Professor Jimmy Williamson, who died in June, was the last surviving member of the Edinburgh group which found the first 100% cure for tuberculosis. In 1954 he was the last consultant to join Sir John Crofton’s team in Edinburgh. As… Read More ›
medical and nursing
Health, the Highlands and Tony Benn’s dad
1913 was anything but a quiet halcyon year, a point well illustrated in Michael Portillo’s recent Radio Four series Two important Scottish centenaries also came out of it. On August 15, royal assent was given to bill setting up the… Read More ›
Highland Doctor – the Hebrides and Goebbels (part 2)
Stand by for a treat – if you haven’t already seen it, Kay Mander’s Highland Doctor from the Scottish Screen Archive is an absolute delight. Click on the image to watch…. It tells in around 20 minutes the story of the… Read More ›
Mountain Midwives – Queens of the Wild Frontier (part two)
By 1930 the Frontier Nursing Service had shown that childbirth was safer in a remote area of Kentucky than in most of North America – and even much of Europe. But for its charismatic founder Mary Breckinridge, it was the start… Read More ›
Mountain Midwives – Queens of the Wild Frontier (part one)
There’s a reckoning at the end of every war. Counting the cost of American dead after World War One caused a few to reflect on a much more disturbing statistic: far more American women had died in childbirth than American… Read More ›
The Women of Royaumont – a unique film
This gem from the Scottish Screen Archive shows the work of some extraordinarily brave women – click on the picture to view. It is intriguing in many ways – as one of the earliest documentaries, perhaps the only moving image… Read More ›
The man who made the first x-ray movie
It is quite astonishing that in 1896 someone was already making a movie of an x-ray. Even more remarkable is the story of the man who produced it. Here’s the movie (it starts with a frog’s leg and moves to… Read More ›
The History Company 