Lung biopsy in the diagnosis of diffuse lung disease.

This lecture commemorates Arthur Tudor Edwards, one of the very small group of surgeons who, in the decade following the first world war, established the surgery of intrathoracic organs as a practicable procedure. For one year, 1932-3, I was house officer at the Brompton Hospital to him and his colleague, J. E. H. Roberts, the two leading thoracic surgeons in London. Seeking a possible link between the time when as a young man I was privileged to work for Tudor Edwards and my present interest in the nosology of broncho-pulinonary disease, I propose in this lecture to consider the contribution of surgical biopsy to the diagnosis of widespread lung disease.