Middlesex Hospital Medical School Research Articles

First Thomas Pickering memorial lecture*: ambulatory blood pressure measurement is essential for the management of hypertension.

THOMAS G. PICKERING Dr Thomas George Pickering, physician, clinical scientist, professor and mentor, editor, husband, father, and grandfather, died on May 14, 2009, at the age of 69 from complications of brain cancer, an illness that he had fought with dignity and courage for more than a year (Figure 1). Tom was educated at Bryanston School in Blandford, England, where he won state and entrance scholarships. He went on to study medicine at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, London, where he graduated in 1966, being awarded the first Broderip Scholarship. His early postgraduate years were spent at Middlesex Hospital and the Radcliffe Infirmary. He sat for the membership of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1968 (becoming a fellow in 1980) and went on to earn a PhD degree at Oxford University in 1970. In 1972, he went to New York to take up appointments as Associate Physician at the Rockefeller University Hospital and Assistant Professor at Cornell University, and he spent 2 years as Assistant Professor at the Rockefeller University working with Neal Miller on biofeedback mechanisms. He was appointed Assistant Physician to the New York Hospital in 1974. He later returned to the Radcliffe Infirmary to work with Peter Sleight on research into baroreceptor function, the autonomic nervous system, and the emerging class of cardiovascular medications, known as the adrenoreceptor blockers. He was attracted back to New York City by the possibility of being able to work as both a practicing physician and a clinical investigator and he spent more than 20 years in a productive career in behavioral cardiovascular medicine, clinical hypertension, and blood pressure (BP) measurement research at Cornell University Medical College. In 2000, he became Director of Behavioural Cardiovascular Health and the Hypertension Program at the Cardiovascular Institute of Mount Sinai Medical Center and in 2003 he moved to Columbia University Medical College as Professor of Medicine and Director of the Behavioural Cardiovascular Health and Hypertension Program. So much for Dr Pickering, the scientist, what about Tom the man we came to love and admire? Tom was the quintessential Englishman, mannerly, gentle, and gentlemanly (the two must not be confused) whose enquiring mind was tinged with that spirit of philosophy whereby he knew nothing was new under the sun, but that what was fundamental to science was the expression of fact and the style of that expression. He was aware that each small brick added to the edifice of knowledge would enhance our understanding of hypertension and ultimately benefit those we graduated to serve as doctors—our patients. My first contact with the Pickering family was with Tom’s father, Sir George Pickering, when we were seated together on a bus taking us from the airport to a hotel in Valetta in 1975. I recall a man of small stature in an incredibly grubby raincoat who talked animatedly to me about the new drugs for the treatment of hypertension. However, my abiding memory is of his kindness to me the following morning when I was the first speaker in a session chaired by him in what was probably my first address to an international audience (Figure 2). As I prepared to begin my presentation there was the unmistakable sound of slides cascading from a carousel to the floor, whereupon Sir George looking encouragingly at me said ‘‘And now we will see how the young doctor from Dublin can convince us without slides!’’ Fortunately, during my sleepless night of rehearsing my lecture I had written prompt cards for each slide a precaution acknowledged by Sir George as ‘‘being a lesson to us all not to rely on slides.’’ Tom’s mother, Lady Carola, was a regular attendee at the British Hypertension Memorial Lectures named after her late husband. The most memorable of these was the ninth Sir George Pickering Lecture delivered in Dublin by Tom in September 1991 on ‘‘Ambulatory Monitoring and the Definition of Hypertension.’’ At dinner at the Royal College of Surgeons she remarked to me: ‘‘Eoin, I am so pleased; I never thought Tom had it in him.’’ How little mothAddress for correspondence: Eoin O’Brien, DSc, MD, FRCP, Department of Molecular Pharmacology, The Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland E-mail: eobrien@iol.ie

Reginald Seymour Lawrie

Reginald Seymour Lawrie (“Rex”), who died aged 93, was one of the most outstanding surgeons of his generation. He eschewed honours and titles, but if the measure of surgical excellence...

Richard Humphrey Tudor Edwards

Richard Humphrey Tudor Edwards exemplified the skills of a clinician scientist in his ability to apply a physiological analysis to the problems besetting patients with neuromuscular disorders and then to...

Anthony Mark Barrington Golding

Anthony Mark Barrington Golding (“Tony”) won two prestigious maths prizes while at Marlborough College and was drawn to a career in accountancy, but his father, a general practitioner in London,...

Third World Conference on Medical Education.

Medical EducationVolume 1, Issue 2 p. 99-102 Third World Conference on Medical Education L. P. Le QUESNE, L. P. Le QUESNE The Middlesex Hospital Medical School, LondonSearch for more papers by this authorR. H. S. THOMPSON, R. H. S. THOMPSON The Middlesex Hospital Medical School, LondonSearch for more papers by this author L. P. Le QUESNE, L. P. Le QUESNE The Middlesex Hospital Medical School, LondonSearch for more papers by this authorR. H. S. THOMPSON, R. H. S. THOMPSON The Middlesex Hospital Medical School, LondonSearch for more papers by this author First published: June 1967 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.1967.tb01677.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume1, Issue2June 1967Pages 99-102 RelatedInformation

Women doctors from the Middlesex Hospital Medical School (University of London) 1947-67.

Women doctors from the Middlesex Hospital Medical School (University of London) 1947-67.

Eldred Wright Walls, MD, FRCS, FRCSE, FRSE

The distinguished anatomist Professor Eldred W. Walls died in Edinburgh on 24 March 2008, aged 95. Eldred undertook medical training at the University of Glasgow before moving to Cardiff and subsequently to the Middlesex Hospital Medical School as a Reader in Anatomy in 1947. In 1949 he took up the S.A. Courtauld Chair of Anatomy at the Middlesex before serving as Dean of the Medical School from 1967 to 1974. He retired in 1974, but continued to play an active role in Anatomical and Surgical training right up until his death. In his final years post-retirement, he contributed to teaching postgraduate students at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh and undergraduate medical students at the University of Edinburgh. An active member of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland since 1936, Eldred served as Treasurer from 1955 to 1963 and as President from 1963 to 1965. Many eminent anatomists and clinicians currently or previously filling leading academic and clinical posts around the globe have been inspired at one point or another by Eldred, thereby leaving a bequest that is impossible to overestimate. We fondly remember his later years, teaching anatomy classes to undergraduate medical students in Edinburgh right up until the year before he died. His broad knowledge of anatomy, boundless enthusiasm, razor-sharp mind and friendly demeanour made students hang on to his every word. His approach to teaching students in the dissection room never failed to create a sense of wonderment, where ladies (‘my dears’ as he affectionately called them) were asked to be seated in a line with the gentlemen standing behind. From there he would deliver a treatise on the subject in hand, of which any Shakespearean actor would surely be envious. Eldred's warm humanity and humility meant he always found time to encourage and motivate students and colleagues alike, an attribute that endeared him to all who had the fortune to come into contact with him. He is survived by two children, Andrew and Gwyneth.

Norman Montague Bleehen

Norman Montague Bleehen was the first Cancer Research Campaign professor of clinical oncology in the University of Cambridge. His department was particularly involved with studies on the treatment of lung...

Anthony Michael Jelliffe

Anthony Michael Jelliffe, known to friends and family alike as Tony, was born on 29 July 1923 in Malta, the second of three sons, to Dorothy and Reginald (known to...

John D C Anderson

Jock Anderson: a man with a mission “Jock” Anderson was born in Lincolnshire, UK, in 1924, attended Bedford School, read natural sciences at Cambridge University (interrupted by World War II),...

Frank Haddow Scadding

Frank grew up in Lincolnshire and was educated at De Aston School, Market Rasen, and the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. After five years' wartime service partly in the Gambia he...

Rest and pain. By John Hilton, F.R.S., F.R.C.S. Edited by E. W. Walls, M.D., Ch.B., B.Sc., Professor of Anatomy in the University of London at Middlesex Hospital Medical School; and Elliot E. Philipp, M.A., M.B., B.Chir., M.R.C.S., M.R.C.O.G., Honorary Demonstrator in Anatomy at Middlesex Hospital Medical School; in collaboration with H. J. B. Atkins, D.M.M.Ch., F.R.C.S., Director of the Department

Rest and pain. By John Hilton, F.R.S., F.R.C.S. Edited by E. W. Walls, M.D., Ch.B., B.Sc., Professor of Anatomy in the University of London at Middlesex Hospital Medical School; and Elliot E. Philipp, M.A., M.B., B.Chir., M.R.C.S., M.R.C.O.G., Honorary Demonstrator in Anatomy at Middlesex Hospital Medical School; in collaboration with H. J. B. Atkins, D.M.M.Ch., F.R.C.S., Director of the Department

Elements of surgical diagnosis. By Sir Alfred Pearce Gould, K.C.V.O., C.B.E., M.S., F.R.C.S., late Surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, etc. Seventh edition, revised by Eric Pearce Gould, M.D., M.Ch. Oxon., F.R.C.S. Eng., Surgeon to Out-patients at the Middle Hospital, Dean of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. Pott 8vo. Pp. 730 + xv, with 26 radiographis plates. 1928. London : Cassell

Journal Article Elements of surgical diagnosis. By Sir Alfred Pearce Gould, K.C.V.O., C.B.E., M.S., F.R.C.S., late Surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, etc. Seventh edition, revised by Eric Pearce Gould, M.D., M.Ch. Oxon., F.R.C.S. Eng., Surgeon to Out-patients at the Middle Hospital, Dean of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. Pott 8vo. Pp. 730 + xv, with 26 radiographis plates. 1928. London : Cassell & Co. Ltd. 12s. 6d. net Get access Elements of Surgical Diagnosis. By Alfred Pearce Gould Sir, K.C.V.O., C.B.E., M.S., F.R.C.S., late Surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, etc. Seventh edition, revised by Eric Pearce Gould, M.D., M.Ch. Oxon., F.R.C.S. Eng., Surgeon to Out-patients at the Middle Hospital, Dean of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. Pott 8vo. Pp. 730 + xv, with 26 radiographis plates. 1928. London : Cassell & Co. Ltd. 12s. 6d. net. British Journal of Surgery, Volume 17, Issue 65, July 1929, Page 191, https://doi.org/10.1002/bjs.1800176523 Published: 06 December 2005

The story of the middlesex hospital medical school. By H. Campbell Thomson, M.D. (Lond.), F.R.C.P., Consulting Physician to the Department for Nervous Diseases, the Middlesex Hospital, etc. Large 8vo. Pp. 182 + xiii. Illustrated. 1935. London: John Murray. 10s. 6d. net

Journal Article The story of the middlesex hospital medical school. By H. Campbell Thomson, M.D. (Lond.), F.R.C.P., Consulting Physician to the Department for Nervous Diseases, the Middlesex Hospital, etc. Large 8vo. Pp. 182 + xiii. Illustrated. 1935. London: John Murray. 10s. 6d. net Get access The story of the middlesex hospital medical school. By H Campbell Thomson, M.D. (Lond.), F.R.C.P., Consulting Physician to the Department for Nervous Diseases, the Middlesex Hospital, etc. Large 8vo. Pp. 182 + xiii. Illustrated. 1935. London: John Murray. 10s. 6d. net. British Journal of Surgery, Volume 23, Issue 90, October 1935, Pages 478–479, https://doi.org/10.1002/bjs.1800239028 Published: 06 December 2005

Peter N. Campbell (1921–2005)

Professor Peter Campbell passed away the night of February 7 after some months in the hospital following a car accident. Peter was one of the founders of Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) and his death is a great loss to his family and the scientific community at large. Peter was born in Kent, England in 1921. He started to study Chemistry at University College London in 1939, and received the PhD degree in Biochemistry in 1949 under Professor Sir Frank Young. From 1949 to 1954 Peter worked at the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill in London under T.S. Work and thereafter moved to the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in London. In 1961 he received a Doctor of Science degree from the University of London. In 1967 Peter was appointed to the Chair of Biochemistry at the University of Leeds and in 1976 he became Director of the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry and Courtauld professor of Biochemistry at the University of London. He was also appointed Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at the University of London. Peter published numerous scientific articles and was widely recognised for his work on protein synthesis. Moreover, he published several books, including Biochemistry Illustrated, a much acclaimed student text in biochemistry. The fifth edition of this book, which is co-authored together with Anthony Smith and Timothy Peters, is due in May this year. Peter was founding editor of Biochemical Education and Essays in Biochemistry, and edited for many years Biotechnology and Applied Biochemistry for the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB). Besides his love for research and teaching, Peter dedicated a great deal of his time to serve the scientific community at large. He was instrumental in establishing FEBS together with P.S. Datta and W.J. Whelan and acted as Secretary of the Biochemical Society from 1958 to 1964. He was the British delegate at the first Council meeting of FEBS in London in 1964 and was later elected Chairman of the Summer Schools Committee – afterwards renamed Advanced Courses Committee. One of Peter's outstanding ideas was to start in 1989 the Scientific Apparatus Recycling Scheme (SARS), a programme that since then has supplied numerous pieces of equipment and literature to Central and Eastern Europe and Africa. Peter was a strong believer in the capacity and potential of scientists in these countries and did his utmost to support them both in educational and scientific matters. Peter was very fond of the people and the countries he travelled to and was passionate about his work with SARS. In Horst Feldmann's book Forty Years of FEBS – A Memoir, Peter tells himself in chapter 6, page 146 about the SARS programme and how it developed under his guidance. In 1999 FEBS started the Working Group on Central and Eastern European Countries, and Peter was a dedicated member of this working group providing much expertise and enthusiasm as well as numerous contacts. In many ways Peter was a true FEBS ambassador. Peter's involvement in science went beyond Europe. He was a founder of the African Societies for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and served as chairman of the IUBMB Committee on Symposia. Later he founded the Education Committee of IUBMB. In 1981 Peter was awarded the FEBS Diplôme d'Honneur for his invaluable contributions to FEBS and the scientific community. This honour is conferred only to those who have given so much of their time to the benefit of others. Peter received the IUBMB Distinguished Service Award in 2000 in recognition of his services to the Union. We shall miss Peter terribly, and extend our condolences to his wife Molly, his children Alistair and Julia as well as to his many friends around the world.

E. J. Moran Campbell, 1925–2004

Dr. Moran Campbell, Founding Chairman of Medicine at McMaster University, 1968–1975, died on April 12, 2004, after a long battle with colon cancer. He was an outstanding scientist, physician, and educator, achieving a worldwide reputation as the foremost clinical respiratory physiologist of his generation. He changed how respiratory medicine was taught and practiced. Moran was born in 1925, the son of a Yorkshire general practitioner. In 1950 he obtained his medical degree at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School in London, and shortly after began research in the Department of Physiology at the same institution. He used the new technique of electromyography, together with pressure and volume measurements to provide the first comprehensive description of the mechanical events during breathing and the neural mechanisms that control the respiratory muscles. His book The Respiratory Muscles and the Mechanics of Breathing (1958) remains the seminal work on these topics. In it Moran developed a diagram (universally known as the Campbell diagram) that remains the standard tool for partitioning work of breathing. After a year at the Johns Hopkins University with Dr. Richard Riley, the foremost researcher in pulmonary gas exchange, Moran returned to London in the late 1950s. He applied the new techniques for measurement of blood oxygen and carbon dioxide pressures to patients with respiratory failure. He documented their blood gas derangements and formulated a new approach to treatment. Central to this approach was the careful control of inspired oxygen concentration to avoid carbon dioxide retention. Both the measurement of carbon dioxide pressure and the administration of small but precise increases in oxygen concentration presented obstacles, but Moran developed novel techniques to overcome them. To achieve precise increases in inspired oxygen concentration, he developed a mask into which a jet of pure oxygen was delivered using a precisely machined nozzle; this led to a reduction in pressure surrounding the jet (the Venturi effect), which thereby drew in room air through holes in the neck of the mask, precisely diluting the oxygen to achieve a small increase in concentration. The “Ventimask” has remained the standard of care ever since, and the approach received worldwide acceptance, and doubtless profited the manufacturer to an incomparably greater extent than the inventor (the only remuneration he ever received from the manufacturer was a free briefcase). He summarized his new ideas when he delivered the Burns Amberson Lecture at the Annual Meeting of the American Thoracic Society in 1967. The principles enunciated in this published lecture (Am Rev Respir Dis 1967;96:626–639) remain the cornerstones of care in respiratory failure. During the late 1950s, Moran became intrigued by breathlessness. He began with a series of studies in which breathing was impeded in healthy subjects by elastic and resistive loads. With Dr. Jack Howell he developed a theory of length/tension inappropriateness, which was based on a complex understanding

Professor Michael John Davies, MD, FRCPath, FRCP, FACC, FESC

Cardiovascular medicine and science lost a leading light with the death in February of Prof Michael J. Davies. A leading exponent of the concept of plaque rupture, Michael Davies’ observations, thought, and articulate advocacy led a major shift in the concepts of the mechanisms of acute myocardial infarction that have transformed contemporary cardiology. Michael Davies’ career in medicine began in 1955 with his studies at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, from which he graduated in 1961. He developed a keen interest in pathology during his early postgraduate days, which solidified when he joined St George’s Hospital as a Registrar (Resident) in Pathology during 1963. When he began his association with this institution, which was to become his academic home, it occupied its original quarters near Buckingham Palace in central London, the site where John Hunter, Edward Jenner, and Sir Henry Gray had worked. Here his research began with work on the pathology of heart block, which led to the award of his academic MD degree …

Campbell De Morgan's 'Observations on cancer', and their relevance today

Campbell Greig De Morgan was born at Clovelly near Bideford in 1811. After training at University College Hospital he became a house surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital where he remained for the rest of his career and life. He was said to have been ‘a man of great accomplishment and unusual ability’ and his interests extended beyond surgery. Thus he was actively involved in the Middlesex Hospital Medical School after its foundation in 1835 and worked closely with its founder, Sir Charles Bell. He became a lecturer in forensic medicine in 1841 and professor of anatomy in 1845, and in 1853 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on the basis of a paper on the structure and development of bone. He also described the small benign dermal angiomas associated with advancing years which, to this day, are known as Campbell De Morgan spots. De Morgan was said to have been a humble, unassuming and kind man of high moral character, somewhat reticent, totally indifferent to worldly success and held in high esteem by his colleagues and students. He was a talented musician, with an interest in the science of music, and was a gifted caricaturist. His death in 1876 was the result of a characteristic act of kindness and caring. In March of that year his friend the artist John Graham Lough presented the Middlesex Hospital with a marble bust (Figure 1) of De Morgan as ‘a token of affection and gratitude’. Just a few days later, Lough became critically ill with pneumonia and De Morgan, whose own state of health had become a cause of anxiety to his colleagues, sat by his friend's bed throughout the night of 6 April, until his death the following morning. As a result, De Morgan himself developed pneumonia and pleurisy from which he died on 12 April, in the presence of one of his two sons. As recorded in his obituary, ‘Few can doubt that in this last act of friendly devotion Campbell De Morgan sacrificed his own life. Greater love hath no man than this’. Figure 1 Bust of Campbell De Morgan, presented to the Middlesex Hospital by John Graham Lough

Molecular genetics, natural history and the demise of childhood leukaemia

After graduating at University College (BSc) and Middlesex Hospital Medical School (Ph.D), Mel worked at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, and the National Institute for Medical Research before joining the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, heading up an immunology laboratory in 1976. In 1984, he was appointed Director of the Leukaemia Research Fund's first specialist centre, at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, where he is still based.The patterns of genetic change, clonal evolution, natural history and latency are very different in the paediatric leukaemias compared with adult epithelial cancers but are similar to those in other childhood cancers of mesenchymal stem cell origin. This distinction has a biological logic in the context of the selective pressures for clonal emergence in different developmental and cellular contexts and has a major impact on curability. Most childhood leukaemias and some other mesenchymal stem cell tumours are of fetal origin and can metastasise without corruption of restraints on cell proliferation or bypassing apoptosis. In marked contrast to most invasive or metastatic epithelial carcinomas in adults, these former cancers then retain sensitivity to therapeutic apoptosis. Moreover, their abbreviated and less complex evolutionary status is associated with less genetic diversity and instability, minimising opportunity for clonal selection for resistance. A minority of leukaemias in children and a higher fraction in adults do, however, have genetic alterations that bypass cell cycle controls and apoptosis imposition. These are the ‘bad news’ genotypes. The cellular and molecular diversity of acute leukaemia impacts also on aetiology. Paediatric acute leukaemias can be initiated prenatally by illegitimate recombination and fusion gene formation in fetal haemopoiesis. For acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) in children, twin studies suggest that a secondary postnatal molecular event is also required. This may be promoted by an abnormal or delayed response to common infections. Even for a classic case of a cancer that is intrinsically curable by systematic chemotherapy i.e. childhood ALL, prevention may turn out to be the preferred option.

Abernethy and the golden age of surgical teaching.

A beautifully bound handwritten volume, John Abernethy's Lectures on Surgery in the Cowlishaw Collection at the library of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons proved the stimulus for a study of the work of Abernethy and two of his contemporaries in 19th century London, namely Charles Bell and James Paget. All excelled in the teaching of anatomy, physiology and pathology, continuing the Hunterian tradition. Abernethy extended Hunter's work on ligation of aneurysms and was a prime mover in the establishment of the Medical School at St Bartholomew's; Bell likewise assisted in the foundation of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School and made important discoveries relating to the nervous system and the circulation; James Paget excelled in the description of surgical pathology as a basis for disease presentation. All three became Fellows of the Royal Society and left a legacy of eponymous structures and important pathological and clinical knowledge.