567 A short film was being made to help to their colleagues the value of demonstrate surgeons transplantation, the categories of potential donors, and the procedures to be undertaken. A working-party was being set up by the Department to recommend à set of basic guidelines for the procedures to be followed in removing organs for transplantation. Meanwhile, the Government will rely on its kidney donor-card scheme; and a new publicity campaign is to be launched next month. Despite criticism from some M.p.s that this system has been a failure, Mr Ennals clearly hopes that by working for the success of this voluntary measure he, or his successors, may avoid the need to legislate on an extremely controversial issue. Mr Dalyell, however, is one of Parliament’s most persistent campaigners and he will not be letting the matter rest.

supply of kidneys.

Notes and News

THIS

WILLIAM STIRK ADAMS M.B. Birm., F.R.C.S.

Mr Bill Adams, honorary consulting surgeon to the United Birmingham Hospitals, and a distinguished ear, nose, and throat surgeon in the Midlands, died on Feb. 1 at the age of 81. Born and educated in Birmingham, he spent his entire life in the city apart from service in the Royal Navy as a surgeon probationer and surgeon lieutenant in the 1914-18 war and

periods of postin Europe education graduate with the giants of his youth such as Chevalier Jackson and Le Maitre. No-one ever served the city of his birth or its teaching hospital with greater devotion than Bill Adams. A bachelor and an obsessional worker, he had few interests outside his specialty except for dinghy sailing. In 1946-47 he was commodore of the Midland Sailing Club. His contributions to the otological literature were in volume considerable and in quality superb, but chiefly he will be remembered for his conscientious and skilful surgery in the teaching hospital in Birmingham, his kindness and friendship to his colleagues and juniors, particularly in his own specialty, and for his work in founding the Midland Institute of Otology of which he was president from its foundation in 1947 until his death. Nothing has done more for otorhinolaryngology in the Midlands, and the Nursing Association afiiated to it has been equally valuable. It was typical of Bill that much of his material possessions should be bequeathed to the institute. Towards the end of his life his vision and hearing deteriorated and he was no longer able to drive his vintage RollsOC9-but his tall figure, his beneficence, and his energy remains a familiar and happy stimulus to his friends and to his disciples. His death is a grievous loss, for he was greatly loved and respected, and he was still making a valuable contribution to his specialty. A.G.W.W. numerous

A memorial service for Mr Lawrence Abel will be held at noon on at All Souls Church, Langham Place, London Wl.

Wednesday, March 15,

no

shortage of preregistration house-officer posts, because plans made by the Department of Health and Social Security to ensure that there are enough posts to meet demands are going well; and there are already sufficient posts for this year’s graduates. In May, 1976, the D.H.S.S. held a conference (attended by representatives of universities and health authorities) to discuss what had to be done to meet the needs of an increasing number of medical graduates. The outcome was the establishment of a working group on preregistration house-officers, which advised the Government to establish a large number of new

Obituary

PREREGISTRATION HOUSE JOBS year’s graduates from medical schools need fear

posts in the next five years.

The D.H.S.S. then set targets for the number of posts which each English region should have available over the next five years (similar plans were made in Scotland and Wales). The targets took into account the numbers of doctors receiving qualifications from non-university licensing bodies in the U.K. and of graduates from overseas and the Republic of Ireland seeking preregistration posts here. Provision was made for a 5% surplus to allow for fluctuations in pass-rates and to give graduates and consultants some choice.

Many posts are linked to medical schools which also run schemes to match consultants’ preferences for students with those of students for jobs; the linkage of posts to medical schools is being encouraged. For students who are not able to find a post through conventional channels, the Council for Postgraduate Medical Education has, since July, 1977, been operating a "safety net". This scheme collects information from all employing authorities about posts still unallocated after local arrangements have been completed (and these should be completed 22-3 months before the posts are to be taken up). The Council then passes this information to the postgraduate deans or their nominees. Graduates seeking posts in the safety-net scheme should do so through their medical schools and they should be prepared to move if necessary to another region. some will not be in order to these been created because have filled, but, posts train house-officers rather than to fill a service gap, there need be no compulsion to fill them. The D.H.S.S. has advised that empty posts should not be filled by fully or temporarily registered doctors unless the post is one that must be filled or unless the General Medical Council believes that a particular doctor under temporary registration requires experience at houseofficer level. If the post has to be thus filled by a doctor not requiring it for registration, it should become available again on the usual starting dates for preregistration posts-that is, Feb.1 or Aug. 1.

Since

a

5% surplus of posts is planned,

Concern has been expressed that some of the new posts have been created by regrading existing senior house-officer (s.H.o.) posts, which may lead to a shortage of s.H.o. jobs, but Sir Henry Yellowlees, Chief Medical Officer of the D.H.S.S., believes that this is not a serious risk, because the number of additional preregistration posts required over the next ten years is only 600, and even if all were to be provided by regrading s.H.o. posts, that would still leave more than 8000 S.H.O. posts available. This note is based on information kindly supplied by Sir Henry Yellowlees and Sir John Richardson (Chairman of the Council for Postgraduate Medical Education in England and Wales), whose letters on this subject are to appear in the correspondence columns of the British

Medical,7ournal of March 11.

568 LABELLING OF DANGEROUS CHEMICALS NEw regulations governing the packaging and labelling of about 800 dangerous substances will come into operation on Sept. 1, 1978, for those supplied in containers of 200 litres or more capacity, and on March 1, 1979, for all other listed substances. The regulations (Packaging and Labelling of Dangerous Substances Regulations 1978) implement within Great Britain an E.E.C. directive. There are eight hazard categories

(explosive, highly flammable, toxic, corrosive, flammable, oxidising, irritant, and harmful). Printed on each label will be the hazard category and its symbol (in orange on black and covering at least one tenth of the area of the label); for example, a label for caustic soda will carry the word Corrosive, and a picture of a hand and a piece of metal being dissolved by liquid dropping from two test-tubes. Each label will also carry: one or more phrases, giving in slightly more detail the main dangers; one or more phrases giving advice on safety prename of the chemical and the address of the supplier or manufacturer.

cautions ; and the

name

and

.. Brigadier J. Lapper has assumed the new appointment of Director of Medical Policy and Plans, Ministry of Defence, in the rank of major-general. Dr Sheldon J. Segal has been appointed Director of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Population Program. Prof. L. P. Le Quesne will give the 28th Thomas Percy Legg Memorial Lecture at King’s College Hospital Medical School on Thursday, March 16, at 4.30 P.M. He will speak on Disturbances of Gastric Emptying. A

symposium

on

real-time ultrasound in obstetrics will be held

at

Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital on May 22. Details and forms (fee 15) may be had from the Symposium Secretary, Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital, Goldhawk Road, London W6. An international symposium on recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment of pituitary tumours will be held at the University of California on May 31-June 4,1978. Details may be had from Division of Letters and Sciences, University Extension, University of California, 2223 Fulton Street, Berkeley, California 94720.

Corrections

A PATHOLOGIST’S MEMENTO MORI

Effect of Phenylalanine Dihydropteridine Reductase Activity in Phenylketonuria Fibroblasts.-In the letter by Dr F. Firgaira and colleagues (Feb. 11, p. 339) phenylalanine was used at 2 mmol/l, not 2 mol/1. on

Dr Milton Helpern was as well known in the United States as, during the 1930s, was Sir Bernard Spilsbury in Great Britain, and for much the same reasons. Sir Bernard, however, published few papers: and after he died his personal records

proved too fragmentary to permit an adequate biography. Early in his career Helpern, and two colleagues, wrote what is still a classic work on legal medicine: and before his death last year he compiled, with the help of a British pathologist, his reminiscences’ of forty-three years as a medical examiner. This office can be compared with that of a coroner in England. It is not, however, a Federal, but a State appointment, and incumbents must hold a specialist qualification in pathology as well as a medical degree. They are denied several of the traditional privileges of their transatlantic counterparts-a coroner enjoys immunity from litigation, but a medical examiner has sometimes had to defend a civil action brought by relatives when he has performed an official necropsy against their wishes. For half of his long term Helpern was chief of a service charged with determining the cause of death in 30 000 cases annually (one in every three deaths in New York State cannot be certified in the ordinary way). To investigate the thousand homicides which occur in the city itself every year, he planned a comprehensive institution, which has centralised refrigeration facilities for 128 bodies. His memoirs

are more

often

con-

cerned with court-room tactics than with the painstaking laboratory studies which preceded them, but professional readers will be interested in an unusual epidemic of malignant tertian malaria amongst heroin addicts using communal syringes. Helpern also describes his experience of air-embolism as a possible murder weapon, and of carbon monoxide as a domestic hazard (particularly from gas-flame refrigerators). Only in a tantalising aside, though, does he disclose that he performed the necropsy on Dylan Thomas.

Farquharson’s Textbook of Operative Surgery--6th ed. Edited by R. F. Rintoul. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone. (Feb. 25, p. 420.) The correct price of this book is /;20.

Diary of the MARCH

1.

The Memoirs of Milton Helpern. By MILTON HELPERN and BERKNIGHT. New York; St. Martin’s Press. Pp.271. $10.

Autopsy: NARD

18

DERMATOLOGY, St. John’s Hospital for Diseases of the Skin, Lisle Street, Leicester Square, London WC2H 7BJ 4.30 P.M. Dr R. A. J. Eady: Wound Healing.

INSTITUTE

OF

Tuesday,14th WESTMINSTER MEDICAL SCHOOL, 17 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2AR 5.15 P.M. Prof. J. P. Blandy: Urethral Injuries. MANCHESTER MEDICAL SOCIETY 8 P.M. (New Medical School.) Surgery. Mr Miles Fox: Transplantation of Islets of Langerhans-A New Hope for the Treatment of Diabetes.

Wednesday, 15th ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND, 35/43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PN 3 P.M. Prof. W. W. Mapleson: From Clover to Computer-Towards Programmed Anasthesia. (Joseph Clover lecture.) INSTITUTE OF DERMATOLOGY 4.30 P.M. Dr M. M. Black: Cutaneous Amyloidosis. INSTITUTE OF ORTHOPEDICS, 234 Great Portland Street, London WIN 6AD 6 P.M. Mr Denys Wainwright: Congenital Flat Foot. 7 P.M. Prof. Thomas Duckworth: Knock Knees. NORTHWICK PARK HOSPITAL, Watford Road, Harrow, Middlesex HA13UJ 1 P.M. Dr C. J. Edmonds: Diuretic and Potassium Therapy. BIRMINGHAM MEDICAL INSTITUTE, 36 Harborne Road, Edgbaston, B15 3AF 8.15 P.M. Prof. W. H. Trethowan: The Art of Madness.

16th

ROYAL COLLEGE

University of Belfast The honorary degree of D.SC. is to be conferred on Prof. John Charnley, University of Manchester, and on Prof. A. D. M. Greenfield, University of Nottingham.

TO

Monday, 13th

Thursday,

University of Newcastle Upon Tyne The honorary degree of doctor of surgery (D.CH.) is to be conferred on Surgeon Vice-Admiral Sir James Watt, formerly Medical Director General of the Royal Navy.

12

Week

OF

PHYSICIANS

OF

LONDON, 11 St. Andrew’s Place, Regent’s

Park, NW1 4LE S

P.M.

Dr Bertram Tullis Mann: Pulmonary Asbestosis with Special Reference to an Epidemic of this Disease at Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire. (Mil-

roy lecture.)

Friday,

17th

INSTITUTE OF LARYNGOLOGY AND OTOLOGY, 330/332 Gray’s Inn Road, London WCIX 8EE 5.30 P.M. Mr J. C. M. Currie: Fractures at the Base of the Skull. UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL, Ashton Street 5 P.M. Dr J. D. G. Troup: Cervical Spondylosis-Epidemiology and Management.

Saturday,

18th

UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL 9 A.M. Mr R. V. Jeffreys: Anterior losis.

Spinal Decompression for Cervical Spondy-

William Stirk Adams.

567 A short film was being made to help to their colleagues the value of demonstrate surgeons transplantation, the categories of potential donors, and...
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