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Biomedical subjects

R Y Keers

Publications and source records attributed to R Y Keers.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1982

Richard Morton (1637-98) and his Phthisiologia.

Richard Morton was one of the outstanding physicians of the seventeenth century. After graduating BA at Oxford he elected to enter the Church, becoming ultimately Vicar of Kinver in Staffordshire. On the Restoration he found himself unable to comply with the requirements of the Act of Uniformity and was ousted from his Staffordshire living. He disappeared for eight years but reappeared in 1670 when, on the sponsorship of the Prince of Orange, the degree of MD was conferred on him by the University of Oxford. He set up in practice in London and was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1678. He has left a lasting memorial in the form of his book Phthisiologia which deals with all aspects of phthisis, the word being interpreted in its widest sense to denote any disease associated with wasting. It is not known where Morton obtained his medical education nor is there anything in his writings to indicate where he spent the eight years between 1662 and 1670. It is suggested that he may have been in Holland for part of those years attending the University of Leyden and making the acquaintance of the Prince of Orange whose patronage was to prove so useful at Oxford in 1670.

England↗
PubMed1981

Laennec: his medical history.

Critical study of the career of Théophile Laënnec, with particular reference to his medical history, gives cause to query the commonly accepted belief that his whole life was a constant battle against pulmonary tuberculosis. He developed respiratory symptoms almost immediately on his arrival in Paris but they were those of bronchial asthma and responded promptly and completely to a change of environment. It was only in the concluding years of his life and when he was worn out by overwork that the symptoms of tuberculosis appeared and thereafter the disease progressed rapidly to its fatal termination.

Asthma↗
PubMed1980

The gold rush 1925-35.

Although from the time of Koch onwards there had been desultory experiments with a variety of gold preparations in the management of pulmonary tuberculosis, gold as a recognised and accepted treatment did not emerge until 1925. In that year Holger Mollgaard of Copenhagen introduced sanocrysin, a double thiosulphate of gold and sodium, with which he had conducted an extensive series of animal experiments. The results of these were considered to justify its use in clinical practice and two physicians, Secher and Faber, undeterred by its toxicity, reported enthusiastically in its favour. Other Danish physicians followed but, alarmed by violent reactions, modified the dosage, an example followed by British workers. Encouraging results continued to be reported although each series contained a significant proportion of failures, and toxicity remained high. The first properly planned and fully controlled clinical trial took place in the United States and produced a report which was wholly adverse and which sounded the death knell of gold therapy throughout America. Until 1934-35 gold was used extensively in Europe but thereafter there was a sudden and largely universal cessation of interest and within a few years gold, introduced with such éclat and carrying so many high hopes, had vanished from the therapy of tuberculosis even though, at that point, no better alternative was available.

Animals↗
PubMed1980

Two forgotten pioneers. James Carson and George Bodington.

James Carson, a Scot, graduated from Edinburgh in 1799. He settled in Liverpool where he became a successful and respected physician and where he also found time to pursue a longstanding interest in physiology and to conduct certain important experiments. He read a series of papers on these experiments and their import before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool of which the two most important were On the elasticity of the lungs and On lesions of the lungs. In the first he clarified the mechanics of respiration while in the second he suggested that this knowledge might be employed to produce temporary collapse of the lung as a therapeutic measure. Two attempts at a clinical trial were defeated by widespread pleural adhesions but the first recorded attempts at artificial pneumothorax had been made. George Bodington, a Warwickshire man, after serving a surgical apprenticeship studied at St Bartholomew's Hospital and obtained the licence of the Society of Apothecaries in 1825. He later practised near Sutton Coldfield where he was known as an acute observer and a thoughtful and fluent speaker. In 1840 he published an essay on the treatment and cure of pulmonary consumption in which he roundly condemned the current therapy and advocated instead fresh air in abundance, gentle exercise in the open, an adequate and varied diet, and a minimum of medicaments. Violently attacked by the reviewers he became discouraged about tuberculosis and devoted the remainder of his professional life to the care of the mentally ill.

Collapse Therapy↗