Notes and Jottings

The year 2009 is the 250th Anniversary of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, the 200th Anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. ‘Joseph Hooker: one of Charles Darwin's best friends’ (Berry RJ. Curtis' Botanical Magazine 2009;26:142–174) discusses the relationship of these friends and colleagues: ‘Hooker played a significant part in the development and refining of Darwin's evolutionary thinking’. Hooker obtained a medical diploma from Edinburgh on 5 May 1839 after less than a year's study but never practised. He sailed to the Antarctic in September 1839 on an almost four-year global circumnavigation on HMS Erebus and took with him a proof copy of Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. In December 1843 Darwin wrote to Hooker ‘I think I have found out (here's presumption?) a simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends’. Joseph Hooker later became director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew from 1865 to 1885, following his father Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865) who had taken up the first such post in 1841.

Robert Richardson has written The Apocalypse of Napoleon Bonaparte His Last Years from Waterloo to St Helena – A Medical Biography (ISBN 978-1-84689-063-5) published by Quiller of Shrewsbury at a cost of £20. This book is beautifully produced with colour illustrations and text that is easy to read. The index of personal names is helpful as are the appendices and notes. The story from 1815 to Napoleon's birth on 5 May 1821 is explored with details of the post mortem and an image of the empty tomb.

Dr Martin Howard has written Napoleon's Poisoned Chalice, The Emperor and his Doctors on St Helena, published by The History Press (ISBN 978-0-7524-48572). Napoleon arrived on St Helena in 1815 for imprisonment following the Battle of Waterloo. This book describes his time there, and his health and death. It is well-produced and easy to read, and fills a gap in the biography of Napoleon.

Clinical Geneticist Alan Emery in his Days & Works – A Life in Poetry has written ‘Choosing to write this life in poetry was deliberate because I could express personal thoughts and deeper feelings better this way. Readers will wish to know more; in relation to the exploration of Emery-Dreifuss Syndrome in 1966 the first stanza of the poem ‘Research Work’ reads:

Among the countless hospital notes,

And there were so very many,

He stumbled upon a single case

Of a rare but fascinating malady.

Musical Doctors by Jean Fogo Russell covers just what it says in encyclopaedic fashion with introductory chapters on composers, instrumentalists, Nobel Prize winners and others. Printed and bound in Australia (ISBN 0-957-8637-0-5) the book covers doctors over several centuries. It is a useful reference work but it would be good to see portraits and illustrations to enhance the text.

Spelling, layout, grammar and syntax challenge writers and editors. Many curious sounding words do not appear in standard dictionaries so the publication (ISBN 978-0-199-54515-5) by Oxford University Press, entitled New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors, The Essential A-Z Style Guide for Scientists would be very helpful in this regard.

The Royal Society of Medicine Press publishes many biographies and the most recent is A Physician in Spite of Himself one of the series of Lives in Medicine and this by DW Carmalt Jones. He was physician to the Westminster Hospital and Dean of the medical school, a physician in the Royal Army Medical Corps and held a chair at Otago University. This series is well produced and each volume very readable.