Ruth Richardson

Donors' attitudes towards body donation for dissection

We report a survey in the UK of potential whole-body donors for dissection. 218 people (age range 19-97 years) answered a postal questionnaire, giving information about themselves, their reasons for donation, attitudes towards the dead body, funeral preferences and medical giving and receiving. In addition to altruism, motives included the wish to avoid funeral ceremonies, to avoid waste, and in a few cases, to evade the expense of a funeral. 44% understood that their bodies would be used as teaching material, 42% for experiments. Whilst 69% believed in one or more supernatural phenomena, only 39% said they were religious. 69% requested cremation after dissection; 2% wanted to be buried. The notion of money incentives to promote donation was overwhelmingly rejected.

Swearing to care: the resurgence in medical oaths

We are witnessing a resurgence of professional interest in medical oaths and codes of conduct. In the United Kingdom the General Medical Council has reissued its professional code and, together with the BMA, the royal colleges, and other organisations, has published a document on the “core values” of medical practice.1 2 There has been discussion of the role of oath taking at the end of medical training, and the BMA has drafted a new Hippocratic Oath on behalf of the World Medical Association (see third box).3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 The American Medical Association has this year commemorated the 150th anniversary of its 1847 Code of Ethics with an extensive debate on the relevance of oaths and codes to modern practice.12 13 14 #### Declaration of Geneva “At the time of being admitted as a Member of my Profession: I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity; I will give to my teachers the respect and gratitude which is their due; I will practice my profession with conscience and dignity; The health of those in my care will be my first consideration; I will respect the secrets that are confided in me, even after the patient has died; I will maintain by all the means in my power, the honour and the noble traditions of my profession; My colleagues will be my sisters and brothers; I will not permit considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient; I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from its beginning, even under threat, and I will not use my specialist knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity; I make these promises solemnly, freely, and …

Quintessence of dust.

Inevitably, reading is one of the requirements to be undergone. To improve the performance and quality, someone needs to have something new every day. It will suggest you to have more inspirations, then. However, the needs of inspirations will make you searching for some sources. Even from the other people experience, internet, and many books. Books and internet are the recommended media to help you improving your quality and performance.

Friends of the foundlings

In the days before Great Ormond Street Hospital had even been thought of, a great institution stood in the fi elds due north of where that world-famous London hospital now stands. It was a diff erent sort of hospital to those we know: “hospital” in the old-fashioned sense of a place off ering hospitality. The London Found ling Hospital, which was estab lished in 1739, took into its care abandoned children in the days before contraception and abortion relieved the desperation of forsaken, sick, or destitute mothers. A delightful exhibition, Received, A Blank Child: Dickens, Brownlow and the Foundling Hospital, now occupies the lower gallery at the Foundling Museum. The exhibition takes its title from a fi ne essay Dickens named after the wording on the Hospital’s printed receipts, which were fi lled out upon the acceptance of every child. The real hero of this exhibition is John Brownlow: not the fi ctional character from Oliver Twist, but the extraordinary real-life Clerk and Secretary of the institution. Dickens was a 2-year-old when Brownlow became a teenaged clerk at the Foundling Hospital in 1814, and he had already been buried in Westminster Abbey when Brownlow retired in 1872, after 58 years’ service there. The two men both worshipped at the Foundling Chapel and collaborated on fundraising and other good works. Brownlow was himself a foundling, and was devoted to the institution that had taken him in, named him, and raised him. He was adept at working out original ways to raise funds: writing a history of the hospital, a fi ctional life of Hans Sloane (also a foundling), and establishing a boys’ band which publicised the Foundling Hospital’s work and provided training for its boys as naval and army bandsmen. Brownlow’s commitment to the insti tution passed down to his daughter Emma, an accomplished artist, several of whose documentary narrative paintings of the various institutional rites of passage are on display in this exhibition. We see babies being carried by older foundlings to be christened with new names, and the Governors saying farewell to grown children on their way to make their transition to suitable work

A life of sensation

www.thelancet.com Vol 374 October 17, 2009 1319 In the fi nal years of his life, the impecunious John Keats (1795–1821) wrote poetry, lodged in Hampstead (then a village north of London), and fell in love with Fanny Brawne, the woman next door. Keats heard the nightingale in the garden. The Georgian villa they inhabited was of modest lime-washed stucco, divided into two straight down the middle. It is portrayed in this fi lm as an enormous dark brick mansion, fi t for an aristocrat with an income equally grand. The disjunction will strike anyone who knows Keats House Museum. To visit London, the real Fanny Brawne had to walk the intervening miles, yet in the fi lm she wears a diff erent dress in almost every shot, the present-day costs of which must have been huge, and in her domestic reality, laughably impossible. Fanny has been often under-rated by devotees who believe her emptyheaded, and Keats’s love for her no more than an infatuation. Yet to underestimate her is to do the same for him. Film maker Jane Campion only half rehabilitates her, rendering Fanny Brawne an intelligent but illeducated genteel fashion-enthusiast: the slender thread behind the many costume changes. The real Fanny Brawne knew she ought to marry money, yet she chose to love her bankrupt Mr Knightley regardless. Despite her limited budget, she used a dressmaker. She may have been sophisticated, wise, discerning, and well-read—much more like Miss Austen, or one of her characters, than the fi lm’s ingénue allows. Keats was a qualifi ed doctor: yet his medical experience and status get a one-word mention in Bright Star. The gaps in his life are glaring: no medicine, no Shakespeare, no Leigh Hunt, no Percy Bysshe Shelley, no politics. This costume drama leaves altogether unexplained the cruelly hostile reviews meted out to his poetry: there is no notion that Keats was a radical writing in reactionary times. No-one would guess these were the years of Peterloo and the Cato Street Conspiracy. The fi lm does however have strengths, one of which is the casting. Ben Whishaw as Keats is slim to start with and scrawny at the end, which is what we would expect of a poor poet

Celebrating New Year in Bart's dissecting room.

This paper presents a condensed version of a Victorian story concerning a surreal New Years social gathering in the dissecting room at St. Bartholomews Hospital Medical School, London. The story focuses upon the relationship between a medical student and a community of cadavers who come to life for the evening. The ethos of the dissecting room in the nineteenth century as revealed by the tale differs markedly from that of the present day. The story offers a persuasive narrative about the ethical treatment of the dead, and could prove a useful teaching tool. An introduction, discussion, and footnotes accompany the text, to draw out the cultural and moral significance of the original.