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.     

Cajal's Brief Experimentation with Hypnotic Suggestion

Spanish histologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, one of the most notable figures in Neuroscience, and winner, along with Camillo Golgi, of the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries on the structure of the nervous system, did not escape experimenting with some of the psychiatric techniques available at the time, mainly hypnotic suggestion, albeit briefly. While a physician in his thirties, Cajal published a short article under the title, “Pains of labour considerably attenuated by hypnotic suggestion” in Gaceta Médica Catalana. That study may be Cajal's only documented case in the field of experimental psychology. We here provide an English translation of the original Spanish text, placing it historically within Cajal's involvement with some of the key scientific and philosophical issues at the time.     

Development vs. Reform: Attempts at Modernisation During the Twilight of British Influence in Iraq, 1946–58

This study analyses British and local Iraqi elites’ efforts to avoid social revolution through promotion of economic development during the last years of the Iraqi monarchy. Discussing the complex set-up of domestic Iraqi elites and their ambiguous relations with British officials in Iraq, it argues that the structural composition of the Iraqi state itself is an important explanatory factor for the swift overthrow of the old regime in 1958. Using British archival records, this article analyses the politics of avoiding reform and promoting economic development to which Iraqi elites and the British were privy. It shows how economistic ideas of ‘modernisation’ and economic growth were believed to be the solution to Iraq's endemic problems of social unrest and politicisation of large parts of the population. Arguing that increased wealth through oil-fuelled development programmes would ultimately trickle down to all strata of the population and thus stave off the danger of revolution, the British failed to realise that Iraq's structural setup with its unscrupulous politicians and wealthy landowners at the apex of power, along with an all-permeating patronage system, effectively hampered any dispersal of what little new wealth was generated through these projects.     

A test of Suchey–Brooks (pubic symphysis) and Buckberry–Chamberlain (auricular surface) methods on an identified Spanish sample: paleodemographic implications

Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology studies depend critically on the accuracy and reliability of age-estimation techniques. In this study we have evaluated two age-estimation methods for adults based on the pubic symphysis (Suchey–Brooks) and the auricular surface (Buckberry–Chamberlain) in a current sample of 139 individuals (67 women and 72 men) from Madrid in order to verify the accuracy of both methods applied to a sample of innominate bones from the central Iberian Peninsula. Based on the overall results of this study, the Buckberry–Chamberlain method seems to be the method that provides better estimates in terms of accuracy (percentage of hits) and absolute difference to the chronological age taking into account the total sample. The percentage of hits and mean absolute difference of the Buckberry–Chamberlain and Suchey–Brooks methods are 97.3% and 11.24 years, and 85.7% and 14.38 years, respectively. However, this apparently greater applicability of the Buckberry–Chamberlain method is mainly due to the broad age ranges provided. Results indicated that Suchey–Brooks method is more appropriate for populations with a majority of young individuals, whereas Buckberry–Chamberlain method is recommended for populations with a higher percentage of individuals in the range 60–70 years. These different age estimation methodologies significantly influence the resulting demographic profile, consequently affecting the biological characteristics reconstruction of the samples in which they are applied.     

The southernmost records of Anhingidae and a new basal species of Anatidae (Aves) from the lower–middle Miocene of Patagonia,Argentina

New bird fossils from the Santa Cruz Formation (lower–middle Miocene), Santa Cruz Province, Patagonia, Argentina, are described. They represent an indeterminate species of the extinct anhingid Macranhinga and a new genus and species of basal Anatidae Ankonetta larriestrai. The record of the giant darter Macranhinga constitutes the southernmost record for the family, and expands the known stratigraphic range of the genus, previously restricted to the upper Miocene. Based on an analysis of the fossil anhingid record from South America, we hypothesize that giant darters disappeared from South America in the early Pliocene due to climatic deterioration, regression of marine and freshwater environments, the arrival of placental carnivorous mammals, and also probably by competition with phalacrocoracid cormorants. The new anatid Ankonetta is based on an incomplete but informative tarsometatarsus, with superficial similarities to extant Dendrocygna. A brief overview of several fossil ducks from the Patagonian Cenozoic concludes that most pre-Pliocene examples belong to non-anatine taxa, indicating that plesiomorphic ducks were the dominant anseriforms in those times, a pattern also evident on other continents.     

The in-between lives of Japanese immigrants in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria,Spain

Over the past 20 years, the theoretical frameworks of population mobility studies have undergone profound changes. The redefinition of the term diaspora, the rise of transnational analysis, the formulation of the embodied experiences of migration, the increasing interest in migrants' attachment to places, gendered expectations and transcultural processes have coalesced to enrich knowledge. This article explores the culturally mediated experiences of migration and the individual change processes among the members of the Japanese community that from the 1960s onwards settled in the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), a meeting point for East and West in the Mid-Atlantic. In spite of its small size, this community displays some characteristics that afford new conceptual insights into cultural in-betweenness. Our aim is to contribute to the burgeoning literature on migrants' sense and ways of being and belonging and on their experience of return, within the analytical framework of diaspora and transnationalism. This article makes use of an interpretative approach, and contrasts relevant local news items and biographical interviews with Japanese residents with the narrative texts of three returnees. This contrapuntal focus reveals their ambivalent sense of belonging ‘here and there’, their in-betweenness or their lives in aidagara.     

Cultural Heritage Management in Post-colonial Polities: not the heritage of the other

Ebel es‐Saqi, a village in the southern hills of Lebanon, emerged from 22 years of Israeli occupation in May 2000. In the ensuing years, several development projects took place in the region with the aim of reviving local economies through tourism, enhancing attachment to the land through employment and spreading environmental awareness. One of these projects, the Ecological Park Project of Ebel es‐Saqi, is the subject of this paper. Through examining local perceptions and reactions to the Ebel es‐Saqi project, this paper explores how local conceptions of landscape evolve in response to political, economic, and social change. The findings of the study, based on in‐depth semi‐structured interviews, suggest that the village landscape is an enabling medium through which traditional culture is preserved, local identities constructed and rural heritage acknowledged. This paper unfolds a conception of landscape based on the day‐to‐day lifestyles of the village community, inherited traditional agricultural practices, valued rural heritage and shared village identity.     

Fichte and the German Idiom: the Metaphysics of the Addresses to the German Nation

This article argues against the dominant Anglophone and Francophone interpretation of Fichte, which reads him as advancing either a form of ethnic or cultural nationalism. It claims that what is missing from the current reception of Fichte is the essentially philosophical and cosmopolitan character of his nationalism – the fact that the Addresses to the German Nation uses non‐empirical and cosmopolitical concepts to develop and articulate its nationalistic viewpoint. It therefore claims that the notion of a national philosophical idiom that the Addresses present, far from being a screen for its nationalism, is its driving engine. It does this by considering the problems of translating the German locution ist unsers Geschlechts. Consequently, it is claimed that the cosmo‐nationalism of Fichte is not reducible to a set of claims regarding ethnicity or even the empirical world, even if a discourse on the organismic, on what counts as life, irreducibly haunts the Addresses.