Aubrey Leatham and the introduction of cardiac pacing to the UK.

In the early 1950s, Dr Aubrey Leatham established a cardiac unit at St. George's Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, London. He developed and taught the essential clinical skill of cardiac auscultation. Under his guidance a clinical department for the care of cardiac patients was developed and coupled to physiological academic research. He was a pioneer in cardiac pacing and, in 1961, Harold Siddons, O'Neal Humphries, and Aubrey Leatham implanted the first 'indwelling' pacemaker in the UK in a 65-year-old man with repeated Stokes-Adams attacks due to complete heart block. The nickel-cadmium 'accumulator', which powered the pacemaker, had to be recharged once a week.

William Osler: slow pulse, stokes-adams disease, and sudden death in families.

In 1903, William Osler, then at Johns Hopkins University, published "On the So-Called Stokes-Adams Disease (Slow Pulse with Syncopal Attacks, etc.)" in The Lancet, classifying a syndrome in evolution. There are thinly disguised references to a brother and to himself in the article, suggesting that Osler was concerned about a family and personal predisposition. Osler's decision to move to Oxford was triggered in part by his personal concerns about cardiac disease. Then, in 1909, Osler contributed a chapter on Stokes-Adams disease to Allbutt and Rolleston's A System of Medicine, complemented by a brilliant pathologic section by the renowned anatomist-morphologist, Arthur Keith. Osler's original contributions involved his emphasis on the importance of family history, his careful clinical and natural history observations, and his recognition of the familial occurrence of bradycardia, Stokes-Adams disease, sudden death, and cardiomyopathy.

Eponymous doctors associated with Edinburgh, Part 2--David Bruce, John Cheyne, William Stokes, Alexander Monro Secundus, Joseph Gamgee.

This, the second in a three-paper series with this title, looks at famous doctors who trained in Edinburgh and their eponyms. With one possible exception, none seems to have sought the eponym, nor awarded it to themselves, nor used it for self-promotion. Unlike those in the first paper, all eponyms in this paper are still in use and their brevity is in contrast to the lengthy description needed if the eponym is not used. Examples are Cheyne-Stokes respiration, Stokes-Adam attacks, Brucellosis and Gamgee dressing. Monro Secundus is included because of his vehement defence of his professional reputation and research findings when he suspected others of trying to detract credit from him, a characteristic seldom reported for the others.