Unraveling the mystery of why there was no childhood lead poisoning

Despite widespread use of leaded paints, classic life-threatening lead poisoning in small children began to be diagnosed as such only in the 1914-30 period. The diagnosis became suddenly more common in the 1950s and 1960s, but only in some areas of the United States. Experts focused on interior leaded paints as the source of the poison. Archival study of cases from Cincinnati and material from Denver, along with reevaluation of the medical literature, suggests that the problem should be reframed in terms of localized accident, not an epidemic. Very likely clinicians' reports accurately reflected social and material reality. Housing patterns hitherto not fully explored or understood explain why diagnoses were or were not reported. Moreover, evidence suggests the hypothesis that exterior (not interior) paint applied to middle-class houses (not mansions) may account for most cases not traced to repainted furniture and windowsills.     

Review Article: Is there a French way of Explaining African Politics?

This article seeks to uncover the extent to which our ways of understanding contemporary Africa are influenced by our national (historical, cultural, political, intellectual) traditions through an examination of the influential French journal Politique Africaine , whose twentieth anniversary falls this year. In a wide-ranging review article that discusses in detail the 1999 issues of Politique Africaine but is informed by a consideration of the 'deep history' of that journal, the author argues that the French Africanist political scientists whose views appear in the journal are somewhat reluctant to open up to some of the new analysis of Africa available today.     

Approaches to violent death: a case study from early medieval Cambridge

This paper examines one of a number of weapon‐injury victims from the cemetery at Church End in Cherry Hinton, Cambridge (Hertfordshire Archaeological Trust/Archaeological Solutions site HAT358), which was in use from the late Anglo‐Saxon period until after the Norman Conquest. Drawing on precedents set by forensic studies, palaeopathology and more traditional spatial cemetery analysis, assertions are made about the nature of the attack and its context. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.