BACKGROUND The study aimed to define the characteristics and assess the clinical predictability and possible prevention of psychiatric in-patient suicides. METHOD The coroner's files on all suicides in the Greater Montreal Region from 1 April 1986 to 31 March 1991 were examined. The medical records of each case of suspected in-patient suicide were then reviewed and rated for predictability an...

One hundred years ago a young Russian scientist, Dimitri Ivanovsky (1864 to 1920), presented a paper before the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg in which he stated that "the sap of leaves infected with tobacco mosaic disease retains its infectious properties even after filtration through Chamberland filter candles" (10). This observation suggested a disease agent smaller than any known bef...

In June 1905, Ernest Starling, a professor of physiology at University College London, UK, first used the word ‘hormone’ in one of four Croonian Lectures— ‘On the chemical correlation of the functions of the body’—delivered at the Royal College of Physicians in London. Starling defined the word, derived from the Greek meaning ‘to arouse or excite’, as “the chemical messengers which speeding fro...