A clinical and pathological atlas. The records of a surgeon in St Vincent, The West Indies

A clinical and pathological atlas. The records of a surgeon in St Vincent, The West Indies. Cecil Cyrus began his studies at Queen's in 1950 and passed his Final MB in 1957. Along the way he worked hard collecting several prizes in his professional examinations, the Symington medal, and a BSc in Anatomy. After a few years he passed his FRCS in England and Edinburgh and gained extensive postgraduate training in all aspects of surgery. He then returned to his native island of St Vincent in the Caribbean where he continues to practice. In the intervening years Cecil Cyrus has accumulated a huge experience, documented and photographed and linked to his own collection of pathology specimens. This book is laid out clearly and systematically and the text is brief and clear. The standard of reproduction is excellent and the printing of a high standard. St Vincent has a relatively small population, but people presented with gross pathology and significant degrees of trauma-endemic illness and lack of sophistication contributed greatly to this. Slowly this pattern has changed. Cecil Cyrus could through his own ability have gone elsewhere and graced a chair of surgery in any part of the world-instead he chose to serve the community in which he had previously lived. This book complements the man and shows how his academic drive persisted through a lifetime in surroundings that could well have discouraged others. Future doctors working in isolated areas and surgical students will derive much from these pages. All those marvellously named eye signs associated with hyperthyroidism-Moebius, Von Graefe, Joffroy, Stellwag-what did they mean and did we really understand exophthalmos any better by using them? Perhaps these names were meant for examiners in medical finals. In contrast, the term Heberden's nodes is very well understood. "What are those little hard knobs about the size of a small pea which are frequently seen upon the fingers, particularly a little below the top, near the joint?"-"hardly ever attended by pain"-"are unsightly rather than inconvenient". (More than two centuries later one understands that). William Heberden rose from modest beginnings. In 1761 he refused appointment as Physician to Queen Charlotte, as "it might interfere with those connections in life that he had now formed". Later in life he advised the Privy Council that the management by restraint of George IlI's mental illness was inappropriate. "I am of the opinion that the present medical treatment …