05 October, 2011

One hundred years ago

1911 address by Sir William Osler:


Session 1911-12 LXIX
Meeting No.1.

The Society met in the Faculty Hall, 242 St. Vincent St. on Thurs. Oct. 5th at 8.30p.m., the President in the chair.

Business
Sir William Osler, Baronet, the Honorary President, delivered a most instructive address on "The advantages and disadvantages of a High Blood Pressure". In his opening remarks he referred in detail to the similarity between the various facts of the circulation of the blood and the various facts on the irrigation by the hills of the surrounding country. He then divided into three groups patients with high blood pressure - viz: firstly, those with high blood pressure, no arterio-sclerosis, no renal changes; secondly, those with high blood pressure, arterio-sclerosis and no renal disease; thirdly those with all three. These groups were illustrated by typical cases. The address, which was not only most instructive but also very interesting, was listened to by a large audience of nearly 200,including several ladies. After Dr TK Munro had avowed a vote of thanks the lecturer gave as his parting word the advice "Don't have your blood pressure taken!" This was all the business.
HENRY L.G. LEASK

1. Transcript.
The above transcript was taken from the seventh minute book of the society, covering the period from 1910 to 1923.
In 1911 William Osler was Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, a post he had held since 1905. In the year he gave this talk, he founded the Postgraduate Medical Association, of which he was the first president, and was made a baronet in the Coronation Honours List for his contributions to the field of medicine.
Dr Henry Leask was president of the society from 1911-12. He had previously been auditor (1906-7), member of council (1909-10), and vice-president (1910-11).

Notes on transcription
To create this transcript, the original minute book was scanned, and the scans were then uploaded to the Internet Archive, and thence to Wikisource. Wikisource is part of the Wikimedia Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the spread of knowledge. The book’s contents will be held safely on their servers in perpetuity. On the Wikisource site it is possible to see the scan in closeup next to a text box, making the process of transcription easier and obviating the need to handle the books themselves. This particular page has been transcribed, but many more have not. Why not try it for yourself and help to archive our heritage? Go to www.wikisource.org. You will then be able to transcribe/proofread pages from our minute books.

13 May, 2011

From the archive: Minute Book 4 1890 - 1895

Book 4 covering the years 1890 to 1895 of the Society's Minutes is now available:

Minute Book 4

This is part of the scanning project to digitise the entire collection of Minute Books of the Society.

Scanned by Dr John Glen, processed and uploaded to the Internet Archive by Dr Jonathan Oates.

From the archive: Minute Book 1

A typewritten transcript of the first minutes of the Society covering the foundation and years 1844-1845 is now available:

Minute Book 1

This is part of the scanning project to digitise the entire collection of Minute Books of the Society.

Scanned by Dr John Glen, processed and uploaded to the Internet Archive by Dr Jonathan Oates.

12 May, 2011

From the archives: Minute Book 1 1844 - 1845

We are delighted to announce that Minute Book 1 in the form of a typewritten transcript has been digitised and is now available on the Internet Archive:

Minute Book 1

The book was scanned by Dr John Glen, and processed and uploaded by Dr Jonathan Oates. This forms part of our major project to scan and digitise the complete minute book archive of the Society.

We hope these will be of interest to members of the Society and to others with a penchant for medical history.

High resolution images are available to bona fide medical historians on application to the Secretary.

12 March, 2011

The Minute Book scanning project


Members who regularly attend our meetings will know that we have embarked on a project to digitise the Society's minute books. The paper volumes are currently archived at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and are only available for reading by special request. The scanning project will make our minute books available for anyone to read online or by download to a PC or mobile device.

In a future post, we will outline the technical details of the project. For now, however, we are pleased to release the first volume to be scanned.

Minute Book Volume 7 (1910-1923) - view online

or download a copy for viewing on your computer or mobile device. If you are not reading the book online, you will need to install a DjVu player to read the book.

Suitable DjVu players for:
iPhone/iPod Touch
PC/Mac

The reason for choosing the DjVu format rather than pdf is that it offers the best balance of image quality vs file size. To give an example, the full set of image files for Book 7 takes up around 11GB. This is compressed to 55MB using DjVu with minimal loss in quality. The equivalent pdf file would be about 700MB. We feel that this significantly reduced file size is sufficient justification for using a relatively uncommon format. DjVu is an open standard and will, we hope, stand the test of time. We plan to maintain copies of the minute books in other file formats (including pdf) just in case, but because of bandwidth constraints, may not make them available on the web.

12 February, 2011

Inebriated Scotland - listen to the lecture

Why has Scotland experienced such a profound growth in alcohol-related harm since 1991? The trend line is extraordinary and, Prof. Hanlon argues, must reflect broader societal issues.

This lecture was given to the Glasgow Southern Medical Society on Thursday 10th February 2011 at the Ebenezer Duncan Centre, Glasgow.

17 January, 2011

Flying the flag for Scotland - General Practitioners at the Deep End - listen again

Listen to the lecture given by Professor Graham Watt to the Glasgow Southern Medical Society at the Ebenezer Duncan Centre, Glasgow on Thursday 13th January 2011. Prof Watt discusses the work of Dr Julian Tudor Hart, and the importance of continuity of care and longterm relationships in primary care. The Deep End project involved the 100 most deprived practices in Scotland. Prof Graham Watt is Professor of General Practice at the University of Glasgow.