Esquirol-Séguin-Down Syndrome Associated with Atrial Septal Defect plus Tricuspid Regurgitation

Background: Esquirol-Séguin-Down syndrome (Trisomy 21) was first described by Jean-Etienne Dominique Esquirol in 1838 and later by Edouard Séguin in 1846. Thereafter, in 1862, John Langdon Down, a British physician emphasized that the syndrome is a distinct form of mental retardation. Congenital cardiac defects are observed in more than one third of the patients with Esquirol-Séguin-Down syndrome, and in approximately 80% these cardiac defects are atrioventricular septal defect or ventricular septal defect with the former being more common. The association of Esquirol-Séguin-Down syndrome with atrial septal defect plus tricuspid regurgitation has been rarely reported. The aim of this paper is to report the rare association of Esquirol-Séguin-Down syndrome with atrial septal defect plus tricuspid regurgitation. Patients and methods: Two and half years old boy with Esquirol-Séguin-Down syndrome, developmental delay and abnormal echocardiography was studied, and the recent relevant literatures were reviewed. Results: Dysmorphic facial features included hypertelorism, oblique palpebral fissures, epicanthic folds, depressed nasal bridge and low set ears. Echocardiography showed atrial septal defect with tricuspid regurgitation. Conclusion: This paper reports the first case of Esquirol-Séguin-Down syndrome in Iraq associated with atrial septal defect plus tricuspid regurgitation.

Rubella, German Measles

Rubella is caused by an RNA virus. Infection results mostly in few or no symptoms. Viremia and viral shedding start before a rash may be seen. German physicians were probably the first to describe rubella in the early 19th century, hence the name "German measles". A British physician reported an outbreak in a boys’ school in India in 1841. He used the word rubella, "little red", a Latin diminutive from ruber (red). Rubella is often indistinguishable from other viral exanthematous diseases, but palpable posterior auricular and suboccipital lymph nodes are almost pathognomonic. Rubella infection during pregnancy may result in cataract, heart disease and deafness in an infant, forming the key triad defining “congenital rubella syndrome”, CRS. Also, mental retardation is common. After birth, rubella is a mild disease with rare complications only. There is no treatment for rubella or CRS, but vaccination programs usually with MMR-vaccine maintaining high vaccine uptake over time can virtually eliminate rubella.

Labrador Emergencies and St. Anthony Institutional Care: Medical Cases of Donald McI. Johnson for the Grenfell Association, 1928–29

In contemporaneous and retrospective publications, British physician Donald McI. Johnson wrote about medical cases in 1928–29 for the organization founded by Wilfred Grenfell in Newfoundland and Labrador. The availability of one physician’s cases in published and institutional forms allows consideration of discursive representations of patients for general and clinical readers in the two decades of Johnson’s writing. This study places these cases within the context of Johnson’s medical background and his escape to rural practice in a remote locale, one that emphasized emergency operations in Labrador and hospital care in the organization’s main hospital in St. Anthony. In this way, it broadens knowledge of medical care provided by visiting physicians and considers ways in which such physicians represented local patients in publications for the general reader. Although it determines that Johnson was unique, it indicates the value of the fuller study of publications by other physicians associated with the Grenfell organization.

Future perspectives on swine viral vaccines: where are we headed?

Deliberate infection of humans with smallpox, also known as variolation, was a common practice in Asia and dates back to the fifteenth century. The world’s first human vaccination was administered in 1796 by Edward Jenner, a British physician. One of the first pig vaccines, which targeted the bacterium Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae, was introduced in 1883 in France by Louis Pasteur. Since then vaccination has become an essential part of pig production, and viral vaccines in particular are essential tools for pig producers and veterinarians to manage pig herd health. Traditionally, viral vaccines for pigs are either based on attenuated-live virus strains or inactivated viral antigens. With the advent of genomic sequencing and molecular engineering, novel vaccine strategies and tools, including subunit and nucleic acid vaccines, became available and are being increasingly used in pigs. This review aims to summarize recent trends and technologies available for the production and use of vaccines targeting pig viruses.

George Chance and Frank Holdsworth: Understanding Spinal Instability and the Evolution of Modern Spine Injury Classification Systems

The concept of spinal cord injury has existed since the earliest human civilizations, with the earliest documented cases dating back to 3000 BC under the Egyptian Empire. Howevr, an understanding of this field developed slowly, with real advancements not emerging until the 20th century. Technological advancements including the dawn of modern warfare producing mass human casualties instigated revolutionary advancement in the field of spine injury and its management. Spine surgeons today encounter “Chance” and “Holdsworth” fractures commonly; however, neurosurgical literature has not explored the history of these physicians and their groundbreaking contributions to the modern understanding of spine injury. A literature search using a historical database, Cochrane, Google Scholar, and PubMed was performed. As needed, hospitals and native universities were contacted to add their original contributions to the literature. George Quentin Chance, a Manchester-based British physician, is well known to many as an eminent radiologist of his time who described the eponymous fracture in 1948. Sir Frank Wild Holdsworth (1904-1969), a renowned British orthopedic surgeon who laid a solid foundation for rehabilitation of spinal injuries under the aegis of the Miners' Welfare Commission, described in detail the management of thoraco-lumbar junctional rotational fracture. The work of these 2 men laid the foundation for today's understanding of spinal instability, which is central to modern spine injury classification and management algorithms. This historical vignette will explore the academic legacies of Sir Frank Wild Holdsworth and George Quentin Chance, and the evolution of spinal instability and spine injury classification systems that ensued from their work.

Incisions and Inscriptions

This chapter follows the dead body as it moved out of the public spaces of vernacular forensics and into the sequestered space of medicolegal science, the morgue. It attends to the efforts of the Siamese state to implement medicolegal science in the form of autopsies (incisions) capable of producing forms of documentary evidence (inscriptions) that foreign consular courts would recognize in the prosecution of foreign residents accused of having harmed Siamese subjects. Engaging with science studies scholarship on the work of mediation, the chapter focuses on the collaborative work of Dr. P. A. Nightingale, a British physician in the employ of the Siamese state, and Mo (Dr.) Meng Yim, his Sino-Thai assistant and translator. It discovers in the documentary fruits of their collaborative labor, the death certificate, a “boundary object” capable of entertaining discordant forms of knowledge. It became a testament to the emergence of a new form of necropolitics in Siam.

The Innovated “Closed Chest Drainage System” of William Smoult Playfair (1871)

During the 19th century, the addition of the water-seal system to a closed chest drain was a major turning point in the history of thoracic surgery. German physician Gotthard Bülau seems to have invented and used his own closed chest drainage device with a liquid-seal system in 1875, and published it in the year 1891. But, in 1871, British physician William Smoult Playfair seems to have thought of the subaqueous drainage and used such drainage to treat the thoracic empyema in children. The British physician stresses in his texts the effectiveness of his method of fully draining the thoracic empyemas while simultaneously preventing air from entering the pleural cavity. An appropriate honor must be attributed to Playfair, who used a subaqueous chest drainage system and appears to be the first to publish such a method.

Angiogenesis in parkinson’s disease

In the present review, we provide a brief overview of studies on angiogenesis in Parkinson’s disease (PD). PD develops from the death of brain cells in a few restricted areas of the brain. The disease was first discovered and its symptoms documented in 1817 (Essay on the Shaking Palsy) by the British physician Dr. James Parkinson; the associated biochemical changes in the brain of patients were identified in the 1960s.

PROFESSOR NIL FEDOROVICH FILATOV (1847 - 1902) - PEDIATRIC-INNOVATOR, CLINICIAN AND TEACHERS (TO THE 170TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTHDAY)

The article contains the main milestones of life and career of professor Filatov. It was noted that during 25 years of scientific and teaching activity N.F. Filatov has made a significant contribution to the development of world Pediatrics. He is the author of over 70 scientific works, including “a Short textbook of pediatric diseases” (1893), aged 12 editions, and “Clinical lectures” (1900). His monograph “Lectures on acute infectious diseases” (1885) through 4 editions, “Semiotics and diagnosis of childhood diseases” (1890) - 9 editions, it is translated into German, Czech, Italian, Hungarian and French. In the monographs and manuals N.F. Filatov studied many of pokoleniya-pediatricians. He described the infectious disease named Filatov scarlatinal rubella. She was later described by the British physician Duxom; one of the presently used names of the disease - a disease Filatov-Dukes. In the first edition of “Lectures on infectious diseases” N.F. Filatov described is not known until the time of infectious mononucleosis, which he called idiopathic inflammation of the cervical lymphatic glands. The disease is now often called a disease Filatov. In 1895 N. F. Filatov, described an important diagnostic sign of measles is the appearance of catarrhal period of illness 1 - 2 days before appearance of rash spot grayish-white lesions on the mucosa of lips and cheeks. As was established later, this sign was first described by A.P. Belsky in 1890, then regardless of him. F. Filatov, and in 1896 Aplicom. In the literature, this symptom is known as spots Belsky-Filatova-Koplik. N.F. Filatov described the pathogenesis of some forms of edema syndrome in children, published works on prolonged afebrile forms of the flu. N. F. Filatov developed a clinical-physiological direction in Pediatrics. He created a large school of domestic pediatricians. Among his students were V.I. Molchanov and G.N. Speransky.