This article examines six main elements in the modern story of the impact of Alfred Russel Wallace's 1855 Sarawak Law paper, particularly in the many accounts of Charles Darwin's life and work. These elements are: Each of these are very frequently repeated as straightforward facts in the popular and scholarly literature. It is here argued that each of these is erroneous and that the role of the Sarawak Law paper in the historiography of Darwin and Wallace needs to be revised.
New Guinea is the world's largest tropical island and has fascinated naturalists for centuries1,2. Home to some of the best-preserved ecosystems on the planet3 and to intact ecological gradients-from mangroves to tropical alpine grasslands-that are unmatched in the Asia-Pacific region4,5, it is a globally recognized centre of biological and cultural diversity6,7. So far, however, there has been no attempt to critically catalogue the entire vascular plant diversity of New Guinea. Here we present the first, to our knowledge, expert-verified checklist of the vascular plants of mainland New Guinea and surrounding islands. Our publicly available checklist includes 13,634 species (68% endemic), 1,742 genera and 264 families-suggesting that New Guinea is the most floristically diverse island in the world. Expert knowledge is essential for building checklists in the digital era: reliance on online taxonomic resources alone would have inflated species counts by 22%. Species discovery shows no sign of levelling off, and we discuss steps to accelerate botanical research in the 'Last Unknown'8.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is thought to be a 'recent' disease in that descriptions of it were only noted in the 17th century. However, a study of paintings would suggest that RA could have been present as early as the 15th century, when artists started to paint the human body accurately rather than figuratively. Thus, it was possible to deduce from their paintings the occurrence of various medical conditions. If present, RA with its typical finger deformities should be apparent. This review discusses the known occurrences of RA-type deformities in paintings and places this in the context of the origins of the disease.
Falciparum malaria may have infected Homo sapiens (and perhaps H erectus) in the Asia Pacific region for more than 100,000 years. This estimate is based on the gene frequency of alpha-thalassaemia, the protection it affords against falciparum malaria and assumptions of untreated mortality from the infection. Up until the end of the 19th century, there was a high mortality from malaria in the coastal parts of Malaya, but the malaria control campaign, begun in 1901 at Klang, was described by Sir Ronald Ross as the first successful antimalarial work in the (then) British Empire. This was extended to Singapore in 1911. When the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine held its Fifth Biennial Congress in Singapore in 1923, malaria was still a major killing disease in parts of Malaya and Sarawak. The mechanism of life-threatening malaria involves cytoadherence of parasitised erythrocytes in microvascular beds, a process enhanced by the products of macrophage activation induced by malarial pyrogen. Improvements in the chemotherapy of life-threatening falciparum malaria with chloroquine and quinine have been countered by the emergence of resistant strains. Artemisinin derivatives may become the treatment of choice during the coming decade. Apart from traditional anti-mosquito methods, control of malaria now involves the use of insecticide-impregnated bed nets, new entomological strategies, including genetic manipulation of mosquitoes and selective chemoprophylaxis. Antigenic diversity and antigenic variation of the malaria parasite have so far defeated attempts to produce an effective vaccine.
Throughout human history, doctors and healers have gathered and refined the knowledge inherited from the previous generations. Different methods of effective therapy have been designed during various historical periods; when each was developed, it was considered "modern scientific medicine" for their time. Mankind has gone through natural and social disasters and survived; hence, history has proved there was no time when medical knowledge was erroneous or ineffective. Classic medicine has grown to be divided into narrow, specialized branches, causing it to lose its holistic approach and general view on health, sickness and therapeutic methods. Many of traditional medicine's effective methods have been forgotten and removed from the mainstream medicine. It would be good for modern medical education to incorporate the general knowledge of historically effective therapeutic modalities and study practical cases. Medical students should be taught how to choose a "good method" or "good medicine" independent of when that method or remedy was discovered. However, he has to keep in mind the primary goal of medicine: "I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment…"(from Hippocratic Oath).
West Malaysia has had a long history of drug use, beginning as early as the 1800s. While early use was primarily restricted to Chinese coolies and Indian immigrant laborers, the 1970s saw drug use become the domain of the youth of Malaysia and achieve the proportions of a national crisis. This paper traces the early origins of drug use and misuse in Malaysia, its development and expansion during the 1970s and the current efforts at eradication and rehabilitation. This examination of Malaysian efforts in response to the spread of drug use or misuse may provide researchers and practitioners in other countries some historical and cross cultural perspectives on current international efforts at eradicating similar problems.
The reconstruction of fire history is essential to understand the palaeoclimate and human history. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been extensively used as a fire marker. In this work, the distribution of PAHs in Borneo peat archives was investigated to understand how PAHs reflect the palaeo-fire activity. In total, 52 peat samples were analysed from a Borneo peat core for the PAH analysis. Pyrogenic PAHs consist of 2-7 aromatic rings, some of which have methyl and ethyl groups. The results reveal that the concentration of pyrogenic PAHs fluctuated with the core depth. Compared to low-molecular-weight (LMW) PAHs, the high-molecular-weight (HMW) PAHs had a more similar depth variation to the charcoal abundance. This finding also suggests that the HMW PAHs were mainly formed at a local fire near the study area, while the LMW PAHs could be transported from remote locations.
The life of Lord Moynihan is briefly reviewed. Incidence of stones in Peninsular Malaysia appears to show the same trend as in other industrialised countries. Management of urinary calculi both prior to and after the introduction of ESWL in a personal series is discussed. More than 90% of urinary stones are now treated by ESWL threatening the place of surgery in Urology. The pattern of incorporating renal transplantation into the urological training programme as practised in the Institute of Urology and Nephrology in Malaysia is suggested as a way to assure a place for surgery in Urology.
This article analyses long-term changes in the mean age at menarche (MAM) as a biological indicator of changes in the standard of living in Indonesia. It finds that MAM was about 15.5 for birth cohorts in the late-19th century, decreasing to 14.5 by the 1930s, at which level it stagnated until the gradual decrease resumed since the early 1960s to around 12.5 in the mid-2000s. The article considers that long-term improvements in nutrition, educational attainment and health care explain these trends. An international comparison of long-term changes finds that MAM in Indonesia was much lower than in Korea and China until respectively 1970 and 1990, but comparable to Japan until 1950 and to Malaysia until 1930. The article presents reasons why these differences are unlikely to be related to dissimilarities in climate and ethnicity, and concludes that they are indicative of relative standards of living.
The rapid increase in the use of helicopters for hospital transport during the 1980s is the culmination of several hundred years of military medical innovation. Mass battefield casualties spurred both technologic and medical changes necessary for today's sophisticated helicopter systems in use worldwide, particularly in the United States. The Napoleonic Era and the American Civil War provided the framework for the evolution of today's state-of-the-art emergency medical techniques. The use of airplanes to evacuate the wounded eventually led to using helicopters for rescue missions in World War II. The combat experiences of the United States in Korea, the British in Malaya, and the French in Indochina proved that rotary-wing aircraft were invaluable in reducing battlefield death rates. Any skepticism about the efficacy of helicopter medical evacuation was erased during the Vietnam conflict. As an integral part of the modern battlefield, these specialized aircraft became a necessity. The observations and experience of American servicemen and medical personnel in Vietnam established the foundation for the acceptance of helicopter transport in modern hospital systems.