Abstract
Just as the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ is upon us, the September issue of the JRCPE makes its arrival too. As usual, the Journal contains a hotch potch of articles of differing types from around the globe. The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh as well, prides itself as being a global brand and encourages clinicians who support and promote many aspects of clinical care, education, innovation and research to be nominated as Fellows; details on how to do so are found on the College website. The Autumn also heralds the start and conclusion of the Edinburgh International Festival which explored three main themes this year: ‘community over chaos’, ‘hope in the face of diversity’ and a ‘perspective that’s not one’s own’. While it’s debateable that all acts could directly resonate with the practice of medicine, the headlines certainly appear to suggest some common ground between medicine and creative artistic processes and activities.
In this issue, Karia et al. tells us about metaverse in a review article describing its role in health care of the future. If this is a word (which is a portmanteau of ‘meta’ and ‘universe’) and concept unfamiliar to you, then read on. The subject matter of a further manuscript, this time about bipolar disorder, is probably much more familiar than metaverse to most physicians. In this accessible and concise review, Lane and Smith provide a contemporary account of its features, diagnosis, management and future directions. A commentary explores the concept and ‘clinical features’ of ‘hyper-doing’ in medicine and its possible anti-dotes, while a further commentary provides some further reflection with regards to the impact of COVID-19 and lessons the National Health Service (NHS) – and undoubtedly other healthcare authorities around the world – can take on board. As well as for COVID-19, other vaccination programmes are arguably equally as important in preventing or altering the clinical course of a multitude of other diseases and conditions, although their success undoubtedly relies on a sufficiently high uptake. With this in mind, Chapmen et al. explored whether an electronic medical record reminder was effective in improving influenza programmes in elderly individuals. The Journal also contains the usual mix of case reports, plus a reminder to us all what Luftsichel sign is and of its importance when looking at chest radiographs. As always, the Journal with its first ever impact factor, welcomes submissions of manuscripts of all shapes and sizes pertaining to the practice and principles of medicine, its education and history. The editorial board will in turn endeavour to provide a timely response on outcomes relating to peer review.
It is likely that most readers will have immediately realised that the introduction of this piece quotes the first line of ‘To Autumn’ written over 200 hundred years ago. The well-known poem reflects – among other things – upon the abundance and ripeness of this particular time of the year and its steady progression through to finality of the season and Winter. What is probably less well known, is that John Keats, did in fact study medicine although never practised it, preferring to turn his hand to poetry. Unfortunately he died in his twenties of tuberculosis and in an article describing the trajectory and circumstances of his illness, 1 we are told that ‘Keats coughed and a small spot of blood appeared on the sheet’ and then commented that ‘I know the colour of that blood; it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that colour. That drop of blood is my death warrant. I must die’. Thankfully, tuberculosis vaccination programmes, treatments and public health strategies have evolved exponentially since the time of Keats and his unfortunate untimely demise.