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Biomedical subjects

J Pearn

Publications and source records attributed to J Pearn.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed2000

Poliomyelitis: the role of the military in the final campaign.

Poliomyelitis remains a disease of significance to military medicine. The medical branches of the military of many nations have much to contribute in the final 4 years of the campaign to eradicate poliomyelitis from the world. The service requirements of immunization remain a logistic charge on the defense health services of all nations. Risks to unimmunized troops remain current in the poliomyelitis endemic regions of Europe, Asia, and Africa; and recent epidemics in India, West Africa, and Albania have involved military personnel in containment programs. The 20th century has seen global attempts to eradicate seven diseases--hookworm, yellow fever, yaws, malaria, smallpox, dracunculiasis, and poliomyelitis. The first four of these were total failures, in spite of huge military logistic resources, especially in the case of yellow fever and malaria. But the global eradication of smallpox, achieved in 1979, led to the World Health Organization's Declaration of a Smallpox-Free World in 1980. Its success ranks as one of the greatest achievements in the history of medicine. Lessons learned and encouragement derived from that program led to the institution of the Poliomyelitis Global Eradication Program in 1988. Following the Declaration of a Polio-Free America, the target date for the Declaration of a Poliomyelitis-Free World has been set for 2004. Regional surveillance programs use the quality-control portal of acute flaccid paralysis to monitor every potential clinical case of acute poliomyelitis. In the Western Pacific region, a region of 22 countries with a recent history of significant operational deployments, 15 countries had experienced endemic poliomyelitis before 1990. In this region, the last case of poliomyelitis (in Cambodia) was reported in March 1997. Such audit, together with massive point vaccination programs, many using massive military support, conducted since 1997 hold realistic promise that the world may be declared poliomyelitis-free by 2004. Poliomyelitis will be more difficult to eradicate than smallpox; and the current world campaign will succeed only with the logistic and professional input of the military of many nations.

Communicable Disease Control↗
PubMed2000

Patera in Aere. Symbols of the goddess of health on coins and medals.

The numismatic record, coins and medals, portrays many of the symbols of health. The oldest symbol which portrays health, as a positive state of physical well-being, is the patera. First associated with Hygeia, it extended to that of the Roman Goddess of Health, Salus, imparting to the concept of health the additional themes of safety and security. Ancient and modern coins and medals, which portray the patera, are included in this account.

Greece, Ancient↗
PubMed1999

Paediatrica philatelica.

The world's nations issue postage stamps with themes that their governments regard as being of significant national and international importance. The philatelic record, thus, parallels each nation's history, its themes of contemporary pride and its aspirations for the future. As children's health is one of the most important of all issues of public and political life, it is not surprising that paediatricians are permanently commemorated in many of the world's postage stamps. Hippocrates is portrayed on many of the world's stamps, as are children's illnesses and children's doctors. Paediatricians are portrayed on stamps from New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Australia, the United States of America, the nations of Africa, Europe and the United Nations. Themes permanently recorded in the philatelic record encompass every discipline within paediatrics, including portraits of Dr Virginia Apgar (of the Apgar score), Dr Truby King (New Zealand) who was responsible for the introduction of universal postnatal nursing visits for every child, and Dr Janusz Korczak (1879-1942), the Polish paediatrician who gave his life at Treblinka in World War II in order that his child patients might not die alone. The paediatric philatelic record is thus an international repository of the chronology of child care.

Child↗
PubMed1999

Facial burns in children: a series analysis with implications for resuscitation and forensic odontology.

This study comprises a continuous (1981-1995) unselected series of all children who died from thermal injuries in the State of Queensland, Australia. One hundred and six children, so identified, died from incineration (35 per cent), respiratory burns with smoke or carbon monoxide inhalation (33 per cent), body surface area burns comprising greater than 60 per cent (9 per cent) and electrocution (20 per cent). The burn fatality rate was 0.98 per hundred thousand children (0-14 years) per year, with no secular trend and, specifically, no reduction in the annual rate of such fatalities. Eighty-two children (49 males) had concomitant facial injuries, both thermal and nonthermal; of whom 55 per cent were under the age of five years. Sixty (73 per cent) child burn victims died in house fires. Forensic odontology is important in confirming the age of such victims in single incinerations but is of limited value when larger numbers of children are incinerated, because of the relative lack of dental restorations in the infant and pre-school age group. Of the 82 children with facial and airway injuries, 12 per cent had only mild or superficial facial damage and only seven (8 per cent) were alive or resuscitable at the time of rescue from the conflagration or burning injury. child deaths from burns contributed an annual loss rate of 506 years of potential life lost (YPLL) in a population of 3 million of whom 21.5 per cent were children under the age of 15 years. Airway management and resuscitation, in the context of managing surviving burn victims of any age with facial injuries, pose special difficulties. Inhalational burns (smoke and the gases of conflagration) result in a mortality greater than 60 per cent. Although 81 per cent of children showed evidence of airway obstruction, analysis of current data indicates that a maximum of 8 per cent could have survived with airway maintenance and protection. Inhalational burns (to both upper and lower airways) grossly reduce survivability. Primary prevention would seem vital and thus remains a major challenge to reduce the incidence of such deaths. Some strategies include advocacy to promote the compulsory installation of smoke alarms, family drills to practise escape and the teaching of 'first aid for all'

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

Boxing, youth and children.

Boxing remains a popular spectator sport, success in which is achieved by the promotion of boxing in the childhood years. Despite the failure to ban boxing generally, there remains the realistic expectation that organised boxing by children below the age of consent (appropriately 16 years) is still achievable. There are two reasons for banning children under the age of 16 years from boxing. The first is that children have little awareness of risk, specifically the risk of chronic encephalopathy, which develops only after a lag period measured in decades or more. The second is that there is no place in contemporary society for a youth sport which has, as its primary goal, the infliction of acute brain damage on an opponent. This paper analyses the medical and ethico-social issues implicit in this subject. Boxing, in historical perspective, has been an altruistic amateur sport for boys and male youths, and has a proud tradition. But in the context of social evolution, and in current perspective to prevent exploitation of underprivileged youths, the time has come for an absolute ban on underage boxing. Such is achievable even if adult boxing remains an Olympic and television sport for some time to come.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

Panis populi--bread and public health in Australia.

The 'standard loaf, 680 gm, white, supermarket-purchased' as expressed in the Consumer Price Index, is but the basic form of bread sold to the Australian public. In the public health context, three themes have been intimately associated with bread--quality control, price control and bread used as a vehicle for supplementary nutritive agents important in preventive medicine. Price control, through assizing, has been a feature of bread marketing in western communities for seven centuries; and bread remains the last item on which price control (although seldom enforced) exists in Australia. Quality control, for public health, is determined both by regulation and by the force of increasingly literate consumers, of whom women occupy the most important determinant. From the preventive medicine point of view, important themes in bread quality, such as its use to reduce laxative sales on the one hand and to reduce the demographic incidence of colonic cancer on the other, remains outside formal regulation. Australia is a relatively conservative nation in the context of nutritional additives. It was not until 1953 that the National Health and Medical Research Council approved the addition of extra B vitamins to bread. Currently, folic acid is added as a discretion to selected high-premium breakfast cereals in Australia in one attempt to reduce the incidence to neural tube defects. The addition of such ingredients to bread remains an unrealised, but potentially important aspect of preventive medicine in Australia.

Australia↗
PubMed1997

Nom et lumière: enlightenment through nomenclature (the 1996 Kenneth F. Russell Memorial Lecture).

The classification of living things is both an acknowledgement of biological relationships and an identification of their differences. When Linnaeus, in 1735, published Systema Naturae, he set in place a system of biological classification that saw its apogee in the invention of binomial nomenclature: the description of every living thing being embodied simply in two names, (i.e. a genus and the species within it). Linnaeus built on the work of scientific forebears, of whom Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712) was one of the most influential. Grew was a surgeon-physician whose passionate interest was plant anatomy; his work led to the discovery and documentation of sexual dimorphism in plants. Grew's life and works are a witness to that philosophy which views nature as a continuum, a broad holistic entity in which discoveries in one biological field have ramifications in other areas. Grew allowed his scientific curiosity full rein, manifested the courage to publish his work and possessed the self-discipline to stand by the audit of his peers. Modern biological research and contemporary clinical practice owes much to the enlightenment engendered by the classification and nomenclature that developed from his work.

Anatomy↗
PubMed1996

War zone paediatrics in Rwanda.

Children are particularly vulnerable to injury and death in two types of 20th century conflicts; terrorist attack and civil war. This account describes some first-hand experiences of the aftermath of the Rwandan Civil War of 1994. Events leading to the conflict are described, eye witness accounts of child trauma during the war are recorded and the medical problems (currently ongoing) affecting children are described. Over a period of 3 months from April to June 1994, between half and one million Rwandese, a significant proportion of them women and children, were murdered in brutal hand-to-hand killing, dying from close-quarter gunshot and machete slaughter. Nearly half of the population became refugees in neighbouring countries or displaced persons in their own land. UNAMIR II, the United Nations Emergency Humanitarian Response, grew to some 7000 persons by May 1995. Medical aid was provided by emergency medical contingents from the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, the latter through its Australian Medical Support Force, providing the definitive emergency medical infrastructure from August 1994. In the consequent post-war civil and social disruption, children suffered from burns, cholera and from motor vehicle trauma. Ongoing landmine blasts continue to affect children and adolescents especially. A new International humanitarian code to build a time-expiry device into landmines and other similar ordinance is urgently required as the post-conflict ongoing disasters in Rwanda, Afghanistan and Cambodia illustrate. Current problems affecting children include an increasing risk of HIV infection, trauma and the special humanitarian needs of thousands of orphans.

Child↗