O.m. over Benjamin Jan Kouwer (1861-1933), hoogleraar vrouwenziekten.

Obituary of Evert Joost Dorhout Mees, pioneering Dutch nephrologist.

The Magnus-Rademaker scientific film collection (1908-1940) deals with the physiology of body posture by the equilibrium of reflex musculature contractions for which experimental studies were carried out with animals (e.g., labyrinthectomies, cerebellectomies, and brain stem sections) as well as observations done on patients. The films were made for demonstrations at congresses as well as educational objectives and film stills were published in their books. The purpose of the present study is to position these films and their makers within the contemporary discourse on ethical issues and animal rights in the Netherlands and the earlier international debates. Following an introduction on animal rights and antivivisection movements, we describe what Magnus and Rademaker thought about these issues. Their publications did not provide much information in this respect, probably reflecting their adherence to implicit ethical codes that did not need explicit mentioning in publications. Newspaper articles, however, revealed interesting information. Unnecessary suffering of an animal never found mercy in Magnus' opinion. The use of cinematography was expanded to the reduction of animal experimentation in student education, at least in the case of Rademaker, who in the 1930s was involved in a governmental committee for the regulation of vivisection and cooperated with the antivivisection movement. This resulted not only in a propaganda film for the movement but also in films that demonstrate physiological experiments for students with the purpose to avert repetition and to improve the teaching of experiments. We were able to identify the pertinent films in the Magnus-Rademaker film collection. The production of vivisection films with this purpose appears to have been common, as is shown in news messages in European medical journals of the period.

Following a short introduction on medical photography and cinematography, we describe a recently discovered neurological film collection, the so called Magnus-Rademaker collection (1909-1940), earlier presumed to be lost. Rudolf Magnus was professor in pharmacology in Utrecht and Gysbertus Rademaker was professor in physiology and later in neurology in Leiden. At the time they performed experimental research on animals to the role of the labyrinth, the neck afferents and cerebellum in position and standing. Next to animals, they also filmed patients. As an example we discuss a film about a boy whose cerebellum had been largely removed because of a tumor. The case was discussed for the ‘Amsterdam Neurologists Society’ and reported upon in the Dutch journal of medicine (1940). The films were produced for educational, as well as for scientific purposes. the discovery of this collection contributes to a better understanding of the role that early cinematography played in science and medicine.

Johan Marcus Baart de la Faille stamde uit een intellectuele patriciërsfamilie met een remonstrantse levensbeschouwing. De familie telde een groot aantal hoogleraren en medici met een uitstekende reputatie.

A biography of Dutch biologist, physiologist and ophthalmologist Franciscus Cornelis Donders is presented. He was born on May 27, 1818 at a small manufacturing town of Tilburg in Noord-Brabant, Netherlands. He entered the Military Medical School in Utrecht in 1935 to begin his medical education and completed his studies at the University of Utrecht. He became a junior military surgeon in a garrison in Flushing in 1840. An overview of his accomplishments and career highlights is presented.

Op woensdag 13 mei 2015 is op 82-jarige leeftijd prof.dr. R.A. de Melker overleden. Hij was van 1984 tot 1997 hoofd van de afdeling Huisartsgeneeskunde in Utrecht. Ruut de Melker was een van de grondleggers van de moderne academische huisartsgeneeskunde in Nederland. Voortbordurend op het werk van Frans Huygen, zijn leermeester in Nijmegen, heeft hij, als opvolger van Jan van Es, in Utrecht het fundament gelegd voor de academische huisartsgeneeskunde zoals die nu bestaat. Gedurende zijn hele carrière had hij bovenal oog voor de klinische kant van de huisartsgeneeskunde: in de dagelijkse praktijk, in zijn onderzoek en het onderwijs.

Franciscus Cornelis Donders was educated at Duizel and Boxmeer before entering the Military Medical School and the medical faculty at Utrecht University in 1835. In 1840, he received his MD from Leiden and spent 2 years in practice at Vlissingen before returning to Utrecht, where he was appointed as an extraordinary professor to lecture on forensic medicine, anthropology, general biology and ophthalmology. Refraction by the eye is complex, since the ray of light passes through many changes of refractive index in its path, and Donders simplified the account of the process by establishing an equivalent refractive system: the reduced eye. When Donders opened an Eye Hospital in 1858, he devoted himself to clinical ophthalmology, making fundamental advances in providing spectacles to correct errors of refraction-which he separated from errors of accommodation. In 1862, Donders was promoted as an ordinary professor at Utrecht and he handed over the greater part of his practice to his pupil Hermann Snellen. From narrow specialisation, Donders was freed to return to the broader physiology; subatmospheric pressure in the pleura was for a while referred to as 'Donders' pressure'; he also devised a method of measuring the mental reaction time taken in making discrimination, rather than the simple reaction time in which no choice is involved. He was widely honoured, presiding at international congresses, and elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society. He died suddenly on 14 March 1889, but his work lives on.