ADDENDA
From the archives: Principled sacrifice?
IMAGE COURTESY OF SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
A CLASH between personal views and a professional duty of care is nothing new – in fact it’s as old as Hippocrates. Consider a newspaper report from 30 October, 1924, announcing the acquittal of Dr Walter Robert Hadwen on charges of manslaughter before the Gloucester Assize Court. Hadwen was president of the British Union
for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) and an active campaigner against vaccination, being a firm disbeliever in the germ theory of disease. The case centred on his treatment of a young girl named Nellie Burnham. She had presented with signs of diphtheria but Dr Hadwen had insisted on a diagnosis of lobar pneumonia “consequent upon a chill which the child caught in going down in her bare feet and night dress to get water”. The accusation was that he must have been aware that
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diphtheria was the most reasonable diagnosis given her symptoms but that he refused to administer diphtheria anti-toxin - first on the grounds that he did not hold with the “theory” that diphtheria was caused by a bacillus. “I look upon it as the result of disease and not as its cause,” he said. Second as an anti-vivisectionist he was vehemently
opposed to the manufacture of diphtheria anti-toxin which involved the inoculation of horses with the diphtheria toxin and their subsequent bleeding to obtain the antibody-containing serum.
Nellie Burnham did not improve with Hadwen’s prescribed 9 10 11 12 13 14 17 18 19 20 15 16 21 22
treatment and another doctor was called in but by then it was too late to save the girl. It also transpired that this doctor had been one of Hadwen’s bitter opponents in the press. This resulted in Hadwen being arrested and charged with manslaughter in the death of the child. In court the prosecution alleged that the doctor, as a result of his zeal, had “shut his eyes to the symptoms” and that this fell within the range of criminal neglect. But the presiding judge in the case Mr Justice Lush disagreed. While accepting that negligence might be proved in civil court he said: “Unless the negligence was of so gross a character as to make one say it was a wicked negligence it could not amount to manslaughter.” Hadwen’s acquittal in the court was greeted with rousing cheers and outside he was so mobbed by the press and supporters he could not reach his car. He announced: “I feel the triumph the greater because, although I had so many medical men pitted against me, the jury have given their verdict solely upon my own evidence.” “I can only say that conscience as far as I understand it, is
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ACROSS 2. Inability to move (9) 8. Encases the testes (7)
9. Major _____, part of the kidney (5)
10. Enzyme immunoassay (acronym) (5)
11. Out of place, as in pregnancy (7)
13. Victorian geologist (6) 15. Infirm toilet (6)
18. Complex polysaccharide antithrombotic (7)
20. Tooth (5) 21. Cardiac muscle (5) 22. Relating to spasms (7) 23. Over-the-counter laxative (9)
DOWN 1. Pertaining to the military (7) 2. Greek bread (5) 3. Butted (6) 4. Found person (7) 5. Orchid flour (5) 6. Gender (3) 7. Revered (8) 12. Legal agreement (8) 14. Irregular (7) 16. Colour range (7) 17. As new (6) 19. Internal images (1-4)
20. Related species of acacia or wattle (5)
21. Stove top (3)
See answers online at
www.mddus.com. Go to the Notice Board page under News and Events.
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that principle implanted in man which leads him to decide before God what is right and what is wrong. Therefore for me to give anything which I believe to be wrong would militate against my conscience as before God.” Just what a GMC panel would make of that today is perhaps without doubt.
Object obscura: Roman vaginal speculum
PHOTOGRAPH: SCIENCE & SOCIETY
THIS bronze vaginal speculum was found in the Lebanon and dates to 100 BC-400 AD. It shows the relatively sophisticated instruments that were in use in Roman medicine. The earliest major work on the diseases of women was written in Roman times, about 100 AD.
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