Sir James Mackenzie

Abstract

Based on a Dissertation read before the Royal Medical Society on Friday, 21st October 1960

Picture, if you can, a dark grim valley of smoke and chimneys, outlined by a ring of light appearing over the hills. In the streets a clatter of horses' hooves and wooden clogs. In a dingy room the oft repeated scene of a girl in labour surrounded by old women in shawls. The ubiquitous, anxious husband is being solemnly reassured by the confident young doctor newly fledged from Edinburgh University. Her grip tightens on his hand as another instalment of pain is to be paid. Suddenly it is limp and tranquillity passes over her sweating brow. Sudden cardiac failure-the year 1880-and the realisation by that doctor in Burnley, James Mackenzie, that nothing was known about cardiac disease which might have warned him of such an outcome.