John Thomas Arlidge (1822-99) and the Potteries.

Thackrah opened his The Effects ofArts, Trades and Professions (1831) with the words 'Man in his several relations is assuredly the most interesting subject for examination and reflection'. J. T. Arlidge warrants both examination and reflection because, in contrast to Thackrah, he has not yet taken his deserved place in the history of medicine. Thackrah found his first biographer only one year after his untimely death (Whytehead, 1834); his treatise ran into several editions on both sides of the Atlantic and was reprinted in 1957 with a splendid introduction by Meiklejohn. Arlidge, after a short flash of publicity and glory following the publication of his Milroy Lectures (Arlidge, 1889) and subsequently of his magnum opus The Hygiene, Diseases and Mortality of Occupations in 1892, fell into almost complete oblivion until Meiklejohn resurrected him in many of his papers (1946, 1954, 1963, 1966, 1969). Isaacson published a short monograph on Arlidge's life and work in 1956 which has never been reprinted and most textbooks on occupational medicine do not mention it. Hunter's (1970) latest edition of The Diseases of Occupations favours Thackrah with 200 lines whereas Arlidge has to be content with three and a half, a difference which even Arlidge, keen but immensely cautious in interpreting statistics, would have found highly but undeservingly significant. He would have been pleased, however, that the Section of Occupational Health of the North Staffordshire Medical Institute carries his name and that Andrew Meiklejohn was its first president.