Excellence in teaching through recruitment of good teachers, rewarding good teaching and the creation of staff development programmes are priorities in the mission statement of most universities. Often, reality belies intention. At many universities serious attempts to ensure maximum teacher effectiveness, overt recognition of teaching excellence, and specific development funding are lacking. This study examines the extrinsic (i.e. financial) reward systems which operate at the eight medical schools attached to South African universities and reports on the current situation. Replies indicated that a reward system of some type operates within the university at seven South African universities which have faculties of medicine and embraces all faculties. One university rewards medical school teachers specifically but, at another, no reward system exists at all. The monetary value of rewards varies greatly. Significant criticism of all systems was the inability to meet their design aims. There was criticism of the criteria, such as they are and where they exist, used to identify teaching excellence and to reward recipients. All replies indicated support for an impartial and equitable system of reward for effectiveness and excellence in teaching.

Biopsy specimens, as a source of myocardial tissue, are being used increasingly in the appraisal of various myocardial diseases. A study of myocardial tissue, biopsied and processed in various ways, and obtained from normal healthy experimental animals, showed that a variety of artefacts may be found. These artefacts develop in reactive, beating myocardium but not in non-reactive hearts. The artefacts are in many instances similar to, or mimic, changes previously described as pathological in origin. This is most unsatisfactory, and if valid pathological appraisals of myocardial biopsies are to be made, a technique allowing the recovery of tissue, free of biopsy artefact, is required. Such a technique is described.

The myofibres in biopsies obtained from the left ventricle during cardiopulmonary bypass, in patients undergoing surgery for mitral and aortic valve replacement and the correction of atrial septal defect, contained inclusions thought to be type 1 cardiac colloid. Electron microscopy showed this material to be synthesised by and contained within a grossly dilated rough endoplasmic reticulum. The presence of membrane-bound aggregates of non-fibrillar sarcoplasmic organelles within colloid deposits, together with osmiophilic inclusions thought to be related to lipofuscin, both within and moving from this structure, suggest that type 1 cardiac colloid is an autophagic vacuole designed to degrade ageing or redundant sarcoplasmic organelles.

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