It’s not often that a professor of neurology is the corresponding author of a study on the prevention of colorectal cancer and indeed this particular part of the body was not on the minds of most of those who designed the trials of aspirin which he and his colleagues analyse in this paper. more…

The magnolias were among the first of flowering trees, and in many respects they remain first for the beauty and scent of their flowers. There are three species with dangling flowers – sinensis, wilsonii, and sieboldii – and these are especially beautiful and especially scented. more…

The Department of Health is frantically trying to magic up as many as 10,000 posts for those who fail to achieve posts within the specialist training stream.

The BMJ understands that the big teaching hospitals are being asked to identify temporary positions that can be made available from August for doctors unsuccessful in obtaining ST3 and ST4 posts.
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This is has been the best week of the year for plants in England: wisterias, tree peonies, the incomparable Paeonia mlokosewiczii, the first bearded irises, and everywhere towering horse-chestnuts of white or red. But I turn to this lowly, smelly wild plant more…

Giant cell arteritis is not a diagnosis we make readily in general practice, though in theory it can be made on clinical grounds without the necessity of a temporal artery biopsy more…

Trials of education and screening in primary care tend to be labour-intensive and end up with large drop-out rates and low yields. This educational outreach and screening programme for tuberculosis in Hackney was certainly labour-intensive, and in terms of case-finding, had a low yield: more…

“Does tonsillectomy beat watchful waiting in adults?

For those who don’t want – or can’t remember – to take a bisphosphonate tablet once a week, there is the option of spending a quarter of an hour once a year having an infusion of zoledronic acid. more…

SURVIVE is not a good acronym for a trial of inotropic drugs in decompensated heart failure: if there is one certainty in cardiac pharmacology, it is that inotropic drugs never improve survival. more…

Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Health, has today made yet another statement — and another apology — in the Commons about the MTAS debacle.
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