The legacy of Douglas Guthrie (1885–1975), surgeon and medical historian

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-101
Author(s):  
Iain Macintyre
Keyword(s):  
History Of Medicine ◽  
British Society ◽  
Second Career ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
Medical Undergraduates ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Medical Historian ◽  
The University ◽  
Bernard Shaw

After graduating in medicine Douglas Guthrie embarked on a career as an ENT surgeon. When his Edinburgh hospital appointment ended in 1936 he began to write History of Medicine, which, thanks to a favourable review by George Bernard Shaw, became a worldwide best seller when first published in 1945. This marked the start of Guthrie’s second career as a lecturer in history of medicine at the University of Edinburgh where his prime responsibility was delivering systematic lectures on medical history to medical undergraduates. At a time when history of medicine was virtually the exclusive preserve of medical doctors, Guthrie promoted to them the historiography techniques of the academic historian. His vision that social historians should become involved in the field and that history of medicine should be taught in arts and humanities faculties began to be adopted in British universities a decade or so after Guthrie made the recommendation. His legacy includes the Scottish Society of the History of Medicine and the British Society for the History of Medicine, both of which he helped to found. His name is commemorated in various charitable trusts which he established to promote the study of history of medicine.

Medicine in America, Historical Essays

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
pp. 1033-1033
Author(s):  
THOMAS E. CONE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
History Of Medicine ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
The United States ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Enormous Amount ◽  
History Of ◽  
Excellent Work ◽  
Medical Historian

This book offers the reader an enormous amount of information about the history of medicine in America and at the same time is a delight to read. One would expect nothing else from Professor Shryock who is, in my opinion, our foremost medical historian. No one has been more successful than he in showing that the history of the medical profession represents a significant phase of our social and cultural evolution. Excellent work has been done in this area previously by Doctor Packard in his well received History of Medicine in the United States and by Doctor Sigerist in his superb study Amerika und die Medizin.

scholarly journals William Hayes, 18 January 1913 - 7 January 1994

1996 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 173-189
Keyword(s):  
Biological Research ◽  
Special Contribution ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Academic Activities ◽  
Hammersmith Hospital ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Influential Book ◽  
The University ◽  
System Operating

William Hayes, physician, microbiologist and geneticist, made his own special contribution to modem genetics and molecular biology in a manner unlike those of any of his contemporaries. Bill, as he was universally known, was an unlikely candidate for such distinction. It is interesting to speculate on the events which transformed someone likely to have had a distinguished but still traditional medical career into a world renowned scientist who influenced a whole generation of microbiologists and geneticists. He did not come from a family with a history of scientific or academic activities. Nor did he study at the centres of biological research. Moreover, at the beginning of his meteoric rise to eminence, he did not have the support of the scientific elite or access to research resources. It is likely that had he been born 20 years later the originality that he brought to microbial genetics would have been lost to us. Perhaps the situation he found in India during the war and the relative freedom of the research system operating in the United Kingdom in the 1950s ideally suited the talents of Bill Hayes. He was a dedicated experimentalist with a talent for improvisation, and his major contributions were experiments that he did himself, rather than through an assistant or graduate student. He would not have described himself as a leader, although his associates willingly gave him their loyalty and support. Nor would he have thought of himself as having charisma; indeed he was unusually self-effacing. When he gave up experimental work to write his outstanding and extraordinarily influential book, The genetics of bacteria and their viruses (13), he typed the first draft himself. Administration and the power it can provoke were anathema to Bill. Nevertheless, he created, first at Hammersmith Hospital in London and then at the University of Edinburgh, research groups that were the envy of his peers in terms of their productivity and innovation.

scholarly journals Interview with 2020 Hooke medal winner Ian Chambers

2020 ◽  
Vol 133 (20) ◽  
pp. jcs254219
Keyword(s):  
Stem Cell ◽  
Stem Cell Research ◽  
Cell Biology ◽  
Embryonic Stem ◽  
British Society ◽  
Control Of Gene Expression ◽  
Erythroid Precursor ◽  
Cell Fate Decisions ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
The University

ABSTRACTIan Chambers studied biochemistry at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK. He then did his PhD in the laboratory of Paul Harrison at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, also in Glasgow. Ian studied the control of gene expression during the differentiation of erythroid precursor cells, discovering that the amino acid selenocysteine is encoded by UGA, which until then was thought to work only as a termination codon. Ian did his post-doctoral work on the regulation of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) with Paul Berg at Stanford University in California, USA. In 1991, he returned to Scotland to work on stem cell regulation with Austin Smith at the Centre for Genome Research (later the Institute for Stem Cell Research) at the University of Edinburgh, UK. During that time, Ian identified the transcription factor Nanog, which directs efficient embryonic stem cell self-renewal. Ian started his research group in 2006 at the University of Edinburgh, where he is also a Professor of Pluripotent Stem Cell Biology. His laboratory tries to understand the regulatory networks and transcription factors that control the identity of pluripotent embryonic stem cells, and how these modulate cell fate decisions during the differentiation process. Ian is now the Head of the Institute for Stem Cell Research at University of Edinburgh, an EMBO member and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Ian is the recipient of the 2020 Hooke Medal from the British Society for Cell Biology (BSCB).

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