Coffee and herbal ‘cigarettes’ once popular treatments for asthma: talks from PMJ 90th Anniversary

Condition used to be regarded as psychosomatic and brought on by stress

Strong black coffee and herbal ‘cigarettes’ were once popular treatments for asthma, which used to

be thought of as a psychosomatic condition, brought on by stress, reveals a review of the evolution of common respiratory diseases over the past century.

The review, presented by Peter Barnes, Professor of Thoracic Medicine and Head of Respiratory Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, is one of a series of historical perspectives on key aspects of health and medicine, and their relevance to future practice, delivered by distinguished clinicians at a symposium in London today for the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine (FPM).*

See programme and speaker abstracts and biographies

The lectures mark the 90th anniversary of Postgraduate Medical Journal, which began publishing in 1925, the year television pictures were first transmitted by Logie Baird and enclosed double decker buses were introduced to London’s streets.

In ancient times, asthma used to be treated with various herbal extracts, derived from horsetail, thorn-apple, and deadly nightshade (belladonna), and available as a tincture or in “asthma cigarettes.”

By the 1850s the use of strong black coffee was recommended to treat symptoms, and by the early 20th century adrenal gland extract, from which adrenaline is derived, emerged as an effective airway opener (bronchodilator) followed by the discovery in the 1920s that theophylline, which occurs naturally in tea, was similarly effective.

The adrenal gland was a source of another treatment for asthma—steroids, the precursor to the mainstay of treatment today. Glucorticosteroids were first extracted in the 1940s, when adrenaline also became available as an inhaled treatment for the first time.

During this period in history, asthma was thought of as a largely psychosomatic condition, brought on by stress. It wasn’t until the 1980s, when chronic inflammation was recognised as a key factor in the airway restriction that characterises the condition.

In 1925 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which includes emphysema and bronchitis, were treated with the same bronchodilators used for asthma. Now long acting bronchodilators and their combination are the treatments of choice, although they don’t work as well in COPD as they do in asthma.

But oxygen was considered to be dangerous and only became available in the 1980s. New treatments for COPD that dampen down the underlying inflammation are urgently needed but have proved difficult to develop.

In another presentation, looking towards the future, Professor Karol Sikora, Medical Director of CancerPartnersUK, points out that cancer could well become a long term condition in 20 years’ time. But this promise critically depends on sustained investment in innovative diagnostics and therapies, such as robotics, genomics, biosensors, and personalised medicine.

He suggests that as the population continues to age, and the prevalence of cancer rises, the interaction of four factors will determine the future success of curbing deaths from the disease: new technology; society's willingness to pay; evolving healthcare delivery systems; and the financial mechanisms that underpin them.

Other speakers include Professor Dame Carol Black, principal of Newnham College Cambridge and past president of the Royal College of Physicians, who will talk about the opportunities to improve public health by focusing on workplace health; Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, David Weatherall Chair in Medicine at the University of Liverpool who will outline progress in the use of personalised medicine; and Dr Paul Nunn, former Coordinator, WHO Tuberculosis Programme, who will cover  the epidemiology and treatment of TB.

Details of all the other speakers and the topics they will be covering are available here: http://fpostgradmed.blogspot.co.uk

Commenting on the relevance and significance of the symposium, FPM President, Professor Donald Singer said: “Today’s symposium showcases many of the tremendous advances in medicine over the past 9 decades. Yet many of the medical challenges present in the 1920s still need further research and more global investment in health systems in developed and less developed regions. “

He added “The Postgraduate Medical Journal continues to play an important role in publishing new medical research and in educating young doctors and their teachers around the world.”

Notes for editors:

*90th Anniversary of the Postgraduate Medical Journal: Medicine from 1925 to 2015 One Day Symposium - 1st October 2015, Medical Society of London

Postgraduate Medical Journal is one of more than 50 specialist journals published by BMJ, which publishes the title on behalf of the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine.

http://pmj.bmj.com

The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, founded in 1918, pioneered educational programmes in all branches of postgraduate medicine. The FPM publishes 2 international journals: the Postgraduate Medical Journal since 1925 and Health Policy and Technology since 2012.

Further information (including contact details for the speakers)

Emma Dickinson, Media Relations Manager, BMJ, BMA House, London, UK

Tel: + 44 (0) 207 383 6529

Email: edickinson@bmj.com

Scots poets commended by Hippocrates Prize for poems inspired by Edinburgh's Royal College of Surgeons

Aileen Ballantyne

Jane Bonnyman

Two Scots poets have been commended by the Hippocrates Prize for poems inspired by Edinburgh Royal College of Surgeons.

Aileen Ballantyne’s poem Clostridium Tetani was inspired by the Scottish surgeon Sir Charles Bell’s 1809 painting in the collection of the Edinburgh Royal College of Surgeons' showing a patient with severe muscle spasms from tetanus [Opisthotonus]. 

Aileen is a journalist turned poet. She is a former Medical Correspondent for the Guardian and The Sunday Times, and is now a tutor in English and Scottish Literature at the University of Edinburgh, with a PhD in Creative Writing and Modern Poetry from the University.

She was a Reuters Journalism Fellow studying medical ethics at Green College, Oxford. Her investigative journalism has been commended in the British Press Awards, and her work on AIDS and the treatment of premature babies commended in the Scottish Press Awards.

Jane Bonnyman wrote her poem Surgeons’ Hall because she said Surgeons’ Hall Museum in Edinburgh has always fascinated her. She said "I am very squeamish by nature, but still find myself drawn to these often gruesome forms and objects. Death masks also intrigue and disturb, bridging the gap between now and then, life and inexorable stillness.”
 
Jane is an English teacher and tutor based in Edinburgh. She writes teaching resources for the Scottish Poetry Library and the BBC, and has been published in New Writing Scotland, Gutter and Poetry Scotland. In 2013 she won the National Gallery of Scotland Writing Competition.

The winner of the 2015 NHS Hippocrates Prize for poetry and Medicine will be announced at an Awards Ceremony in London at the close of an International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine at the Medical Society of London on Friday May 22nd.

Competing for the UK NHS 2015 Hippocrates £5000 first prize are former counsellor Kate Compston, GP Ann Lilian Jay, tutor Carole Bromley and radiologist Rowena Warwick.

Poets from New York and the UK are competing for this year’s Hippocrates Open Prize for Poetry and Medicine.  Short-listed in the Open Category are teacher and writer Maya Popa from New York, and poets Pascale Petit and Catherine Ayres who live in the UK.

Four poets have been shortlisted for the £500 2015 Hippocrates Young Poet Prize: Daniella Cugini from Warwick in England for the surgeon dissects his lover, and US poets Alex Greenberg from New York City for Dusting, Alexandra Spensley from Avon Lake, Ohio for Geography of a bone and Parisa Thepmankorn from Rockaway, New Jersey for Intraocular Pressure.

The winners will be announced by judges Femi Oyebode, Rebecca Goss and Rae.

The judges agreed 13 commendations in the NHS category and 18 commendations in the Open category.

At £5000 first prize both in the NHS category and the Open category,and £500 for the Young Poets Prize, this is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem.

Register for the Awards Ceremony from 3.30 pm - 6.15 pm on Friday 22nd May, at the Medical Society of London,11 Chandos Street, London W1G 9EB.

Now in its 5th year, the short-listed entries for the 2015 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine have been selected from around 1000 entries, from 31 countries by judges poet Rebecca Goss, poet Simon Rae, psychiatrist Professor Femi Oyebode and doctor and writer Theodore Dalrymple.

Judge Rebecca Goss said: “The subject of medicine is sprawling and complex, but poetry is the perfect medium to explore it closely and aid our understanding of human experience at its most raw. A variety of voices make up the winning and commended entries in this year’s Hippocrates Prize. Experiences of both medic and patient are explored, but so too, are the insights of the bystander. Included in this list are the carers, the relatives, the friends, revealing the impact illness also has on their lives."

Judge Professor Femi Oyebode said “I feel very privileged to be involved in the Hippocrates poetry prize. This experience has been most humbling.”

He added: “The wondrous thing is to imagine that these are poems written by healthcare workers who, in their everyday work, deploy their technical expertise with emotional commitment and compassion, all over the world, in a variety of settings in order to care for people; and yet, in-between times, having observed the most extraordinary human situations of trauma, tragedy, hope, despair, death and suffering, find the words to communicate these with sensitivity, with original and unique images, and sometimes with humor.”

Judge Theodore Dalrymple remarked: “Once again, the Hippocrates Prize has stimulated poets and health workers around the word to put their experiences of hope, despair, sadness, and compassion into poetic form, with impressive success.”

The Hippocrates Initiative – winner of the 2011 Times Higher Education Award for Innovation and Excellence in the Arts – is an interdisciplinary venture that investigates the synergy between medicine, the arts, and health.



Notes to editors: 
Photos of all finalists, along with biographies and extracts of their poems are available on request. Contact 07447 441666 or hippocrates.poetry@gmail.com

Awards: In each category there will be: 1st prize £5,000, 2nd prize £1,000, 3rd prize of £500, and further commendations each of £50.

The 2015 Hippocrates Anthology of winning and commended poems will be launched at an Awards Ceremony in London on Friday 22nd May. 



The Hippocrates Prize judges

Rebecca Goss grew up in Suffolk. She returned to live in the county in 2013, after living in Liverpool for twenty years. Her first collection The Anatomy of Structures was published by Flambard Press in 2010. Her second collection, Her Birth (Carcanet/Northern House), was shortlisted for The 2013 Forward Prize for Best Collection and winner of the Poetry Category in The 2013 East Anglian Book Awards. In 2014 she was selected for The Poetry Book Society's Next Generation Poets.

Femi Oyebode is Professor of Psychiatry University of Birmingham & Consultant  Psychiatrist National Centre for Mental Health Birmingham. His research interests include clinical psychopathology and medical humanities. His publications include Sims’ Symptoms in the Mind: textbook of descriptive psychopathology 5th edition (translated into Italian, Portuguese and Estonian); Mindreadings: literature and psychiatry; & Madness at the Theatre.

He is a poet and his published works include Naked to your softness and other dreams; Forest of transformations; Master of the leopard hunt; Indigo, camwood and mahogany red; & Femi Oyebode: Selected poems (edited O. Okome). For a critical review of his poetry see Home and exile in Femi Oyebode’s poetry (edited Obododimma Oha).

Theodore Dalrymple is the pen name for Dr Anthony Daniels, who has worked as a doctor in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Gilbert Islands, London and Birmingham, most recently as a psychiatrist and prison doctor. His writing has appeared regularly in the press and in medical publications, including the British Medical Journal, the Times, Telegraph, Observer and the Spectator and he has published around 20 books, most recently Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality (2015).

Hippocrates Prize Organisers Professor Donald Singer is President of the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine. His interests include research on discovery of new therapies, and public understanding of drugs, health and disease. He co-authors Pocket Prescriber, the 8th edition of which is published by Taylor & Francis in the summer of 2015. Professor Michael Hulse is a poet and translator of German literature, and teaches creative writing and comparative literature at the University of Warwick. He is also editor of The Warwick Review. His latest book of poems, Half-Life (2013), was named a Book of the Year by John Kinsella.


The 2015 Hippocrates Prize is supported by:

The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, a national medical society founded in 1918 and publisher of the Postgraduate Medical Journal and Health Policy and Technology, has supported the Hippocrates Prize since its launch in 2009.



The Cardiovascular Research Trust, a charity founded in 1996, which promotes research and education for the prevention and treatment of disorders of the heart and circulation.

Call for papers for 2015 International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine and Hippocrates Awards

Registration is open for the 6th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine to be held on Saturday 23rd May 2015  in London. The symposium will include poster sessions, lectures, round table discussions and poetry readings (by former President of the Poetry Society Jo Shapcott and 2012 Hippocrates Awards judge Marilyn Hacker). The 2015 Hippocrates Open International, International Young Poet and NHS Awards will be announced at the end of the Symposium. 

The programme includes sessions on historical and contemporary themes, illness and poetry, poetry as therapy, poetry in the education of medical students, nurses and doctors, and poetry as an aid to health professionals..

Abstract submission is open - deadline 31st March 2015.
 
The Hippocrates initiative was named winner of the Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Arts in the 2011 Times Higher Education awards, announced on 24th November 2011 in London. This award aims to recognise the collaborative and interdisciplinary work that is taking place in universities to promote the arts. 
The deadline for entries for the 2015 Hippocrates Prize for poetry and medicine, which is for unpublished poems in English, is 12 midnight GMT on 31st January 2015.  

The Hippocrates poetry and medicine initiative has been supported by the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, the Wellcome Trust, the Cardiovascular Research Trust, Heads, Teachers and Industry, and the National Association of Writers in Education. 

In its first 5 years, the Hippocrates Prize has attracted over 6000 entries from 61 countries, from the Americas to Fiji and Finland to Australasia.

With a 1st prize for the winning poem in each category of £5,000, the Hippocrates prize is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem. In each category there is also a 2^nd prize of £1,000, 3^rd  prize of £500, and 20 commendations each of £50.  

The judging panel for the 2015 Hippocrates Awards for Poetry and Medicine comprises poet Rebecca Goss, BBC broadcaster and author John  Humphrys poet and psychiatrist and poet Professor Femi Oyebode.

See more on the 2015 Hippocrates Awards and the Hippocrates initiative. 

Leprosy, from old Spittals to modern times

The Berwick-on-Tweed leper hospital (Spittal) is said to have been established in 1234, at what is now called Spittal Beach. This coincides with the middle of the peak of reported leprosy in Great Britain as being 12th and 13th centuries. London eventually had 10 hospitals for lepers on main routes out of the city. The last recorded case of leprosy in London was said to be in 1559. St Bartholomew was associated with lepers in medieval times, with associations between leper hospitals and churches named after the saint both in Berwick and near London. The name leprosy is derived from the Greek word for scales (lepra), the disease discussed by Hippocrates, with evidence that it was known in Ancient Egypt at least 6000 years ago.

What was like to be leper in medieval times? Lepers lost their rights under common law, including property rights. They were excluded from places where people gathered. They had to carry a bell to warn others of their presence. They were isolated, typically sent away to remote hospitals with chapels, as lepers were expected to follow Christian rule. Hospitals were usually run by religious orders. The reportedly well-funded Berwick hospital was later by Royal Charter of James 1 of Scotland in the charge of the King's Chaplain, Thomas Lauder.

RC St Clemens, ex Benedictine Cloisters, Bad Iburg

Squints or hagioscopes allowed people with leprosy and other infectious diseases to view the sacraments from outside a church of without coming into contact with the healthy members of the congregation.

Historically people with leprosy were recognized because of resulting deformities and were shunned because of fear of contagion. Untreated, leprosy could progress, causing serious disease and deformity to nerves, skin, nerves, limbs and face, including flattening of the nose due to destruction of underlying cartilage, and associated changes in the quality of speech.

A stone tower was erected at the Spittal in Berwick in 1369 as look-out point and protection from raids over the nearby border by the Scots. The buildings were demolished and nothing above ground remains.

Red staining of organism that causes leprosy

We now know that the disease is caused by a bacterium similar to the one that causes tuberculosis: the leprosy version - mycobacterium leprae - discovered by Paul Hansen, leading to the eponymous name Hansen's disease for leprosy. There is a wide spectrum of clinical features of leprosy. The main route of spread to susceptible people considered to be by nasal droplets (from coughing and sneezing). Risk of acquiring the infection appears linked to causes of impaired cell-mediated immunity, prolonged exposure to infected patients, and to malnutrition. Although infants may develop the disease, the incubation period may be as long as 30 years.

Does leprosy still exist? The World Health Organization  records official data on leprosy from up to 120 national programmes in Member States, results published in  the WHO's Weekly Epidemiological Record. From this data, the WHO estimates that one person in 10,000 is affected by the disease (prevalence). New case detection is estimated to have decreased from around 760,000 in 2002 to around 200,000 in 2011 . With early combination drug treatment before deformity (usually for 6-12 months), outcome of the disease is much improved. However, patients with treated leprosy may still be ostracised, especially in rural communities, even if patients are known to have been treated,  because of ignorance about the low risk of disease transmission and about the success of treatment: people are considered no longer infectious after around one week of treatment and it is estimated that over 10 million people estimate cured of leprosy in past 2 decades.

See
Professor Carole Rawcliffe, Medieval History, University of East Anglia
Leprosy in Medieval England, 2006.

Where science collides with life: short-list for the 2013 Hippocrates Prize

Judges Dalrymple, Shapcott and Highfield at short-listing

A Harvard physician, a rising New Zealand Poet, a BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year from Bristol, and a recent Afghanistan veteran are finalists for this year’s Open International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, at £5000 in both Open and NHS categories, one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem. Themes ranged from experience of a children’s hospital, to effects of cancer on a friend, the emergency call, and humanity underlying traditional grand rounds.

Now in its fourth year, the short-listed entries for the 2013 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine have been selected from over 1000 entries from 32 countries by judges distinguished poet Jo Shapcott, psychiatrist and medical writer Dr Theodore Dalrymple, and Roger Highfield, science writer and Director of External Affairs at the Science Museum Group .

Short-listed poets in the Open Category are American Literature expert Liam Corley from California, Harvard Physician and poet Rafael Campo, from Massachusetts, published poet Matthew Barton from Bristol, in England, and poet, writer and former physiotherapist Sue Wootton from Dunedin in New Zealand.

And competing for the UK NHS 2013 Hippocrates £5000 first prize are family doctor Ann Lilian Jay from LLandysul in Wales, former nurse Ann Elisabeth Gray who runs a care home for dementia in Cornwall, poet and novelist Mary V Williams from Shropshire, hospital chaplain Ian McDowell, from London and midwifery senior lecturer Bella Madden from Milton Keynes.

The winners will be announced at an International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine at the Wellcome Rooms in London on Saturday May 18th.

The judges also agreed 18 commendations in the NHS category and 20 in the Open International category –  1 each from from Ireland, Scotland and Israel, 7 from the USA and 10 from the England, from the Isle of Wight to Yorkshire.

Full list of commended poets, with biographies and notes on inspiration for their poems

Judge Jo Shapcott said: 'The Hippocrates Prize, since its inception in 2009, has quickly established itself as one of the most important international prizes for poetry as well as providing a unique place for poetry and medicine to meet.  Its international reach is reflected in this years prizewinners who come from countries all round the globe, including New Zealand, the USA, Ireland, and Israel.“

She added: “You might imagine that poetry on medical themes would be sad, even grim reading, but far from it.  There was a lively range of subjects and perspectives in this year's batch, and the judges were lucky enough to be debating the merits of some outstanding poems which have in common their sheer brio, skill, and passion, and often an exhilarating deftness in deploying medical language so that it sings.”

Judge Roger Highfield commented 'The Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine works brilliantly because medicine is where science collides with life. Again and again I found myself transported in mind and spirit to unfamiliar situations where I encountered the memories, experiences and inner emotional worlds of others. I found it enthralling and, at times, disturbing, a powerful reminder of the mysterious way that a few words can herd our thoughts and emotions.'

Judge Theodore Dalrymple remarked “As the Hippocrates Prize once again demonstrates, health care is a fertile source of poetic inspiration. All the poems arise from the need to communicate a deep human experience, and succeed in doing so.”

The awards symposium will consider the relationship between poetry and medicine, with topics including poetry as therapy, using poetry in health professional training, the impact of health and disease on the professional poet and the history of poetry and medicine.

Speakers planned for the awards symposium are from USA, Spain and Switzerland, and the UK.

The Hippocrates Initiative – winner of the 2011 Times Higher Education Award for Innovation and Excellence in the Arts – is an interdisciplinary venture that investigates the synergy between  medicine, the arts, and health.

To attend the Symposium see http://hippocrates-poetry.org

Notes to editors
Photos of all of the finalists, along with biographies extracts of their poems are available on request.

For more information, please contact hippocrates.poetry@gmail.com

Awards: In each category there will be: 1st prize £5,000, 2nd prize £1,000, 3rd prize of £500, and 20 commendations each of £50.

The 2013 Hippocrates Anthology of the 46 winning and commended poems will be launched after the Awards Symposium at the Wellcome Rooms in London on Saturday 18th May. Winning and commended poets are entitled to one free copy of that year's anthology.

The Hippocrates Prize judges

Jo Shapcott was born in London. Poems from her three award-winning collections, Electroplating the Baby (1988), Phrase Book (1992) and My Life Asleep (1998) are gathered in a selected poems, Her Book (2000). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition (twice). Tender Taxes, her versions of Rilke, was published in 2001. Her most recent collection, Of Mutability, was published in 2010 and won the 2011 Costa Book Award. She was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in December 2011.   Jo Shapcott teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Theodore Dalrymple is the pen name for Dr Anthony Daniels, who has worked as a doctor in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Gilbert Islands, London and Birmingham, most recently as a psychiatrist and prison doctor. His writing has appeared regularly in the press and in medical publications, including the British Medical Journal, the Times, Telegraph, Observer and the Spectator and he has published around 20 books, most recently The Pleasure of Thinking.

Roger Highfield is the Director of External Affairs at the Science Museum Group. He was born in Wales, raised in north London and became the first person to bounce a neutron off a soap bubble. He was the Science Editor of The Daily Telegraph for two decades and the Editor of New Scientist between 2008 and 2011. Roger has written seven books and had thousands of articles published in newspapers and magazines

Hippocrates Prize Organisers

Donald Singer is Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, University of Warwick, and President of the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine. His interests include research on discovery of new therapies, and public understanding of drugs, health and disease.

Michael Hulse is a poet and translator of German literature, and teaches creative writing and comparative literature at the University of Warwick. He is also editor of The Warwick Review.

His latest publications are: The Secret History (poems, Arc) and The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (translation of Rilke's novel, Penguin Classics). With Donald Singer he co-founded in 2009 the International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine.

2013 Hippocrates Prize is supported by:

The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, a national medical society founded in 1918 and publisher of the Postgraduate Medical Journal and Health Policy and Technology, has supported the Hippocrates Prize since its launch in 2009.

The Cardiovascular Research Trust, a charity founded in 1996, which promotes research and education for the prevention and treatment of disorders of the heart and circulation.

The National Association of Writers in Education, which is supporting the new Young Poets category in the Hippocrates Prize.

Heads Teachers and Industry is also supporting the new Young Poets category in the Hippocrates Prize. HTI is a not-for-profit organisation with over 25 years experience of record of working across business, education and government to raise aspirations and employability of young people.

Philip Gross joins panel for 18th May, 2013 International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine.

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The 4th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine organised by the Hippocrates Initiative will take place on Saturday 18th May 2013 at the Wellcome Collection rooms in London.

See downloadable Symposium Programme

The symposium will include poster sessions, lectures, round table discussions and poetry readings by TS Eliot Prize-winner Philip Gross and 2013 Hippocrates Awards judge and winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, Jo Shapcott).

Abstract submission remains open for posters - deadline 31st March.

There will be sessions on historical and contemporary themes, illness and poetry, poetry as therapy, poetry in the education of medical students, nurses and doctors, and poetry as an aid to health professionals. The programme of lectures, round table discussions, poetry readings and the Hippocrates Awards Ceremony will be published on the Symposium website. 

The winners and commended entrants in the 2013 Hippocrates International, NHS, and Young Poets Awards for Poetry and Medicine will be announced by the judges at the end of the 4th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine.

The 2013 Symposium Faculty includes:
Theodore Dalrymple (Doctor and writer; 2013 Hippocrates Prize Judging Panel); Michael Hulse (Speaker and Chair; Writing Programme, Warwick): Luz Mar González-Arias (Speaker: University of Oviedo, Spain); Philip Gross (Poet: Professor of Creative Writing, Glamorgan University); Roger Highfield (Director of External Affairs, Science Museum Group, London: 2013 Hippocrates Prize Judging Panel); Anne Hudson Jones (Speaker: Harris L Kempner Professor in Humanities in Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston); Antonios Kousoulis (Speaker, Imperial College, London); Andrew McMillan (Speaker: Liverpool); Hugues Marchal (Speaker: Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature, Basel University, Switzerland); Cheryl Moskowitz (Speaker, London); Femi Oyebode (Psychiatrist, University of Birmingham); Jo Shapcott (Poet, Royal Holloway College, London; 2013 Hippocrates Prize Judging Panel); Donald Singer (Speaker and Chair; Warwick Medical School); John Riddington Young (ENT Surgeon, West Barton, Bideford).

Keynote speakers
Anne Hudson Jones is Harris L Kempner Professor in the Humanities in Medicine and Professor in the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. She was a founding editor and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Literature in Medicine (John Hopkins University Press), Associate Editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine and has published widely, including a series of essays in the Lancet on literature and medicine.

Hugues Marchal is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at Basel University. His research includes major interests in relations between poetry and science from 1800 to the present day. He has taught in the USA at Duke University and Johns Hopkins University, and in Paris at 3-Sorbonne. He has published widely on these themes, including the social context of the times.

Register for the Symposium

Submit an abstract for an oral or poster communication

See more ...

Entries from 29 countries for the 2013 Hippocrates Prize

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Entries are now closed for the 2013 Hippocrates Prize Open and NHS categories.
There were over 1000 entries from 29 countries: from throughout the United Kingdon and USA (39 states), and from Canada to China, Switzerland to South Africa, Netherlands to Australia and New Zealand.
In order of number of entries received, poems were from: United Kingdom, USA, New Zealand, Ireland, India, Canada, Australia, France, Switzerland, Nigeria, Germany, South Africa, Greece, Belgium, China, Mexico, Netherlands, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Montenegro, Zimbabwe, Poland, Macedonia and Spain.

Entries remain open for the 2013 Hippocrates category for Young Poets aged 14-18 years: deadline 12 midnight GMT 1st March.  

This new category in the Hippocrates Prize is for Young Poets from anywhere in the world and is for an unpublished poem of up to 50 lines in English on a medical theme. The entry fee is £2 per individual poem or £15 per group of 10 poems entered e.g. from a poetry society or school.
The Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets will be judged by poet Clare Pollard, who published her first collection of poetry at the age of 19. The Young Poets Prize offers an award of £500 for the best poem. There will also be ten commendations.
Short-listed poets in all categories of the Hippocrates Prize will be informed by mid-April.
Awards will be announced by the judges on 18th May, 2013 at the Wellcome Collection in London at the end of the 4th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine.

Boris Godunov

Boris Godunov

@HealthMed The RSC is currently running a new version by Adrien Mitchell of Pushkin's Boris Godunov - in which Godunov is accused of the murder of the young epileptic son of former Tsar Ivan the Terrible, following which he (Godunov) allows himself to be 'persuaded' to became the new Tsar. 

Tsar of Russia Boris Godunov is said to have died in mid-April 1605 after a lengthy illness, the cause of death attributed to a stroke. 

Hippocrates is considered to have been the earliest to describe stroke - then called apoplexy [for Gk for to strike down/incapacitate]. As insight into Roman views on the cause of apoplexy, the Latin translation (sideratio) indicates a disease caused by a constellation.  It wasn't until several decades after Godunov's death that Swiss pharmacologist and pathologist Johann Jakob Wepfer linked apoplexy both to bleeding within the brain and to blockage of a blood vessel in the brain. His work on strokes was published in 1658 as Historiae apoplecticorum. 

Depicted as well-fed, Godunov by the age of 54 would have been at risk of hypertension, diabetes and hyperlipidaemia. Other causes of apoplexy could have included a primary or secondary cerebral tumour, indolent brain infection/abscess such as tuberculosis, or indeed a ruptured congenital vascular anomaly. Poisoning was of course then an occupational hazard. Slow onset heavy metal or other toxins could have contributed to his reported long terminal illness.

Apoplexy has attracted fascination from historical reports (e.g. from Petrarch to Copernicus and Catherine the Great, surgeon John Hunter's suspected caused of death - reportedly during a meeting with the board of management, and President Woodrow Wilson) to fictional references - often with a hint of retribution (e.g. Villefort's father in the Count of Monte Cristo, Rip van Winkle's wife ... ). 

For more on general aspects of apoplexy, see History of Stroke by Maurizio Paciaroni and Julien Bogousslavsky.