scholarly journals ‘X-rays don't tell lies’: the Medical Research Council and the measurement of respiratory disability, 1936–1945

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 447-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
COREEN MCGUIRE
Keyword(s):  
Medical Research ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Medical Research Council ◽  
Coal Dust ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Health Examination ◽  
X Rays ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
South Wales

AbstractDuring the first half of the twentieth century, the mining industry in Britain was subject to recurrent disputes about the risk to miners’ lungs from coal dust, moderated by governmental, industrial, medical and mining bodies. In this environment, precise measurements offered a way to present uncontested objective knowledge. By accessing primary source material from the National Archives, the South Wales Miners Library and the University of Bristol's Special Collections, I demonstrate the importance that the British Medical Research Council (MRC) attached to standardized instrumental measures as proof of objectivity, and explore the conflict between objective and subjective measures of health. Examination of the MRC's use of spirometry in their investigation of pneumoconiosis (miner's lung) from 1936 to 1945 will shed light on this conflict and illuminate the politics inherent in attempts to quantify disability and categorize standards of health.

The mica of certain coal-measure shales in South Wales

1943 ◽  
Vol 26 (180) ◽  
pp. 297-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Nagelschmidt ◽  
D. Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Coal Seam ◽  
Medical Research ◽  
Pulmonary Disease ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Bituminous Coal ◽  
Medical Research Council ◽  
Coal Mines ◽  
Coal Measure ◽  
Main Constituent ◽  
South Wales

During a study of the sources of the dusts in South Wales coal mines, carried out on behalf of the Industrial Pulmonary Disease Committee of the Medical Research Council, a mineral of the mica group was found as the main constituent of the shales overlying the coal in several mines. Of six shales investigated four were associated with anthracite, one with semi-bituminous, and one with bituminous coal. Between the coal seam itself and the shale which forms its roof there usually occurs a more coaly shale referred to locally as ‘clod’. Five of the samples investigated were isolated from ‘clods’ and one from a roof.

A Census of Psychiatric Cases in two Contrasting Communities

1958 ◽  
Vol 104 (434) ◽  
pp. 72-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. M. Carstairs ◽  
G. W. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Factors ◽  
Medical Research ◽  
Rural Population ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Medical Research Council ◽  
Research Unit ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Mining Community ◽  
Two Populations

During recent years members of the Medical Research Council Pneumoconiosis Research Unit have carried out a number of studies of the prevalence and incidence of common diseases in two populations in South Wales and attempted to relate differences in morbidity to known differences in social and environmental factors (Cochrane and Miall, 1956). The communities studied are the Rhondda Fach, a mining valley with a population in 1951 of 19,722 (aged over 15 years) living in a contiguous series of eight small towns, and a number of parishes in the Vale of Glamorgan, approximately ten miles from the Rhondda Fach, in which the population of 4,621 (aged over 15 years) is spread over a relatively large agricultural area. These will be referred to as the Rhondda and the Vale. They were originally chosen to provide a complete mining community (in which the prevalence of diseases of the lungs in miners and ex-miners could be estimated) and a contrasting, predominantly rural, population respectively.

scholarly journals A study of the direct and indirect action of X-rays upon the tissues of the embryonic fowl

1927 ◽  
Vol 102 (713) ◽  
pp. 9-29 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Medical Research ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Medical Research Council ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Chick Embryos ◽  
X Rays ◽  
In Ovo ◽  
Destructive Effect ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Indirect Action

The experiments here recorded had three main objects :— ( a ) To investigate the effects of X-rays upon chick embryos of different ages irradiated in ovo (Part I). ( b ) To discover how far the destructive effect of radiation upon the tissues is due to a direct action of X-rays upon the individual cells, and how far it may be attributed to an indirect action resulting from physiological disturbance in the organism (Part II). ( c ) To determine if possible the nature of such indirect action (Part III). The authors are indebted to the Medical Research Council, by whom the expenses of these investigations were defrayed.

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