Pharmacology

The Rush to Diagnose ADHD

Prescribing Behaviour

By Gail Bell

Allan has been in the game for over 30 years and currently works at a special school, discreetly tucked away on the edge of a sports field. It’s a bland, Department of Education semicircle of prefab buildings that nevertheless, on the day I visited, set off a familiar prickle of uneasiness in my throat of the kind I felt as a child when we dared each other to push through the tangled oleand

Howard Florey & Alexander Fleming

By Shane Maloney

On 2 September 1940, as the Battle of Britain raged, a short, grey-headed man with a dapper bow tie presented himself at the pathology laboratory at Oxford University. “Hullo,” he said to the grouchy, work-absorbed Australian in charge. “I hear you’ve been doing things with my old penicillin. I’d be interested to look around.” Thus Alexander Fleming met Howard Florey. As a battlef

Reflections on the Breeding House

In the Rat Room

By Gail Bell

In many ways it was the perfect job for a young recovering panic merchant. Geographical isolation, hours alone with non-speaking mammals, a heavy door between me and the other primates, and a routine to learn and master at my own speed. Nominally, I was a laboratory assistant in a facility that had no lab. The training on offer was of the passed-down from wiser heads variety and I could hope for no piece of paper at the completion of th