UK SURGEON OVERTON suggested FINGERPRINTS 50 years before police took notice.

PUBLISHED: 14:03 GMT, 9 December 2012 | 

From UK DAILY MAIL

The notorious killer Jack the Ripper might have been caught if police had paid attention to a doctor's theory about using fingerprints to solve crimes, it emerged today.
But the authorities ignored the suggestion of the village surgeon and it was another 50 years before forensic evidence was used for identification purposes.
His three-page letter written in 1840 detailing how fingerprints could track down murderers is being auctioned at Sothebys this week.

Horror: A cartoon of the grisly discovery by police of one of Jack The Ripper's female victims

The note refers to the shocking killing on May 6, 1840, of 73-year-old  politician Lord William Russell who was found in his bed with his throat cut at his Mayfair townhouse.

 

More...

• Mystery man may have lived in home where Lord Lucan's nanny was bludgeoned to death, BBC documentary claims
• The wife who turned detective to expose her £400 million cheat of a husband 'living it large' whilst pleading poverty

Ten days later, surgeon Robert Blake Overton, who lived in  the Norfolk village of Grimstone, wrote to the victim's nephew, Lord John Russell - the future prime minister - who passed it onto Scotland Yard.

The letter: Surgeon Robert Blake Overton even used two inky fingerprints to illustrate his theory

In it, he referred to the marks of 'bloody fingers' found at the scene, adding: 'It is not generally known that every individual has a peculiar arrangement [on] the grain of the skin …
'I would strongly recommend the propriety of obtaining impressions from the fingers of the suspected individual and a comparison made with the marks on the sheets and pillows.'
Overton explained that “the impressions made from the fingers of different persons will produce different shapes.'
The doctor even included two pairs of inky fingerprints in his letter to illustrate his theory.
The letter - among some 700 original documents relating to the murder investigation and later trial are owned by the Law Society. The collection is expected to fetch £6,000.
Dr Gabriel Heaton, the auctioneer's manuscript specialist, told the Independent:: 'If this idea had been taken up, the whole criminal history of the Victorian period – of the foggy streets and of Sherlock Holmes and of Jack the Ripper – would have looked very different.

'This obscure village surgeon was suggesting the forensic use of fingerprint evidence  a full 50 years before the procedure was adopted.'

It wasn't until the late 1850s that William Hershel, a British officer, used fingerprints for identification  on contracts in India. 
And it was not until the 1890s that pioneering use was made of fingerprints in criminal investigations. Even Sherlock Holmes did not use fingerprints until 1903.

Clue: A fingerprint and caricature of Jack The Ripper the unidentified serial killer of vice girls in Whitechapel

Mr Heaton added: 'Perhaps even Jack the Ripper might have been caught. Instead, this letter was filed away and Overton himself disappears from the history of forensics.'
But fingerprint evidence would not have helped to solve Russell's murder. Scotland Yard took up Overton's suggestion but recorded on the back of the letter that, 'there were no such marks except those made by the Surgeons who first examined the wound.'
Russell's Swiss valet, François Benjamin Courvoisier, was later charged and confessed. His execution was attended by thousands,

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2245403/Village-surgeon-pioneered-fingerprints-50-years-used-police.html#ixzz2EcNwO4uH
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

SWISS MEDICAL WEEKLY

Inbox

Read the Journal

Submit to SMW

Get E-Mail Alerts

Contact Us

Website EMH

SMW newsletter, 07 December 2012

email: office@smw.ch

Recently published articles on www.smw.ch Mitral valve reconstruction - timing, surgical techniques and results Sündermann SH, Falk V, Jacobs S Review article: Current opinion, published 28 November 2012 A road map for patients with imminent end-stage renal disease Burkhalter F, Steiger J, Dickenmann M Review article: Current opinion, published 28 November 2012 Combination therapies in the context of anti-CD3 antibodies for the treatment of autoimmune diseases Dean Y, Dépis F, Kosco-Vilbois M Review article, published 28 November 2012 Resuming motor vehicle driving following orthopaedic surgery or limb trauma Rod Fleury T, Favrat B, Belaieff W, Hoffmeyer P Review article, published 27 November 2012 Neuroenhancement - perspectives of Swiss psychiatrists and general practitioners Ott R, Lenk C, Miller N, Neuhaus Bühler R, Biller-Andorno N Original article, published 27 November 2012 Vitamin D levels and associated factors: a population-based study in Switzerland Guessous I, Dudler V, Glatz N, Theler JM, Zoller O, Paccaud F, Burnier M, Bochud M Original article, published 26 November 2012 Neglected tropical diseases: diagnosis, clinical management, treatment and control Utzinger J, Becker SL, Knopp S, Blum J, Neumayr AL, Keiser J, Hatz CF Review article: Current opinion, published 22 November 2012 Alzheimer's dementia: budget impact and cost-utility analysis of a combination treatment of a cholinesterase inhibitor and memantine in Switzerland Pfeil AM, Kressig RW, Szucs TD Original article, published 21 November 2012 Endoscopy teams' judgment of discomfort among patients undergoing colonoscopy: "How bad was it really?" Heuss L, Sugandha SP, Degen L Short communication, published 05 November 2012 Impaired left ventricular function as a predictive factor for mid-term survival in octogenarians after primary coronary artery bypass surgery Berdajs D, Marinakis S, Kessler U, Muradbegovic M, Ferrari E, von Segesser LK Original article, published 05 November 2012 Carbon nanotubes: an insight into the mechanisms of their potential genotoxicity van Berlo D, Clift MJD, Albrecht C, Schins RPF Review article: Current opinion, published 05 November 2012 Uncontrolled arterial hypertension in primary care – patient characteristics and associated factors Chmiel C, Wang M, Senn O, Del Prete V, Zoller M, Rosemann T, Steurer-Stey C Original article, published 30 October 2012 Cerebral vasculitis complicating postoperative meningitis: the role of steroids revisited Darling KEA, Niederhauser J, Bervini D, Giulieri S, Daniel RT, Bille J, Erard V Peer reviewed letter, published 29 October 2012 Molecular pathogenesis of infections caused by Moraxella catarrhalis in children Bernhard S, Spaniol V, Aebi C Review article: Current opinion, published 29 October 2012 Physical activity behaviour in patients with metabolic syndrome Murer M, Schmied C, Battegay E, Keller DI Original article, published 25 October 2012 Long term survival after trimodal therapy in malignant pleural mesothelioma Fahrner R, Ochsenbein A, Schmid RA, Carboni GL Original article, published 25 October 2012 Carotid intima-media thickness as a biomarker of subclinical atherosclerosis Bauer M, Caviezel S, Teynor A, Erbel R, Mahabadi AA, Schmidt-Trucksäss A Review article, published 25 October 2012 Impact of intraoperative MRI-guided transsphenoidal surgery on endocrine function and hormone substitution therapy in patients with pituitary adenoma Bellut D, Hlavica M, Muroi C, Woernle CM, Schmid C, Bernays RL Original article, published 23 October 2012 Diagnostic errors and flaws in clinical reasoning: mechanisms and prevention in practice Nendaz M, Perrier A Review article: Current opinion, published 23 October 2012 Continuous flow left ventricular assist devices: a valid option for heart failure patients Carrel T, Englberger L, Martinelli MV, Takala J, Boesch C, Sigurdadottir V, Gygax E, Kadner A, Mohacsi P Review article: Current opinion, published 18 October 2012

IceCure Medical : Caesarea & Cleveland.

quoted in today's UK DAILY MAIL


IceCure Medical, Inc.wirby@icecure-medical.com

ISRAEL’S ICECURE MEDICAL OPENS U.S. HEADQUARTERS IN CLEVELAND
CAESAREA, ISRAEL and CLEVELAND, OH – IceCure Medical LTD., an Israeli medical device company providing physicians with minimally-invasive, office-based, cryoablation solutions for women’s health, will open its U.S. headquarters on June 1, 2011 in Cleveland’s Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center (GCIC).
"The unique infrastructure for growing biomedical companies, the support we received from many
organizations, and the progressive health care environment that includes world-class institutions such as the
Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals Case Medical Center, led us to choose Cleveland for our US
operations,” said Hezi Himelfarb, CEO of IceCure Medical.
The IceCure Cleveland-based staff will be launching U.S. marketing and sales of the new state-of-the-art
IceSense3™ cryoablation system. The IceSense3 technology treats benign breast growths through freezing, as a quick, safe and successful alternative to invasive surgery. “We are thrilled to offer a patient-friendly, inoffice, minimally invasive treatment for benign breast disease,” said Mr. Himelfarb.

“We are pleased that IceCure has selected Ohio as the location for its US operations," said Jim Leftwich, the
Director of the Ohio Department of Development. "The State of Ohio has strongly supported the development
of a vibrant biomedical innovation environment."
“The Health Tech Corridor builds on one of our region's economic strengths and is an international destination
for medical technology companies. Cleveland’s ability to attract companies like IceCure and help them develop
their business is essential for the growth and success of the area,” said Mayor Frank G. Jackson. “We welcome
them home to the City of Cleveland.”
“This is a testament to how well Northeast Ohio’s economic development partners work together to attract
leading organizations into our growing biomedical cluster,” said Tom Waltermire, CEO of Team Northeast
Ohio (NEO). “In the future, we anticipate that IceCure Medical will bring 15 highly skilled jobs and roughly $1
million in annual payroll into the Cleveland Plus region.”
“IceCure Medical has strong growth potential,” said Baiju R. Shah, president and CEO of BioEnterprise, “It's a
testament to the state’s and region’s initiatives to attract foreign high-tech firms and support their business
growth in the U.S, including Israeli companies such as MDG Medical, NI Medical, and Simbionix, that IceCure
has selected Cleveland.”
Supported by the Ohio Capital Fund, Bridge Investment Fund LP has been instrumental in supporting Israeli
companies with innovative technology set up operations in Cleveland. “Bridge works closely with its portfolio
companies to address their specific needs to grow in the US market, and we look forward to IceCure opening
shop here,” said Michael Goldberg, managing director of the Fund.
IceCure Medical will lease space in GCIC’s 50,000 sq. ft. facility adjacent to the Cleveland Clinic, which
“provides close proximity to world-class clinical researchers and clinicians along with extensive facility and
business support services,” according to GCIC Managing Director, Mark Low.
About IceCure Medical Ltd
IceCure Medical Ltd. Is a publicly traded medical device company (TASE: ICCM), focusing on minimally
invasive, office-based, cryoablation solutions for treating women’s tumors. The company was founded in 2006
with main offices in Caesarea, Israel and U.S. headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. For more information, visit:
www.icecure-medical.com.

NORTHERN ONTARIO GP

$350-$500,000 yr.for GP in Northern Ontario

COCHRANE (5340) + IROQUIS FALLS (4595) + MATHESON (2410)

BONUS for Underserviced area ($98,080 - $111,400) depending on contract.time,

FREE HOUSING + subsidized office for TWO YEARS

Relocation expenses + yearly study allowance.

All-expenses paid visit.

RECRUITMENT@ MICSGROUP.COM
705-272-7200 ext 2345

UK:IMMIGRANT IMPORTED TB

• From UK DAILY MAIL
•  
• Calling for blood test used in the U.S. to be standard test

By Anna Hodgekiss
PUBLISHED: 12:01 GMT, 7 December 2012 | UPDATED: 14:19 GMT, 7 December 2012

Britain will be 'swamped' by tuberculosis unless new measures to diagnose the disease

A leading doctor has warned that Britain will be ‘swamped’ by tuberculosis unless new measures to diagnose the disease in immigrants are introduced.
The disease, which was rife in Britain until the 1950s, is an increasing and worrying problem in urban areas. Rising immigration has seen a surge in cases in the last 20 years.

Under current rules, new immigrants from countries where TB is common are required to have chest X-rays before being allowed into Britain.

But doctors argue this century-old method only spots active TB once it is already destroying the lungs – meaning cases are often diagnosed far too late.

Other countries such as the U.S. use a blood test, which can detect the latent TB in those not displaying any symptoms. Cases have fallen since this technique was introduced in 2007.

At the British Thoracic Society conference this week, Peter Davies of the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, said urgent changes were needed to halt the decades-long rise in TB cases.

He told The Times: ‘The tide has been coming in for 20 years, it’s been getting bigger and bigger and if we don’t do something we will be swamped with TB as we were 100 years ago.’

 

More...

• Cancer death rates fall by nearly 10% thanks to earlier diagnosis, better treatment and decline in smoking
• One in three patients wait more than an hour at A&E because departments are struggling to cope with high volumes of patients

TB is caused by a bacterium that spreads through saliva. The disease used to be known as consumption because the bacterium ate holes in the lungs. From 50,000 cases a year in Britain in the 1950s, the rate fell to 5,000 in the 1980s.

TB: IT COULD TAKE JUST A SNEEZE

TB is a bacterial infection which is spread by inhaling drops of saliva when an infected person coughs, speaks or sneezes.

The disease mainly affects the lungs, but can travel to other parts of the body including the brain, kidneys, bones and joints. The disease is curable with a six-month course of antibiotics, but a drug-resistant form can develop if the course is not completed. Left untreated it can prove fatal.

Symptoms include a persistent cough that lasts for more than three weeks that gets progressively worse, unexplained weight loss, fever, night sweats, chest pain, fatigue and loss of appetite.

However, many people who are infected never develop symptoms - although the bacteria remain in the body, they are not infectious. 

Last year there were just over 9,000 cases of TB - a five per cent increase on the year before, according to figures from the Health Protection Agency.

The main risk area is still London with 3,588 cases reported in 2011, accounting for 40 per cent of the UK total. And nearly three quarters of those suffering the disease were those not born in the UK.

Professor Davies and his peers recommend that people from the Indian subcontinent and sub-Saharan Africa, where rates are highest, should be given the blood test when registering with a GP. Those found to have latent TB can easily eliminate it with a course of antibiotics.

Speaking about the blood test, he said:  ‘It’s a no-brainer. If we screen for latent TB we would eliminate the majority of cases of people coming into this country. Now we’ve got the blood tests, for goodness’ sake let’s use them.’

He added that with TB claiming up to 500 deaths a year, the numbers were as many as HIV. The homeless and drug addicts should also be screened because new infections have become more common among these groups, he continued. 

Mike Mandlebaum, chief executive of the charity TB Alert, said: ‘The truth is that TB never really went away in the UK and has been steadily rising here, from around 5,000 cases a year at the end of the Eighties to 8,500 in 2007/8.

‘TB is a disease usually associated with certain high-risk groups such as those with HIV, those from Eastern bloc countries and Asia, and those living in crowded living conditions. But anyone can get it.'
Onn Min Kon, a consultant at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, London, said that rates of the disease are continuing to rise and that the UK has the highest rates in Europe.

Last year there were just over 9,000 cases of TB - a five per cent increase on the year before, according to figures from the Health Protection Agency

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2244512/Britain-swamped-TB-unless-tests-diagnose-brought-21st-century-experts-warn.html#ixzz2ENZv6nXw
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

New Delhi M-1 ENZYME

From Toronto Star

Outbreaks of new superbug in Toronto-area hospitals raise worrisome spectre

Helen Branswell

The Canadian Press

Outbreaks in two Toronto-area hospitals of a dangerous new form of superbug have infection-control experts contemplating a worrisome future.
Both outbreaks are now over. Details of the chains of spread and how the hospitals managed to stop them are outlined in two studies just published in medical journals.
But they represent the first reports of hospital outbreaks of bacteria containing the so-called NDM-1 enzyme in Canada. In each case, at least one of the people who carried the bacteria into the hospital seemed to have acquired it in Canada.
Previous NDM-1 cases in this country have been seen in individual cases and generally in people who had travelled outside Canada for health care — most commonly to India, but also on occasion to the United States.
“For many years the term superbug has been used and thrown around. And there have been threats that we’ll end up with a situation where there are infections that end up not being treatable because of the risk of drug resistance,” says Dr. Andrew Simor, senior author of one of the studies, which appeared in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
“I think we’re actually seriously now approaching that point with these NDM-1s.”
The NDM-1 enzyme — the ND stands for New Delhi — was first found in 2008 in a Swedish person who had travelled to India for medical treatment. The discovery, reported in the journal Lancet, rang alarm bells the world over because of it represented a new mechanism of drug resistance.
NDM-1 positive bacteria were first found in Canada in 2010.
Drug-resistant bacteria have been around as long as there have been antibiotics. And with increasing use of the drugs in the second half of the 20th century, the resistant bacteria flourished, leaving the pharmaceutical industry scrambling to try to stay ahead of the bugs.
But NDM-1 isn’t a bacterium. It’s an enzyme produced by some bacteria which disables an alarming array of antibiotics.
The few drugs that do treat NDM-1 positive bacteria are antibiotics that are rarely used. One, colistin, is highly toxic; doctors do not use it if they have an option. And NDM-1 positive bacteria become resistant to colistin over time, Simor says.
Perhaps more upsetting is the fact that the gene responsible for making the enzyme is promiscuous: It is able to move from one bacteria to another, conferring on each a level of drug resistance that leaves doctors with few treatment options.
One patient described in one of these studies had both E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria that contained NDM-1, leaving the authors to conclude the enzyme passed from one bug to the other in the patient.
Allison McGeer, the head of infection control at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, is an author of that paper, which appeared in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
The article is the first describing a hospital outbreak involving NDM-1 organisms in Canada. It occurred at William Osler Health System in Brampton, northeast of Toronto, and was first spotted in October 2011.
“Everywhere you turn there is bad news,” McGeer says of NDM-1 and a handful of similar enzymes that confer resistance to drugs in the beta-lactam class of antibiotics.
The Brampton outbreak involved five patients, all carrying Klebsiella pneumoniae. Molecular study of the bacteria from all five showed they were linked. None of the patients in the outbreak had travelled to or been hospitalized in countries where NDM-1 is endemic.
The researchers who investigated the outbreak were not able to determine where the bacteria had been acquired.
Simor’s study describes an outbreak at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, where he is head of microbiology. The outbreak was identified in January 2011 and was over by February 2012.
During that time two patients came into the hospital with different strains of NDM-1 Klebsiella pneumoniae. One had received previously health care in India, but the second had no history of travel to the Indian subcontinent.
From these two patients, the resistant bacteria spread to seven others.
Five of the nine were just carrying the bacteria. At the time of their hospitalization the bugs were not making the patients sick — other ailments were.
But four of the patients did develop infections caused by their NDM-1 positive bacteria; two had infections in their bloodstream and two had urinary-tract infections.
Some of the patients who picked up the bugs were roommates of people carrying the bacteria, and others were on the same ward.
In one case, a patient moved into a room that had been occupied by one of the positive patients and then picked up the bacteria. An investigation pinpointed a handwashing sink in the room as the likely source of the bacteria. Health-care workers had used the sink to dispose of bath water and other fluids.
NDM-1 positive bacteria were growing in the biofilms in the sink’s pipes and repeated efforts to disinfect the sink failed. Eventually the sink and the sink traps were replaced.
McGeer, who has battled a sink-related outbreak — though not with a bacteria carrying NDM-1 — shudders at the idea.
“If we get our sinks contaminated with an NDM Kleb pneumo” — a short form for Klebsiella pneumoniae — “in our ICU, it will be unpleasant. Expensive.”
Simor’s study outlines the efforts Sunnybrook’s infection control team took to stop transmission. Tracing contacts of all the patients was not easy, and in fact the majority of the contacts had been discharged before they could be tested to see if they were carrying the bug.
Typically infection-control teams would take a rectal swab of patients to see if they are carrying organisms and if they are, whether those organisms are NDM-1 positive.
But in some of the cases in the Sunnybrook outbreak, swabs were negative until about three weeks after exposure. Hospitals that didn’t test that far out might miss such cases.
With numbers of NDM-1 cases still low in Canadian hospitals, Simor suggests facilities may have a hard time deciding how much effort they should put into finding such cases at this point.
“So the question is how extensively do you do surveillance when there’s little bang for the buck? I think we’re going to have to be able to gear up our surveillance as the numbers increase. And I have no doubt they will increase.”
When asked if hospitals and public-health officials in Canada are paying enough attention to the threat, McGeer’s answer suggests she isn’t sure.
“People are paying attention to it. I am sure that we’re not paying enough attention to it to be really good at dealing with it. I’m hoping we’re paying enough attention to it to be OK.”

London UK: King Edward VII HOSPITAL Sister Agnes.

LONDON, UK: KING EDWARD VII Hospital "Sister" AGNES

Agnes Keyser

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

.

Agnes Keyser Royal Red Cross (1852–11 May 1941) was the wealthy daughter of a Stock Exchange member, a humanitarian, courtesan and longtime mistress to Edward VII of the United Kingdom. Of all of Edward VII's mistresses, with the exception of socialite Jennie Jerome,(mother of Sir Winston Churchill), Keyser was the best accepted within royal circles, to include having the acceptance of Edward VII's wife, Alexandra of Denmark.She remained with Edward VII until his death in 1910.
Keyser, as recorded by author Raymond Lamont-Brown in his book Edward VII's Last Loves: Alice Keppel and Agnes Keyser, held an emotional bond with Edward VII that others did not, due to her being unmarried herself, and preferring a more private affair to that of a public one.
Keyser was born Elizabeth Agnes Keyser in July 1852 at Great Stanmore in Middlesex, the daughter of Charles and Margaret Keyser, her father was a partner in a stock exchange firm Ricardo and Keyser.^[1] She died at Buckland House, Farringdon, Berkshire on 11 May 1941 aged 89.^[1]

King Edward VII's Hospital for Officers

At the suggestion of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) Agnes along with her sister Fanny used their house at 17 Grosvenor Crescent to help sick and wounded British Army officers who had returned from the Boer War.^[2] During the First World War the hospital used 9 Grosvenor Gardens to nurse British officers amongst them the novelist Stuart Cloete.^[3] The hospital became the King Edward VII's Hospital for Officers and later the King Edward VII's Hospital Sister Agnes.<sup>[4]

(Miss Keyser asked the King what to call herself as she was not a nurse.: "SISTER"Agnes.was the reply.</sup>