Mental hygiene for geniuses: psychiatry in the early Soviet years

In this paper, I deal with one episode from the early history of Soviet psychiatry, the project of the Institute of Genius. Though the project never materialized, the idea was characteristic of the very beginning of the Soviet era, when the wildest experiments in the human sciences seemed possible. The author of the project, the psychiatrist Grigorii Vladimirovich Segalin (1878-1960), followed in the steps of another prominent psychiatrist, the architect of the Soviet mental health care system, Lev Markovich Rozenshtein (1884-1934). Rozenshtein, a proponent of social medicine, introduced a new system of psychiatric help that, by contrast with the prerevolutionary one, was preventive and based on outpatient units - neuropsychiatric dispensaries. In a similar way, Segalin planned dispensaries for geniuses, where these otherwise "socially ill adapted" people would receive professional help and care. Having failed to establish such an institution, he founded a journal, the Clinical Archive of Genius and Talent (of Europathology), where he and his like-minded colleagues discussed the supposed pathological origins of talent and published pathographies of outstanding figures. The article traces Segalin's project till its end in the early 1930s.     

现代化进程中的社会边缘化现象--透视20世纪二三十年代上海帮会

20世纪二三十年代,帮会这种传统社会的怪胎,在处于社会转型时期的上海得到全面的复苏和全方位的发育。上海帮会的大发展,是与上海新旧并存的社会环境、人口失控与社会失调、以及帮会与政权相互需求等因素有密切的关系。“适时而变”是这一时期上海帮会最为显的特点。“适时而变”使其获得了,特殊的生存空间,成为一支不可小觑的社会力量。但某些资本主义色彩并未改变其反社会、反现代理性与法则的破坏性本质。     

MacDonald's Parties: The Labour Party and the 'Aristocratic Embrace', 1922-31

The article tests the claim that certain Labour MPs and ministersin the 1920s succumbed to an ‘aristocratic embrace’.It begins with a short account of debates in the early LabourParty over social mixing, which culminated in the 1924 disputeover the wearing of Court Dress by some Labour ministers. Theextent of ‘embrace’ is assessed through the examinationof who wore Court Dress (and why), who was offered and acceptedhonours, and of patterns of residence, income and wealth, andparticipation in London Society, measured by club membershipsand appearances in the Court & Social columns of The Times.The article concludes by examining the usefulness of the ideaof ‘aristocratic embrace’ in explaining the defectionof J.R. MacDonald and others from the Labour Party in 1931.     

Medical education reform efforts and failures of U.S. medical schools, 1870-1930

The dramatic decline in the number of US medical schools in the early twentieth century has been traced to a medical education reform movement that gained momentum after the Civil War. The major parties to reform-the universities themselves, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), state licensing boards, the American Medical Association (AMA), and Flexner-had different interests and strategies, however, and scholars have continued to debate the impact each had on the decline. To isolate the independent effects that the temporally intertwined forces for reform had on medical school failures, this study applies statistical survival analysis to an extensive and unique data set on medical schools operating in the United States between 1870 and 1930. Contrary to the views of some scholars, the results indicate that schools closed in response to critical evaluations published by the Illinois State Board of Health in the nineteenth century and the AMA and Flexner in the twentieth century. Additionally, the results indicate that schools were less likely to have failed if they adopted certain reforms implemented at leading schools or joined the AAMC, and were more likely to have failed if their state's licensing regulations mandated lengthier premedical and medical training.     

Social eugenics and nationalist race hygiene in early twentieth century Spain

In the twentieth century, the UN Declaration of 1948 is considered to be the international standard for universal human rights. In 1791, Olympe de Gouges critically analysed the French Declaration of Human Rights of 1789, and found that women were excluded from it.¹ This paper is a critical examination of the 1948 UN Declaration, with equally troubling findings.     

现代性与社会政策改革——1890-1933年间德国社会政策探析

1890-1933年间德国社会政策的演进,正是以"制度化"与"民主化"为目标的现代性在"国家/社会"这一权力结构中的又一展演.这一发展实现了现代国家在统治模式上的"理性化",从而成为德国现代化的一次尝试.然而"现代性的病态"却注定了这种尝试以失败告终.德国社会政策改革的这一历史将成为学界反思现代性的又一途径.     

Holy Wisdom and British foreign policy, 1918-1922: the St. Sophia redemption agitation

Abstract

As the Ottoman Empire tottered towards its final collapse at the end of the First World War the fate of its various territorial components aroused the interest not only of other states, but of interest groups within those states. Britain in particular revealed a strong concern with this subject, having long been interested in the Eastern Mediterranean. The end of the Ottoman Empire saw the legendary Lawrence of Arabia grasping the Arab lands, various secret treaties with the other Great Powers disposed of much of Anatolia, and the future of Turkish rule over Constantinople, that much sought after city, now hung in the balance. The final fate of the city would be decided at the postwar Paris Peace Conference. Of all of the spoils of the Ottomans none evoked such passions as that inspired by Constantinople – Byzantium, the Second Rome. If any building could epitomise the Europeans' vision of this city it was the St Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom, which since the fall of Constantinople in 1453 had been a mosque. With the end of Ottoman dominance an opportunity was seen by some of symbolically completing a crusade begun centuries before, with the expulsion of the Turks, and Islam, from Europe. Nothing could so symbolise a change of control at Constantinople than the reconversion of St Sophia into a church. This found support from those who wished to see the Turk expelled bag and baggage from Europe. The philhellenes saw its transfer to the Greek Orthodox church as indicating the resurgence of the Greek nation, and forming the backdrop to eventual Greek control of Constantinople. In Britain the focus of such views was the St Sophia Redemption Committee, which sought to restore the building to its original function. Now virtually forgotten, the agitation for the redemption of St Sophia was an emotive topic during the first months of peace. The supporters of this movement were not a group of fringe political cranks, and its members numbered two future foreign secretaries and many other prominent public figures. The popular agitation coordinated by this committee, and the opposition it encountered, illustrate some of the complexities at work in the formulation of a coherent Eastern Mediterranean policy for Britain.