Oh no--it's Donald Hunter!

Abstract

Once upon a time the MRCP (London) was divided, like Gaul, into three parts: the compulsory essay questions and clinicals; the path viva (not confined to pathology); and the final viva before the President, Censors and senior examiners. Each step weeded out the majority, leaving a very nervous ∼10% for the final ordeal. And in the path viva there was the risk of meeting Donald Hunter. I only saw him once, as a student, when he came to give an invited lecture at our medical school; he was a big man and spoke impressively on the history of occupational diseases. His book on the subject became a classic and the British Journal of Industrial Medicine which he founded and edited remains, as Occupational and Environmental Medicine , a leader in its field. Although there are sporadic records of doctors commenting on work-related illness back to Roman times, diseases of ordinary working people were of little interest to doctors until Bernardino Ramazzini, professor of medicine in Padua, wrote his great work, De Morbis Artificium Diatriba , in 1715. Ramazzini made the first addition to medical history-taking since Hippocrates with his advice not to be too proud to sit down with a working man and ask about his job. The first description of a …