This issue showcases the unique preventive role of occupational medicine. Heralding the Society of Occupational Medicine Annual Scientific Meeting in Leeds in June, Mathie [1] applauds the legacy of Charles Turner Thackrah, anatomist, experimental physiologist, clinician, teacher, founder of the Leeds Medical School, preventive medicine pioneer and humanitarian. Thackrah packed so much into his short life before dying of pulmonary tuberculosis the day after his 38th birthday in 1833. He was a shrewd observer, an assiduous recorder, who married benevolence with imagination and vision. He published his famous tract in 1831 with a larger and definitive edition following in 1832, ‘The effects of the arts, trades, and professions, and of civic states and habits of living, on health and longevity: with suggestions for the removal of many of the agents which produce disease, and shorten the duration of life’. The book covered over 100 trades in Leeds at the time and made important recommendations for prevention, opining that ‘Thoughtlessness or apathy is the only obstacle to success.’ The discipline of occupational medicine resulted and it influenced the Factory Act 1833 which prohibited the employment of children under 9 years old in the textile mills. Sir John Simon, the first chief medical officer in 1855, ranked Thackrah’s contribution to preventive medicine as important as Jenner’s work on smallpox.
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