Making Distinctions: The Contribution of Hector Landouzy to Differential Diagnosis in Relation to Hysteria and Epilepsy

Hector Landouzy (1818-1864) is known for his Traité Complet de l'Hystérie (1846), which was crowned by the Académie de Médecine, but this work is not given much importance in historical accounts. It deserves more attention because it was more than an orthodox statement about the nature of hysteria. In the context of the diagnostic confusion between epilepsy and hysteria, it introduced a method of presenting criteria to facilitate diagnosis. An examination of French authors on epilepsy and hysteria in the second half of the nineteenth century suggests that this method probably set the example which was to be followed by later clinicians, including Charcot at the Salpêtrière.     

谷仓罐动物装饰的文化内涵

本文对吴、晋青瓷堆塑谷仓罐上出现的诸多动物装饰题材追根溯源,并阐释了其文化内涵。     

Wissenstransfer auf dem Prüfstand. Europäische Mediziner im Kampf gegen die Pest von Moskau 1771

Foreign knowledge being tested: European physicians fighting the Moscow plague of 1771. – The transfer of Western medicine to Russia increased significantly in the Eighteenth century. Foreign doctors were employed, their writings translated, their education standards copied. But who regarded that knowledge as superior and why? Taking the Moscow Plague of 1771 as a case study, this article examines the crucial role foreign and Russian medical practitioners played during the epidemic. It argues that especially those ideas and practices that were useful for social control filtered into politics and public discourse, but failed to convince the majority of the population.     

Production centers of cooking pots in Iron Age Judah

This paper will present and discuss a multifaceted research project dealing with the production of cooking pots during the Iron Age II (ca. 1,000–586 BCE) Judah (modern Israel). In particular the new compositional analysis of 541 cooking vessels from 11 sites in Iron Age Judah will be presented. The study employs petrographic and chemical (NAA) analysis. The results of this ongoing research have already produced interesting information about production centers and movements of cooking pots in Iron Age II Judah. Apparently, the vast majority of the cooking pots sampled were made of a similar type of clay, related to terra rossa soil. This is true also for sites in the northern Negev and Judean Desert, where the type of soil was not available in the region of the sites. Furthermore, many of the cooking pots distributed around Judah were made in Jerusalem according to a well-located chemical profile (JleB). Other groups may represent Judean Shephelah production centers as the Lachish area as well as production centers in southern Israel or ancient Edom. The implications of the importation patterns of cooking pots by peripheral Judean sites will be discussed.     

Iran–US Public Health Cooperative Organization (PHCO): Education,Healthcare, and Health Services in the Southwest of Iran (Fars), 1950–60

Fars is among the largest provinces of Iran that received the most technical assistance from the American economic delegation in the 1950s. After settling in the province and during ten years of activity, the American delegation provided technical assistance in the fields of health engineering, health education, preventive medicine, nursing, medical services, and medical education. This paper explains how the technical assistance of US personnel contributed to the general health of the Fars province. The findings of this research show that after the formation of the Public Health Cooperative Organization (PHCO) in 1950, not only did most of the cities and villages of this province began to enjoy safe drinking water, but also public health improved. Additionally, the birth of children with disabilities and the spread of infectious diseases such as malaria and trachoma declined by means of preventive medicine centers and health education.     

Commentary. The Diseases of Alexander the Great

The accompanying articles that speculate that Alexander the Great had a traumatic carotid dissection or congenital cervical scoliosis demonstrate the difficulties in retrospective diagnosis as a historical enterprise. The extant primary sources were written centuries after Alexander’s death and are ambiguous in their original languages, and even more so in translation. Thus we cannot be certain what illness Alexander actually had. Furthermore, anachronistic diagnosis removes Alexander from the medical context of this time, telling us little of historical significance about him. Such investigations also illustrate the more general limits that the absence of context imposes on the study of ancient history.     

Reverse Engineering the Ceramic Cooking Pot: Cost and Performance Properties of Plain and Textured Vessels

Ceramic cooking pots throughout the world vary in exterior surface treatment from smooth to roughly textured. An intriguing example of this variation occurred in the Puebloan region of the southwestern United States where cooking pots changed from scraped plain to highly textured, corrugated vessels between the seventh and eleventh centuries AD, and then reverted back to plain-surfaced by the fifteenth century. To investigate potential cost and performance differences between plain and corrugated cooking pots, a set of controlled experiments were performed, which document manufacturing costs, cooking effectiveness, and vessel durability. These experiments indicate that while corrugation may have increased manufacturing costs, neck corrugations improved vessel handling, upper body corrugations yielded greater control over cooking, and basal corrugations extended vessel use-life. Discerning the explanatory significance of these results for cooking pot change in the Southwest and elsewhere requires additional data on the contexts in which these pots were made and used.     

Medical Hermeneutics of Murder. Race,Medicine and Law in a Murder Case from Finnmark, 1911

Abstract

This article seeks to investigate the investigation of a murder case in Finnmark in 1911, where four siblings killed their young brother. In the legal investigations following the misdeed, a number of medical experts played a prominent role. Their role was to assess the mental condition of the defendants, but also to make sense of the murder. A specific interpretational mode was called for: a “medical hermeneutics” of the murder. The murder investigation becomes an occasion for discussing medical and juridical interpretations of human agency at the turn of the century, and especially of the role of the concept of “race” in these interpretations. For at least some of the physicians involved, the racial make-up of the ethnic group to which the actors belonged constituted an inevitable part of the context that made the act intelligible. Although the concept of race, and the conceptual frameworks offered by degenerationism and medical psychology to a certain degree made the act intelligible, these interpretational schemes had little to offer in terms of assessing the legal accountability of the defendants. Hence, the case illustrates the profound epistemological limits of medical interpretation in facing a legal case.     

Antiparacelsismus und Dreieinigkeit. Medizinischer Antitrinitarismus von Thomas Erastus (1524–1583) bis Ernst Soner (1572–1605)

Antiparacelism and Trinity: Medical antitrinitarism from Thomas Erastus (1524–1583) to Ernst Soner (1572–1605). – There were close relationships between Renaissance medicine and antitrinitarianism in 16th and 17th century. Forming an important part of the radical reformation antitrinitarianism won many disciples in the Holy Roman Empire and proved its attraction for physicians. This paper centers on two public scandals in Heidelberg and Altdorf involving the reknown university professors and physicians Thomas Erastus and Ernst Soner. Michael Servetus' new concept of the blood flow through the lungs was discussed in Heidelberg. In Altdorf Caspar Hofmann, Soner's colleague, developed a special theory of the blood flow and corresponded with William Harvey. Erastus and Soner sharply critisized the hermectical and neoplatonical ideas of Paracelsus. Although sympathizing with antitrinitarianism they denounced the Paracelsians as heretics. The Polish antitrinitarians were called Socinians, from Faustus Socinus. Their doctrine tended to be Aristotelic and rationalistic. Soner combined a socinian theology with a heterodox Aristotelianism referring to Andrea Cesalpino. Again after Soner's death some of his pupils and other physicians advocated socinianism in Gdansk (Martin Ruar, Florian Krause, Daniel Zwicker,Valentin Baumgart).