Acetylsalicylic acid was synthesized by Gerhardt in 1853 and even put on the market during the 1880s by the firm Merck.1 Yet the proper history of this medicine begins only in 1897, now more than a hundred years ago, when this miracle amongst medicines was again synthesized at the dyestuffs factory of Friedrich Bayer and the chemical factory of Friedrich von Heyden. About eighteen months later ...

Copyright © 2012 Massachusetts Medical Society. Surgery is a profession defined by its authority to cure by means of bodily invasion. The brutality and risks of opening a living person’s body have long been apparent, the benefits only slowly and haltingly worked out. Nonetheless, over the past two centuries, surgery has become radically more effective, and its violence substantially reduced — c...

JUST OVER A century ago, Daniel Maclachlan, Physician to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, published his book The Diseases and Infirmities of Advanced Life. This was based on his extensive experience among the Chelsea pensioners as well as patients seen in private practice. He begins by stating 'the diseases of advanced and declining life have been comparatively neglected ... they have nowhere recei...

I n this issue of OEM, an article by Tim Carter documents the experience of cutaneous, pulmonary, and abdominal anthrax among wool sorters and others in a rural town (Kidderminster, Worcestershire) in the UK in the early twentieth century. At the start of the twenty first century anthrax was an esoteric topic of study, mostly for those interested in zoonoses. This position changed radically fol...

proposed that could activate transcription of numerous genes in spermatids. If a gene is transcribed and its protein accumulates in spermatids, it is very possible that the protein will function there. Regulation of holoenzyme levels might also contribute to other cases of cell-type-specific gene regulation. Although no other cells seem to accumulate as much of the basal transcription machinery...