The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 272 No 7298 p584
8 May 2004

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Why progress may carry a high price more
Summer is a-coming in — and loud sings the two-tone chiffchaff more
South Africa needs more archaeologists to investigate human origins more

Why progress may carry a high price

Some reflections on the adverse effects of business reorganisation on the welfare and health of those employed in an enterprise appear in a commentary in The Lancet for 10 April.

It has been shown that workers who keep their jobs while their employers are having recourse to “downsizing” and laying off staff may be twice as liable as those who are laid off to die from some form of cardiovascular disease.

It has been deduced that work stress may be the factor operating in this situation. Paradoxically, it appears that increasing the size of a working staff can also result in absences attributed to long-term sickness or even to hospital admission.

Today there is a tendency for businesses to merge and, by acquiring fresh assets, to expand enormously into global corporations or similar empires. The effect upon workers is inevitably to increase anxiety and decrease loyalty, and upon senior organisers to devalue individual efforts.

The old concept of job security is now widely regarded as no longer valid. Yet it is upon the knowledge and experience possessed by those who actually carry out their work from day to day that the continued success of an enterprise depends. Capricious demands to increase work output, regardless of increased physical and mental stress induced in employees who have little or no choice in the matter, must always threaten health.

Two major considerations would vastly improve the current picture. First, people are more important than profits that may endanger them. Second, human capital must be regarded as paramount. And, incidentally, individuals who feel that they are sympathetically regarded will always prove more productive than those who feel pressure brought upon them, and they will certainly be less likely to be absent from work on account of illness.

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Summer is a-coming in — and loud sings the two-tone chiffchaff

The Early English song by an unknown author, which runs “Sumer is icumen in, / Lhude sing cuccu!”, dates from about 1250. It is rather misleading in a way, depending on when you wish to date summer.

It is true that our seasons are a little distorted in these days of global warming and climate variations, but I submit that the passing of winter and early spring is associated with the return to our shores of the chiffchaff rather than the cuckoo.

In 1780 the naturalist-parson Gilbert White of Selborne, Hampshire, remarked that the true “harbinger of spring” was indeed the chiffchaff and not the cuckoo, which arrives slightly later in April. Lord Grey of Fallodon, in his classic ‘The charm of birds’ (1927), commented: ‘‘To those who mark the progress of the year by the song of birds, the first hearing of the chiffchaff is the beginning of a new stage.” The bird, he observed, has made an incredibly long double journey, abroad and home again, since we heard him last. Normally it overwinters in Africa north of the equator, or in Arabia or northern India, but small numbers winter in southern Britain.

The name chiffchaff dates from the late 18th century and reflects its two-toned and insistent song. It has also been called the lesser pettichaps and the small willow-wren. It utters its characteristic call as it flits among high trees feeding, preferring the beech for its perch. However, the bird nests only slightly above ground, among brambles and evergreen shrubs, rather than in lofty situations.

Its bill and legs are blackish, though rarely the legs are paler, its upper plumage olive-brown, and its under parts white with occasionally a lemon-yellow tinge. While it resides with us it persists in its two-tone call, with a rare change of key, and, as Grey remarks, it is a persistent and industrious performer, and keeps one alert throughout the day.

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South Africa needs more archaeologists to investigate human origins

A note by John Bohannon of Oxford in Science for 16 April records that South Africa is known to abound in important archaeological sites, and is probably the best area in the entire world to offer us evidence regarding human origins and progress.

The South African government has now given priority to human origins research when it comes to funding for archaeology. This attitude stands in contrast to that during the apartheid era, when ideas on evolution were frowned upon by the ecclesiastical authorities, which leant heavily on the then government. Black archaeology students were not encouraged, and this has caused a shortage in present studentships and faculty positions. The prospects are now said to be improving. In addition, palaeoanthropologists are now reaching South Africa from other parts of the continent as racist policies are giving way to more enlightened democracy.

So far only a small handful of South Africa’s many important archaeological sites have been investigated, and much remains to be accomplished. One major site is at Elands Bay, where a rocky outcrop has revealed a shelter in the sandstone face. The packed deposit on the floor has already brought to light the remains of a cooking hearth, a refuse pile of seafood shells and ostrich shells bearing geometric patterns, and reaching back in prehistory to close on 100,000 years. There are stone tools showing increasing sophistication, and wall paintings in red ochre of antelopes and human handprints estimated to be at least 20,000 years old. This important site is undergoing excavation by a team of archaeologists from the University of Cape Town.

Some 1,200km to the north-east, near Johannesburg, is the celebrated Sterkfontein Cave, claimed to be one of the richest sources of early hominid remains in the world, including the skeleton of an australopithecine ancestor of humans, estimated to be three to four million years old. According to a Johannesburg palaeoanthropologist, the unusual number of whole skeletons can be attributed to the strange fact that many of our ancestors either fell or climbed down into the cave and were unable to make their way back.

With sites like these to investigate, it is forecast that South Africa will develop into a world centre for the serious study of human evolution.

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