ROYAL MEDICAL AND CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY. Tuesday, April 10th, 1838.

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E G Jacoby: A Brief Historiography of New Zealand Demography

Dr "Peter" Jacoby can legitimately be seen as the "founding father" of modern New Zealand demography. It was for this reason that the Population Association of New Zealand, with his widow's permission, have used his name for its student prize. Parenthetically, it can be noted here that the Goethe Society independently set up a Jacoby Prize -- I only learnt about this a year or so ago. In sum then, two professional bodies have recognised the contribution of Dr Jacoby to New Zealand Scholarship. Beyond this, representatives of the state library in the Landt where he had studied -- Schelswig -- came to New Zealand to collect the papers of this notable "native son" for their archives

Premature thoughts on writing disorders

Three papers appeared in the 19th century describing the dissociation between speech and writing: Marce (1856), Ogle (1867) and Pitres (1884). An account of the convincing evidence of dissociations put forward in these papers is presented. Three explanations are proposed as to the reason why the observations reported by these authors were overlooked or rejected by their contemporaries, namely: (a) in the first half of the century it seems that very little knowledge of the processes underlying writing (as opposed to speech) was available, (b) the debates focussed on the independence of speech versus motor control and language versus the intellect, (c) parallelisms between phylogeny, ontogeny and aphasia impeded the application of the principle of double dissociations, including the dissociations between speech and writing. It is argued that this phenomenon in the history of aphasia is best captured by the concept of prematurity in scientific discovery proposed by Stent (1972, 2003)

The 'idioglossia' cases of the 1890s and the clinical investigation and treatment of developmental language impairment

The early history of developmental language impairment in late 19th century Britain is considered through the critical examination of three papers appearing in 1891 by Hadden, Golding-Bird and Hale White, and Taylor. They represent innovative investigations of child language disorders whose themes and concerns are resonant today. The term ‘idioglossia’ was coined to identify this new impairment and reflected the belief by some that these children spoke an invented language. Rather than viewing these children as having some constitutional deficiency, these 19th century physicians were novel in insisting that children with language impairments merited extensive clinical investigation and treatment. Their case descriptions and the subsequent debates regarding classification and prognosis are reviewed. Further consideration is given to how these cases led to questioning the relation between language and speech and other aspects of child development and disorder. Reflection on the early sources of clinical categories provides a new perspective on our current formulations for variation in developmental language trajectories

The third man: Robert Dunn’s (1799-1877) contribution to aphasia research in mid 19th century England

Throughout his medical career, Robert Dunn (1799-1877) published a number of clinical cases with post-mortem reports involving acquired language disorders, the first noted in 1842. He developed a physiologically informed approach to psychological function during the 1850s along with a group of notable colleagues Benjamin Collins Brodie, Henry Holland, Thomas Laycock, John Daniel Morell, and Daniel Noble. He was also active in ethnographic research on human origins and racial diversity. As such, Dunn represents an interesting player in the developing fields of neurology, psychology, and anthropology in England in the latter part of the 19th century. These various strands converged at the meeting of the British Association of the Advancement of Science in 1868, where Dunn shared the program of lectures on the cutting edge topic of aphasia with Paul Broca (1824-1880) and John Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911). Dunn’s ideas developed over a longer time-frame than his younger colleagues and as such represent a unique blending of concepts from the earlier work of Franz Josef Gall (1758-1828) and Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud (1798-1881) to the perspectives on language organization in the brain developed after 1861

Dispersing the Mists: An Experimental History of Medicine Study into the Quality of Volatile Inhalations

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version. The final publication is available from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Publishers at https://doi.org/10.1089/jamp.2016.1357.Background: Dr. Nelson's Improved Inhaler was first marketed with an advertisement in The Lancet in 1865. Revolutionary at the time for its ease of use and patient-friendliness, the inhaler is still in use for self-treatment by many all over the world. On the occasion of its 150th anniversary, this study reports an experimental historical medicine approach to identify evidence for the quality of vapor inhalers. Methods: Through accessing reviews of the device's use by the contemporary medical establishment, it was established that Dr. Nelson's Inhaler enjoyed a reputation of quality and efficacy among reputable physicians generating empirical evidence of clinical performance. There was a general absence of product performance tests during this period. Therefore, modern inhalation performance testing was applied to test the aerosol delivery performance for Friars' Balsam, and its key chemical constituent, benzoic acid (BA). Results: A respirable dose of 59.9 ± 9.0 μg of BA was aerosolized in a 10 minutes period from a dose of 3.3 mL Friars' Balsam (equivalent to 35.1 ± 0.2 mg of BA) in 375 mL of steaming water using the glass twin stage impinger at a flow rate of 60 L·min−1. The respirable dose from a standardized aqueous BA inhalation formulation increased from 115.9 ± 10.6 to 200.2 ± 19.9 μg by increasing the simulated inhalation period from 5 to 10 minutes. When tested with a simulated inhalation maneuver (500 mL tidal volume, 13 minutes−1 respiration rate, 1:2 inspiratory:expiratory ratio) a respirable dose of 112.8 ± 40.3 μg was produced. Conclusions: This work has highlighted the potential for aerosol drug delivery using steam inhalers that are popular with patients. Physicians should therefore be aware of the potential for lung dosing with irritants when patients self-medicate using the Nelson Inhaler with vaporizing formulations such as Friars' Balsam.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio