Events Calendar

Jim Milledge: Stanhope T. Speer, Alpinist and Physician.
Tuesday 14 June 2016, 07:30pm
Contact Derek Buckle
Tuesday 14 June 2016

 

 In 1853, First Description of Mountain Sickness: Jim recently unearthed a hitherto unknown early publication on mountain sickness (MS) and has subsequently published a paper about it in the High Altitude Medicine journal. In this talk he will recount the story of Speer’s pioneering research. Speer qualified in Edinburgh, and started climbing as a student. He made the first ascent of one of the three summits of the Wetterhorn, the Mittelhorn, in 1845. He had various medical jobs, including 3 years as Prof. of Medicine in Dublin. Later he was in General Practice in Cheltenham and retired at the age of 37! In 1853, he published an excellent paper on Mountain Sickness. This was 60 years before the two papers usually regarded as the first modern descriptions of MS since Speer’s paper was unknown to Mountain Medicine at the time. In 2014, Jim found a reprint of Speer’s paper in the AC library, where it must have languished for the past 161 years!

 

Location London
55/56 Charlotte Road
London
EC2A 3QF
Uk