Dr Juliet Rogers was an outstanding person, who made a huge contribution to UK rheumatology. Juliet came from an illustrious medical family, her grandfather being Dr Carey Coombs of the heart murmur. However, this was more a cross to bear than a cause for celebration during her medical undergraduate years in Bristol. After qualifying as a doctor, she decided not to go into medical practice. Instead, she combined her interests in archaeology and medicine, and began to study evidence of disease in ancient skeletons. This was never an easy road or an attractive subject for funding, but Juliet's determination to bring science to this field was successful. Over the years, the value of her contribution gradually became recognized, so much so that in 1998 the Arthritis Research Campaign awarded her a special three-year fellowship to continue her work to aid our understanding of musculoskeletal diseases.
Within her discipline, Juliet became a world leader, always in demand as a plenary speaker at palaeopathology meetings. Her beautifully illustrated, understated presentations of her work will be fondly remembered by many of us. She helped bring scientific rigour to the study of bones recovered from archaeological sites and, in conjunction with Tony Waldron, wrote the definitive text on methodology in skeletal palaeopathology. The application of these methods to the study of rheumatological conditions gave us many new insights. Juliet taught us that by looking at all of the surfaces of all bones and joints of a skeleton one can see things that will always be missed if we confine our attention to the bits that hurt or try to image changes with constrained techniques like radiography. She introduced the concept of the bone former (linkage of enthesophyte and osteophyte formation), found evidence that tibiofemoral joint osteoarthritis (OA) may be a recent disease, found that Paget's disease is not recent, showed that elbow-joint OA is common (and probably largely asymptomatic), and made huge contributions to our understanding of the antiquity of erosive arthropathies.
While doing all of this, Juliet maintained a huge house and garden on the outskirts of Bristol, where at one time she had 3000 skeletons in her attic. She was a great cook, gardener, hostess, wife, mother and grandmother. For nine long years she nursed her husband Alan at home after a devastating stroke, and soon after his death she developed fibrosing alveolitis. But in spite of these problems she remained cheerful and kept her work interests going. Days before her death, Juliet's final PhD student was at her bedside discussing findings on old bones.
Juliet had a quiet calm and humility about her, combined with a steely determination to see things through and get them right. The dignified way in which she bore her fatal illness was awe-inspiring. In Bristol we are pleased to have had the opportunity to celebrate her life and work at two sell-out events: a Festschrift held in her honour in July and her funeral in December. She enhanced the lives of many of us.