Vets in India

Our India Papers collection continues to take us down unexpected paths. Not only do we now have a publisher producing facsimile reprints of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report with their unique sepia photographs of hemp users but the website Medical History of British India is now well into phase 2 (look out for our Digitisation Manager Francine’s fascinating blog entries about this).
We’re pleased to announce that the Wellcome Trust has approved funding for phase 3 of the project, which will see our veterinary reports digitised and added to the site. This project has helped enormously in the success of a Collaborative Doctoral Award from AHRC, with the Library and the University of Strathclyde as partners. The post-graduate student will begin his study of the Civil Veterinary reports in October and he’ll contribute to the text for the website, enabling greater understanding of the content of this important collection.

Do you want to be in my gang?

The King Institute of Preventive Medicine in Guindy undertook a variety of medical work and its annual reports have just been microfilmed. Through checking the films this week I have been re-acquainted with one of my favourite institutions.
This is because the reports give a lively and vivid snapshot of life at the institute between 1906 and 1932, not to mention that prominent figures in the medical field worked there.
The Bacteriological Section produced vaccines, including prophylactic cholera and combined typhoid and paratyphoid (T.A.B.) vaccines, anti-meningococcus vaccine and anti-influenza vaccines, the numbers produced appearing in these reports. Investigation units were engaged in the field and reported on outbreaks of diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, relapsing fever, gastro-enteritis, glandular fever, malaria and chicken pox in both settlements and jails.
It was in the 1922-23 report from Alipuram Jail, Bellary, that I came across the term “bowel gang.” 1,250 men were found to be suffering from latent dysentery: “These men were constituted into a “Bowel gang” housed separately; dieted and treated for their conditions. They were given suitable work in their own enclosure, and were not allowed to mix with the rest of the convicts.” (page 31, click on the image to view the paragraph from the report) This system seemed to work and cases of dysentery were reduced within 3 months, although I shudder to think of the indignity of being a member of such a gang. I wonder, also, if the members knew of the designation that was given to them to aid medical research and disease control.
The King Institute of Preventive Medicine is still in operation. Visit its website at http://www.tnhealth.org/meking.htm

Dr WHO?

It's the 60th anniversary of the World Health Organisation. To mark this occasion they've got a nice potted history, plus an online photo exhibition of their work.

Binge drinking

The Scottish Goverment set out its plans to help curb the so-called binge drinking culture.

Treaty of Lisbon

The Irish people rejected the Treaty in a referendum last week. What does it all mean? Read the official response to the rejection, and what other countries think about it.