'Oxford medicine: A walk through nine centuries'

A new book celebrates Oxford’s contribution to the development of medicine, highlighting more than 45 city sites of historic medical interest. Based on a two-hour guided walk, Oxford Medicine: A Walk Through Nine Centuries by Dr Eric Sidebottom of the Dunn School of Pathology takes visitors to 11 Oxford colleges in addition to several departments, libraries and city museums.

The book highlights the contributions of Baron Howard Florey and Sir Ernst Chain, two of three Nobel Prize winners credited with the development of penicillin. It features Cecil Rhodes and Dr John Radcliffe, who both left large sums for medical development in Oxford.

Other attractions include the walk’s starting point, Magdalen College, which boasts medical landmarks spanning all nine centuries, and the Merton College library, which houses a 14th century manuscript of John of Gaddesden’s Rosa Medicinae, one of the first medical books by an English author.

The tour concludes at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology where Florey and Chain were based. Additional outlying sites include the Iffley Road Athletics Track where, in 1954, Sir Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four minute mile. Bannister graduated from Merton and his athletic feat overshadowed his career as a distinguished neurologist and head of Pembroke College.

Books asked Dr Sidebottom about his guide

How did the book and your interest in medical history come about?

I was prompted to research the book following the success of my walking tours of sites linked with Oxford’s medical past. The first tour was for visiting American doctors and set me thinking what a wonderfully scenic and intellectually stimulating place the centre of Oxford is. I studied medicine at Corpus Christi and England’s first hospital, St Bartholomew’s in London, and then held a succession of posts at Oxford University, the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and the Wellcome Trust. After that, I became interested in the history of pathology. If you look at disease through history, it has wrought havoc.

Are there aspects of medical history in Oxford that interest you particularly?

There are several. In the thirteenth century, Oxford became the first British University to offer medical degrees. The manuscript and printed copies of John of Gaddesden’s book is one of the delights of Oxford. Roger Bacon was among other early scholars and his advocacy of the use of scientific experiments and, incidentally, healthy eating, more than 700 years ago broke new ground. Oxford’s most glorious time was the 1600s, however, when scientifically-inclined scholars met at Wadham College and eventually established the Royal Society in 1660. Much later, money left by Dr John Radcliffe on his death in 1714 helped pay for the Radcliffe Camera and Radcliffe Infirmary, where in 1941 the first trials of penicillin on humans took place.

Oxford researchers were closely involved in the discovery of penicillin. Are they properly credited?

The story of penicillin is among my favourites and I regard it as the first spin story about medicine. People think that Alexander Fleming alone discovered the antibiotic properties of the Penicillium fungi but in fact, after discovering that the mould produced something that killed bacteria, he dropped it. The mould was unstable and he couldn’t purify it, and he didn’t see the potential impact on human infection. Nothing then happened for 10 years when Howard Florey and Ernst Chain started working on it in Oxford. It was they who turned it into an antibiotic which immediately became a miracle drug.

What influence has disease has on history?

When Europeans first sailed across the Atlantic, they carried the smallpox virus which decimated the populations of Central, South and North America. Possibly as many as 90% of native people died because of smallpox, to which they had no immunity. People say it was the Conquistadors who conquered America but it was actually smallpox. Similarly, in the fourteenth century, the Black Death wiped out about half the European population. And in the First World War, there was a lot of awful disease including a huge amount of typhus in the trenches. You could make a claim that every war until the Second World War was determined more by disease than by the enemy.

Do you foresee Oxford continuing to play such a significant role in medical development?

Yes, I’m looking forward with confidence to more important discoveries. It’s an exciting time to be in medicine. Oxford has many excellent scientists and doctors with good ideas and advanced technology, and is well equipped to face many quite challenging problems.

Oxford Medicine: A Walk Through Nine Centuries is published by Offox Press.