Published 20 August 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1354
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1354

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Too posh to infect?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In John Buchan’s last book, Sick Heart River, published posthumously in 1941, the protagonist, Sir Edward Leithen, has been given a year to live by an eminent London specialist, Acton Croke. A gas attack in the first world war has awakened tuberculosis as a delayed effect, and it is now galloping through his lungs. Although occurring only a handful of years before the discovery of streptomycin, Sir Edward’s tuberculosis is a death sentence.

Buchan finished the book just a few days before his own death from cerebral thrombosis. Then governor general of Canada, he had been a martyr to peptic ulcer for decades, and he eked out his bland poached eggs at elaborate state dinners while everyone around him gorged themselves.

When the first papers were published suggesting that peptic ulcer was, in effect, an infectious disease, and that a poached egg diet was all in vain, I read . . . [Full text of this article]

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