Spitzka and spitzka on the brains of the assassins of presidents

Abstract

Although four American Presidents have been assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy), only the assassins of Garfield (Charles Julius Guiteau) and McKinley (Leon Franz Czolgosz) were tried, convicted, and executed for their crime. In 1882 Edward Charles Spitzka, a young New York neurologist with a growing reputation as an alienist, testified at the trial of Guiteau. He was the only expert witness who was asked, based on his personal examination of the prisoner, a direct question concerning the mental state of Guiteau. Spitzka maintained the unpopular view that Guiteau was insane. In spite of aggressive and spirited testimony on Spitzka's part, Guiteau was convicted and hanged. However, even before the execution it was acknowledged, by some experts, that Spitzka was undoubtedly right. About 20 years later, in 1901, Edward Anthony Spitzka, the son of Edward Charles Spitzka, was invited to conduct the autopsy on Czologsz, the assassin of McKinley. At the time Spitzka the younger, who had just published a detailed series of papers on the human brain, was in the fourth year of his medical training. It was an unusual series of fortuitous events that presumably led to Edward A. Spitzka conducting the autopsy on the assassin of the President of the United States while still a medical student. This, in light of the fact that other experts were available. Each Spitzka went on to a career of note and each made a number of contributions in their respective fields. It is however, their participation in the ‘neurology’, as broadly defined, of the assassins of Presidents Garfield and McKinley that remains unique in neuroscience history. Not only were father and son participants in these important events, but these were the only times that assassins of US Presidents were tried and executed.     

George Sigerson: Charcot's translator*

Abstract

Senator George Sigerson (1836–1925), Dublin's first neurologist, was also a significant contributor to Anglo‐Irish literature. His medical career and literary accomplishments are outlined, the focus of the article being Sigerson's friendly relationship with Charcot (with whom he corresponded), and whose Leçons sur les maladies du système nerveux he translated.     

Non-linear relationship between bulk δC and percent maize in carbonized cooking residues and the potential of false-negatives in detecting maize

Bulk δ¹³C values on charred cooking residues adhering to pottery sherd interior surfaces have been used as a source of information on the histories of maize in various locations in the western hemisphere. This approach is based on an assumption of a linear relationship between the percent maize in the resource mix cooked in a pot and δ¹³C. Previous experiments suggest that this relationship is non-linear, and maize may not be identified from bulk δ¹³C values even when it contributed substantially to the resource mix. A second round of experiments, presented here, indicates that the mobilization of carbon from maize and C₃ resources over time is the critical variable in residue formation and the resulting bulk δ¹³C value. This is influenced by the form of maize being cooked.     

Probing dietary change of the Kwädąy Dän Ts'ìnchį individual,an ancient glacier body from British Columbia: II. Deconvoluting whole skin and bone collagen δC values via carbon isotope analysis of individual amino acids

The remains of the Kwäd?y Dän Ts'ìnch? individual, a frozen male human, were recovered from a retreating glacier within the Tatshenshini-Alsek Park in British Columbia in August 1999. In order to provide information on both the geographical origin of this individual and low long he spent in the remote interior region prior to his death, molecular analysis and compound-specific carbon isotope analyses were performed on individual amino acids purified from his skin and bone. Gas chromatographic quantification of constituent amino acids of both tissues revealed a molecular distribution characteristic of collagen, dominated by glycine and to a lesser extent proline, hydroxyproline and alanine. Chiral gas chromatography indicated that protein preservation in both tissues was exceptional. Carbon isotope analysis of a faunal assemblage from an earlier prehistoric site from southern British Columbia provided reference dietary amino acid δ¹³C values for terrestrial (deer and domestic dog) and marine species (salmon and sealion), showing clear separation in all amino acids, particularly glycine which was extremely ¹³C-enriched in the marine animals. The distinction between terrestrial and marine organisms was increased by exploring Δ¹³C_{Glycine-Phenylalanine} values (6.6 ± 0.6‰ and 15.0 ± 2.1‰, respectively), which were higher in the latter by approximately 8‰, mirroring the increased δ¹⁵N_{Bulk collagen} values observed for the marine animals (R² = 0.78; p < 0.001). The Kwäd?y Dän Ts'ìnch? individual's bone had a similarly elevated Δ¹³C_{Glycine-Phenylalanine} value of 15.6 ± 1.0‰, indicating his extreme reliance on marine dietary resources throughout early life. The skin amino acid δ¹³C values were consistently lower than those observed for bone, with a concurrently lower Δ¹³C_{Glycine-Phenylalanine} value of 12.7 ± 0.9‰. The shift between the carbon isotope composition of bone (long-term diet) and skin amino acids (short-term diet) confirmed a sudden divergence away from marine food sources in the last months of life, consistent with his discovery 80 km inland.     

‘Taken captive by the mystery of the Great River’: towards an historical geography of British geography and Atlantic slavery

By examining the case of James MacQueen (1778–1870), this paper initiates a research agenda that contributes to what David N. Livingstone has argued remains the most pressing task for historians of geography: to write ‘the historical geography of geography’. Born in Scotland in 1778, MacQueen was one of the many ‘arm-chair’ geographers whose efforts at synthesising contemporary and historical sources were a significant feature of the encounter between Europe and the rest of the world. Indeed, although he never visited Africa, his speculations about the course and termination of the River Niger turned out to be broadly correct. What makes MacQueen a particularly significant figure was the original source of his theory: enslaved Africans in a Caribbean plantation-colony. In this light, a remark that MacQueen's imagination was ‘taken captive by the mystery of the Great River’ carries a dark double-meaning, because ‘captive’ knowledge was the very source of MacQueen's interest in African geography. Beginning with MacQueen's time in Grenada, the paper explores a series of personal relations, textual traces and West African ethno-histories to reveal how his geographical knowledge and expertise were bound up with Atlantic slavery. This shows not only how the colonial economy, centred on the Caribbean, underwrote the production of geographical knowledge about Africa, but also how British geographical discourse and practice might be probed for traces of Atlantic slavery and enslaved African lives. More generally, the case of James MacQueen illuminates a broader field of relationships between Atlantic slavery, West African exploration, and the development of modern British geography in the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Examining these relationships is key to writing a ‘historical geography of British geography and Atlantic slavery’ and contributes to postcolonial histories of the discipline by revealing the tangled relationships that bound geography and slavery, knowledge and subjugation, that which ‘captivates’ and those held ‘captive’.     

Adipocere withstands 1600 years of fluctuating groundwater levels in soil

An extraordinarily well-preserved skeleton of a child, interred in a stone sarcophagus in the Late-Roman era, was discovered in the city of Mainz (Germany) in 1998, covered with a puff pastry-like substance assumed to be adipocere. It is the first time that this substance, which is derived from fat under oxygen-deficient conditions and prevents corpses from decaying, has been discovered on corpses buried under conditions described in the present paper.     

S.C并非胡适笔名

1923年9月16日,<努力周报>发表署名S.C的文章<"大国民"的外交>.史学界认为该文是胡适所作,S,C是胡适笔名.实际上,从用语、思想观念及1923年9月前后胡适的居行及著述等方面考察,均可断定<"大国民"的外交>非胡适所作,S.C不是他的笔名.     

THE CHRONOSTRATIGRAPHY AND GEOARCHAEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF AN ALLUVIAL GEOARCHIVE: COMPARATIVE OSL AND AMS 14C DATING FROM GREECE*

The Basin of Phlious in southern Greece is known for its thick colluvial and alluvial deposits from the Holocene. It offers a good opportunity to reconstruct the history of Holocene soil erosion and its interaction with historical farming activities. In this study, we present new results based on optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating from the Basin of Phlious. The comparison between OSL and ¹⁴C AMS ages shows good agreement, and demonstrates the need for the detection of insufficiently bleached OSL samples in order to obtain accurate results. The discovery of a Neolithic site, buried under thick alluvial deposits, confirms the hitherto postulated Neolithic human impact on the landscape.     

‘Partially provided’: geography at the University of Toronto, 1844–1935

In universities, as in everyday life, there is a fundamental need for geographical knowledge, even when no formal departments exist to provide instruction. This need was true in the University of Toronto during the decades before Griffith Taylor was appointed in 1935 to the first university Chair in geography in English‐speaking Canada. Using matriculation and annual university course examinations, university calendars and the papers of President Falconer and Professors James Mavor and Harold Innis, I trace the development of geography at the University of Toronto from the mid‐nineteenth century to the arrival of Taylor. Courses taught in selected aspects of physical and human geography in the Departments of Geology, Political Economy and History are particularly significant. Underlying this instruction, and also the desire to establish a geography department, was an acute awareness of the fundamental importance of geography to help understand a large regionally complex homeland, and a wider world.     

IN VITRO DECOMPOSITION OF BONE COLLAGEN BY SOIL BACTERIA: THE IMPLICATIONS FOR STABLE ISOTOPE ANALYSIS IN ARCHAEOMETRY*

To understand biogenic collagen type I decomposition and to establish how diagenesis may bias archaeometric data, modern mammalian bone was inoculated with a selection of ubiquitous soil bacteria. The presence of exogenous microbial biomass in the inoculated specimens was then checked microscopically prior to collagen extraction. The experimentally degraded bone collagen showed altered amino acid compositions, attributable to the selective breakdown of certain amino acids by the bacteria. While both the bulk collagen extract and the single amino acids exhibited shifts to more negative δ¹³ C-values, enrichment was recorded for general δ¹³ N, and a depletion trend relative to unaltered collagen was observed for individual amino acid δ¹³ N. One explanation for the enrichment of the global δ¹⁵N-values is cleavage of peptide bonds, which leaves ¹⁵ N within the substrate, while the change of ¹³C is mostly due to the altered amino acid composition. On the other hand, possible repolymerization of cleavage products under experimental conditions may also be responsible for the depletion trend of individual amino acid δ¹³C- and δ¹⁵ N-values. This paper discusses the results as a basis for the development of a method for the reconstruction of the isotopic abundance of the original collagen, using the amino acid composition of the degraded product, the contribution of individual amino acids to its global δ-values and of isotope discriminations implied in the microbial decomposition.