The Nightmare Experience,Sleep Paralysis,and Witchcraft Accusations

Witch-trial records, and other early-modern writings on witchcraft, reveal that in various European societies people complained of being physically oppressed at night by witches and other supernatural beings, the victims of these nocturnal assaults describing a similar set of symptoms. Contemporary English authors termed the experience the "mare" or "nightmare." In the twentieth century, it has been identified as a manifestation of "sleep paralysis." Medical studies and surveys of the condition help us make better sense of the historical accounts, while an awareness of the historical evidence illuminates modern reports of sleep paralysis experiences. [1]     

More than a Disease: The History of General Paralysis of the Insane in Turkey

This article explores the history of general paralysis of the insane (GPI) and its treatment in Turkey. GPI was considered as “a disease of civilization” at the end of the nineteenth century. From the early years of the twentieth century, Turkish psychiatrists discussed and interpreted the causes of GPI and followed the European diagnostic and treatment methods of the disease. Austrian psychiatrist Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857–1940) introduced and developed “malaria fever therapy” for general paralysis in 1917. Malaria fever therapy spread to other countries and, during the 1920s, the treatment was also used in Turkey. This article not only aims to illuminate an unnoticed aspect of the history of psychiatry in Turkey but also uses GPI as a model to illustrate how psychiatry in Turkey was influenced by the developments in Europe.     

《诸病源候论》语词札记

《诸病源候论》为隋代巢元方等编纂．是一部我国最早的论述以内科病为主、各科病病因和症候的医。此书不仅在医学上有重要作用和价值,而且从语言研究的角度看,本书还富含方俗口语词,值得我们重视。本试从语言角度对此书作语词考释,这些语词或是《汉语大词典》、《汉语大字典》、《辞源》等大型语工具书所失收的词条,或是立项、释义和书证等方面值得商榷的地方。     

Lesions as Therapy: Rigidity and Parkinsons Disease

Since James Parkinson (1817) first characterized the shaking palsy as a unique condition, significant confusion has remained concerning the causes and treatments of Parkinson‘s disease (PD). Through the 19th century, a wide variety of approaches were attempted in an effort to reduce its cardinal signs – rigidity, tremor, and bradykinesia – but to little effect. Today, approaching 200 years after Parkinson‘s seminal work, this disorder is commonly treated by surgical means, inducing a lesion in one specific portion of a small nucleus in the central nervous system (Desaloms et al., 1998, Lang et al., 1999). The notion of providing a lesion to the nervous system as a therapy for PD, however, began in earnest at the beginning of the 20th century. The first attempt to alleviate the symptoms of PD through surgical means involved a section of the dorsal roots of the spinal cord supplying the affected limb (also known as dorsal rhizotomy).Today, selective dorsal rhizotomy is commonly performed to treat chronic pain (Scrivani et al., 1999) and spasticity in children with cerebral palsy (Vaughan et al., 1998). Thus, for certain types of paralysis, this procedure relieves some measure of rigidity without producing further complications.     

Hallucinations and Pathological Visual Perceptions in Maupassant's Fantastical Short Stories- A Neurological Approach

Maupassant excelled as a realist writer of the nineteenth century, with fantastical short stories being an outstanding example of his literary genius. We have analysed four of his fantastical stories from a neurological point of view. In “Le Horla,” his masterpiece, we have found nightmares, sleep paralysis, a hemianopic pattern of loss and recovery of vision, and palinopsia. In “Qui sait” and in “La main” there is also an illusory movement of the objects in the visual field, although in a dreamlike complex pattern. In “Lui,” autoscopy and hypnagogic hallucinations emerge as fantastical key elements.

The writer suffered from severe migraine and neurosyphilis involving the optic nerve, which led to his death by general paralysis of the insane (GPI). Visual loss and visual hallucinations affected the author in his last years, before a delirant state confined him to a nursing home. Our original hypothesis, which stated that he could have translated his sensorial experiences coming from this source to his works, had to be revised by analyzing some of his earliest works, notably “Le Docteur Héraclius Gloss” and “La main d’écorché” (1875). We found hallucinatory symptoms, adopting the form of autoscopy and other elaborated visual misperceptions, in stories written at age 25, when Maupassant was allegedly healthy. Therefore, we hypothesize that they may be related to his hypersensitive disposition, assuming that no pathology is necessary to experience such vivid experiences. In addition, Maupassant's abuse of drugs, as illustrated in “Rêves,” could have provided an additional element to outline his painstaking visual depictions. All these factors, in addition to his up-to-date neurological knowledge and attendance at Charcot's lectures at “La Salpêtrière,” armed the author for repetitive and enriched hallucinatory experiences, which were transferred relentlessly into his works from the beginning of his career.     

William Rutherford Sanders (1828–1881) and his neurologically fertile years (1865–1868)

ABSTRACT

William Rutherford Sanders (1828–1881) was an Edinburgh physician who occupied the Chair of Pathology at the University of Edinburgh from 1869 to 1881. All of his published output between 1865 and 1868 was concerned with neurology. In arguing that a patient did not have paralysis agitans, Sanders (1865) employed the term “Parkinson’s disease” for the first time in the English-language literature to distinguish between the disorder that Parkinson (1817) termed “paralysis agitans” and other types of shaking palsies. He contributed a major chapter on the same topic to Russell Reynolds’s A System of Medicine (1868). Sanders also investigated the innervation of the palate and facial muscles (1865), and in 1866 recorded the autopsy findings in two cases of aphasia. Here, for the first time in the English-language literature, he described findings that supported Broca’s location of the representation of speech to a particular area of the left cerebral hemisphere.     

Hallucinations and pathological visual perceptions in Maupassant's fantastical short stories--a neurological approach

Maupassant excelled as a realist writer of the nineteenth century, with fantastical short stories being an outstanding example of his literary genius. We have analysed four of his fantastical stories from a neurological point of view. In "Le Horla," his masterpiece, we have found nightmares, sleep paralysis, a hemianopic pattern of loss and recovery of vision, and palinopsia. In "Qui sait" and in "La main" there is also an illusory movement of the objects in the visual field, although in a dreamlike complex pattern. In "Lui," autoscopy and hypnagogic hallucinations emerge as fantastical key elements. The writer suffered from severe migraine and neurosyphilis involving the optic nerve, which led to his death by general paralysis of the insane (GPI). Visual loss and visual hallucinations affected the author in his last years, before a delirant state confined him to a nursing home. Our original hypothesis, which stated that he could have translated his sensorial experiences coming from this source to his works, had to be revised by analyzing some of his earliest works, notably "Le Docteur Héraclius Gloss" and "La main d'écorché" (1875). We found hallucinatory symptoms, adopting the form of autoscopy and other elaborated visual misperceptions, in stories written at age 25, when Maupassant was allegedly healthy. Therefore, we hypothesize that they may be related to his hypersensitive disposition, assuming that no pathology is necessary to experience such vivid experiences. In addition, Maupassant's abuse of drugs, as illustrated in "Rêves," could have provided an additional element to outline his painstaking visual depictions. All these factors, in addition to his up-to-date neurological knowledge and attendance at Charcot's lectures at "La Salpêtrière," armed the author for repetitive and enriched hallucinatory experiences, which were transferred relentlessly into his works from the beginning of his career.     

A note on the treatment of drummer Bock: an early Danish account of multiple sclerosis?

Multiple sclerosis (MS) was first presented in a clinical setting in 1838. In this paper the presentation and treatment of a transient hemiparesis in a drummer in 1789 is discussed. This may have been an early case of MS and presents evidence against the theory that MS is an infectious disease beginning in the 19th century.     

Definitions of Turkish in‐group boundaries: national participation and essentialism as predictors of inter‐group attitudes in Turkey

The present research investigates how definitions of national in‐group boundaries predict inter‐group attitudes in Turkey. In Study 1, we explore definitions of Turkish in‐group boundaries as well as perceptions of the Turkish in‐group's relations with other groups among 64 university students. In Study 2, conducted among 324 university students, exploratory factor analyses reveal two dimensions of Turkish in‐group boundaries: national participation (a more civic definition) and national essentialism (a more ethnic definition). They also reveal four dimensions of the relations with others. Regression analyses show that national participation predicts more negative inter‐group attitudes. However, national essentialism is not found to predict the inter‐group attitudes. These results are compared with those of previous studies, mostly conducted in Western countries. The comparison suggests that conclusions about the positive role of Civic and the negative role of Ethnic/Cultural definitions in intergroup relations may be less general than is previously thought.     

The Growth Cone as Seen Through Cajal's Original Histological Preparations and Publications

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) was first presented in a clinical setting in 1838. In this paper the presentation and treatment of a transient hemiparesis in a drummer in 1789 is discussed. This may have been an early case of MS and presents evidence against the theory that MS is an infectious disease beginning in the 19th century.     

The Influence of Problem Definitions on Environmental Policy Change: A Comparative Study of the Yellowstone Wildfires

In the summer of 1988, television viewers across the United States and Canada were transfixed by images of Yellowstone National Park seemingly consumed by flames as wildfires burned almost one million acres of land within the Greater Yellowstone Area. In the wake of the fires, the governments of the United States and Canada both reassessed their policy approaches to fire management and came to two very different conclusions. The purpose of this study is to explore how the wildfire problem was defined in Canada and the United States in the wake of the Yellowstone wildfires, why these definitions were so different, and what effects these different definitions have had on fire policy. As a subtext, this research also highlights the challenges inherent in science‐based decision making.     

Problem Definitions and Policy Agendas

Problem definition is a key part of the policy process. Policy problems can be defined in different ways, and different definitions often compete for the attention of policymakers and for privileged status on the governmental agenda. This article uses different problem definitions of public education in Boston, Massachusetts as a case study of how different definitions vie for acceptance. Problem definitions that received the most attention—weak governance, inadequate school programs, and limited finances—achieved agenda status due to their high visibility, strong political sponsorship, and availability of viable solutions.     

Modeling Issue Definitions Using Quantitative Text Analysis

Issue definitions, the way policy issues are understood, are an important component for understanding the policymaking process. Research on issue definitions has been divided between a macro level that examines collective issue definitions and a micro level focusing on the ways in which policy actors frame policy issues. This article develops a model of issue definitions that assumes issues are multidimensional, competition exists among policy actors in defining issues, and that collective issue definitions can be understood as the aggregation of individual issue definitions. This model is then estimated using quantitative text analysis. While various approaches to text analysis and categorization have been used by scholars, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), a specific type of topic modeling, is used to estimate issue definitions. Using LDA, witness testimony taken from Congressional hearings that occurred from 1975 to 2012 about the issue of used nuclear fuel (UNF) is examined and seven distinct dimensions of the UNF debate are estimated. The construct validity of these dimensions is checked by testing them against two major policy changes that occurred in the UNF domain. I conclude with a discussion of the strengths and weakness of topic modeling, and how this approach could be used to test hypotheses drawn from several of the major policymaking theories.