The Early Days of Diverticula of the Colon

Abstract

As a 17 year old first-year medical student at Oxford University in 1943, busily dissecting a cadaver in the Anatomy Department, I could not help noticing a series of peculiar pea-sized swellings along the course of the sigmoid colon. I showed these to our Professor of Anatomy, the much respected Sir Wilfred Le Gros Clarke FRS, who said ‘Those are diverticula, my boy. As an Oxford student you should know, (which, in fact, I did not!), that the word ‘diverticulum’ is Latin for a ‘wayside house of ill fame or ill repute’, and well do they deserve that descriptive term’. I carefully excised the affected piece of colon, put it in a bottle of formalin and, at the end of term, put it onto the mantelpiece of my bedroom at home. A few years later, my mother, in a clearing-up mode, threw the dusty bottle away. What a pity that I am unable to produce a photograph of my specimen to illustrate this article!