In February 1924, Mamie Hodges of San Antonio, Texas, addressed a letter to the US Children’s Bureau. In the letter, she described an all too typical set of circumstances. Hodges was a young mother teetering on the brink of poverty. At the time she wrote to the Bureau, she and her husband had nearly paid off their home. However, a new discovery made Hodges fear for her family’s future: she was pregnant. Again.1

The WHO Laboratory Manual for the Examination and Processing of Human Sperm, sixth edition, introduces several important advancements over the previous edition, including an updated and comprehensive laboratory technical guide for performing semen analysis, recognition that the lower 5th percentile values of basic semen parameters are insufficient to distinguish fertile from infertile men, and the incorporation of advanced diagnostic tests such as sperm DNA fragmentation (SDF), oxidative stress (OS), and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) testing. These updates reflect significant progress in standardizing laboratory procedures and expanding the analytical scope of male fertility assessment. However, despite these strengths, the manual has some limitations which include absence of clinical guidelines to accompany the laboratory protocols, removal of reference limits, underrepresentation of the reference population, and lack of information from source studies. This gap leaves clinicians without practical direction on when to advise a test, interpreting test results and integrating them into patient management. Addressing these shortfalls would enhance the manual’s utility by bridging the divide between laboratory data and clinical decision making in the male infertility evaluation.

Post-mortem imaging is an indispensable tool in the investigation of suspicious childhood deaths, particularly for identifying fractures and intracranial hemorrhages. It offers significant logistical advantages over traditional autopsies, including cost-effectiveness and rapid image acquisition. However, its application requires close collaboration between radiologists, pathologists and forensic experts, and is rarely used as a standalone approach. This chapter delves into the role of post-mortem imaging, with a primary focus on post-mortem CT and some coverage of post-mortem MRI and novel techniques of micro-CT and linear slot scanning.

The chapter discusses key medicolegal considerations, imaging protocols, common findings and interpretation challenges and the importance of maintaining strict chain-of-custody protocols. As post-mortem imaging continues to gain traction, we underscore the need for standardized imaging protocols and enhanced support for multidisciplinary teams to safeguard the well-being of professionals conducting these sensitive examinations.

Introduction: Derivative Anxieties?

In the first decade of its establishment in 1817, the Hindu College, Calcutta, was seeing a steady growth in terms of both the number of students and the introduction of new courses. “A Drawing class was added in 1827,” the Presidency College Centenary Volume observes, “but a more significant development was the creation of a professorship of Law and Political Economy so that in a few years the college came to have two branches—the General Department and the Law Department.” Although the Centenary Volume mentions 1831 as the year in which the instruction in law and political economy started, the college might not have had a teaching position specifically for it before 1840. In October 1840, the General Committee of Public Instruction wrote a response to the Governor-General Auckland's minute on education. In the response, the General Committee acknowledged the necessity of lectures on jurisprudence, ethics, and political economy and asked for the provision of “the services of a Lecturer on the Principles of Jurisprudence and Political Economy” at the Hindu College. The letter further mentioned the plan to start the lectureship also at other institutions under the Committee's jurisdiction.

The decision to introduce a course on law and political economy was underpinned by deliberate reasoning.

Rib fractures are the most common fracture by number in the abused child. While posterior rib fractures bear the highest specificity for child abuse, rib fractures are rare in infants and young children from accidental trauma. In the absence of overt underlying bone disease or reliably witnessed trauma, any rib fracture in an infant or young child is worrisome and indicates the need for further evaluation.

Normal rib anatomy is presented. Rib fractures may occur at any location in the rib from rib head proximally to costochondral junction distally. Abusive rib fractures may be acute or, more commonly, in the healing state at presentation. Rib fractures are commonly accompanied by other abusive injuries. Lower rib fractures are not infrequently seen when there is abusive visceral trauma.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation in infants may cause rib fractures; however, such fractures are characteristically buckle fractures of the anterior or anterolateral upper and middle ribs and show no evidence of healing at presentation.

This chapter explores the international public health nursing programme of the League of Red Cross Societies through the interwar period. Established in 1920 in London, and run from King’s College and then Bedford College, the programme saw over 250 nurses from around the world undertake post-graduate training. Calling themselves ‘Old Internationals’, these nurses returned home and became leaders in their own countries in the development of public health and social welfare. The chapter explores the role of the Commonwealth Fund and its humanitarian assistance to Austrian nurses to enable them to attend the London courses in the interwar period. It focuses on the nurses who attended the League courses and how the training helped them to become leaders in public health initiatives across Austria.

In 1896, a small booklet titled the Descriptions with Plans of a Chemical Laboratory: Presidency College, designed by Alexander Pedler, professor of chemistry, and erected by the Bengal Public Works Department, was published by the Bengal Secretariat Press. About thirty-five pages in length, the booklet was composed of a brief introductory note followed by a series of eighteen plates of detailed design and floor plans of both the interior and the exterior structures of the new building.

Pedler outlined the significance of the publication in the following terms: