More Blockbuster Drugs for Ulcers: Prilosec, Nexium, and Other Proton-Pump Inhibitors

Author(s):  
Jie Jack Li

In the first half of the 19th century, British physician William Prout conclusively showed that gastric juice contains hydrochloric acid. U.S. Army officer William Beaumont examined the physiological control mechanism of gastric acid secretion by studying Alexis St. Martin’s chronic gastric fistula that had resulted from a gunshot wound in the 1820s. Gastric acid is essential to digest protein and emulsify fats. It breaks down food so it can go on to the small intestine where nutrients are absorbed. Low levels of gastric acid can contribute to a myriad of discomforts and diseases. On the other hand, too much of a good thing is bad. High levels of gastric acid often result in heartburn and ulcers. Heartburn is a symptom produced by reflux when digesting food and gastric acid passes back up into the esophagus through the sphincter muscle at the top of the stomach. It is also known as GERD, for gastroesophageal reflux disease. If reflux occurs often and the body fails to sufficiently clear the acidic mixture back into the stomach, the tissue of the esophagus can be damaged, and that is when ulcers develop. Forty million Americans experience heartburn two days a week, and 60 million have it at least once a month. The disorder costs an estimated $10 billion in the United States, counting visits to doctors and hospitals, medications, and time lost from work, according to the American Gastroenterology Association. Before the emergence of Tagamet and Zantac as H2 histamine-receptor blockers for the treatment of heartburn and ulcers, numerous medicines were available, but none were satisfactory. For over a century, heartburn sufferers had been taking over-the-counter (OTC) antacid products such as Alka-Seltzer, Maalox, Mylanta, Pepto-Bismol, Rolaids, and Tums. Most of them contain simple inorganic bases as the principal active ingredients. Americans alone spend approximately $1 billion a year on these antacids, which bring relief within minutes and work by neutralizing the stomach acid that causes heartburn.

Author(s):  
Eric Rosenberg

Baseball has been proudly coined “the national pastime” for nearly its entire existence. The sport evolved from several English bat and ball games and quickly became part of the American identity in the 19th century. Only a few decades after the first baseball club formed in New York City, amateur clubs began to organize into loose confederations as competition and glory entered a game originally associated with fraternal leisure. Soon after, clubs with enough fans and capital began to pay players for their services and by 1871 and league of solely professionals emerged. Known as The National Professional Base Ball Players Association, this league would only last five seasons but would lay the groundwork for the American tradition of professional sports that exists today. In this paper, I analyze the development of the sport of baseball into a professional industry alongside the concurrent industrialization and urbanization of the United States. I used primary documents from the era describing the growing popularity of the sport as well as modern historians’ accounts of early baseball. In addition, I rely on sources focusing on the changing American identity during this period known as The Gilded Age, which many attribute to be the beginnings of the modern understanding of American values. Ultimately, I conclude that baseball’s progression into a professional league from grassroots origins compared to a broader trend of the ideal American being viewed as urban, skilled, and affluent despite the majority not able to fit this characterization. How certain attributes become inherent to a group identity and the types of individuals able to communicate these messages are also explored. My analysis of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players provides insight on the formative experience of the modern collective American identity and baseball’s place in it as our national pastime.


2005 ◽  
Vol 156 (8) ◽  
pp. 288-296
Author(s):  
Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani

In the first half of the 19th century scientific philosophers in the United States, such as Emerson and Thoreau, began to pursue the relationship between man and nature. Painters from the Hudson River School discovered the rural spaces to the north of New York and began to celebrate the American landscape in their paintings. In many places at this time garden societies were founded, which generated widespread support for the creation of park enclosures While the first such were cemeteries with the character of parks, housing developments on the peripheries of towns were later set in generous park landscapes. However, the centres of the growing American cities also need green spaces and the so-called «park movement»reached a first high point with New York's Central Park. It was not only an experimental field for modern urban elements, but even today is a force of social cohesion.


2012 ◽  
Vol 142 (5) ◽  
pp. S-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Naas ◽  
Christopher Rife ◽  
Paul Nietert ◽  
Donald O. Castell

Author(s):  
Amin Tarzi

Since its inception as a separate political entity in 1747, Afghanistan has been embroiled in almost perpetual warfare, but it has never been ruled directly by the military. From initial expansionist military campaigns to involvement in defensive, civil, and internal consolidation campaigns, the Afghan military until the mid-19th century remained mainly a combination of tribal forces and smaller organized units. The central government, however, could only gain tenuous monopoly over the use of violence throughout the country by the end of the 19th century. The military as well as Afghan society remained largely illiterate and generally isolated from the prevailing global political and ideological trends until the middle of the 20th century. Politicization of Afghanistan’s military began in very small numbers after World War II with Soviet-inspired communism gaining the largest foothold. Officers associated with the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan were instrumental in two successful coup d’états in the country. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, ending the country’s sovereignty and ushering a period of conflict that continues to the second decade of the 21st century in varying degrees. In 2001, the United States led an international invasion of the country, catalyzing efforts at reorganization of the smaller professional Afghan national defense forces that have remained largely apolitical and also the country’s most effective and trusted governmental institution.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-58
Author(s):  
John J Magyar

Abstract The generally accepted belief about the rule prohibiting recourse to legislative history as an aid to statutory interpretation is that it began in the case of Millar v.Taylor in 1769, and it was followed thereafter in England and throughout the United States through to the 20th century. However, all four judges on the panel in Millar v.Taylor considered evidence from the Journal of the House of Commons and changes made to the relevant bill in their opinions. Meanwhile, the case was widely cited for several substantive and procedural matters throughout the 19th century, but it was not cited by a judge as a precedent for the rule against legislative history until 1887. A careful examination of the relevant cases and secondary literature from the 18th and 19th centuries reveals a much more nuanced and complex history to the rule. Its emergence becomes less clear because it is shrouded in judicial silence. Its beginnings must be inferred from a general and often unarticulated principle that lawyers felt free to disregard. Furthermore, the development, refinement, and decline of the rule followed a different timeline in England, the US federal courts and the state courts.


2021 ◽  
pp. 72-77
Author(s):  
Anita R. Denisova

Acute respiratory diseases (ARIs), a group of infectious diseases with similar epidemiological and clinical characteristics, are the most common reason for seeking medical care, children skipping attendance of educational institutions and parents skipping work. The clinical picture of ARI is characterized by a combination of the following symptoms: increased body temperature, nasal discharge, mostly mucous, nasal congestion, sore or scratchy throat and cough. In some cases, myalgia and manifestations of asthenia such as weakness, rapid fatigue, headache and decreased appetite may be noted. Pathogenetic therapy of ARI is based on clinical syndromes and includes symptomatic, antiviral and antibacterial drugs, also mucolytics, expectorants, cough suppressants; H1-histamine receptor blockers and immunocorrectors if necessary. Hyperthermia is the most significant problem faced by parents of young patients and pediatricians when dealing with ARI. The production of interferon gamma, interleukin-2 and tumor necrosis factor, which stimulate the production of IgG, is significantly increased with fever. Therefore, it is especially important to know the algorithms of behavior and criteria for understanding when and what antipyretics should be prescribed to a child. Administration of antipyretics for fever is aimed not only at stopping the fever, but also to improve the child’s wellbeing and reduce the pain syndrome during ARI. When choosing antipyretics, it is necessary to consider the age of the child, the preferred method of administration, the allowable doses, the frequency of administration, the prevention of complications in children at risk. Antipyretics may be prescribed in the form of combined drugs, not only able to reduce fever, but also eliminate other symptoms that occur against the background of acute respiratory infection.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
John J. Swab

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Fire insurance maps produced by the American firm the Sanborn Map Company have long served as cartographic guides to understanding the history of urban America. Primarily used by cultural and historical geographers, historians, historic preservationists, and environmental consultants; historians of cartography have little explored the history of this company. While this scholarship has addressed various facets of Sanborn’s history (Ristow, 1968), no scholarly piece has explored the lived experience of being a Sanborn surveyor. This lack of scholarship comes not from any significant oversight but rather from the fact that the contributions of most Sanborn surveyors were anonymous and little recorded on the maps themselves. Moreover, the company itself has done little to save its own history, thus little is known of their individual stories and experiences. The exception to this is perhaps the most famous Sanborn surveyor of all: Daniel Carter Beard.</p><p>Over the course of his nine-decade life, Daniel Carter Beard held several prominent positions including the co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America and the lead illustrator for many of Mark Twain’s novels. However, he got his start as a surveyor for the Sanborn Map Company in the 1870s, just a few years after its founding. His papers, housed at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, includes a variety of ephemera from his time with the Sanborn Map Company.</p><p>Trained in civil engineering, Beard got his start as a surveyor for the Cincinnati (Ohio) Office of Platting Commission, creating the first official plat map for the city. He was hired by Sanborn in 1874 and served as a surveyor until 1878, traveling extensively over the eastern half of the United States, parlaying his skills into creating fire insurance maps for Sanborn. Thus, this paper speaks to two main themes. The first theme traces the route of Beard during his early years with the company across the eastern half of the United States, documenting both the places he visited and the challenges he faced as a Sanborn surveyor. The second theme, interwoven through the paper, is an analysis of the innerworkings of Sanborn’s administrative structure and its relationship with the larger fire insurance market during the 1870s. Altogether, these documents present unique insight into the organization of the Sanborn Map Company and how it produced its maps during the second-half of the 19th century.</p>


1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Arditi

This paper explores the opening of a discursive space within the etiquette literature in the United States during the 19th century and how women used this space as a vehicle of empowerment. It identifies two major strategies of empowerment. First, the use or appropriation of existing discourses that can help redefine the “other” within an hegemonic space. Second, and more importantly, the transformation of that space in shifting the lines by which differentiation is produced to begin with. Admittedly, these strategies are neither unique nor the most important in the history of women's empowerment. But this paper argues that the new discourses formulated by women helped forge a new space within which women ceased being the “other,” and helped give body to a concept of womanhood as defined by a group of women, regardless of how idiosyncratic that group might have been.


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