In his autobiography, Joseph Arch recalled a trial which had taken place in Bedford in 1875, and which had caused much local dissatisfaction:Samuel Dawson, a farm labourer aged fifty-seven, whose wages averaged twelve shillings a week, was sent to Bedford gaol for two months with hard labour…because he could not pay one shilling a week towards the maintenance of his parents… It was a cruel business and it touched scores and scores of labourers on the raw^-fof'this question of maintaining parents was a burning one.

Morphometric analysis of transmission electron micrographs of blood vessel, skin and dura mater collagen fibers were performed on postmortem tissues taken from 28-year-old female with Ehlers-Danlos type IV syndrome (EDS IV). Vascular tissue from this patient was compared to 5 age- and sex-matched controls (age range 26-28 years). Our study revealed significant variation in collagen fibril diameter in the walls of almost all the vessels studied. In general, the EDS IV tissue showed a net decrease in average collagen fibril cross sectional area in arterial wall samples. This decrease was significant (p less than .05) across the entire wall of the renal artery, in the media of the carotid artery, and in the media and adventitia of the common iliac artery. Samples from the vena cava show significant increases in collagen fibril cross sectional area across the vessel wall (p less than .005). The only areas studied which did not show significant changes were the intimal and adventitial regions of the common carotid artery. The observed changes may be contributory to the decreased arterial wall strength typical of the syndrome.

No abstract

No abstract

Joseph Lister's painstaking experiments in antiseptic lotions, dressings, and sutures in the 1860s and early 1870s seemed needlessly complex to his critics and were best understood by those who saw him in action. From the 1880s the acrimony subsided, and Lister's international reputation became a major asset to the medical profession, even as it discarded or bypassed many of his techniques. He was claimed as an influence by many new specialties, even though in some cases his links with the discipline were tenuous. By the early twentieth century Lister had become a focus of imperial sentiment, and his legacy is seen at home and abroad through successive generations of students from his Scottish universities.