PREFIGURING THE POSTHUMAN: DICKENS AND PROSTHESIS

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 617-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Sussman ◽  
Gerhard Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
World View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Inanimate Object ◽  
Material Thing ◽  
Metabolic Conversion ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Martin Chuzzlewit ◽  
Classic Essay

With every tool man is perfecting his own organs…. by means of spectacles he corrects defects in the lens of his own eye; by means of the telescope he sees into the far distance. Man has become a kind of prosthetic god.—Freud,Civilization and its DiscontentsDOROTHY VAN GHENT'S“View from Todgers's” classic essay of 1950 (about perspective inMartin Chuzzlewit) might be defined as the starting point for what we now accept as the veriest Dickens commonplace: the fact that an interchange between animate human subject and inanimate object characterizes his world view. The boundaries of person and material thing are permeable, are constantly criss-crossing, according to Van Ghent, in a “system that is presumed to be a nervous one…. its predications about persons or objects tend to be statements of metabolic conversion of one into the other” (221). But this persistent reading, expressed here in biological terms–“nervous” system, “metabolic conversion”–of Dickens's stylistic habit, itself depends upon attributing to Dickens the critic's sharp distinction between the “human” and the “inhuman” or “non-human.”

The Morisonian Lectures on Insanity for 1873

1875 ◽  
Vol 21 (93) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Skae
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Nervous System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Mental Impairment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Mental Symptoms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Complete Account

Syphilitic Insanity.—This is the first of the varieties of insanity in Dr. Skae's classification that is due to the action of a poison introduced from without. As might be expected, its symptoms are much more definite than those of the more constitutional and hereditary varieties of mental alienation. Something, too, is known of its pathology, and yet it is only about twenty years since the fact was recognised that the syphilitic poison could produce mental derangement at all. It has been described by English, French, and German authors on insanity and syphilis, but Dr. Wille, the latest German writer on the subject, has given us by far the most complete account of the disease in all its forms so far as it is at present known. An excellent abstract of his paper appeared in the “Journal of Mental Science” for January last, by Dr. Addison.† It is one of the forms of insanity that must be studied in connection with the other syphilitic affections of the nervous system, if we wish to understand it. To describe its symptoms without reference to the syphilitic form of epilepsy, of paralysis, and neuralgia, would be a mistake in every respect. Dr. Reade, of Belfast, and Dr. Todd, of London, were the first in this country to direct special attention to the occurrence of mania as a direct result of syphilis. They both showed that it was one of a train of symptoms that had the specific infection for its starting point; that those symptoms proved clearly that the nervous system, both spinal cord and brain, as well as their membranes, were involved in such cases, and that whatever cured the syphilis cured the neuroses. Dr. Duncan published three very interesting cases of syphilitic insanity in 1863.∗ Dr. Hugh Grainger Stewart published three cases in 1870.† Dr. Wille has collated the symptoms of 77 cases of syphilis, in which there were mental symptoms of one kind or other. Many of Lancereaux's cases, given in his work on syphilis, have mental impairment or disturbance as a part of their history.

The Morisonian Lectures on Insanity for 1878

1875 ◽  
Vol 21 (93) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
David Skae ◽  
T. S. Clouston
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Nervous System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Mental Impairment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Mental Symptoms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Complete Account

Syphilitic Insanity.—This is the first of the varieties of insanity in Dr. Skae's classification that is due to the action of a poison introduced from without. As might be expected, its symptoms are much more definite than those of the more constitutional and hereditary varieties of mental alienation. Something, too, is known of its pathology, and yet it is only about twenty years since the fact was recognised that the syphilitic poison could produce mental derangement at all. It has been described by English, French, and German authors on insanity and syphilis, but Dr. Wille, the latest German writer on the subject, has given us by far the most complete account of the disease in all its forms so far as it is at present known. An excellent abstract of his paper appeared in the “Journal of Mental Science” for January last, by Dr. Addison.† It is one of the forms of insanity that must be studied in connection with the other syphilitic affections of the nervous system, if we wish to understand it. To describe its symptoms without reference to the syphilitic form of epilepsy, of paralysis, and neuralgia, would be a mistake in every respect. Dr. Reade, of Belfast, and Dr. Todd, of London, were the first in this country to direct special attention to the occurrence of mania as a direct result of syphilis. They both showed that it was one of a train of symptoms that had the specific infection for its starting point; that those symptoms proved clearly that the nervous system, both spinal cord and brain, as well as their membranes, were involved in such cases, and that whatever cured the syphilis cured the neuroses. Dr. Duncan published three very interesting cases of syphilitic insanity in 1863.∗ Dr. Hugh Grainger Stewart published three cases in 1870.† Dr. Wille has collated the symptoms of 77 cases of syphilis, in which there were mental symptoms of one kind or other. Many of Lancereaux's cases, given in his work on syphilis, have mental impairment or disturbance as a part of their history.

scholarly journals ML-23 The outcome of malignant lymphoma of the central nervous system in a single institution

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (Supplement_3) ◽  
pp. ii18-ii18
Author(s):  
Kiyonori Kuwahara ◽  
Shigeo Ohba ◽  
Kazuyasu Matsumura ◽  
Saeko Higashiguchi ◽  
Daijiro Kojima ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Central Nervous System ◽  
Nervous System ◽  
Adverse Events ◽  
Malignant Lymphoma ◽  
Survival Time ◽  
Progression Free Survival ◽  
Treatment Method ◽  
The Other ◽  
High Dose ◽  
Other Hand

Abstract Background: Although high dose-methotrexate therapy has been performed for primary central nervous system malignant lymphoma (PCNSL), R-MPV (rituximab, methotrexate (MTX), procarbazine and vincristine) therapy is currently the first line therapy for (PCNSL) in our hospital. This study examines the results of R-MPV therapy comparing with past treatment. Method/Subjects: Thirty-seven patients treated at our hospital from 2009 to 2020 were included. Overall survival time, progression free survival time, and toxicities were evaluated. Results: The average age of patients was 65.7 years. Patients included 21 males and 16 females. Thirty-six patients were diagnosed DLBCL by resected brain tumor tissues, and one was diagnosed DLBCL by vitreous biopsy. As initial treatment, rituximab±HD-MTX therapy (R±MTX group) was performed in 20 cases, HD-MTX therapy plus radiation (R±MTX+RT group) was performed in 12 cases, and RMPV therapy was performed in 5 cases (R-MPV group). Median OS of all cases was 69 months and median PFS was 38 months. Median OS was 69 months in R±MTX group and could not be calculated in R±MTX+RT, and R-MPV groups. Median PFS was 16 months and 56 months in R±MTX group and R±MTX+RT, respectively, and could not be calculated in the R-MPV group. Although the R-MPV group had a short follow-up period, the results were considered to be comparable to those of the R±MTX+RT group. On the other hand, grade 3/4 adverse events occurred in 50%, 25%, and 100%, respectively. Conclusion: R-MPV therapy may delay the timing of radiation and reduce the amount of radiation. On the other hand, the frequency of adverse events is high, and more strict management of treatment is required.

Madness, virtue, and ecology: A classical Indian approach to psychiatric disturbance

2021 ◽  
pp. 095269512098224
Author(s):  
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Psychiatric Disturbance ◽  
Indian Medical ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Moral Relationship

The Caraka Saṃhitā (ca. first century BCE–third century CE), the first classical Indian medical compendium, covers a wide variety of pharmacological and therapeutic treatment, while also sketching out a philosophical anthropology of the human subject who is the patient of the physicians for whom this text was composed. In this article, I outline some of the relevant aspects of this anthropology – in particular, its understanding of ‘mind’ and other elements that constitute the subject – before exploring two ways in which it approaches ‘psychiatric’ disorder: one as ‘mental illness’ ( mānasa-roga), the other as ‘madness’ ( unmāda). I focus on two aspects of this approach. One concerns the moral relationship between the virtuous and the well life, or the moral and the medical dimensions of a patient’s subjectivity. The other is about the phenomenological relationship between the patient and the ecology within which the patient’s disturbance occurs. The aetiology of and responses to such disturbances helps us think more carefully about the very contours of subjectivity, about who we are and how we should understand ourselves. I locate this interpretation within a larger programme on the interpretation of the whole human being, which I have elsewhere called ‘ecological phenomenology’.

Ontology and Perception

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Jeffrey S. Galko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Complex Environment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Ontological Question ◽  
The One ◽  
Bodies Of Water ◽  
The Relationship

The ontological question of what there is, from the perspective of common sense, is intricately bound to what can be perceived. The above observation, when combined with the fact that nouns within language can be divided between nouns that admit counting, such as ‘pen’ or ‘human’, and those that do not, such as ‘water’ or ‘gold’, provides the starting point for the following investigation into the foundations of our linguistic and conceptual phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to claim that such phenomena are facilitated by, on the one hand, an intricate cognitive capacity, and on the other by the complex environment within which we live. We are, in a sense, cognitively equipped to perceive discrete instances of matter such as bodies of water. This equipment is related to, but also differs from, that devoted to the perception of objects such as this computer. Behind this difference in cognitive equipment underlies a rich ontology, the beginnings of which lies in the distinction between matter and objects. The following paper is an attempt to make explicit the relationship between matter and objects and also provide a window to our cognition of such entities.

Role of Autonomic Nervous System in Maintenance of Cerebral and Renal Hypertension

1957 ◽  
Vol 188 (2) ◽  
pp. 371-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sol Rothman ◽  
Douglas R. Drury
Keyword(s):  
Blood Pressure ◽  
Nervous System ◽  
Autonomic Nervous System ◽  
Renal Hypertension ◽  
The Other ◽  
Peripheral Vasculature ◽  
Blood Pressures ◽  
Sympathetic Nervous ◽  
Blood Pressure Responses

The blood pressure responses to various drugs were investigated in renal hypertensive, cerebral hypertensive and normotensive rabbits. Hexamethonium bromide and Dibenamine reduced the blood pressures of renal and cerebral hypertensives. Effects in the normal were insignificant. The cerebral hypertensive's blood pressure was slightly affected by benzodioxane. Blood pressure was not reduced at all in the other groups. Blood pressure of the renal hypertensive rabbit was greatly reduced by Veriloid and dihydroergocornine. Blood pressures of cerebral and normal animals were affected to a lesser degree. The results suggest that maintenance of hypertension in the cerebral hypertensive rabbit depends on an overactive sympathetic nervous system, possibly due to the release of medullary pressor centers from inhibitory impulses originating in higher centers; whereas, the maintenance of hypertension in the renal hypertensive rabbit may be attributed to an increased reactivity of the peripheral vasculature to a normal sympathetic tone.

scholarly journals V. A letter on a canal in the medulla spinalis of some quadrupeds

1809 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 146-147
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Cauda Equina ◽  
The Other ◽  
Small Stream ◽  
Spinal Marrow ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Contrary Direction

Sir, According to your request, I send you an account of the facts I have ascertained, respecting a canal I discovered in the year 1803, in the medulla spinalis of the horse, bullock, sheep, hog, and dog; and should it appear to you deserving of being laid before the Royal Society, I shall feel myself particularly obliged, by having so great an honour conferred upon me. Upon tracing the sixth ventricle of the brain, which corresponds to the fourth in the human subject, to its apparent termination, the calamus scriptorius, I perceived the appearance of a canal, continuing by a direct course into the centre of the spinal marrow. To ascertain with accuracy whether such structure existed throughout its whole length, I made sections of the spinal marrow at different distances from the brain, and found that each divided portion exhibited an orifice with a diameter sufficient to admit a large sized pin; from which a small quantity of transparent colourless fluid issued, like that contained in the ventricles of the brain. The canal is lined by a membrane resembling the tunica arachnoidea, and is situated above the fissure of the medulla, being separated by a medullary layer: it is most easily distinguished where the large nerves are given off in the bend of the neck and sacrum, imperceptibly terminating in the cauda equina. Having satisfactorily ascertained its existence through the whole length of the spinal marrow, my next object was to discover whether it was a continued tube from one extremity to the other: this was most decidedly proved, by dividing the spinal marrow through the middle, and pouring mercury into the orifice where the canal was cut across, it passed in a small stream, with equal facility towards the brain (into which it entered), or in a contrary direction to where the spinal marrow terminates.

Fast Detoxification of Heroin Addicts by Acupuncture and Electrical Stimulation (AES) in Combination with Naloxone

1977 ◽  
Vol 05 (03n04) ◽  
pp. 257-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. L. WEN
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Electrical Stimulation ◽  
Parasympathetic Nervous System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Abstinence Syndrome ◽  
Rehabilitation Centre ◽  
Heroin Addicts ◽  
Social Rehabilitation ◽  
Receptor Sites ◽  
Long Acting

Detoxification can be accomplished more rapidly by first "flushing" the opiates from the receptor sites. Naloxone, a short antagonist displaces opiates from the receptor sites and such displacement precipitates an abstinence syndrome. Recently, a method of using acupuncture and electrical stimulation (AES) in combination with naloxone for fast detoxification was reported. This technique was applied to 50 cases of heroin addicts. Forty-one were detoxified. There were nine failures. Of the 41 cases, 18 patients were sent to rehabilitation centres and did not experience abstinence symptoms. Six were sent out of Hong Kong where heroin is not available, and two others did not go to a rehabilitation centre but still abstained. The other 15 were presumed to be on the drug. It is advocated that AES increases endorphin and relieves abstinence syndrome, but also at the same time inhibits the autonomic nervous system, mainly the parasympathetic nervous system. The technique does not stop the craving, therefore after detoxification, the patients should be sent for psycho-social rehabilitation, or alternatively be put on long acting antagonist.

The influence of lithium on the competence of the ectoderm in Ambystoma mexicanum

Development ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-331
Author(s):  
D. O. E. Gebhardt ◽  
P. D. Nieuwkoop
Keyword(s):  
Central Nervous System ◽  
Nervous System ◽  
Ambystoma Mexicanum ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Amphibian Embryos ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Morphogenetic Potential ◽  
Made In

The influence of lithium on the amphibian egg has been the subject of a number of investigations. From the work of Lehmann (1937), Töndury (1938), and Pasteels (1945) it is known that exposure of amphibian embryos to lithium results in a progressive cranio-caudal reduction of the central nervous system and a simultaneous conversion of the presumptive notochord into somites. Whereas these experiments were made with whole embryos, attempts have been made in recent years to localize the lithium effect by transplanting or explanting specific parts of the embryo. Gallera (1949), for instance, concluded from his experiments with transplants containing lithium treated presumptive chorda mesoderm, that lithium had reduced the ‘morphogenetic potential’ of this inductor. Lombard (1952), on the other hand, claimed that the susceptibility of amphibian eggs towards lithium was the result of the ion's direct influence on the ectoderm rather than on the presumptive archenteron roof.

The Co-Ordination of Insect Movements

1957 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-333
Author(s):  
G. M. HUGHES
Keyword(s):  
Central Nervous System ◽  
Nervous System ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Limb Amputation ◽  
Normal Movement ◽  
Thoracic Ganglia ◽  
Blatta Orientalis ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
Leg Movements

I. The effects of limb amputation and the cutting of commissures on the movements of the cockroach Blatta orientalis have been investigated with the aid of cinematography. Detailed analyses of changes in posture and rhythm of leg movements are given. 2. It is shown that quite marked changes occur following the amputation of a single leg or the cutting of a single commissure between the thoracic ganglia. 3. Changes following the amputation of a single leg are immediate and are such that the support normally provided by the missing leg is taken over by the two remaining legs on that side. Compensatory movements are also found in the contralateral legs. 4. When two legs of opposite sides are amputated it has been confirmed that the diagonal sequence tends to be adopted, but this is not invariably true. Besides alterations in the rhythm which this may involve, there are again adaptive modifications in the movements of the limbs with respect to the body. 5. When both comrnissures between the meso- and metathoracic ganglia are cut, the hind pair of legs fall out of rhythm with the other four legs. The observations on the effects of cutting commissures stress the importance of intersegmental pathways in co-ordination. 6. It is shown that all modifications following the amputation of legs may be related to the altered mechanical conditions. Some of the important factors involved in normal co-ordination are discussed, and it is suggested that the altered movements would be produced by the operation of these factors under the new conditions. It is concluded that the sensory inflow to the central nervous system is of major importance in the co-ordination of normal movement.

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