WEMJ Volume 117 No.3 September 2018

This issue we have just three articles. The first is an historical article from Dr. Paul Main regarding the establishment of the Royal College of General Practice. Whilst this was supported strongly by the The Lancet, the British Medical Journal and The Practitioner, and the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries it was equally strongly resisted by the Royal Colleges of Surgeons, Physicians and Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Following Main's article is the first in a series entitled "Quacks and their Cures". This series will look at famous "quacks" throughout the history of medicine and the first such article looks at the Chasmberlen family who invented obstetric forceps. They have been pilloried for having kept the forceps secret for a hundred years but they had, in fact tried to set up a college of midwifery where they would teach their techniques only to be foiled by the resistance put up by none other than the Royal College of Physicians! So history really does repeat itself. Then there is, as article 3, a short report (Science Watch) on advances in medical science that are presently being discussed in the press.

WEMJ Volume 117 No 3 Article 1 September 2018 - Paul Main: Birth of the Severn Faculty

The College of General Practitioners was founded on 19th November 1952, after a protracted gestation period of over one hundred years and the South West England Faculty was established shortly afterwards.

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WEMJ Volume 117 No3 Article 2 September 2018 - Paul Goddard: Quacks and their Cures

Bad doctors or peddlers of fake remedies are often referred to as quacks. This is not derived from the famous Dr. Donald Duck, a Scottish GP who practised in Mallaign and was born just before the advent of the cartoon aquatic bird of that ilk, but apparently is a corruption of the Dutch term “quacksalver”.

Eventually the term quack became attached to any person who provided unsatisfactory or unconventional treatment

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WEMJ Volume 117 No 3 Article 3 September 2018 - The Editor: Science Watch

In the last month some interesting reports with a pulmonary slant have appeared in the science journals. First to catch the eye is a paper in Nature, also referred to in a short report in New Scientist. A team from Novartis have discovered a completely new type of cell in the human airway. They have named this the “pulmonary ionocyte”.....

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