Discovering Purple
For thousands of years, dyes used to colour textiles and other materials were made from only natural sources. Historically, coloured dyes were made from the roots and leaves of plants, and from certain animals. Among the most precious of the animal-based dyes was the purple colour extracted from snails. This dye was very difficult to obtain and was therefore outrageously expensive. What was more, colours from natural dyes tended to be quite dull, and they faded when exposed to sunlight. But all this changed in 1856 when a London teenager made an important discovery.
William Perkin was born on March 12, 1838, in London, England. His father was a builder, and the family lived in fairly prosperous circumstances in an otherwise rather disreputable neighbourhood in the city's East End. As a boy, Perkin's curiosity prompted early interests in the arts, sciences, photography, and engineering. But then one day, when he was exploring his late grandfather's home, he happened to come across a run-down, yet functional, laboratory, and this solidified his passion for chemistry.
As a student at the City of London School, Perkin became immersed in the study of chemistry. His teacher, Thomas Hall, encouraged him to attend a series of lectures given by eminent scientist Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution. Those speeches fired the young chemist's enthusiasm further, and he became determined to attend the Royal College of Chemistry. Perkin's father hoped to convince his bright young son to follow in his older brother's footsteps into the more respectable field of architecture, so he tried to prevent this at first. But pressure from Hall and the wishes of his son won out, and Perkin entered the Royal College of Chemistry in 1853, at the age of 15. At the time of Perkin's enrolment, the college was headed by noted German chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann. Perkin's scientific gifts soon caught Hofmann's attention, and within two years, he became Hofmann's youngest assistant. Not long after that, Perkin made the discovery that would make him both famous and wealthy.
In 1856, the only viable medical treatment for the deadly disease malaria was quinine, derived from the bark of the cinchona tree native to South America. Demand for this drug was surpassing the available supply. Thus, when Hofmann made some passing comments about the desirability of a synthetic substitute for quinine, it is unsurprising that his star pupil was moved to take up the challenge.
During his spring school holidays that year, Perkin spent his time at home attempting to manufacture the drug from aniline, a by-product from the manufacture of the gas that lit London's streets. Despite his best efforts, however, he did not end up with quinine. Instead, he produced a mysterious dark sludge. Luckily, Perkin's scientific training and nature prompted him to investigate the substance further. Incorporating potassium dichromate and alcohol into the aniline at various stages of the experimental process, he finally happened upon a deep purple solution. Perkin quickly grasped that his purple solution could be used to colour fabric, thus making it the world's first synthetic dye.
Perkin asked advice of Scottish dye works owner Robert Pullar, who convinced him that manufacturing the dye would be well worth it if the colour remained fast and the cost was not prohibitive. Thus reassured, he decided to pursue his commercial plans. Over the fierce objections of his mentor Hofmann, Perkin left college to give birth to the modern chemical industry. He was still only eighteen years old.
With the help of his father and brother, Perkin set up a factory on a site near the Grand Union Canal in Greenford Green, not far from London. Utilising the cheap and almost unlimited supply of aniline available in the city, it began producing the world's first synthetic dye in 1857. Perkin originally called his dye 'Tyrian Purple' or 'aniline purple', but then decided to call it 'mauve', after the French word for the mallow plant used to make the colour violet. This was the name he fixed on in 1859, and is the name still in use to this day.
The company received an unexpected commercial boost from the Empress Eugenie of France when she decided the new colour flattered her, and it soon became the must-have shade for all the fashionable ladies of France. Not to be outdone, England's Queen Victoria also appeared in public wearing a gown of the same hue, thus making it all the rage in England as well. The dye was bold and fast, and the public wanted more. So Perkin went back to the drawing board, and between 1859 and 1864 he developed several more synthetic dye colours.
It is important to note that Perkin's synthetic dye discoveries had effects far beyond the merely decorative. The dyes also became vital to medical research in many ways. For instance, they were used to stain previously invisible microbes and bacteria, allowing researchers to identify such bacilli as tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax.
New technology in New Zealand's health service
A At some time in their lives, nearly all New Zealanders will have to attend an after-hours clinic following an emergency or accident. On entering the consulting room, the patient is faced with a barrage of questions. The first ones relate to the current episode, and are followed by more general enquiries. Do you have any allergies? Are you on any medications? And so on. But imagine a different scenario. The patient walks into the consulting room and there on the healthcare professional's computer screen is his or her medical record in its entirety – allergies, medications, test results and everything else. To some, it's amazing that this isn't happening already. After all, individuals can track their bank accounts, phone records and countless other transactions online, so why can't they track their health? Ian McCrae, Orion Health's CEO, says that it's understandable if health often falls behind other sectors in its adoption of information technology (IT). It might be, he argues, because of concerns about patient privacy, but also because health care is just so complicated.
B The irony is, New Zealand started out being ahead of the game. The backbone of any health IT system is having a unique identifier for each patient, and New Zealand's national health index (NHI) number system was introduced in 1993, before most other countries in the world. Innovation then slowed for some years, but in 2011 the earthquake in Canterbury, which affected thousands of people, was a catalyst for health IT in that region of the country. Suddenly, many people couldn't be seen by their usual doctor and many health records were inaccessible. An existing plan for an electronic shared record was fast-tracked, and within six months a basic system, HealthOne, was up and running. By 2013, clinicians in the hospital emergency department were able to see all relevant medical information about patients. Dr. Nigel Millar, Chief Medical Officer for the Canterbury region, says within days doctors were telling him the information had already revolutionised the way they worked.
C This idea, known as a 'patient portal', is now in operation in other parts of the country, including the capital Wellington. With a mobile app patients can remain connected to their patient portal on their mobile device, allowing for added flexibility. However, there's a lot of complacency in medicine, according to Dr. Richard Medlicott. He says that innovative IT systems have the potential to radically change health care delivery, because they will free doctors from routine administrative tasks and instead allow them to focus on diagnosis and patient care, which is where their skills are really needed. But he admits there is some way to go in the adoption of shared care records, and also in changing the mindset of some doctors who are resistant to change. A good example of technology in use comes from Australia, where the National Home Doctor Service has brought back a service that was becoming infrequent – the home visit. The after hours service uses an app to arrange an on-call doctor who will visit patients at home to provide on-the-spot healthcare.
D A key part of the health IT picture is maintaining a dialogue and exchange of ideas between healthcare professionals, according to Kate Reid, a director at Orion Health. Reid says this is critical, but it's not easy because there are so many different agencies that are sometimes in competition. Another issue, Reid says, is that there are many information systems that are being trialled today. However, these trials are not big enough to determine if they could ever work at a national level. One area where cooperation in health IT really could deliver benefits is in disease prevention and early intervention, says Reid. 'We've got innovations and technology that could be reaching at-risk people right now,' she argues, but the infrastructure is not in place to allow funding to be shifted from treatment to prevention. Scott Arrol, CEO of New Zealand Health IT, says that advances are coming, they're just not arriving as fast as everybody would like.
E While IT is extremely important to a functioning health system, there are other areas where New Zealand technologies are improving health care. Dr. Hong Sheng Chiong, for example, has adapted a smartphone camera for medical use. The examination kit combines a phone adapter and app, allowing users to examine the eye with minimal training. Another innovation is the Clever MedKit, an intelligent first aid kit. It separates different items like band-aids and ice packs and orders replacements when necessary, making it particularly helpful in today's busy offices. In a separate field, the use of pre-made ceramic fittings which can be placed over a broken tooth in a single sitting reduces the cost of treatment. Dr. Adam Doudney came up with the idea before it was developed by researchers at the technology company Rhondium. Another idea is the Silhouette system, which offers a way to easily monitor wounds. It allows practitioners to detect small differences in wound size by collecting accurate images and data. Finally, the Auckland Bioengineering Institute is helping those wishing to keep fit or rehabilitate from injury. When placed on the body their special sensor moves with the wearer and measures the amount of movement, before the data is transmitted to the user's mobile or tablet. It'll be fascinating to see how these and other technologies transform medicine over the years to come.
The tuatara – past and future
The New Zealand species of lizard, the tuatara, is firmly embedded in the national psyche: an icon for today which dates from the age of dinosaurs; an ancient reptile commemorated on the back of the five cent coin. New Zealanders feel an affinity with the tuatara, and accept that active conservation management is required to ensure it will be among the legacies left to future generations.
When European explorers reached New Zealand in 1769 they found two large islands, which together they called the 'mainland', and many tiny offshore islands around the coast. The naturalists who came with the explorers disregarded the tuatara, though it is improbable none were seen. Only several decades later did a tuatara specimen reach the British Museum, where it was eventually classified as just another type of lizard.
One of the first scientists who realised that aspects of tuatara anatomy were odd – unchanged for tens of thousands of years – was Albert Gunther in 1876. Gunther believed the tuatara was one of the most valuable objects in zoological anatomical collections, and also noted, in passing, that the reptile was likely to become extinct. From today's perspective, it is striking that Gunther expressed no concern about the probable demise of the tuatara. He and his contemporaries were products of their age, strongly influenced by Charles Darwin's theory, which had only recently been published. Their views were something like this: 'Extinction is a natural process. It is sad that species disappear, but that is part of nature.'
There is a second important aspect of Gunther's work. He recorded, correctly, that some of the mammals introduced by Europeans were predators of the tuatara – particularly rats. But what he did not realise was that New Zealand has two species of rat, both introduced, both with an appetite for tuatara: the ship's rat came with European explorers and settlers; but the kiore rat had already been in the country for hundreds of years, brought by Polynesians from the Pacific Islands. Gunther failed to recognise the distinction, believing all rats to be a relatively recent introduction.
Little further research was conducted until Ian Crook of the NZ Wildlife Service published his findings in 1973, which can be summarised as follows. Tuatara thrive on offshore islands with no rats. Tuatara never survived on islands with ship's rats. On a few islands, small and declining populations of tuatara occur with the kiore. This should not be seen, however, as evidence that tuatara and kiore can coexist. Rather, Crook proposed, kiore probably only arrived recently on such islands, and thus the small populations represent extinctions in progress.
Throughout the 1990s, Richard Holdaway and his colleagues at Victoria University in Wellington documented the surprising discovery that kiore probably arrived around 1800 years ago, although the human population of New Zealand is thought to be no older than 800 years. How is this possible? Presumably, Holdaway argued, the kiore rat were brought by Polynesian explorers who visited the country but did not settle. Thereafter, the rats were agents of ecological warfare, exterminating perhaps 1000-3000 species. Thus, tuatara and many other species were already rare or extinct when permanent human inhabitants – the Maori – arrived around 1300. This hypothesis is still being debated, but the evidence continues to accumulate in its favour.
Conservation practice has changed dramatically since Crook's findings were published in 1973. Eradication of rats from any given environment was believed to be virtually impossible until about 1980, but since then has become routine. Enormous conservation benefits are accruing as newly rat-free offshore islands are providing sanctuaries for the country's rarest species. In 1995, for example, Nicola Nelson of the Department of Conservation established 68 tuatara on Titi Island. Since then, four more populations of tuatara have been established elsewhere under similar conditions. Today, numbers of tuatara are still a fraction of what they once were, but for the first time in 1800 years the decline has been reversed.
While the recovery of rare species is itself a good thing, the truly significant outcome of this research is that it liberates the imagination. If we can remove predatory introduced mammals from islands, why not from the mainland too? Perhaps the questions we ask should demonstrate even more visionary ambition. Can non-mammalian pests also be removed from the mainland? Our rivers, for example, are full of introduced species of fish called trout. Some day more people will understand that trout have replaced a whole native fauna in our waterways, just as rats replaced tuatara on the mainland. Will such knowledge lead to the creation of mainland 'aquatic islands' where we can once again establish those species of indigenous fish that used to live in our rivers? Similarly, can bellbirds and tuis replace birds like starlings and mynahs?
The answers to such questions are uncertain, and opposing sides will doubtless be fiercely debated. But the role of scientific knowledge in illuminating the past will no longer be crucial. Just as we now no longer tolerate extinction, in the future we may no longer accept a mainland devoid of the biological wonders of our past. Conservation is thus not primarily about the past but about imagining and then creating the future we wish for our children and ourselves. For 80 million years until humans arrived, tuatara occurred throughout New Zealand – might they do so again?
@juststudykokand