No . 137 The Trusty Servant
Vox Senum
OW Centenarians The list of Ten Sen Men includes three : Nigel Bruce ( D , 34-39 ); Bryan Thwaites ( C , 41-42 ); and Bill Prescott ( C , 38-42 ). Two more will join them in September : John Irving ( K , 38-42 ) on the 9 th and Edgar Feuchtwanger ( A , 39-43 ) on the 28 th .
Dr Feuchtwanger has been in touch and reports that the International Feuchtwanger Society Conference will take place at the Senate House , University of London , 13-15 September 2024 . He has also sent links to various Items of Note , including his biography of Bismarck ( which the Trusty Servant , to his shame does not yet seem to have featured ). For more information , please contact the office .
Reading the Records : a Reply TS 136 carried an article by Suzanne Foster , the College Archivist , with an embedded request to conduct further research . Nigel Hoad ( Coll , 68-73 ) has sent the following responses , informed by his medical background and his son ’ s chemical engineering career :
Richard Lydiat ( Scholar 1716 ): the 18th century saw the development of a plethora of so-called ‘ patent medicines ’, and for some the cure was indeed more dangerous than the illness ! Despite containing a significant amount of the toxic heavy metal antimony ‘ Dr James ’ s Fever Powders ’ remained a popular household remedy for some 150 years . Chronic use can lead to cardiac toxicity which is probably what ‘ did for ’ this unfortunate Collegeman . During my military medical career in the 1980s I gave intravenous injections of an antimony-containing compound to a number of British soldiers who had returned from Belize with an unpleasant skin ulcer leading to the disease cutaneous leishmaniasis . The UK ’ s expert on that disease was another Wykehamist , Prof Anthony Bryceson ( I , 48-52 ) and he was also the Army ’ s Honorary Consultant in Tropical Medicine .
Charles Mansfield ( Scholar 1831 ): when you said that he had invented Benzole ( from the fractional distillation of coal tar residue ) I automatically assumed that this would lead on to the synthesis of benzene / gasoline / petrol , but James [ Hoad ( Coll , 05-10 )] who works for bp , quickly pointed out that the internal combustion engine was yet to be invented , so there was no requirement for an efficient liquid fuel . However , Mansfield ’ s work was developed by others , leading to the distillation of further compounds , including what turned out to be the family of aniline dyes that transformed the textile industry . Development of this work found its way to companies such as Geigy , Bayer , Ciba , Sandoz and Hoechst who in the 20th Century all switched to making pharmaceuticals and antibiotics . So , it would not be too far-fetched to describe Mansfield as one of the founders of the modern pharmaceutical industry .
Publication
Jock Macdonald ( CoRo , 64-01 ) brings news of a book by former Fellow , Sir Dieter Helm ( GoBo , 99-03 ):
It is not often that a one-time member of GoBo , and Fellow of New College , writes a book that both OWs and present pupils should read , but this is certainly true of Legacy : How to Build the Sustainable Economy , by Sir Dieter Helm , Professor of Economic Policy . The book is open access and free to download : https :// creativecomms . org / cclicences .
The book alludes to a talk he gave in New Hall in Cloister Time 2022 . The nub of it is that , despite all the COP meetings since Rio in 1992 , 80 % of the world ’ s energy ( and thus climate change ) is still driven by fossil fuels , a percentage that hasn ’ t changed for 32 years . Consumption of goods and services is the force behind it , a fact for which the UK , so far from being a world environmental leader is among the dozen or so countries that are the most polluting . Among the main culprits are the world ’ s elites . They have the power to understand the problem and act on it , but instead too often they concentrate much of their wealth on their own purchases , from cars to clothes to real estate and to frequent ventures overseas , not to mention their own status . The book is written for the general reader and has much more of importance and interest than I have space to give it here .
266 pages ; Cambridge University press ; ISBN 978-1009449182
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