Porphyria cutanea tarda (symptomatica) (PCT) is an acquired hepatic porphyria, usually caused, in susceptible people, by liver damage from a high ethanol intake. Clinically, patients have skin fragility, hypertrichosis, photosensitivity and hyperpigmentation, and biochemically there is a high urinary excretion of uroporphyrin, hepatic siderosis, abnormal iron metabolism (Turnbull, Baker, Vernon...

Socially reared zebra finch males imitate a song they hear during posthatching days 30-65; during this time, many new neurons are added to the high vocal center (HVC), a forebrain nucleus necessary for the production of learned song. New neuron addition drops sharply after day 65, and no new songs are imitated. In contrast, male zebra finches reared in isolation from other males have more varia...

PHLEBITIS or periphlebitis of the retina manifests itself in various forms. Perhaps the commonest expression of the condition is represented by a line of events ending in gross recurrent vitreous haemorrhages (Eales'.s disease); but there are other forms varying from an inflammation of a smaller retinal tributary to an inflammation of the central retinal vein, in which case the clinical picture...

We extend the optimal symmetric group sequential tests of Eales & Jennison (1992) to the broader class of asymmetric designs. Two forms of asymmetry are considered, involving unequal type I and type II error rates and different emphases on expected sample sizes at the null and alternative hypotheses. We discuss the properties of our optimal designs and use them to assess the efficiency of the f...

IN 1880 and again in 1882 Henry Eales of Birmingham described the clinical picture of primary recurrent retinal haemorrhage in young adults. His seven cases were all young men, whose ages ranged from 14 to 29. They had in common a history of headache, epistaxis, variations in peripheral circulation, dyspepsia, and chronic constipation. One was diagnosed as having mitral incompetence, and in two...

Endogenous endophthalmitis is an intraocular infection that results from hematogenous spread of organisms from a distant source of infection. Facial cellulitis is rarely reported as a focus of infection. We report a case of 51-year-old unconscious woman presenting with fever, facial swelling, and decreased visual acuity secondary to facial cellulitis, endogenous endophthalmitis and end-stage re...