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Historians have long been aware of a text purporting to contain decisions made by the burgesses of four Scottish burghs: Berwick, Roxburgh, Edinburgh and Stirling. This text is internally dated to 1295 or 1296 and purports to lay down rules governing succession to deceased burgesses, some of which have echoes in modern Scots succession law. The text of the decisions has attracted little study, in part because of its complex manuscript tradition. This article draws on important recent work on the Scottish legal manuscript traditions, to explore the transmission of the decisions and what they meant to those who first articulated them. In the process, it also asks about the interaction between the manuscript traditions that transmitted the legal texts and the traditional customary practices of Scottish burghs. These questions may have some bearing on how historians understand the development of the Scottish legal tradition during the medieval period.

This volume represents a truly remarkable scholarly achievement. Without doubt, it is the single most significant work to be published on the Scottish legal system during the central Middle Ages in...

Twelfth-century Scottish monarchs laid the foundations of the medieval Scottish common law. This chapter begins by exploring the political context from which that common law emerged. It then considers the various legal tools, courts, and procedures that were created by twelfth- and early thirteenth-century monarchs to deliver royal justice. Subsequently the chapter explores how later monarchs adapted the institutions laid down by their predecessors to develop the common law of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Particular reference is made to the brieves, many of which were inspired in their content by near-contemporary English writs. The extent to which these ‘brieves’ furnished litigants with truly ‘common’ mechanisms for the enforcement of claims across the Scottish kingdom is currently debated, as is explained in this chapter. Finally, brief reference is made to the transformation of the common law in light of Romano-canonical learning during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In 1579, the Scottish jurist David Chalmers argued that remedies for the contemporary political troubles of his native country could be found in the study of law and history. His thinking in this regard was indebted to the French writer Jean Bodin. And yet while Chalmers was evidently familiar with Bodin's Les Six Livres de la Republique, he did not endorse all of the latter's more radical claims. In particular, he does not seem to have accepted that all law-making was dependent upon an exercise of sovereign will. In 1566 Chalmers had already argued that in Scotland the binding force of law could be attributed to that which local legal experts recognized to be just and rational on the basis of their learning. He developed this idea in 1579 to create an intriguing account of how both legal and historical learning could be used to shape Scottish laws and government.

There is a lack of published evidence for treatment and outcome measures for vulval erosive lichen planus (ELPV).To conduct a multicentre case note review to examine real-life management of ELPV comparing current U.K. practice against an agreed audit standard.Criteria for standards of care for which to evaluate current service provision were set following communication with experts from the British Society for the Study of Vulval Disease. Participants from 10 U.K. centres included nine dermatologists and one gynaecologist who run specialist vulval clinics. Standards examined the documentation of disease severity/impact measures, the use of diagnostic biopsies, treatments used and assessment of treatment response.Audit data were collected from 172 patients. Documentation of symptoms/clinical findings was excellent (99%, 170/172). A schematic diagram was present in the notes of 87% (150/172). Patient-related disease impact measures including Dermatology Life Quality Index (3%, 6/172) or visual analogue scales (1%, 2/172) were less well documented. Biopsies were performed in 78% (135/172); 71% (96/135) showed histological features consistent with erosive lichen planus. Squamous cell carcinoma developed in four patients (two vulval, two oral) and vulval intraepithelial neoplasia in two further patients. Recommended first-line treatment with a very potent topical steroid was used in 75% (129/172) with improvement in 66% (85/129). Significant variation in second-line therapy was seen.Wide variation in U.K. practice demonstrates the absence of standardized guidance for treating ELPV and the need for vulval-specific outcomes. This audit should act as a framework towards improving ELPV management and to plan future research in this area.

Young male pigs were used to examine effects of dietary protein and fat sources on plasma cholesterol parameters. Diets providing 16 and 42% of metabolizable energy from protein and fat, respectively, were fed for 12-14 weeks. Protein was derived either from plant sources (50% from soybean meal and 25% each from corn and wheat) or from animal sources (90% from casein and 10% from lactalbumin). The polyunsaturated to saturated fat ratio in the diets averaged 3.0 in the polyunsaturated fat diets and 0.3 in the saturated fat diets. Cholesterol content of the four experimental diets (plant protein-polyunsatured fat; plant protein-saturated fat; animal protein-polyunsaturated fat; and animal protein-saturated fat) was 0.6 mg/kcal. Consumption of diets containing plant protein rather than animal protein reduced total plasma cholesterol levels by 50 mg/dl; high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels were also lowered in pigs fed plant protein. Similarly, plasma cholesterol levels were approximately 40 mg/dl lower in pigs fed the polyunsaturated fat diets than in pigs fed the saturated fat diets. HDL cholesterol levels, however, were unaffected by source of fat fed. These results show that the hypocholesterolemic action of the plant proteins was as great as the hypocholesterolemic action of polyunsaturated fat and that consumption of plant proteins rather than animal proteins resulted in lower plasma cholesterol levels regardless of whether polyunsaturated or saturated fats were fed.

An attempt to evaluate the endocrine function of the islet cells of the pancreas in man has been possible since reliable methods of measuring serum insulin concentration became available to the clinician.