Gamgee Tissue is a surgical dressing invented by Dr. Joseph Sampson Gamgee in Birmingham, England, in 1880. [2] [3] [4]
Gamgee Tissue is a surgical dressing invented by Dr. Joseph Sampson Gamgee in Birmingham, England, in 1880. [2] [3] [4]
Gamgee Tissue has a thick layer of absorbent cotton wool between two layers of absorbent gauze. [2] It represents the first use of cotton wool in a medical context, and was a major advancement in the prevention of infection of surgical wounds. It is still the basis for many modern surgical dressings. The name has been a trademark of Robinson Healthcare (formerlyl Robinson and Sons Ltd of Chesterfield), [5] based in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, since 1911.
In Birmingham, "Gamgee" became the colloquial name for cotton wool, which led to the surname of Gaffer Gamgee and his son Sam in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings . In a 1954 letter to the author Naomi Mitchison, who was checking the text of the novel for Tolkien, he addresses a question she had about the name: [1]
Yes, Sam Gamgee is in a sense a relation of Dr. Gamgee, in that his name would not have taken that form, if I had not heard of 'Gamgee tissue'; there was I believe a Dr. Gamgee (no doubt of the kin) in Birmingham when I was a child. The name was any way always familiar to me. Gaffer Gamgee arose first: he was a legendary character to my children (based on a real-life gaffer, not of that name). But, as you will find explained, in this tale the name is a 'translation' of the real Hobbit name, derived from a village (devoted to rope-making) anglicized as Gamwich (pron. Gammidge), near Tighfield (see vol. II p. 217). Since Sam was close friends of the family of Cotton (another village-name), I was led astray into the Hobbit-like joke of spelling Gamwichy [as] Gamgee, though I do not think that in actual Hobbit-dialect the joke really arose.
— J.R.R. Tolkien [1]
Hobbits are a fictional race of people in the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien. About half average human height, Tolkien presented hobbits as a variety of humanity, or close relatives thereof. Occasionally known as halflings in Tolkien's writings, they live barefooted, and traditionally dwell in homely underground houses which have windows, built into the sides of hills, though others live in houses. Their feet have naturally tough leathery soles and are covered on top with curly hair.
Samwise Gamgee is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. A hobbit, Samwise is the chief supporting character of The Lord of the Rings, serving as the loyal companion of the protagonist Frodo Baggins. Sam is a member of the Fellowship of the Ring, the group of nine charged with destroying the One Ring to prevent the Dark Lord Sauron from taking over the world.
Shelob is a fictional monster in the form of a giant spider from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Her lair lies in Cirith Ungol leading into Mordor. The creature Gollum deliberately leads the Hobbit protagonist Frodo there in hopes of recovering the One Ring by letting Shelob attack Frodo. The plan is foiled when Samwise Gamgee temporarily blinds Shelob with the Phial of Galadriel, and then severely wounds her with Frodo's Elvish sword, Sting.
The year 1880 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed here.
"The Scouring of the Shire" is the penultimate chapter of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy The Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship hobbits, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, return home to the Shire to find that it is under the brutal control of ruffians and their leader "Sharkey", revealed to be the Wizard Saruman. The ruffians have despoiled the Shire, cutting down trees and destroying old houses, as well as replacing the old mill with a larger one full of machinery which pollutes the air and the water. The hobbits rouse the Shire to rebellion, lead their fellow hobbits to victory in the Battle of Bywater, and end Saruman's rule.
The Lord of the Rings 1981 radio series is an epic fantasy adventure for BBC Radio 4, adapted from J. R. R. Tolkien's 1955 novel of the same name. It is the third radio dramatisation of the novel, following a 1955 BBC Radio adaptation, and a 1979 adaptation for NPR in the United States.
Dr Joseph Sampson Gamgee, MRCS, FRSE was a surgeon at the Queen's Hospital in Birmingham, England. He pioneered aseptic surgery, and, in 1880 invented Gamgee Tissue, an absorbent cotton wool and gauze surgical dressing.
Cotton wool consists of silky fibers taken from cotton plants in their raw state. Impurities, such as seeds, are removed and the cotton is then bleached using hydrogen peroxide or sodium hypochlorite and sterilized. It is also a refined product which has medical, cosmetic and many other practical uses.
During 1955 and 1956, a condensed radio dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings, adapted and produced by Terence Tiller, was broadcast in two series of six episodes each on BBC Radio's the Third Programme. These radio broadcasts were the first dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings, a book by J. R. R. Tolkien, the final volume of which, The Return of the King, had been published in October 1955. The script had been thought lost, but it was rediscovered in the BBC archives in 2022.
Scholars and critics have identified many themes of The Lord of the Rings, a major fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, including a reversed quest, the struggle of good and evil, death and immortality, fate and free will, the danger of power, and various aspects of Christianity such as the presence of three Christ figures, for prophet, priest, and king, as well as elements like hope and redemptive suffering. There is also a strong thread throughout the work of language, its sound, and its relationship to peoples and places, along with moralisation from descriptions of landscape. Out of these, Tolkien stated that the central theme is death and immortality.
"The Council of Elrond" is the second chapter of Book 2 of J. R. R. Tolkien's bestselling fantasy work, The Lord of the Rings, which was published in 1954–1955. It is the longest chapter in that book at some 15,000 words, and critical for explaining the power and threat of the One Ring, for introducing the final members of the Fellowship of the Ring, and for defining the planned quest to destroy it. Contrary to the maxim "Show, don't tell", the chapter consists mainly of people talking; the action is, as in an earlier chapter "The Shadow of the Past", narrated, largely by the Wizard Gandalf, in flashback. The chapter parallels the far simpler Beorn chapter in The Hobbit, which similarly presents a culture-clash of modern with ancient. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey calls the chapter "a largely unappreciated tour de force". The Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge writes that the chapter brings the hidden narrative of Christianity in The Lord of the Rings close to the surface.
Gollum is a monster with a distinctive style of speech in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He was introduced in the 1937 fantasy novel The Hobbit, and became important in its sequel, The Lord of the Rings. Gollum was a Stoor Hobbit of the River-folk who lived near the Gladden Fields. In The Lord of the Rings it is stated that he was originally known as Sméagol, corrupted by the One Ring, and later named Gollum after his habit of making "a horrible swallowing noise in his throat".
The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire is an inland area settled exclusively by hobbits, the Shire-folk, largely sheltered from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It is in the northwest of the continent, in the region of Eriador and the Kingdom of Arnor.
"Fastitocalon" is a medieval-style poem by J. R. R. Tolkien about a gigantic sea turtle. The setting is explicitly Middle-earth. The poem is included in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
The plants in Middle-earth, the fictional world devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, are a mixture of real plant species with fictional ones. Middle-earth was intended to represent the real world in an imagined past, and in many respects its natural history is realistic.
Robinson and Sons Ltd was founded in 1839 by John Bradbury Robinson in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. The company started making pill boxes and grew to become a major packaging and healthcare business.
The roles of women in The Lord of the Rings have often been assessed as insignificant, or important only in relation to male characters in a story about men for boys. Meanwhile, other commentators have noted the empowerment of the three major women characters, Galadriel, Éowyn, and Arwen, and provided in-depth analysis of their roles within the narrative of The Lord of the Rings.
The prose style of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth books, especially The Lord of the Rings, is remarkably varied. Commentators have noted that Tolkien selected linguistic registers to suit different peoples, such as simple and modern for Hobbits and more archaic for Dwarves, Elves, and the Rohirrim. This allowed him to use the Hobbits to mediate between the modern reader and the heroic and archaic realm of fantasy. The Orcs, too, are depicted in different voices: the Orc-leader Grishnákh speaks in bullying tones, while the minor functionary Gorbag uses grumbling modern speech.
The presence of sexuality in The Lord of the Rings, a bestselling fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, has been debated, as it is somewhat unobtrusive. However, love and marriage appear in the form of the warm relationship between the hobbits Sam Gamgee and Rosie Cotton; the unreturned feelings of Éowyn for Aragorn, followed by her falling in love with Faramir, and marrying him; and Aragorn's love for Arwen, described in an appendix rather than in the main text, as "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen". Multiple scholars have noted the symbolism of the monstrous female spider Shelob. Interest has been concentrated, too, on the officer-batman-inspired same-sex relationship of Frodo and his gardener Sam as they travel together on the dangerous quest to destroy the Ring. Scholars and commentators have interpreted the relationship in different ways, from close but not necessarily homosexual to plainly homoerotic, or as an idealised heroic friendship.
J. R. R. Tolkien was both a philologist and an author of high fantasy. He had a private theory that the sound of words was directly connected to their meaning, and that certain sounds were inherently beautiful. Scholars believe he intentionally chose words and names in his constructed Middle-earth languages to create feelings such as of beauty, longing, and strangeness. Tolkien stated that he wrote his stories to provide a setting for his languages, rather than the other way around. Tolkien constructed languages for the Elves to sound pleasant, and the Black Speech of the evil land of Mordor to sound harsh; poetry suitable for various peoples of his invented world of Middle-earth; and many place-names, chosen to convey the nature of each region. The theory is individual, but it was in the context of literary and artistic movements such as Vorticism, and earlier nonsense verse that stressed language and the sound of words, even when the words were apparently nonsense.