The Palace of Westminster: Another Window of Opportunity?

The Palace of Westminster is in need of urgent, substantial repairs. This provides a ‘window of opportunity’ for change. This essay traces the restoration and transformation (or lack of) that the Palace of Westminster has seen in the last half a century, before assessing its current state, and considering whether parliament is fit for purpose. It provides a ‘long‐view’ understanding of previous missed ‘windows of opportunity’. The essay focuses on drawing insights from history in order to add a depth of understanding to the contemporary issue. An understanding of the preceding renewal and restoration projects enables us, potentially, to avoid some of the problems that have been previously experienced, and finally seize this opportunity to build a parliament which is fit for purpose.     

The development and evolution of “cerebral thermometry”: The physiology underlying a nineteenth-century approach to cerebral localization and neurological diagnosis

ABSTRACT

Surface thermometers were developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century. From the 1850s through the 1880s, collaborations between physicians, research scientists, and instrument makers produced clear improvements in the technology to measure cranial surface temperatures, with development of self-registering mercury surface thermometers resistant to pressure and little influenced by ambient temperature, apparatus for recording cranial surface temperatures from multiple stations simultaneously, and development of thermoelectric apparatus. Physiologic studies of cranial surface thermometry were conducted over a quarter century from 1861 to 1886. Beginning in the 1860s Albers in Bonn, Germany, and Lombard at Harvard and later in England systematically investigated surface temperatures on the head using surface thermometers and thermoelectric apparatus; they demonstrated that head temperatures were variable over time and across individuals and were not clearly influenced by thinking or muscular contraction but were influenced by ambient air temperature. In 1880 Amidon in the United States claimed that cranial surface thermometry during exertion produced localized increases in surface temperature on the contralateral scalp in a specific pattern (“external motive areas”) indicating underlying brain areas responsible for each movement. Amidon’s results were not reproduced by experienced physiologists in England or France. Contemporaries recognized that significant technical and practical problems limited the accuracy and reliability of cranial surface thermometry. Physiological studies of cranial surface thermometry ended in the mid 1880s, although some clinicians who were early advocates promoted its use in clinical contexts into the early twentieth century.     

The development and evolution of “cerebral thermometry”: Clinical applications of a nineteenth-century approach to cerebral localization and neurological diagnosis

ABSTRACT

Surface thermometers were developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In 1877, Broca, already famous for his contributions to the cerebral localization of nonfluent aphasia, presented his first clinical observations on cranial surface temperatures: In two cases, cranial surface temperatures were decreased over a middle cerebral artery infarction, and increased in surrounding areas, which Broca attributed to “compensatory hyperaemia.” As Broca made apparent in a later report in 1879, he had used a “thermometric crown,” an apparatus consisting of six to eight large-reservoir mercury thermometers strapped against the head. Following Broca’s report, American neurologists reported cases in which cranial surface temperatures were increased either locally over a superficial brain tumor or globally with a cerebral abscess. Despite promising anecdotal reports, contemporaries recognized that significant technical and practical problems limited its accuracy, reliability, and clinical utility. Advocates never demonstrated that this technology provided significant marginal benefit to the medical history and physical examination. The technique fell out of fashion before 1900, though some early advocates promoted it into the early twentieth century. It was ultimately replaced by more effective technologies for cerebral localization and neurological diagnosis.     

Alice Munro,Charles McGrath,and the Shaping of “The Turkey Season”

Using archival evidence of the editorial process behind the publication of the story “The Turkey Season,” this article explores the collaborative literary relationship between Alice Munro and one of her long-time editors at The New Yorker magazine, Charles McGrath. It reveals McGrath’s exceptional contribution to the story—restructuring it by combining the two versions Munro submitted into a composite—and theorizes the composite version’s effects on the epistemological grounding of the story and the narrator’s certainty about her own memory of the events she recounts, both of which are features that are often considered characteristic of Munro’s style in her mature writing.     

William Laud and the Parliamentary Politics of 1628–9

This article seeks to highlight the important part played by Bishop William Laud in the counsels of Charles I in the 1620s, and, in particular, his involvement in the parliamentary sessions of 1628 and 1629. Having demonstrated his usefulness as a parliamentary spokesman for the crown in the parliaments of 1625 and 1626, and having been promoted to the privy council, the parliament of 1628–9 witnessed the height of Laud's parliamentary engagement. His key role as a writer of memoranda and speeches both for the duke of Buckingham and for Charles himself demonstrate the weight accorded to his political views. These views, reflected in his writings, sermons and his contributions to parliamentary debate, embody a dislike of parliamentary bargaining, a firm commitment to uphold the royal prerogative, particularly in matters of taxation, and a determination to resist encroachments upon it by the common lawyers, whether by the confirmation of Magna Carta or in the form of the Petition of Right. The expression of these views in such an emphatic fashion would come back to bite him, in the parliamentary attacks on him in 1629, but above all at his trial in 1644. Nevertheless, his articulation of them suggests that Laud himself was a more considered political thinker, and a more active politician, than he has hitherto been given credit for, and that there were ideas around in influential conciliar circles that do not appear to reflect the ‘anti‐absolutist’ consensus that, it is widely claimed, prevailed within the early Stuart political nation.     

Drafting the Nineteen Propositions,January–July 1642*

This article analyses the drafting of the document eventually printed as the Nineteen Propositions. Section two addresses certain issues regarding the methods and concepts employed in the subsequent analysis, focusing on consensus‐building, constitutional leanings and the drafting of parliamentary declarations in early 1642. Section three examines the origins of the Nineteen Propositions in the draft Declaration of Ways and Means (January 1642) (hereafter cited as the Ways). Section four traces the emergence of the Declaration Concerning Grievances and Remedies (hereafter cited as the Grievances) from the Ways (January–February). Section five examines the junta's efforts to overcome the Lords' prevarication over passing the Grievances (February–May). Section six examines the emergence of the initial draft of the Nineteen Propositions from the Grievances (24–7 May). Section seven analyses the 28 May draft, while section eight explores the amendment of that draft (31 May and 1 June). Section nine examines parliament's abortive attempts to revise the Nineteen Propositions in light of His Majesty's Answer to the XIX Propositions (21 June–2 July). It is concluded that, contrary to the received view, the text of the Nineteen Propositions began to emerge in January rather than May 1642, and that the junta in the Commons rather than the Lords drove this process. The three appendices identify, respectively, the constitutional leanings of the relevant parliamentarians, the parts of the text of the Ways that were repeated in the Grievances, and dates on which the various parts of the final text of the Nineteen Propositions were written.     

Arnau de Vilanova at the summit of Oloron (1287): a major inflection point in the life of a medieval physician

In July 1287, during mediation by Edward I for the release of Charles, prince of Salerno, the kings of England and Aragon met with Charles' representatives at a large assembly at Oloron in Béarn, on the edge of the Pyrenees west of Bayonne. An English document deriving from this meeting reveals the presence there of the famous physician Arnau de Vilanova, a member of the Aragonese party, and recipient of a gift from the king of England. This article demonstrates how this document and other recent discoveries, properly contextualised, can illuminate an obscure period in Arnau's life in which he turned towards a new pattern of existence.