1917: A Hundred Years, a Hundred Covenants

One hundred years.

One of my earliest memories is of a tall, thin clergyman who arrived late for a meeting as I stood outside the Lodge room as an Entered Apprentice whilst the ceremony of a higher degree was in progress. He was the treasurer of the Lodge and his name was the Reverend Prebendary Charles Waton. He was the Vicar of St Benet Fink, Edmonton and was a Grand Officer. To me, he was a very important maso...

The last hundred years.

A Hundred Years of Larmor Formula

Sir Joseph LARMOR showed in 1897 that an oscillating electric charge emits radiation energy proportional to (acceleration) 2. At first sight,the result appears to be valid for arbitrary accelerations. But, perpetual uniform acceleration has been a case of nagging doubts, as radiation reaction vanishes and the equivalence principle, as also conformal symmetry of Maxwell equations each require ni...

A hundred years of knee arthroscopy

Looking into the cavities of the human body by means of devices, without having to make an incision in the skin, has always been the dream of surgeons. The quest to light up these dark spaces was resolved for the first time in 1886, with the advent of the first cystoscope fitted with an incandescent bulb, designed by Leiter and Nitze in Germany. In 1910, it was improved on by the Swedish physic...

A hundred years of narcolepsy research.

The emergence of a clinical syndrome: The first convincing descriptions of narcolepsy-cataplexy were reported in Germany by Westphal (1877) (100) and Fisher (1878) (25). The unique association of episodes of muscle weakness triggered by excitement and sleepiness were described in these two reports. In both cases, hereditary factors were noted, with the mother of Westphal’s patient and one siste...