Reflections on historical aspects of spinal cord injury care

Yes, thank you, Dr. Fellings.

Thank you, Michael.

In fact, it's a pleasure and an honor to join you on this very important series of podcasts.

And I wanted to congratulate you for the great work you do with the spinal cord general, but also in the field.

It's a great opportunity also to sometimes dip back into time and see what we have learned and what we have achieved.

And this article was published in 1976, which is some 150 years ago, in a journal that no longer runs, the Edinburgh Medical Journal.

This year, 2026, is the 300-year anniversary of the founding of the Edinburgh Medical School.

It's alleged to be the oldest English-speaking medical school in the world.

Although, of course, whenever one claims to be the first of something, it's almost always contested.

And in reality, in Edinburgh itself, long before the med school, there was already a tradition of surgery and medicine through the royal colleges.

This particular case is in fact only one of a series of cases that were discussed back then in journals.

And it struck me as very instructive because when I was browsing an old copy of the journal that I found, I found parallels with today's management we all know that spinal cord injury can be a devastating scenario for the patient involved and there is still today an amount of nihilism in their care both up front and also downstream as the patient goes to their journey And it was encouraging to read this article.

It was written by Dr. Granger Stewart, who was a physician to the Royal Infirmary back then, who actually achieved quite a lot of prominence in the medical establishment in Scotland and England.

He rose to be the president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, which is an ancient institution in medicine.

but also was visiting doctor to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases down in London.

So it is, by chance, an interesting finding.

So that's how the genesis came about.