The papers from George Blair\'s war service as a prisoner of the Japanese in the Second World War are unusually complete. It is a valuable record because it is representative of those young doctors who provided most of the medical care in the camps, and also because the Taiwan camps are not well documented in the literature.

This article explores civilian responses to the British army\'s blood donor recruitment campaign in wartime Britain, revealing it to be an underexplored medium for the examination of the contribution of women to Britain\'s war effort. However, despite extensive gender-targeted propaganda, it reveals evidence of a significant disparity between levels of volunteering to donate and actual donation throughout the war. Wartime donor behaviour was influenced by perceptions of personal or familial risk, with donor recruitment propaganda emphasising kinship ties to those in military service and promoting blood donation as a mutual insurance policy. Ultimately, this article argues that evidence of donor behaviour further undermines the mythologised narrative of Britain\'s \'People\'s War\' and provides nuance to the understanding of blood donor motivation.

Optimizing analysis parameters and sample input is crucial in forensic genetics methods to generate reliable results, and even more so when working with muti-copy mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and low-quality samples. This study compared mitotypes based on next-generation sequencing (NGS) results derived from the same samples at two different sequencing library concentrations-30 pM and 0.3 pM. Thirty femur samples from the Second World War were used as a model for poorly preserved DNA. Quantitative PCR (qPCR) method targeting 113 bp long fragment was employed to assess the quantity of mitogenomes. HID Ion Chef™ Instrument with Precision ID mtDNA Control Region Panel was used for library preparation and templating. Sequencing was performed with Ion GeneStudio™ S5 System. Reference haplotypes were determined from sequencing samples at 30 pM library input. Haplotypes were compared between optimal (30 pM) and suboptimal (0.3 pM) library inputs. Often the difference in haplotypes was length heteroplasmy, which in line with other studies shows that this type of variant is not reliable for interpretation in forensics. Excluding length variants at positions 573, 309, and 16,193, 56.7% of the samples matched, and in two samples, no sequence was obtained at suboptimal library input. The rest of the samples differed between optimal and suboptimal library input. To conclude, genotyping and analyzing low-quantity libraries derived from low-quality aged skeletonized human remains therefore must be done with caution in forensic genetics casework.

An unsung hero of British ophthalmology is the largely forgotten Sir Benjamin Rycroft (1902-1967). This paper will discuss and analyse the undervalued career of this great man. Upon graduating from medical school, Rycroft became a General Practitioner. Rycroft then decided to train to become an ophthalmologist. Rycroft began his ophthalmology career in 1930s London focusing on the new ground-breaking surgery of keratoplasty (corneal grafting) before serving with distinction in the medical corps during the Second World War. He is chiefly remembered for his work after the war at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, Sussex, where he worked with renowned plastics surgeon Archibald McIndoe. During his time, there Rycroft became globally recognised for his skill in keratoplasty and started a campaign which radically changed the legal framework behind organ donation in the UK. Despite few knowing of him today, Rycroft is undoubtedly one of the most influential British ophthalmologists of the past century. He was for decades seen as one of the world\'s leading practitioners of keratoplasty and established a unit which restored sight to wounded veterans. His greatest achievement lies in his organ donation reform, which started the process of allowing organ donation to be carried out on a nationwide scale for the first time.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is of great value in forensics to procure information about a person when a next of kin, personal belongings, or other sources of nuclear DNA (nDNA) are unavailable, or nDNA is lacking in quality and quantity. The quality and reliability of the results depend greatly on ensuring optimal conditions for the given method, for instance, the optimal input of the copy number (CN) in next-generation sequencing (NGS) methods. The unavailability of commercial quantitative PCR (qPCR) methods to determine mtDNA CN creates the necessity to rely on recommendations to infer mtDNA CN from nDNA yield. Because nDNA yield varies between individuals, tissues, parts of the same tissue, and because mtDNA CN varies between tissues, such assumptions must be examined for a specific context, rather than be generalized. This study compares mtDNA CN calculated from nDNA yield and qPCR measured mtDNA CN. Seventy-five femurs from the Second World War victims were used as samples; they were cut below the greater trochanter, surface contaminants were removed by mechanical and chemical cleaning, samples were fully demineralized, and DNA was isolated. PowerQuant® Kit (Promega) was used to analyze DNA yield. An in-house method was used to determine mtDNA CN. Comparison of mtDNA CN from nDNA derived calculations and measured mtDNA CN highlighted vast differences. The results emphasize the need to perform qPCR to assess mtDNA CN before NGS analyses of aged bones\' mitogenomes rather than estimating mtDNA CN from nDNA yield to ensure the quality and reliability of the results of NGS analysis.

During the Second World War, the Hadfield Spears ambulance took care of around 22,000 wounded and/or sick patients across three continents. This article analyses how military attacks and instances of violence impacted on the psychological, emotional and physical health of those attending the wounded within this mobile unit. While historiography of allied medicine develops apace, analysis of the Free French health service remains rare. Yet the history of the Hadfield Spears ambulance provides a fascinating window into the neglected issue of attacks on healthcare in wartime, as well as a fresh scope for combining macro and micro perspectives. The deployment of both approaches suggests potent ways to connect intimate responses to attacks to broader histories of allied frictions and cooperation. Crucially, it offers rich insights into the development of a transnational \'ethos of stoicism\', which helped to sustain the hospital\'s community, in a fraught allied diplomatic context.

It is very important to generate phenotypic results that are reliable when processing chronological old skeletal remains for cases involving the identification of missing persons. To improve the success of pigmentation prediction in Second World War victims, three bones from each of the eight skeletons analyzed were included in the study, which makes it possible to generate a consensus profile. The PowerQuant System was used for quantification, the ESI 17 Fast System was used for STR typing, and a customized version of the HIrisPlex panel was used for PCR-MPS. The HID Ion Chef Instrument was used for library preparation and templating. Sequencing was performed with the Ion GeneStudio S5 System. Identical full profiles and identical hair and eye color predictions were achieved from three bones analyzed per skeleton. Blue eye color was predicted in five skeletons and brown in three skeletons. Blond hair color was predicted in one skeleton, blond to dark blond in three skeletons, brown to dark brown in two skeletons, and dark brown to black in two skeletons. The reproducibility and reliability of the results proved the multisample analysis method to be beneficial for phenotyping chronological old skeletons because differences in DNA yields in different bone types provide a greater possibility of obtaining a better-quality consensus profile.

An efficient extraction method is important for obtaining high-quality DNA from degraded aged bone samples. An automated full-demineralization method using the EDTA and DNA Investigator Kit (Qiagen) combined with Qiagen\'s biorobots was optimized in our laboratory in the past to extract the DNA from 500 mg of aged bone samples. The purpose of this research was to further improve the method with the aim of reducing the required sample material, shortening the extraction time, and achieving higher throughput. To process extremely small samples, the amount of bone powder was reduced to 75 mg, EDTA was replaced with reagents from the Bone DNA Extraction Kit (Promega), and decalcification was shortened from overnight to 2.5 h. Instead of 50 ml tubes, 2 ml tubes were used, which allows higher throughput. The DNA Investigator Kit (Qiagen) and EZ1 Advanced XL biorobot (Qiagen) was used for DNA purification. A comparison between both extraction methods was made on 29 Second World War bones and 22 archaeological bone samples. The differences between both methods were explored by measuring nuclear DNA yield and STR typing success. After cleaning the samples, 500 mg of bone powder was processed using EDTA, and 75 mg of powder from the same bone was processed using the Bone DNA Extraction Kit (Promega). DNA content and DNA degradation were determined using PowerQuant (Promega), and the PowerPlex ESI 17 Fast System (Promega) was used for STR typing. The results showed that the full-demineralization protocol using 500 mg of bone was efficient for Second World War and archaeological samples, and the partial-demineralization protocol using 75 mg of bone powder was only efficient for the Second World War bones. The improved extraction method-for which significantly lower amounts of bone powder can be used, the extraction process is faster, and higher throughput of bone samples is possible-is applicable for genetic identification of relatively well-preserved aged bone samples in routine forensic analyses.

BACKGROUND: The activity of the Strasbourg Dermatology Clinic was interrupted in September 1939 by the outbreak of the Second World War and the evacuation of the hospital. After annexing Alsace to the Reich, the German authorities demanded that physicians return to work, which resumed at the Dermatology Clinic, and was now entirely Germanized, in particular the laboratory of dermatopathology. Our aim was to study activity in the histopathology laboratory between 1939 and 1945.
METHODS: We studied all the histopathology reports contained in three registers written in German. We collected patient data, clinical elements and diagnoses by microscopy. There were a total of 1202 cases between September 1940 and March 1945. The records were in a good state of preservation, enabling exhaustive analysis.
RESULTS: The number of cases peaked in 1941 and diminished thereafter. The average age of patients was 49 years, and the sex ratio was 0.77. Patients were referred from Alsace or other Reich territories; referrals from other regions of France or other countries had ceased. There were 655 cases in dermatopathology, with a predominance of tumor lesions, followed by infections and inflammatory dermatoses. We noted 547 cases of non-cutaneous diseases, mainly in gynecology, urology, and in ear, nose, throat and digestive surgery; their numbers peaked in 1940-41, then tapered off progressively.
CONCLUSIONS: Thedisruptions associated with thewar were manifested by the use of German language and the cessation of scientific publications. The lack of general pathologists in the hospital resulted in numerous cases in general pathology. Skin biopsies were mainly diagnostic and focused on skin cancers, whereas inflammatory and infectious diseases predominated before the war. No traces of data related to unethical human experimentation were identified in these archives, in contrast to other institutes in Strasbourg that were truly Nazified.
CONCLUSIONS: These data from the Strasbourg Dermatology Clinic contain valuable information for the history of medicine and provide an insight into the functioning of a laboratory under the Occupation.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem opened the first medical school in Israel in May 1949. One of the select 45 students of its first class was Bracha (Chweidan) Ramot. After completing her medical studies with distinction, she went on to specialize in internal medicine and hematology and soon became a central figure in the development of hematology in Israel. In 1958, Ramot established the Hematological Institute at Tel-Hashomer hospital and served as its director until 1991. She devoted much of her time and effort to researching environmental and genetic factors that influence hematological conditions: deficiencies in coagulation factors, glucose metabolism disorders, and especially leukemias and lymphomas, including the type known as Hodgkin\'s disease. In 2001, Ramot, \"The Doyenne of Israeli Hematology\" as she was called in publications of the Albert Einstein Institute, was awarded the Israel Prize in Medical Sciences, the country\'s most prestigious prize. Her biography personifies the ability to overcome obstacles and challenges in one\'s personal life while concurrently becoming an exceedingly successful physician and researcher of extraordinary achievement.