining scholarship); Graduated BA, Magdalen College, Oxford (after obtaining a scholarship) 1st class, Physiology, 1923; University scholar, St Mary's Hospital Medical School, 1924; BM,BCh, 1926; Awarded Radcliffe travelling fellowship: studied endocrine disease and metabolism, Berlin and Vienna, 1927; MRCP, 1928; Medical Registrar St Mary's Hospital (from 1930 Consultant Physician); DM, 1930; Helped to inaugurate Mediterranean and European Society of Gastroenterology, 1932; FRCP, 1935; Wartime service in Royal Army Medical Corps, 1940-1945; Returned to St Mary's Hospital, 1945; President, Mediterranean and European Society of Gastroenterology (1st International Congress), 1956; President, British Society of Gastroenterology, 1956-1957; President, World Organisation of Gastroenterology (OMGE), 1962-1966; Awarded CBE, 1964; Helped to set up Digestive Disorders Foundation (British Digestive Foundation) - its Chairman for 10 years, 1970; Harveian Orator, 1972; died, 1980.
This clinic was founded in 1928 by Dr Henry Warren Crowe (1875-1967) for the treatment of rheumatism and allied diseases. It was first established in Southwark and in 1932 a West End branch was opened but moved in 1939 to Weymouth Street in the West End. It operated partly as a free charitable clinic and partly as a fee-paying clinic (for those with incomes under £250 pa and a doctor's recommendation) and continued to do so after the setting up of the National Health Service. In 1936 the organisation was placed in the hands of a Charity Trust. A history of the Clinic can be found in the first issue of the journal it published, Rheumatism: A Journal Devoted to Clinical Aspects and Treatment, July 1938, pp 29-31.
It has proved hard to discover biographical details of Dr Warren Crowe: he qualified in medicine in 1901 and disappears from the Medical Directory after 1966. No obituary notice has been traced.