Vaginismus: a Franco-American story

In November 1861, Dr. J. Marion Sims, an American gynecologist, named and described the syndrome of vaginismus, which linked symptoms of vaginal hypersensitivity to muscular spasm. The only rational treatment for this disorder, said Sims, was surgery. His work was taken up immediately in France, but the story of its interpretation and application is a rather complicated one. Félix Roubaud, a leading specialist on matters of impotence and sterility, revised earlier writings in order to make a clear place for Sims's theories. But in the succeeding decades, Sims was subject to more and more criticism in French medical circles. Some argued that French specialists had already identified all the key elements of vaginismus, and that Sims was no more than a successful publicist. Others-and these were finally the most influential-argued against surgical treatment. More and more French writers on sexual medicine argued that vaginismus was a "moral" disorder that could not properly be treated by physical methods. And within French medical circles the Sims operation for vaginismus came to represent an "American" approach that was too rational, and too straightforwardly physical.     

The psychiatric works of Emil Kraepelin: a many-faceted story of modern medicine

A new English language edition of some of the major works of Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), the famous German psychiatrist, appeared in 2002. This essay has been written to mark the occasion. Kraepelin is famous for his psychiatric nosology, specifically the demarcation of dementia praecox (schizophrenia) and manic-depressive insanity (bi-polar disorder). This essay deals not only with these topics but with many other aspects of Kraepelin's psychiatry: his talents as a writer and teacher; his unusual and intense concern with volition; his lack of psychological empathy with his patients, on the one hand, and on the other, his humane care for their physical well-being; his tangled involvement with psychoanalysis; his war on alcohol; his tradition-bound treatment of hysteria; his reflective attempt to understand paranoia; some criticisms of his work; the debate over the role played by his famous diagnostic cards (Z?hlkarten); his misuse of his psychiatric beliefs in the public arena. A conclusion addresses both his shortcomings and his assets.     

Chasing shadows: lives of ancient Greek statues as lived by writers1

This paper is both an essay and a critique. It questions whether the ancient Greeks responded to heroic or devotional sculpture in any significantly different way than people in later ages, including our own, do. Questioned, too, is whether ancient sculpture or sculpture at any time as to its coming into being can be explained by linguistics, such as, in this case, by Roman Jakobson's notion that all linguistic models are based on one of two models: either on similarity (metaphoric) or on contiguity (metonymic: the name of one thing used in place of another associated with or suggested by it).     

Nuclear science and the story of a preserved leaf from a copy of the Great Bible

Three pressed leaves of Ulmus glabra (Wych Elm) were found within the pages of a copy of the Great Bible in the Library of the University of Western Australia. The Bible dates from AD 1540 and was originally housed at Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire. A radiocarbon age on one of the leaves found it was about as old as the Great Bible itself, and stable C and N isotope and neutron activation analyses were carried out on the same leaf. The δ¹⁵N values were elevated and the content of iron, arsenic, bromine, silver, gold and mercury were relatively high. These analyses are consistent with an environment where water logging is present, as at Ely at the time, and the silver and gold content are probably consistent with the cathedral setting. The mercury was found to be associated with the red ink in the Bible. It is intriguing to ponder why Wych elm leaves were placed in the Bible, especially in the light that a copy of an original edition of the King James version of the Bible from Ely, also in the library in Perth has many dozens of U. glabra leaves also preserved within in its pages.     

白鹭的故事

<正>白鹭,又称鹭鸶,是一种非常美丽的水鸟,"两个黄鹂鸣翠柳,一行白鹭上青天。"古人的赞美早已让其成为中国人心目中诗情画意的一部分。白鹭天生丽质,身体修长,有很细长的腿及脖子,全身披着洁白如雪的羽毛,