Welcome colleagues from Birmingham University Medical School

[Asher Kelman]

Birmingham is an industrial City north of London famous for its Orchestra with rising levels in a horseshoe shape!

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….so Sir Simon Rattle, the famed conductor would stand at the center with eye contact to all the musicians!

Furthermore, the sound of each instrument freely radiates, no longer obstructed and dampened by clothing of musicians in front.

This command positioning of instruments in free air space optimizes the acoustics of the concert hall.

Now to another call to game from Birmingham! This time in medicine:

An old woman, Mother Hutton”, wise in healing with herbs, brought potion-brewed from the foxglove plant to treat heart failure to Dr William Witheging.

That passing of an ancient remedy, (once polished by purifying the drug and learning to measure the correct dosage), revolutionized medicine to become the foundation for treatment of congestive cardiac failure with digitalis!

]When I was in Nigeria, I had the fascinating experience where a witchdoctor treated a patient with “jumping neck veins” with the juice of a flowering vine that grew around palm trees! I think that was also a digitalis drug!]

Allegedly, Withering first learned of the use of digitalis in treating "dropsy" (œdema) from "Mother Hutton", an old woman who practised as a folk herbalist in Shropshire, who used the plant as part of a polyherbal formulation containing over 20 different ingredients to successfully treat this condition.[13][14][15] Withering deduced that digitalis was the active ingredient in the formulation, and over the ensuing nine years he carefully tried out different preparations of various parts of the plant (collected in different seasons) documenting 156 cases where he had employed digitalis, and describing the effects and the best - and safest - way of using it. At least one of these cases was a patient for whom Erasmus Darwin had asked Withering for his second opinion. In January 1785 Darwin submitted a paper entitled "An Account of the Successful Use of Foxglove in Some Dropsies and in Pulmonary Consumption" to the College of Physicians in London;[16]
In the University, chemists put together the science of replacement fluids for person involved with trauma, burns, crush injuries war and allowed surgery to proceed despite loss of blood.(Wikipedia)

Other scientists did primary work on design of potential nuclear explosive device and contributed to the dawn of the nuclear age.

 

[Asher Kelman]

When, in the misty fall of 1960, I first approached in awe toward entrance of The Medical School, (to be my future and the payoff for a years of study, chemistry, physics and biology), from nowhere an archaic archaic skeletonized wooden fort structure came to view on my left.

The fort in 1959​

I changed direction and it drew me in. Embedded in an a neglected grass parkland, to the left, of the school ground was bizarre, unexplained threadbare wooden fort built on an earthen mound!

It turns out, that this was a reconstruction of a Roman Fort at this site, reimagined from the persistent foothold in the mound and the structure of Such forts in the Arch of Titus in Rome and in other ancient sites in England.

When I was last there 10 years ago a modern plaza had been built with two stripes of yellow bricks marking the North Gete (Porta Decumana in Latin) of Netchley Fort of 2000 years ago.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Then I entered that broad camel color brick wide building of The Medical School.

To the left of the grand entrance hall was a boxed in security booth with two security men who looked askance at my shoes and bid me, “Tidy up!” And had me straighten my tie. A female student was pulled over and told her heels were too sharp for the valuable protected floor of the monumental entrance hall! As if that wasn’t enough, he objected to her painted nails!

This was the start of a 5 year training to become a physician at one of the most respected major medical schools in the UK: but certainly not of the class of Oxford or Cambridge, LOL!

But we were in!

Asher

PS, When we visited again in 2015, I was stunned to see students saunter in with unkempt hair, torn jeans, girls with very short shorts, flip flops and long painted nails. It was if the vandals were coming to sack Rome!