Chaos in the Bowels

Jules Henri Poincare (1854 – 1912) was in trouble.  The most famous mathematician of his generation,  he set himself the task of predicting accurately the orbits of the earth, moon and sun.  His solution was brilliant. It was nominated for a prestigious international prize, but just before he was due... Read more »

Psychological influences on the gut

The opportunity to retrain as a psychoanalytical psychotherapist sharpened my interest on the influence of the meaning of life experience on gut function and on the role of psychological therapies in treating gut illness. Collaboration with Professor Francis Creed in Manchester led to the award of a large dual centre... Read more »

Diagnostic Criteria for Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Irritable Bowel Syndrome is one of the large number of unexplained medical illnesses that form the bulk of todays medical practice. These include chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia syndrome, unexplained backache, functional dyspepsia, depression and many others. I regard each of these illnesses to be the variable expressions of the... Read more »

Small Intestinal Transit and Motility

A collaboration with Dr Immanuel Bergman from the Safety in Mines Research Establishment in Sheffield led to the development of a simple device for measuring breath hydrogen, which we exploited for the measurement of small intestinal transit time. The combination of this with scintigraphic measurement of gastric emptying and radioopaque... Read more »

Rectal Sensitivity

Irritable Bowel Syndome (IBS) is characterized by increased sensitivity of the rectum. We showed that rectal sensitivity is quite variable and identified how stress, inflammation and sleep deprivation could enhance sensitivity while hypnosis, relaxation and a new class of drugs that blocked serotonin receptors could diminish it. The latter became... Read more »