Seventeenth century concepts of "apoplexy" as reflected in Bonet's "Sepulchretum"

The term "apoplexy," which has been in use since antiquity, referred to a catastrophic illness with an abrupt loss of consciousness and a frequently fatal outcome. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries scholastic approaches that relied on authorities were merging with an observational approach to medicine and Galen's speculation that apoplexy was due to an accumulation of phlegm or black bile in the cerebral ventricles began to be seriously challenged. The most extensive collection of case reports with autopsies published in the seventeenth century was Theophile Bonet's Sepulchretum sive Anatomia Practica. Section 2 of Book I of the Sepulchretum contains 70 case reports of patients that died with the diagnosis of apoplexy. The scholia in this section provide an idea for the modern reader of the notions physicians had of apoplexy in the seventeenth century. The Sepulchretum was an important book for physicians of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It played an important role in the development of modern medicine and it was an important foundation for Morgagni's De Sedibus et Causis Morborum. This essay reviews the pathological findings reported in victims of apoplexy and examines the views concerning the symptomatology, pathogenesis, etiology, and treatment of this condition that were prevalent at that time.     

Book reviews

Australian Politics

J.M. Baxter, M. Emmison and J. Western, Class Analysis and Contemporary Australia (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1991) pp.xiii + 394. $29.95 ISBN 0 7329 0335 1.

Clive Bean, Ian McAllister and John Warhurst (eds.), The Greening of Australian Politics: The 1990 Federal Election (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1990) pp.xvi + 229. $22.99. ISBN 0 582 87031 3.

Peter Cullen, with an introduction by Clem Lloyd, No is Not an Answer: Lobbying for Success (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991) pp.vii + 166. $19.95 ISBN 0 04 442294 6.

Peter Sekuless, Lobbying Canberra in the Nineties: The Government Relations Game (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991) pp.vii + 165. $19.95 ISBN 0 04 442303 9.

Hugh V. Emy and Owen E. Hughes, Australian Politics: Realities in Conflict, Second Edition, (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1991) pp.ix + 577. $34.95 ISBN 0 7329 0392 0.

Brian Galligan, J.R. Nethercote and Cliff Walsh (eds.), The Cabinet and Budget Processes (Canberra: ANU, 1990) pp.141. $n.p. ISBN 0 7315 08815.

Adam Jamrozik, Class, Inequality and the State (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1991) pp.xx + 348. $29.95 ISBN 0 7329 0245 2.

Bruce Muirden, The Diggers Who Signed on For More: Australia's Part in the Russian Wars of Intervention, 1918–1919 (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1990) pp.115. $14.95 ISBN 1 86254 260 0.

Hugh Smith (ed.), Australia and Peacekeeping (Canberra: Australian Defence Studies Centre, 1990) pp.viii + 137.$10.00 ISBN 0 7317 0129 1.

David Wells, In Defence of the Common Wealth: Reflections on Australian Politics (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1990) pp.126. $14.99. ISBN 0 582 86913 7.

Kenneth Wiltshire, Tenterfield Revisited: Reforming Australia's System of Government for 2001 (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1991) pp.47. $9.95 ISBN 0 7022 2349 2.

Comparative and International Politics

Adam Ashforth, The Politics of Official Discourse in Twentieth‐Century South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) pp.xiv + 296. $120.00 ISBN 019 827702 4.

Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair, Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability: The Stabilization of European Electorates, 1885–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) pp.xix + 363. £45.00/$US59.50 ISBN 0 521 38292 0.

Gerard Braunthal, Political Loyalty and Public Service in West Germany (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990) pp.xvi + 249. $27.50 ISBN 0 87023 707 1.

Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley, Red Brotherhood At War (revised edition) (London: Verso, 1990) pp.xxii + 322. $29.95 ISBN 0 86091 501 8.

Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) pp.184. $29.95 ISBN 0 7456 08671.

Brian Head and Elaine McCoy (eds.), Deregulation or Better Regulation? (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1991) pp.vii + 183. $24.95 ISBN 0 7329 0563 X.

Ewan Jamieson, Friend or Ally (Sydney: Permagon Press, 1990) pp.x + 139. $19.95 ISBN 0 08 040081 7.

Boris Kagarlitsky (Translator, Rick Simon), The Dialectic of Change (London and New York: Verso, 1990) pp.xi + 393. $29.95 ISBN 0 86091 973 0.

Samuel Kernell (ed.) Parallel Politics: Economic Policymaking in Japan and the United States (Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, and Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1991) pp.xiii + 390. $US36.95 ISBN 0 8157 4892 2.

Chandran Kukathas, David W. Lovell and William Maley (eds.), The Transition From Socialism: State and Civil Society in the USSR (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1991) pp.viii + 227. $24.99 ISBN 0 582 87046 1.

James Minchin, No Man Is An Island: A Portrait of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990). pp.407. $17.95 ISBN 0 04 4000028.

Chris Moore and J.J. Richardson, in association with Jeremy Moon, Local Partnership and the Unemployment Crisis in Britain (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989) pp.163. $n.p. ISBN 0 04 352220 3.

Neil Nevitte and Roger Gibbins, New Elites in Old States: Ideologies in the Anglo‐American Democracies (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990) pp.xi + 209. $24.95 ISBN 0 19 540803 9.

Philip Norton (ed.), Legislatures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) pp.xi + 336. $28.95 ISBN 019 8275811.

Amin Saikal and William Maley, Regime Change in Afghanistan: Foreign Intervention and the Politics of Legitimacy (Bathurst, Australia: Crawford House Press, 1991).pp.viii + 190. $37.50 ISBN 1 86333 029 1.

Alan Tapper, The Family in the Welfare State (Sydney: Allen and Unwin in association with the Australian Institute of Public Policy) pp.x + 284. $17.95 ISBN 0 04 442309.

Elise K.Tipton, The Japanese Police State: Tokko in Interwar Japan (Sydney: Allen & Unwin 1991) pp.vii + 209. $24.95 ISBN 004 442258 X.

Wang Jiye and Terence H. Hull (eds.), Population and Development Planning in China (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991) pp.xx + 311. $24.95 ISBN 0 04 442323 3.

Political Theory and Methodology

John Dunn: Interpreting Political Responsibility: Essays 1981–1989 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), pp. vii + 274. $32.95 ISBN 0 7456 0828 0.

David Held (ed.), Political Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) pp.ix + 360. £12.50 ISBN 0 7456 0856 6.

Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or, The Persistence of the Dialectic (London: Verso, 1990) pp.x + 270. $29.95 ISBN 0 86091 981 1.

Eugene Kamenka, Bureaucracy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989) pp.ix + 192. $24.95 ISBN 0 631 14579 6.

Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990) pp.xvi + 263. $34.95 ISBN 0–86091–919–6.

Alan Moran, Andrew Chisholm and Michael Porter (eds.), Markets, Resources and the Environment (Sydney: Allen and Unwin in association with National Priorities Project, Tasman Institute, Melbourne, 1991) pp.ix + 290. $19.95 ISBN 1 86373 025 7.

Joseph Raz (ed.), Authority (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) pp.330. $34.95 ISBN 0 631 15944 4.

Ian Shapiro, Political Criticism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) pp.xii + 338. $n.p. ISBN 0 520 06672 3.

David West, Authenticity and Empowerment (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990) pp.xv + 198. $n.p. ISBN 0 7450 0516.

Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) pp.168. $29.95 ISBN 0 7456 0603 2.     

Multidimensional Sequence Alignment Methods for Activity‐Travel Pattern Analysis: A Comparison of Dynamic Programming and Genetic Algorithms

Quantitative comparisons of space‐time activity‐travel patterns have been made at length in regional science. Traditionally, Euclidean Hamming distances have been widely used to measure the similarity between activity‐travel patterns that involve several attribute dimensions such as activity type, location, travel mode, accompanying person, etc. Other techniques, such as pattern recognition in signal processing theory, have also been introduced for this purpose. All these measures, however, lack the ability to capture the sequential information embedded in activity‐travel patterns. Recently, the sequence alignment methods (SAMs), developed in molecular biology that are concerned with the distances between DNA strings, have been introduced in time use research. These SAMs do capture the similarity of activity‐travel patterns, including sequential information, but based on a single attribute only. Unfortunately, the extension of the unidimensional SAMs to a multidimensional method induces the problem of combinatorial explosion. To solve this problem, this paper introduces effective heuristic methods for the comparison of multidimensional activity‐travel patterns. First, following a brief review of existing measures of activity‐travel pattern comparison, the problem of multidimensional sequential information comparison and the combinatorial nature of the method are discussed. The paper then develops alternative multidimensional SAMs employing heuristics based on dynamic programming and genetic algorithms, respectively. These heuristic SAMs are compared using empirical activity‐travel pattern data. The paper ends by discussing avenues of future research.     

Integrating Transportation Network and Regional Economic Models to Estimate the Costs of a Large Urban Earthquake

In this paper we summarize an integrated, operational model of losses due to earthquake impacts on transportation and industrial capacity, and how these losses affect the metropolitan economy. The procedure advances the information provided by transportation and activity system analysis techniques in ways that help capture the most important ecomonic implications of earthquakes. Network costs and origin-destination requirements are modeled endogenously and consistently. Indirect and induced losses associated with direct impacts on transportation and industrial capacity are distributed across zones and ecomonic sectors. Preliminary results are summarized for a magnitude 7.1 earthquake on the Elysian Park blind thrust fault in Los Angeles.     

The slow death and strange rebirths of imperial history

The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume V, Historiography edited by Robin W. Winks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp.xxxiv + 731. £35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–19–820566‐X.