WEMJ Volume 116 No.4 December 2017

1.Plagues, Pestilence and War The Long Fox Lecture 2017: (Part 1) Professor Paul R Goddard WEMJ Volume 116 No 4  Article 1 December 2017

Plagues and pestilence particularly affect history by wiping out whole armies and even by killing the leaders of countries in conflict. But it also works the other way round: wars, revolution and famine, due to man’s inhumanity to man, predispose to pandemics.

Lists of the worst pandemics in world history and of famous people killed by plagues are presented and correlations of epidemics with wars and conflicts demonstrated.

2. The Lives of Two Pioneering Medical-Chemists in Bristol:Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808)  and William Herapath (1796-1868), Brian Vincent Bristol  Medico-Historical  Society Proceedings The West of England Medical Journal Vol 116 No 4 Article 2

From the second half of the 18th century onwards the new science of chemistry took root and applications were heralded in many medical-related fields, e.g. cures for diseases such as TB, the prevention of epidemics like cholera, the application of anaesthetics and the detection of poisons in forensics. Two pioneering chemists who worked in the city were Thomas Beddoes, who founded the Pneumatic Institution in Hotwells in 1793, and William Herapath who was the first professor of chemistry and toxicology at the Bristol Medical School, located near the Infirmary, which opened in 1828. As well as their major contributions to medical-chemistry, both men played important roles in the political life of the city.

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3.Severe Rhesus Haemolytic Disease of the Newborn,  obstructive jaundice and hydrops fetalis, Peter M. Dunn, WEMJ Volume 116 No 4  Article 3 December 2017

I intend to discuss an early interest of mine, namely that hydrops fetalis and a number of other manifestations of severe Rhesus haemolytic disease of the newborn (Rh HDN) are due to liver damage or what I have termed ‘Rh haemolytic hepatitis’.

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