1. society
2. unrest and war

Archives of natural history 42.1 (2015): 1–9
Edinburgh University Press
DOI: 10.3366/anh.2015.0274
# The Society for the History of Natural History
www.euppublishing.com/journal/anh
Isaac Bayley Balfour, Sphagnum moss, and the Great War
(1914–1918)
P. G. AYRES
13 Vanbrugh Close, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1YB (e-mail: [email protected]).
ABSTRACT: Isaac Bayley Balfour was a systematist specializing in Sino-Himalayan plants. He enjoyed
a long and exceptionally distinguished academic career yet he was knighted, in 1920, “for services in
connection with the war”. Together with an Edinburgh surgeon, Charles Cathcart, he had discovered in
1914 something well known to German doctors; dried Sphagnum (bog moss) makes highly absorptive,
antiseptic wound dressings. Balfour directed the expertise and resources of the Royal Botanic Garden,
Edinburgh (of which he was Keeper), towards the identification of the most useful Sphagnum species in
Britain and the production of leaflets telling collectors where to find the moss in Scotland. By 1918 over
one million such dressings were used by British hospitals each month. Cathcart’s Edinburgh organisation,
which received moss before making it into dressings, proved a working model soon adopted in Ireland,
and later in both Canada and the United States.
KEY WORDS : First World War – Charles Walker Cathcart – wound dressings – Edinburgh.
BALFOUR’S BOTANY
In the period from 1888 to 1922, when Isaac Bayley Balfour (1853–1922) was Regius
Professor of Botany in the University of Edinburgh, and also Keeper of the Royal Botanic
Garden, Edinburgh (The Queen’s Botanist in Scotland), new plants flooded into Britain from
its empire and from the Far East. Balfour successfully made Edinburgh pre-eminent in the
study of Sino-Himalayan plants; it was to him that plant hunters such as George Forrest,
Frank Kingdon Ward, and Reginald Farrar sent their most prized collections. Although
an excellent all-round botanist, his speciality was systematics, in particular “working out”
species of the genera Rhododendron and Primula (Anonymous 1922; Bennell and Lamond
1991). It was Balfour’s word which often helped decide whether or not new plant-hunting
expeditions should be funded. Among his last acts he helped establish a reserve for
rhododendrons in Glenbranter Forest, Argyll, near Loch Lomond, and one for alpines in
Caenlochan Forest, Angus (Prain 1924). The latter is now included within a Site of Special
Scientific Interest.
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh was quite literally Balfour’s home, for his father,
John Hutton Balfour (1808–1884), was Keeper when Isaac was growing up. Isaac was
able to roam freely through the Garden, learning from its gardeners the practical skills of
horticulture. When a young man, he voyaged to two tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, in
1874 studying the flora of Rodrigues, an island east of Madagascar, and in 1879 visiting
Socotra, an island east of the Horn of Africa (Farmer 1923). He made his first botanical
collections, bringing back from Socotra over 200 previously unknown plants including the
endemic Begonia socotrana which, when crossed with B. tuberosus, produced cultivars
2
I. B. BALFOUR, SPHAGNUM AND THE GREAT WAR (1914–1918)
highly valued for their ability to flower in all seasons. On the basis of his floral studies he
was able to argue that Socotra was once connected to the Horn.
Balfour went on to hold university chairs in Glasgow, Oxford and Edinburgh. With his
great friend Frederick Orpen Bower, who succeeded him as Professor of Botany in Glasgow,
he attempted in his later years to exert control over contemporary botany and botanists,
working assiduously to influence appointments ranging from professorships in Aberdeen and
in Oxford (Boney 2001), to the Presidency of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science (Boney 1995). In the latter case, he, Bower, and Balfour’s ex-student John Bretland
Farmer (then Professor at Imperial College, London) lobbied successfully to prevent Mrs
Agnes Arber succeeding Miss E. (“Becky”) Saunders as President of Section K (Botany) at
the 1921 meeting – one woman after another was more than they could tolerate. Arber
withdrew and Dukinfield Henry Scott (Keeper of the Jodrell Laboratory, Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew), an old ally of Balfour and Bower, was made President.
Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1884, and with many subsequent honours,
Balfour was a most eminent botanist by the standards of any age – let alone an age in which
there were few such professionals. It seems unsurprising, therefore, that such an outstanding
career should be honoured by the King and his nation. Balfour was duly knighted in 1920
yet, remarkably, not for services to botany.
On 30 March 1920, in a supplement to the London gazette (Anonymous 1920: 3758) it
was announced that “The King has been graciously pleased” to invest Isaac Bayley Balfour
with the order of Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) “for services in
connection with the war”. His name was grouped alongside those of a brigadier general,
various masters of merchant ships, and a petroleum adviser to the War Office. Why?
The answer has to do with the adoption by military hospitals during the Great War of
wound dressings that were made from Sphagnum (bog moss); dressings which through their
absorptive and antiseptic properties saved countless limbs and even lives. By 1918 one
million dressings per month were being sent out from Britain not just to hospitals at the
Western Front but to theatres of war as distant as Egypt and Mesopotamia, Serbia and Russia
(Porter 1917; Nichols 1920).
Beginning with an article in The Scotsman newspaper in November 1914, it was Balfour
and an Edinburgh surgeon, Charles Walker Cathcart, who persuaded the authorities to use
Sphagnum. This aspect of Balfour’s life has not previously been described.
THE BALFOURS AND MEDICINE
Until late in the nineteenth century botany in universities formed part of the medical
curriculum, students being taught to recognize plants as materia medica. Many of those who
in later life became leaders of academic botany held degrees in medicine. The tradition in the
Balfour family of mixing botany and medicine was, thus, not unusual; what marked out the
Balfours was that they combined botany and military medicine. Balfour’s grandfather,
Andrew, had served for a time as an assistant-surgeon in the 1st Hampshire Regiment (Prain
1924). Balfour’s father, John Hutton, was indentured as an apprentice with Sir George
Ballingall, Professor of Military Surgery at Edinburgh University, before he qualified as a
doctor of medicine in 1831, and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1833.
Andrew had been a keen amateur botanist, a love he passed to his son who, while a student at
Edinburgh, had attended the botanical lectures of Professor Robert Graham. Soon after John
I. B. BALFOUR, SPHAGNUM AND THE GREAT WAR (1914–1918)
3
Hutton Balfour returned to Edinburgh in 1834 as assistant to the Professor of Military
Surgery, he began in his spare time an ambitious survey of the vegetation of the Scottish
hills. He helped to found both the Botanical Society of Edinburgh and the Botanical Society
Club. In 1840 he became Lecturer on Botany in the extra-mural School of Medicine. After
a spell as Professor of Botany at Glasgow University, he returned to Edinburgh where
he held the Regius Chair of Botany, and was Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden (posts
subsequently held by his son, Isaac Bayley Balfour) (Turner 1933).
Isaac Bayley Balfour also studied medicine, his first medical session being in 1874
and his last in 1877. Most significantly, since Joseph Lister was the father of antiseptic
technique, in the winter session of 1875–1876 Balfour worked as Lister’s “dresser” – an
assistant with special responsibility for tending the wounds of patients – on surgical wards at
the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Also studying medicine at Edinburgh at broadly the same
time (1873–1878) was Charles Walker Cathcart. It seems highly likely that the two met
during this period. Letters prove they were in contact shortly afterwards, in 1891–1892,
when they corresponded about Cathcart’s interest in (de-lignified) wood wool as a cheap
substitute for cotton wool in wound dressings.1 Wood shavings could be bought for one
penny per pound (weight) whereas cotton wool cost twelve times as much (one shilling per
pound). At a time when the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary was using 300 pounds (136 kg) of
cotton wool per week, considerable savings could be realised. With the advice of Balfour –
who in turn consulted William Thiselton-Dyer, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens,
Kew – both native and foreign woods were compared. As Cathcart wrote to Balfour
on 23 October 1891, “Scotch Fir” (Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris), which was locally abundant,
was much superior to “Red Wood, Yellow Pine (American), [and] White Wood (Baltic)” in
terms of both its softness and absorbency.2 Further trials merely underlined the superiority of
Scots pine.
Cathcart (1853–1932) was an energetic man-of-action (Macintyre and MacLaren 2005).
While a student in Edinburgh he played rugby for his university and was capped three times
for Scotland. From 1881 to 1885, he taught anatomy at the extra-mural School of Medicine
at Surgeons’ Hall, where, after his appointment to the new Royal Infirmary as Assistant
Surgeon in 1884, he also lectured in surgery. In 1900 he was appointed Surgeon-in-Ordinary
to the Royal Infirmary with charge of the wards. Already a voluntary member of the Royal
Army Medical Corps, when the Great War broke out in August 1914 he was given the rank
of lieutenant-colonel and made Consulting Surgeon to military hospitals in the Edinburgh
region, an appoinment which gave him the opportunity to test new sorts of wound dressings.
DISCOVERING SPHAGNUM WOUND DRESSINGS
The advent of war prompted renewed interest in alternatives to cotton wool. The Lancet of
11 December 1915 noted that the large number of war wounds was threatening to exhaust
the available supply of the usual materials (Anonymous 1915; Riegler 1989); what its
correspondent did not know was that alternatives were on their way. It is not clear whether
Balfour or Cathcart found an article in English which connected with the considerable
volume of German literature on using Sphagnum, or Torfmoos, as an alternative basis
for dressings. (At least one such English article existed for, on 26 January 1884,
The pharmaceutical journal and transactions contained a short editorial (Anonymous 1884)
discussing the use of the moss in Germany.) Or, alternatively, if their starting point was a
4
I. B. BALFOUR, SPHAGNUM AND THE GREAT WAR (1914–1918)
paper in German, it was probably Balfour who made the discovery, for he kept a close eye
on German scientific literature. He had spent the winter of 1878–1879 studying with two
world famous botanists, Anton de Bary in Strassburg and Julius von Sachs in Wu¨rtzburg,
and he was a great admirer of the experiment-based “New Botany” they were forging in
Germany. Balfour was largely responsible for bringing into the English language a number
of seminal German texts, such as De Bary’s work of fungi, mycetozoa and bacteria
(de Bary 1887) and Sachs’s history of biology (1906), when translations by the Reverend
H. E. F. Garnsey were revised and, almost certainly, edited by Balfour before their republication in English. In 1909 he was, with Percy Groom, responsible for translating
into English Eugenius Warming’s classic Lehrbuch der okologischen Pflanzengeographie
(1896), a book that was pivotal in helping continental plant geography mature into the new
Anglo-American science of ecology (Ayres 2012). In short, Balfour was fluent in German
and always had one eye on German literature.
The critical collaboration between Balfour and Cathcart had already begun by the
autumn 1914 when they exchanged letters on the subject of Sphagnum and its properties.3
These letters reveal not only the botanical advice given by Balfour but the way in which
at every stage Cathcart invited Balfour to correct an article he was drafting. The outcome
of their collaboration, which appeared in The Scotsman on 17 November 1914, was
anonymous. It was the first item in a section called “Science and Nature”, and was headed
“Sphagnum moss in surgery”. Its authorship was made clear both by a subsequent article
published by Cathcart (1915) in the British medical journal, and by the fact that the two men
shared equally the two guinea fee paid by The Scotsman.4
Readers of The Scotsman article were told first about the biology of bog moss. It was a
soil-forming agent.
Its smooth stem is densely beset with leaves and emits a branch at every fourth leaf; often these branches are
turned downward, and apply themselves more or less closely to the stem. The whole construction results in a
system of delicate capillary tubes having the effect of a very fine sponge. The perforated cells readily take in
water and hold it firmly.
The article continued, “We owe the introduction of sphagnum moss as a surgical dressing
to Germany, where it has been established for this purpose for many years” (Anonymous
1914). Quoting from Ovid’s Metamorphoses – “Fas est et ab hoste doceri” – they concluded
it is right to be taught even by the enemy.
In both articles (Anonymous 1914; Cathcart 1915), readers were told how in the early
1880s a workman at one of the outlying peat moors in north Germany severely lacerated his
forearm. In the absence of anything better to apply to the wound his colleagues wrapped it in
peat. Ten days passed before the wounded man arrived at the surgical clinic at Kiel. To the
astonishment of the doctors the wound was found to have healed “in a most satisfactory
manner” (Cathcart 1915). The case was written up (Neuber 1874) and before long German
surgeons were extolling in print the wound-healing properties of Sphagnum. In consequence
the use of Sphagnum dressings was adopted by hospitals and clinics throughout Germany.
The properties of Sphagnum dressings were known to few doctors in Britain. One of
these was Sir Henry Morris, a former President of the Royal College of Surgeons of
England, who recalled in January 1916 how he had some years before used “German peat
moss” both in hospital and private practice, “especially in my bladder and kidney cases
where there was any escape of urine” and that he only stopped when it became difficult to
obtain regular supplies of high quality dressings. Sir Henry blamed that shortage upon the
I. B. BALFOUR, SPHAGNUM AND THE GREAT WAR (1914–1918)
5
vogue for using Sphagnum moss as litter for stables, including those of military horses.5
Sir Henry was one of several distinguished surgeons who supported Cathcart’s request –
approved in February 1916 – that the War Office (Army Medical Department) should
approve the moss for use in wound dressings.
THE EXTRAORDINARY PROPERTIES OF SPHAGNUM
Cathcart and Balfour (Anonymous 1914) had pointed to the extraordinary ability of
Sphagnum to absorb and retain water, reporting that 10 ounces (283 g) of dried moss
could hold 70 ounces (1.984 kg) of water. It was subsequently found that the best dried
moss would absorb 20 to 22 times its own weight of water before dripping (Porter
1917). Sphagnum could equally well absorb blood, pus, lymph or other bodily fluids,
being at least twice as absorptive as cotton wool (itself becoming scarce as supplies were
being increasingly commandeered by the military for the manufacture of “gun cotton” or
nitrocellulose explosive) and easily obtained from within Britain, unlike cotton wool which
had to be imported – with all the hazards that that involved in wartime. Sphagnum dressings
were light and more comfortable for patients. Later in the war they were often described as
“cool” (Porter 1917), especially by those suffering burns, and they did not need frequent
changing by hard-pressed nursing staff.
The moss was far from inert, unlike cellulose, for it had antiseptic properties, which was
of enormous significance given the high incidence of wound infections suffered by soldiers
wounded on the muddy, well-manured battlefields of the Western Front which were crisscrossed by often sewage-laden trenches. The antiseptic chemicals available to surgeons gave
unsatisfactory protection against infection of deep wounds suffered on the battlefield or in
the operating theatre because, although many worked well in dilute aqueous solution in
the laboratory, they performed poorly in mixtures with blood, body fluids, or pus (Harrison
2010). Surgeons were in desperate need of anything that might reduce the incidence of
sepsis, such as naturally antiseptic wound dressings.
COLLABORATING WITH CATHCART
Following publication of the article in The Scotsman on 17 November 1914, Balfour’s
support of Cathcart continued. He provided Cathcart with expert botanical advice,
either personally, or by making available to Cathcart the time of both his deputy as
Keeper at Royal Botanic Garden, William Wright Smith, and of the Garden’s “moss expert”,
R. Chapman Davie.6 Over 50 species of Sphagnum occur in Europe but the majority make
poor wound dressings. It was vital, therefore, to collect only the most useful species. Thus,
the Royal Botanic Garden was involved in the identification of moss samples received by
Cathcart – The Scotsman article had prompted the sending of many of these. In a typical
letter, dated 27 April 1915, Balfour wrote to Cathcart7:
The moss is Sphagnum – S. CUSPIDATUM, Ehr. – but it is not so good as the broader-leaved form
S. CYBIFOLIUM. Its leaves are narrower and the tracheidal cells are narrower and it is not nearly so
absorptive. As you evidently observed it crumbles much more easily and the leaves do not cover the stem so
fully.
For his part, Cathcart set up a highly efficient organization for collecting, cleaning,
drying, and packing the moss into dressings – a model that was soon copied in Ireland
6
I. B. BALFOUR, SPHAGNUM AND THE GREAT WAR (1914–1918)
(Ayres 2013). As the collection of moss gathered pace, especially after War Office approval,
the Edinburgh Depot was having to be continually reorganized to produce the numbers of
dressings required. Cathcart looked to Balfour for help. Perhaps he could use his personal
status and contacts to try to influence the decision makers in London? Cathcart needed larger
premises, so he asked Balfour for space at the Botanic Garden. He asked also for the help of
William Smith in organizing the operation. Smith, whose peacetime work was devoted to the
study of Sino-Himalayan plants, had shown his versatility when he compiled a widely
praised report – published as a leaflet for distribution to would-be collectors8 – which
examined potential sites throughout Scotland from which Sphagnum could be collected
(Smith 1916). It was Sphagnum palustre (formerly called S. cymbifolium) that Smith
recommended, its leaves being a duller green than those of most other species and, therefore,
more easily recognized. In both Britain and North America this species and S. papillosum
were favoured on the basis of the efficacy of the wound dressings they produced, and of the
ease with which those dressings could be prepared. In North America, S. imbricatum was a
widely used acceptable alternative (Nichols 1918).
When the First Commissioner of Works – to whom Balfour, in his role as Keeper of the
Royal Botanic Garden, was responsible – decided that if Smith were to be seconded to the
War Office, as Cathcart requested, then the War Office would have to pay his salary, Balfour
tried a two-pronged approach to persuade the War Office to find the money. First, he wrote
directly to Sir Edward Ward, Director General of Voluntary Organisations.9 He explained to
Ward that “as the organisation grows and voluntary helpers increase the Association for
Sphagnum work is more and more in need of a competent and informed organiser of its
operations who would devote his whole time to it”. Second, unwilling to travel from
Edinburgh because of his age and increasing deafness, he enlisted the help of a Londonbased ally, Bretland Farmer. Farmer should talk to both Ward and Sir Alfred Keogh,
Director General of the Army Medical Services. On 12 October 1916, Farmer duly replied;
he had spoken to Ward, who might be able to find War Office support for Smith, and he
would see Keogh the next day.10 The next day Farmer wrote again to Balfour, but this time
the signs were not good, his talk with Keogh had been disappointing.11 The matter, he
believed, rested between Keogh and Ward. By 2 November 191612 the matter was settled.
Cathcart wrote to tell Balfour that Ward had decided he could not help. And there the matter
ended as far as Balfour was concerned. Luckily it had not damaged his friendship with
Cathcart.
COLLECTING SPHAGNUM AT HOME AND ABROAD
In September 1916, the London Graphic, under the headline “Are You Collecting Sphagnum
Moss?”, reported that “the collecting, drying and making into surgical dressings of
Sphagnum moss has become a national industry in Scotland . . . the work is being extended
all over Ireland, England and Wales” (Anonymous 1916), noting that Sir Edward Ward had
established depots all over Great Britain to receive and forward the material to war hospitals
(Porter 1917). At the behest of Keogh, Ward had undertaken in 1917 to “gather, collect,
treat, supply, and distribute sphagnum moss to all Army Hospitals at home and overseas”
(Macpherson 1921).
The collection of Sphagnum was naturally restricted to the cooler, wetter parts of
Britain and Ireland where bogs abound. Consequently, the main centres for the production
I. B. BALFOUR, SPHAGNUM AND THE GREAT WAR (1914–1918)
7
of dressings were located in Edinburgh and Dublin. However, collections on a smaller scale
were made wherever there were significant Sphagnum bogs, such as around Princetown on
Dartmoor, in England, where the Prince of Wales provided and equipped a depot for moss
collection on Duchy of Cornwall lands (Anonymous 1918). The moss experts concluded that
the best quality moss occurred in the wettest, “quakiest” parts of a bog, a message that was
not always welcomed by dedicated collectors in the field (Nichols 1918). One of the most
energetic organizers of such collections, the Reverend Adam Forman, manager of the family
estate at Craigielands, near Beattock, recommended in his action plan of June 1918, “fill the
sacks only about three-quarter full, drag them to the nearest hard ground, and then dance on
them to extract the larger percentage of water”.13
As the war ground onwards the demand for Sphagnum dressings grew ever greater.
Contracts were signed with Canadian organizations, which were already providing them for
their own troops. Availability of raw material was not a problem because Sphagnum species
grew well in most Canadian provinces, but the highest quality material of the favoured
species, Sphagnum papillosum, was abundant in British Columbia. When the United States
joined the war in 1917 that country, too, adopted Sphagnum dressings on a large scale,
most collections being made from the wetter states of the Pacific north-west. Cathcart’s
organization in Edinburgh proved an exemplar for both Canada and the United States (Ayres
2013).
It is noteworthy that Germany was more active than any of the Allies in utilizing
Sphagnum. With imports largely blockaded, especially after America’s entry to the war, its
need for a cotton substitute was great. Fortunately, the bogs of north-eastern Germany, and
Bavaria, provided seemingly inexhaustible supplies. Civilians and even Allied prisoners of
war were conscripted to gather the moss (Hotson 1921; Thieret 1956).
“FOR SERVICES IN CONNECTION WITH THE WAR”
In Balfour’s obituary written for the Royal Society of Edinburgh by his close friend, Bower,
there is a passage that until now might have seemed surprising. Concerning what Balfour
prized most in his career, Bower judged, “Above all stood his work with and for the medical
students, to whom he lectured right up until 1921, when he retired” (Bower 1923). We can
now understand that remark. Given his family’s traditions, and his lifetime’s interest in the
subject from his time as a student on Lister’s wards to his efforts during the Great War, it is
clear that medicine was always a strong thread running through Balfour’s life; it proved for
him both a stimulus and a commitment, ultimately something for which his king and country
had good reason to be thankful.
There is a sad footnote to this account. Balfour and Cathcart were linked not just by
Sphagnum moss but also, tragically, by the loss of their sons. Balfour’s only son, Lieutenant
Isaac Bayley Balfour of the 14th Battalion Royal Scots was killed on 28 June 1915 in the
Dardanelles. He was 25 years old. Second Lieutenant Francis John Cathcart, Royal Field
Artillery, age 21, was killed on 4 June 1916, barely a year after Balfour’s son.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am most grateful to Leonie Paterson, Archivist at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, for finding and showing
to me so many of the documents and letters that underpin this paper.
8
I. B. BALFOUR, SPHAGNUM AND THE GREAT WAR (1914–1918)
NOTES
1
C. W. Cathcart (hereafter CWC) to Isaac Bayley Balfour (hereafter IBB), 22 October 1891: original manuscript
in Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (hereafter RBGE).
2
CWC to IBB, 23 October 1891: RBGE.
3
IBB to CWC, 16 October 1914; CWC to IBB, 7 November 1914: RBGE.
4
CWC to IBB, 1 January 1915: RBGE.
5
Sir Henry Morris to the Marquis of Breadalbane, 23 January 1916: original manuscript in Wellcome Library,
London, Archive GC/166, “Sphagnum Moss in Surgery”.
6
IBB to CWC, 27 April 1915; IBB to Dr George Mackay, 29 January 1916: RBGE.
7
IBB to CWC, 27 April 1915: RBGE.
8
Printed by Morrison & Gibb, Edinburgh: copy in RBGE.
9
IBB to Sir Edward Ward, 17 October 1916: RBGE.
10
J. B. Farmer to IBB, 12 October 1916: RBGE.
11
J. B. Farmer to IBB, 17 October 1916: RBGE.
12
CWC to IBB, 2 November 1916: RBGE.
13
A. Forman, memorandum on sphagnum gathering: unpublished manuscript in RBGE.
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2. Audience
Blog posts are written for an educated, popular and academic audience within EUP Journals’ publishing fields.
3. Content criteria - your ideas for posts
We prioritize posts that will feature highly in search rankings, that are shareable and that will drive readers to
your article on the EUP site.
4. Word count, style, and formatting
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Flexible length, however typical posts range 70-600 words.
Related images and media files are encouraged.
No heavy restrictions to the style or format of the post, but it should best reflect the content and topic
discussed.
5. Linking policy
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Links to external blogs and websites that are related to the author, subject matter and to EUP publishing
fields are encouraged, e.g.to related blog posts
6. Submit your post
Submit to [email protected]
If you’d like to be a regular contributor, then we can set you up as an author so you can create, edit, publish,
and delete your own posts, as well as upload files and images.
7. Republishing/repurposing
Posts may be re-used and re-purposed on other websites and blogs, but a minimum 2 week waiting period is
suggested, and an acknowledgement and link to the original post on the EUP blog is requested.
8. Items to accompany post
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A short biography (ideally 25 words or less, but up to 40 words)
A photo/headshot image of the author(s) if possible.
Any relevant, thematic images or accompanying media (podcasts, video, graphics and photographs),
provided copyright and permission to republish has been obtained.
Files should be high resolution and a maximum of 1GB
Permitted file types: jpg, jpeg, png, gif, pdf, doc, ppt, odt, pptx, docx, pps, ppsx, xls, xlsx, key, mp3, m4a,
wav, ogg, zip, ogv, mp4, m4v, mov, wmv, avi, mpg, 3gp, 3g2.