Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (I978) vol 6o

HUNTERIANA

John Hunter, Gilbert White, and the migration of swallows I F Lyle, ALA Library of the Royal College of Surgeons of England

Introduction This year is not only the 25oth anniversary of John Hunter's birth, but it is also I90 years since the publication of Gilbert White's Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne in December I788. White and Hunter were contemporaries, White being the older man by eight years, and both died in I 793. Despite their widely differing backgrounds and personalities they had two very particular things in common. One was their interest in natural history, which both had entertained from childhood and in which they were both self-taught. In later life both men referred to this. Hunter wrote: 'When I was a boy, I wanted to know all about the clouds and the grasses, and why the leaves changed colour in the autumn; I watched the ants, bees, birds, tadpoles, and caddisworms; I pestered people with questions about what nobody knew or cared anything about".

White's comment was remarkably similar: 'It has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbours whose studies have led them towards the pursuit of natural knowledge: so that, for want of a companion to quicken my industry and sharpen my attention, I have made but slender progress in a kind of information to which I have been attached from my childhood'2.

Secondly, both men had the gift of observation, which they used at a time when philosophic speculation was more fashionable. Much of what they saw could have been seen by other men had they chosen to look, but in this White and Hunter were before their time. White was an amateur, the first real fieldnaturalist and the founder of the great tradition of amateur natural historians. However, he knew his limitations and seldom performed dissections, which he left to others better quali-

fied than himself, although he frequently suggested points that would be worthy of investigation by others. Hunter, by comparison, was the complete professional and his work as a comparative anatomist was complemented by White's fieldwork. The only occasion on which they are known to have co-operated was in I768, when White, through an intermediary, asked Hunter to undertake the dissection of a buck's head to discover the true function of the suborbital glands in deer3. Nevertheless, there were several subjects in natural history that interested both of them, and one of these was the age-old question: What happens to swallows in winter?

Background and history One of the most contentious issues of eighteenth-century natural history was the disappearance each autumn of a number of species of birds-swifts, swallows, and martins in particular-and their reappearance the following spring. This was no new problem for the phenomenon was known to the Greeks, but it had never been established what happened to the birds in their absence. Two main theories had been propounded: either they migrated to warmer latitudes during the colder months or else they hibernated. Neither explanation had ever been satisfactorily proved, although both had been put forward from the time of Aristotle. 'A great number of birds also go into hiding; they do not migrate, a.s is generally supposed, to warmer countries. Thus certain birds (as the kite and the swallow) when they are not far off from places of this kind, in which they have -their penranent abode, betake themselves thither, others, that are at a distance from such places, decline the trouble of migration and simply hide themselves where they are. Swallows, for instance, have often been found in holes, quite denuded of their feathers . . .'4.

486

I F Lyle

In the early sixteenth century a Bishop of Uppsala, Olaus Magnus, in his Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus claimed that swallows had been found hibernating under water5 and illustrated his text with a woodcut showing fishermen pulling the birds ashore in their nets. Unlikely as it was, this startling report was used as a basis for many similar accounts and alleged observations until at least the end of the eighteenth century. Robert Burton, for example, mentions it in his Anatomy of Melancholy: '. . What becomes of Swallows, Storks, Cranes, Cuckows, Nightingales, Redstarts, and many other . Do they sleep in winter, kind of singing birds like Gesner's Alpine mice; or do they lye hid (as Olaus affirms) in the bottom of lakes and rivers, spiritum continentes? often so found by fishermen in Poland and Scandia, two together, mouth to mouth, wing to wing; and when the spring comes they revive again, or if they be brought into a stove, or to the fireside. Or do they follow the Sun ... or lye they hid in caves, rocks and hollow trees, as most think . .

grated to the moon for the winter. The growth of interest in natural history at this time produced a greater awareness of the subject among travellers, who brought fresh observations to supplement the many old and distorted stories that were then extant. These new accounts were eagerly seized upon by naturalists at home who then fiercely argued their signifigance. One of these new accounts was related by Pierre Adanson in his Voyage to Senegal: 'The 6th of the same month [October I7491 at half past six in the evening, we were about fifty leagues from the coast, when four swallows came to take their night's lodging in our vessel, and pitched upon the shrouds. I catched them all four with great ease, and found them to be European swallows. This lucky incident confirmed me in the suspicion that I had formerly entertained; that those birds crossed the sea to get into the torrid zone, as soon as winter approached: and that I have observed since, that they are never seen but at this time of year at Senegal . . . when the cold drives them away from the temperate countries of Europe. Another fact not less worthy of remark, is, that the swallows do not build their nests in Senegal as in Europe . .'8.

Not all naturalists were prepared to give credence to the hibernation theory. Francis A similar observation was made by Admiral Sir Willughby and his friend John Ray, the great Charles Wager, published in I760 by Peter English naturalist of the seventeenth century, Collinson, a naturalist and Fellow of the Royal expressed doubts about it in Willughby's Orni- Society, who was a strong advocate of the thologia of I676 (English edition I678). Al- migration theory: though Willughby died in i672, Ray arranged and edited the material for publication, so we 'I have often heard Sir Charles Wager . . relate may assume that it reflected his view as well. that in one of his voyages home, in the spring of the year, as he came into soundings of our channel, 'What becomes of Swallows in Winter time, whether they fly into other countries, or lie torpid in hollow trees, and the like places, neither are natural historians agreed, nor indeed can we certainly determine. To us it seems more probable that they fly away into hot countries, viz. Egypt, Aethiopia, etc. then [sic] that either they lurk in hollow trees, or holes of Rocks and ancient buildings, or lie in water under the ice in Northern Countries, as Olaus Magnus reports.'7

Up to this time most writers put forward both hibernation and migration as possible explanations, but this situation changed in the eighteenth century, when naturalists became more dogmatic in their opinions and tended to polarise into definite 'migrationist' and 'hibernationist' camps. At the same time another theory, fortunately shortlived, arose to confuse matters. This was the idea that swallows mi-

a great flock of swallows came and settled on all his rigging: every rope was covered, they hung on one another like a swarmn of bees; the decks and carvings were filled with them; they seemed almost spent and famished, and were only feathers and bones; but being recruited with a night's rest, they took their flight in the morning'9.

Collinson sent this paper to Linniaeus, with whom he maintained a correspondence between 1738 and I767. Linnaeus was a 'hibernationist' who believed in Olaus Magnus' tales of birds hibernating under water. Several of Collinson's letters were taken up in trying to persuade him to perform experiments and dissections, the results of which, Collinson was convinced, would show that underwater hibernation by swallows was impossible. Linnaeus never took up the challenge, but Collinson's suggestion was significant"0.

John Hunter, Gilbert White, and the migration of swallows

Gilbert White - observations and doubts Most of the material published in the Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (hereafter referred to simply as Selborne) was never intended for publication. It was originally contained in letters written by White to two fellow-naturalists, Thomas Pennant and the Hon. Daines Barrington. Pennant was one of the leading naturalists of the day and a writer of popular travel books. White met him in I767 through his brother Benjamin, a partner in a firm of publishers which had published Pennant's British Zoology. Pennant in turn introduced him to Barrington, who was a judge, the Recorder of Bristol, but also an enthusiastic antiquary and amateur naturalist. Both men were Fellows of the Royal Society, to whom, through Barrington, some of White's observations on the Hirundines were read. Thomas Pennant was a 'migrationist', but Barrington supported the hibernation theory. Their attitudes to the subject obviously influenced White's own thinking on the matter and this can be clearly seen in the letters in their published form. There are many references in Selborne to what White referred to as the Hirundines. These were the swallow, the house martin, and the sand martin, all members of the Hirundinidae, and the swift, which is now classified in the family Apodidae, related to the humming-birds. At times he seems to contradict himself in his statements to the extent that his subsequent editors have interpreted his remarks in a number of ways. However, it is important to remember when reading White that the original letters were written over a period of years and that he modified his views in the light of his knowledge. Basically, White was a 'migrationist', although this did not prevent him from keeping an open mind on hibernation. This was a very professional approach. The evidence for migration, in his view, was unquestionable, but from his own observations and from unsubstantiated reports from elsewhere there was circumstantial evidence to suggest that some birds might hibernate, and until he could obtain positive proof to the contrary he could not rule out the possibility. He never did obtain the proof he sought and in later life this seems to have worried him a great deal. In the very first letter he wrote to Pennant he said:

487

'As to swallows (hirundinae rusticae) being found in a torpid state during the winter in the isle of Wight, or any part of this country, I never heard any such account worth attending to. [He then goes on to describe two such cases.]"'

In White's opinion any evidence of hibernation did not hinge upon such accounts, which were probably distorted and unreliable anyway. Instead it lay in the fact that the young birds from late broods of swallows and martins, which have two, sometimes three, broods in a season, could not possibly be sufficiently strong and well fledged to undertake their migratory flight south. Two extracts from his letters illustrate this: 'I see by my fauna of last year [his notes], that young broods come forth so late as September the eighteenth. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of hiding than migration?"12 'I myself, on the twenty-ninth of last October [I 767] (as I was travelling through Oxford), saw four or five swallows hovering around and settling on the roof of the county-hospital. Now is it likely that these poor little birds (which perhaps had not been hatched but four weeks) should, at that late season of the year, and from so midland a county, attempt a voyage to Goree or Senegal, almost as far as the Equator? I acquiesce entirely in your opinion-that, though most of the swallow kind may yet migrate, yet that some do stay behind and hide with us during the winter'13.

It is now known that White was incorrect; the young birds do migrate, although in particularly mild winters occasional birds have been known to stay in the south of England. White was very fortunate in that he had a reliable observer farther south: his brother John, who was the chaplain to the garrison at Gibraltar and, like himself, a keen naturalist. John sent back reports of swallows crossing the Straits which Gilbert quoted when writing to the sceptical Barrington in I77I : 'You are, I know, no friend to migration; and the well attested accounts from the various parts of the kingdom seem to justify you in your suspicions, that at least many of the swallow kind do not leave us in the winter, but lay themselves up like insects and bats, in a torpid state . . . But then we must not, I think, deny migration in general; because migration does subsist in some places, as my brother in Andalusia has fullyinformed me. Of the motions of these birds he has ocular demonstration, for many weeks together, both spring and fall: (luring which periods myriads of the swallow kincl

488

I F Lyle

traverse the Straits from north to south, and from south to north, according to the season . . . . It does not appear to me that much stress may be laid on the difficulty and hazard that birds must run in their migrations, by reason of vast oceans, cross winds, etc. [one of Barrington's objections to migration]; because, if we reflect a bird may travel from England to the equator without launching out and exposing itself to boundless seas, and that by crossing the water at Dover, and again at Gibraltar. And I with more confidence advance this obvious remark, because my brother has always found that some of his birds, particularly the swallow kind, are very sparing of their pains in crossing the Mediterranean: for when arrived at Gibraltar, they . . direct their course to the opposite continent at the narrowest passage they can find'4.

Daines Barrington remained unconvinced and in the following year published a paper refuting the idea of migration in favour of hiber-

the cottages at the end of the hill. After making this observation I waited 'til it was quite dusk, but saw them no more; & returned home well pleased with the incident, hoping that it might lead to some useful discovery and point out their winter retreat. Since that, I have only seen two on Oct 22 in the morning. These circumstances put together make it look very suspicious that this late flock at least will not withdraw into warmer climes, but that they will lie dormant within 300 yards of the village'" .

He described this event in a letter to Barrington"8, adding afterwards: 'Had they indulged me that autumn with a November visit as I much desired, I presume that with proper assistants, I should have settled the matter past all doubt; yet though the third of November was a sweet day . . . yet not a martin was to be seen . . . . I have only to add that were the bushes, which . . . are not my own property, to be grubbed up and carefully examined, probably those late broods, and perhaps the whole aggregate body of the house-martins of this district, might be found there in different secret dormitories

nation15. For White, therefore, migration accounted for the majority of birds, but what of the single birds, or small groups of two or three that were White's inability to find any evidence of seen very early or late in the season? White never understood that these birds were passing swallows hibernating obviously puzzled him through, hence their sudden appearance and greatly and he pursued the problem until the disappearance, and that their presence on a very end of his life. In April I793, just three fine day was due to the number of insects in months before his death, he obtained the asthe air. He assumed that they were always the sistance of a neighbour to help him search the same birds, whereas they were successive small thatch of an empty cottage in Selborne for torparties on the move. Even when this was sug- pid birds. The subject even occurs in what was gested to him by his brother-in-law, Thomas probably the last letter that he ever wrote, on the following I5th June. In it, referring to a Barker, he refused to accept it: 'I cannot agree with those persons who assert that the swallow kind disappear some and some gradually, as they come, for the bulk of them seem to withdraw at once: only some stragglers stay behind a long while and do never, there is the greatest reason to believe, leave this island. Swallows seem to lay themselves up, and come forth of a warm day, as bats do continually on a warm evening, after they have disappeared for weeks'16.

letter which had recently been published, he wrote: 'I did not write the letter in the Gent. Mag. against the torpidity of swallows; nor would it be consistent with what I have sometimes asserted, so to do"9.

This neatly summarises White's opinions on the subject and is a fittting epilogue to his work, for despite all his dedicated fieldwork it was inNVhite's dismissal of the explanation, virtually sufficient either to prove or to discount out of hand. is uncharacteristic and it is ironic torpidity. that it is this explanation that has proved to be correct. Nevertheless, he persisted in the idea that some birds might hibernate. In his journal John Hunter - dissections and the entry for i3th and I4th October I780 experiments Although there is very little material on swalreads: lows in Hunter's surviving papers, it is possible 'On these two days many house-martins were feed- to gather some idea of his interest in them from ing and flying along the Hangar as usual, 'til a other sources. Certainly he was interested in quarter past five in the afternoon, when they all scudded away in great haste to the S.E. and darted the ideas of migration and hibernation in gendown among the low beechen oaken shrubs above eral. His work on the hibernation of hedge-

John Hunter, Gilbert White, and the migration of swallows hogs is well known, as is his encouragement of Edward Jenner in his pioneer work on the cuckoo. jenner himself made a valuable contribution to the study of migration in a paper published posthumously in I82320. Hunter never seems to have entered into the controversy to the same extent as some of his contemporaries. This is understandable as he was never a man to enter into idle speculation for its own sake and because it was only one of the many subjects in which he was interested. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that he was unaware of the argument that the whole question of migration provoked.

489

These observations are largely confirmed by his surviving notes on the subject, published in Essays and Observations: 'If swallows sleep in the winter, as it is said, it must be very different from the manner in which the bear, dormouse, lizards, snakes, etc. do. Some of these really sleep most of the time; the otheTs are in a state of stupor or insensibility: but the swallow must be in a state of total suspense of animal action, such as they say people are when in a trance. There can be no circulation, as there can be no respiration'22.

It is only in recent years that these views have been questioned, although they still hold good for hibernation under water. When Daines Barrington wrote his paper adAlmost certainly as a result of his vocating the hibernation theory in I7721' he Hunter noted that the sole diet ofdissections, swallows incorporated in it two observations made by was insects, and the inferences that he drew Hunter while serving in Portugal in I762-63. from this fact, had they been published at the Part of Barrington's case was based on the be- time, would have been a severe blow to the lief that birds always flew at a height at which hibernationist theory: they could be seen from the ground, and he quoted Hunter as saying that the highest-flying 'Swallows live wholly on flying insects, and those insects are only to be found in hot weather; therebird that he knew was a 'small eagle on the fore, in a climate that changes from hot to cold, confines of Spain and Portugal which frequents we can only have insects in the hot season; and the high rocks'. He also told Barrington that while swallow too can only be there in those seasons. In he was in Portugal he frequently saw swallows warm climates, where there is a sufficient degree and martins in winter. of heat all the year round for those insects to live in, we find swallows all the year round'.

It is to Hunter that the credit must be given After the deaths of White and Hunter in for making dissections of swallows for the purpose originally suggested to Linnaeus by Peter I 793 the controversy continued, particularly in Collinson in I 762-to prove whether or not the columns of the Gentleman's Magazine, they were physiologically capable of hibernat- where, in 1796, a correspondent signing himing under water. The results showed conclus- self 'T P', undoubtedly Thomas Pennant, conively that it was impossible, but although the cluded a letter on the subject: account was given in a popular work, Thomas 'The late Mr John Hunter made curious experiPennant's British Zoology, the myth refused to ments to ascertain whether the swallow, at the time die. he disappeared from us, was disposed to sleep or 'Though entirely satisfied in our own mind of the impossibility of [swallows hibernating under water]; yet desirous of strengthening our opinion with some better authority, we applied to that able anatomist, Mr John Hunter; who was so obliging to inform us that he had dissected many swallows, but had found nothing in them different from other birds as to the organs of respiration. That all those animals which he had dissected of the class that sleep during the winter, such as Lizards, frogs, etc. had a very different conformation as to these organs. That all these animals, he believes, do breathe in their torpid state; and as far as his experience reaches, he knows they do: and that therefore he esteems it a very wild opinion, that terrestrial animals can remain any long time without drown-

illg.'21

immerge in water, the result and exact account of which, it is to be hoped, will be found among his

papers and communicated to the world. In the interim, the writer of this may possibly in a future Number, relate the particulars, which he once heard very minutely described by Mr Hunter himself'23.

If such papers ever existed they have never been found, unless they were among those burnt by Sir Everard Home. However, shortly after this announcement Pennant published the following description of Hunter's experiment: 'One year, in the month of September, he [Hunter] prepared a room with every accomodation and convenience which he could contrive, to serve as a

490

I F Lyle

dormitory for swallows, if they were disposed to sleep in winter. He placed in the centre a large tub of water with twigs and reeds &c. which reached to the bottom. In the comers of the room he contrived artificial caverns and holes, into which they might retire; and he laid on the floor, or suspended in the air, different lengths of old wooden pipes, which had formerly been employed in conveying water through the streets, &c. When the receptacle was rendered as complete as possible, he then engaged some watermnen to take by night a large quantity of the swallows that hang upon the reeds in the Thames about the time of their departure. They brought him, in a hamper, a considerable number; and had so nicely picked the time of their capture, that on the very day following there were none to be seen. He put the swallows into the room so prepared, where they continued to fly about, and occasionally perch on the twigs, &c. But not one of them ever retired into the water, the caverns, holes or wooden pipes; or showed the least disposition to grow torpid, etc. In this situation he let them remain till they all died but one. This, appearing to retain some vigour, was set at liberty; when it mounted out of sight and flew away. All the birds lay dead scattered about the room; but not one was found asleep or torpid, or had, if I rightly remember, so much as crept into any of the receptacles he had so provided. Such, to the best of my recollection, is the description I heard Mr John Hunter give in the year 1792 .

.24

While this experiment could not be said to have been conclusive, it was a brave attempt, and throughout it shows Hunter's close attention to detail.

number of species, including members of the swallow and swift families25. These experiments have shown that with a drop in the ambient temperature many birds become torpid and enter a state of hypothermia from which they can be aroused. While in the hypothermic state their consumption of energy and oxygen is very low. If only in part, Gilbert White's doubts may yet be vindicated.

References I

2

3 4

5

6 7

8

Conclusion The controversy between the 'hibernationists' and the 'migrationists' continued to the end of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century, but support for the migration theory gradually gained ground and eventually became generally accepted. However, it was not until I 9 1 2 that the final proof was obtained when swallows ringed in England were recovered in South Africa. Nevertheless, the story does not end there. In 1946 an ornithologist in Colorado found a poorwill (Phalaenoptilus nuttallii), a bird related to the nightjar, in a torpid state while bird-watching in the mountains. Since then there have been further reports of torpid birds anid experiments have been carried out on a

9 io

ii

12

I3 14

I5

Quoted by Dobson, J (I969) John Hunter, p. I3. Edinburgh, Livingstone. White, G, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (hereinafter cited as Selborne) Letter Io to Thomas Pennant. (Note: In view of the many editions of this book page numbers are unhelpful. Most editions arrange the letters in two separately numbered sequences, one for letters to Pennant, the other to Barrington. Citations are therefore made on this basis. Any particular editions are cited in full.) White, G (I9oo) Selborne, ed. R Bowdler Sharpe, vol. i, pp. 87-9. London, Freemantle. Aristotle (i9io) Works, trans. under J A Smith and W D Ross. Vol. 4: Historia animalium, by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, 6ooa, I0-I6. Oxford, Clairendon Press. Olaus Magnus (1567) Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, p. 732. Basle. (Also published in Rome, 1555.) Burton, R (I676) The Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 154. London, for P Parker. Willughby, F (i678) Ornithology, p. 2I2. London, for John Martyn. Adanson, P (I759) A Voyage to Senegal, the Isle of Goree and the River Gambia, pp. I21-2. London, for J Nourse and W Johnston. Collinson, P (1760) Philosophical Transactions, 5I, 459-464Smith, Sir J E (I82i) A Selection of the Correspondence of Linnaeus and Other Naturalists . . . vol. I, pp. 49-51, 59-62. London, Longman. White, G, Selborne. Letter IO to Thomas Pennant. White, G, Selborne. Letter Io to Thomas Pennant. White, G, Selborne. Letter I 2 to Thomas Pennant. White, G, Selborne. Letter 9 to iDaines Barrington. Barrington, D (1772) Philosophical Transactions, 62, 265-326.

i6 White, G, Selborne. Letter 23 to Thomas Pennant.

John Hunter, Gilbert White, and the migration of swallows 17 Whitc, G (I93i) Gilbert White's Journals, ed. XValter Johnson, p. 178. London, Routledge. (Reprinted Newton Abbot, David and Charles, 1970)

i8 White, G, Selborne. Letter 55 to Daimes Barrington. I9 White, G (i877) Selborne, ed. Thomas Bell. vol. 2, p. 302. London, Van Voorst. 20 Jeinner, E (I824) Philosophical Transactions, 14,

''-44.

491

2I Peninant, T (I776) British Zoology, 4th edn, vol. I, pp. 349-50. London, B White. 22 Hunter, J (i86i) Essays and Observations on Natural History, Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology, and Geology, [edited] by Richard Owen, vol. 2, p. 148. London, Van Voorst. 23 Pennant, T (I796) Gentleman's Magazine, 66, I98. 24 Pennant, T (I796) Gentleman's Magazine, 66, 399. 25 Bartholomew, G A, Howell, T R, and Cade, T J (I957) Condor 59, I45.

FRACTURE TREATMENT WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO AO/ASIF TECHNIQUES Three-day intensive course held at the Royal College of Surgeons of England from 2ISt to 23rd June 1978 The letters AO stand for 'Association for Osteosynthesis'. Under this title a group of Swiss surgeons banded themselves together some 20 years ago; their objective was simple-to improve the treatment of fractures. Closed reduction and plaster had been strongly advocated by Bohler in Vienna and by Watson-Jones in England. With the equipment and skills then available it was safer than open reduction and internal fixation; but often there was a legacy of joint stiffness, which became known as 'the fracture disease'. Thc AO school set themselves the task of improving the techniques and instrumentation for internal fixation and they succeeded brilliantly. So it was not inappropriate that the group changed its name to ASIF (Association for the Study of Internal Fixation). Note the word 'study', for their single-minded devotion to understanding fractures led to the establishment of an important research centre and their determination to assess their results objectively led to a remarkable system of documentation, in itself a major achievement.

Now their methods are known throughout the world. No small part of this fame rests on the courses run for many years at Davos. These are miracles of organisation-and how delightful to be able to ski each aftemoon! But not everyone can get to Davos and we felt that the Royal College of Surgeons of England should provide the opportunity for leaming the techniques involved. Some i8 months ago planning began. The Swiss surgeons co-operated with enthusiasm, they readily gave us their time, knowleclge, and skill, for all of which we are very grateful. The course extended over three long days. Lectures and discussions were, of course, important, but the vital activity was the practicals. With the help of

videotapes and closed-circuit television participants vere first shown how to use AO techniques; then, assisted by demonstrators, each individual applied these methods to plastic bones. Ninety-six surgeons, mostly consultants but with a few senior registrars, constituted the class; well over twice that number had applied, but space and facilities were restricted. Lecture Room 2 comfortably accommodated the lectures and discussions, though it was modified by installing twin projectors and twin screens. Similar dual apparatus was provided in a room where the lecturers could rehearse. Lecture Room i was adapted for the practicals. The seats were all removed and eight large tables installed. Each was equipped with vices, electric drills, compressed air drills, power reamers, plates, screws, and all the complex paraphernalia of modem internal fixation. The participants worked in pairs with two demonstrators to each table. Much of the basic equipment for these practical sessions was prepared and supplied by Mr 0 F Phoenix, who, as head of the Bio-Medical Engineering Unit at the North Staffordshire Polytechnic, has built up a body of experience in such matters. The instruments, in i6 large packing-cases, were flown in from Switzerland by the Synthes Organisation. Six of the leading Swiss surgeons and four British surgeons acted as both lecturers and demonstrators, augmented by eight British surgeons as demonstrators and two highly skilled engineers. The College staff (administrators, audiovisual experts, secretaries, technicians, caterers, and porters) dealt with this formidable invasion so skilfully and efficiently that the College is already organising a similar course to be held next year (see P 493). A GRAHIANi APLEY

John Hunter, Gilbert White, and the migration of swallows.

Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (I978) vol 6o HUNTERIANA John Hunter, Gilbert White, and the migration of swallows I F Lyle, ALA...
1MB Sizes 0 Downloads 0 Views