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The History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group (HoMBRG) is an academic organisation specialising in recording and publishing the
oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people wh ...
of twentieth and twenty-first century
biomedicine Biomedicine (also referred to as Western medicine, mainstream medicine or conventional medicine)
. It was established in 1990 as the Wellcome Trust's History of Twentieth Century Medicine Group, and reconstituted in October 2010 as part of the School of History at
Queen Mary University of London , mottoeng = With united powers , established = 1785 – The London Hospital Medical College1843 – St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College1882 – Westfield College1887 – East London College/Queen Mary College , type = Public researc ...
.


History

The project originated as The
Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...
's History of Twentieth Century Medicine Group, and later functioned as the Academic Unit of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. It was originally established at the Royal College of Physicians in 1990 and comprised Sir
Christopher Booth Sir Christopher Charles Booth (22 June 1924 – 13 July 2012) was an English clinician and medical historian, characterised as "one of the great characters of British medicine". Booth was born in 1924 in Farnham, Surrey. His father Lionel ...
(the Harveian Librarian) and Professor
Tilli Tansey Elizabeth Matilda Tansey (known as Tilli) is an Emerita Professor of the history of medicine and former neurochemist, best known for her role in the Wellcome Trust's witness seminars. She previously worked at Queen Mary University of London ( ...
. Its purpose was to devise ways of stimulating historians, scientists & clinicians to discuss, preserve and write the history of recent biomedicine. The Group's activities were originally overseen by a Programme Committee, which included professional historians of medicine, practising scientists and clinicians. From 2000 to 2010 it was a constituent part of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. In October 2010 it moved to the School of History, Queen Mary's University, London. In 2011 the Group received a Strategic Award from the Wellcome Trust to embark upon a new project, "Makers of Modern Biomedicine".


Outputs

An archive of oral and written history, plus videoed interviews, has been compiled by the HoMBRG and consists of three projects: Witness Seminars, Today's Neuroscience, Tomorrow's History and SAD at 30. All material and documentation related to the project is deposited with the Wellcome Library. The resultant publications are open access, and made freely available online via the HoMBRG website, a partnership with the
Medical Heritage Library The Medical Heritage Library (MHL) is a digital curation collaborative among several medical libraries which promotes free and open access to quality historical resources in medicine. The MHL is currently digitizing books and journals and is worki ...
, and iTunes. The topics covered by the archive fall broadly into five themes:
clinical genetics Medical genetics is the branch tics in that human genetics is a field of scientific research that may or may not apply to medicine, while medical genetics refers to the application of genetics to medical care. For example, research on the caus ...
,
neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...
, global health and
infectious diseases An infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable dise ...
,
medical technologies Health technology is defined by the World Health Organization as the "application of organized knowledge and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures, and systems developed to solve a health problem and improve quality of liv ...
and ethics of research and practice. Resources from the archive are online at The History of Modern Biomedicine Archive and the internet archive


Today's Neuroscience, Tomorrow's History

The Group's 'Today's Neuroscience, Tomorrow's History' initiative (2006–2008) was funded by a Wellcome Trust Public Engagement grant. It recorded interviews on three themes,
neuropharmacology Neuropharmacology is the study of how drugs affect function in the nervous system, and the neural mechanisms through which they influence behavior. There are two main branches of neuropharmacology: behavioral and molecular. Behavioral neuropharmac ...
,
psychiatry Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry. Initial psych ...
/
neuropsychology Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology often focus on how injuries or illnesses of t ...
, and
neuroimaging Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Incre ...
, with twelve neuroscientists, including
Geoffrey Burnstock Geoffrey Burnstock (10 May 1929 – 2 June 2020) was a neurobiologist and President of the Autonomic Neuroscience Centre of the UCL Medical School. He is best known for coining the term purinergic signalling, which he discovered in the 19 ...
,
Salvador Moncada Sir Salvador Moncada, FRS, FRCP, FMedSci (born 3 December 1944) is a Honduran-British pharmacologist and professor. He is currently Research Domain Director for Cancer at the University of Manchester. In the past, he was the Research Directo ...
,
Michael Rutter Sir Michael Llewellyn Rutter CBE FRS FRCP FRCPsych FMedSci (15 August 1933 – 23 October 2021) was the first person to be appointed professor of child psychiatry in the United Kingdom. He has been described as the "father of child psychol ...
and
Uta Frith Dame Uta Frith (''née'' Aurnhammer; born 25 May 1941) is a German-British developmental psychologist at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. She has pioneered much of the current research into autism and dysl ...
.


The Witness Seminars

A series of
witness seminar A witness seminar is a method of collecting oral history material, whereby a number of people connected to an event or topic meet to share recollections of their involvement. The results may be recorded or videoed and an edited transcript published. ...
s began in 1993, with regular meetings being held, about four per year. These recorded the voices of those who have contributed, in diverse ways, to the development of modern
biomedicine Biomedicine (also referred to as Western medicine, mainstream medicine or conventional medicine)
, using oral history methodology. The aim is to make the series widely available for education, research and outreach purposes. The results are published online, with most edited transcripts appearing within 18 months. Witness Seminar participants have included Usama Abdulla, Thomas Brown, Professor Dugald Cameron, Professor Stuart Campbell, John Fleming, Professor John MacVicar, Professor Peter Wells, Dr
James Willocks James is a common English language surname and given name: *James (name), the typically masculine first name James * James (surname), various people with the last name James James or James City may also refer to: People * King James (disambiguat ...
, Sir Douglas Black, Sir John Gray, Sir
Raymond Hoffenberg Sir Raymond Hoffenberg KBE GCOB (16 March 1923 – 22 April 2007) was an endocrinologist who specialised in the study of the thyroid. Born in South Africa, he was forced to leave in 1968, and settled in the United Kingdom, where he was Presi ...
, Dr Sheila Howarth, Professor
Peter Lachmann Sir Peter Julius Lachmann (23 December 1931 – 26 December 2020) was a British immunologist, specialising in the study of the Complement system, complement system. He was emeritus Sheila Joan Smith Professor of Immunology at the University of ...
, Sir
Patrick Nairne Sir Patrick Dalmahoy Nairne, (15 August 1921 – 4 June 2013) was a senior British civil servant. His career started in the Admiralty. He eventually became Permanent Secretary of the Department of Health and Social Security and Master of St ...
, Professor Sir
Stanley Peart Sir William Stanley Peart (31 March 1922 – 14 March 2019) was a British medical doctor and clinical researcher who was first to demonstrate the release of noradrenaline after the stimulation of sympathetic nerves. One or more of the preceding s ...
, Dr Peter Williams and Professor Anthony PM Coxon. Each witness seminar is transcribed and published by HoMBRG. Recent volumes have been edited by E M Jones, C Overy and E M Tansey. there are 62 Volumes. Titles include ''The Development of Brain Banks'', ''Narrative Medicine''; ''Migraine''; ''The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles''; and ''The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC)'' The publication of these works are often referred to by specialists in their fields of medical practice. The first two volumes were reviewed in ''
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine The ''Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine'' is a peer-reviewed medical journal. It is the flagship journal of the Royal Society of Medicine with full editorial independence. Its continuous publication history dates back to 1809. Since July ...
'' in 1999, with the comment, "Few books are so intellectually stimulating or uplifting." Reviewing the series in the ''
British Medical Journal ''The BMJ'' is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Origi ...
'' in 2002, medical historian
Irvine Loudon Irvine Loudon (1 August 1924 – 7 January 2015) was a British doctor and a medical historian on childbirth fever and maternal mortality. Biography Loudon was born in Cardiff on 1 August 1924. His father, Andrew Walker Buist Loudon was a genera ...
wrote, "This is oral history at its best...all the volumes make compulsive reading...they are, primarily, important historical records In 2014 a seminar, chaired by Professor Sir Brian Follett, with
Norman Rosenthal Sir Norman Rosenthal (born 8 November 1944) is a British independent curator and art historian. From 1970 to 1974 he was Exhibitions Officer at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. In 1974 he became a curator at the ...
and Alfred Lewy, entitled 'The Recent History of
Seasonal Affective Disorder Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a mood disorder subset, in which people who have normal mental health throughout most of the year exhibit depressive symptoms at the same time each year. Common symptoms include sleeping too much, having li ...
(SAD): 30 Years of SAD' was undertaken on the topic of Seasonal Affective Disorder. This resulted in a number of podcasts, and Volume 51 of the Witness Seminar publications.


Clips and Conversations

In 2015 the Group began producing oral history interviews with notable scientists and clinicians. This material is made freely available on YouTube (in the case of video interviews) and the Group's website, as are the transcripts of both audio and video interviews.


Wikidata

As the HoMBRG project came to an end, a Wikimedian in Residence was engaged, to create
Wikidata Wikidata is a collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a common source of open data that Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, and anyone else, can use under the CC0 public domain license. ...
records for the publications and those people interviewed in them.


References


Further reading

* Monoclonal Antibodies to Migraine: Witnesses to Modern Biomedicine, An A-Z Ed. E M Jones and E M Tansey 2014 * The Recent History Of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) Edited by C Overy and E M Tansey 2014 * Project to reveal hidden pioneers of modern medicine, http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/hss/62665.html * Renowned medical historian joins Queen Mary, http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/hss/37291.html


External links

* {{Official website Biomedicine History of medicine 1990 establishments in the United Kingdom