Search

Guillotines from Joseph‑Ignace Guillotin to Greenfield Sluder

Joseph‑Ignace Guillotin. The politician and physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814) was so disgusted by brutal head and shoulder injuries sustained in ‘failed attempts’ by drunken axe-wielding executioners during the French Revolution that he and surgeon Antoine Louis (1723-1792) advocated not only...

Down with the nose, down with it flat

In Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, Timon urges prostitutes to spread syphilis throughout Athens. He implores the whores, Phrynia and Timandra, to: Consumptions* sow In hollow bones of man; strike their sharp shins,And mar men’s spurring*. Crack the lawyer’s voice**, That...

OBITUARY: Prof Shanmugam Kameswaran (1923-2021)

Professor Shanmugam Kameswaran was born in 1923 and did his MBBS and MS at Madras Medical College, India, under PV Cherian who later became the Governor of Maharashtra, India. He worked as his assistant and left for the UK in...

History of innovation in ENT

Innovation seems to have been in the strapline of every meeting, conference and course for the last few years. You would be forgiven for thinking it is a new a concept, but as Neil Weir beautifully details, innovation has been...

In conversation with Brian Westerberg and Fred Kozak

Dr Osler caught up with friends and colleagues, Dr Brian Westerberg, current IFOS Vice-President and IFOS 2021 World Congress President, and Dr Frederick Kozak, IFOS 2021 World Congress Vice-President and Scientific Committee Chair, to talk about their vision for the...

The father of the history of otology

This year marks the centenary of the death of Adam Politzer (1835-1920). He has been described as the Father of Otology [1] and was certainly the most influential person in otology in the latter half of the 19th century [2]....

From Hippocrates to COVID-19: sniffing out the disease

The ancient Greek physician, Hippocrates, used the ‘art of smell’ to diagnose diseases around 400BC. He also formulated miasmatic theory, which posited that disease is caused by bad smells. Bad air was strongly believed by many physicians to be the...

OBITUARY: Professor Wolfgang Steiner (1942–2024)

It is with great sadness that we must inform all our readers of the passing of the wonderful Professor Dr Wolfgang Steiner, the truly indomitable, passionate Professor of Otolaryngology of the Medical Faculty of Gottingen, Germany, from 1986–2007. Wolfgang died...