scholarly journals Modelling Authority: Obstetrical Machines in the Instruction of Midwives and Surgeons in Eighteenth-Century Italy

Author(s):  
Jennifer F Kosmin

Abstract This article takes the commission of an elaborate and life-like obstetrical machine by the Italian midwifery instructor, Vincenzo Malacarne, in 1791 as a starting point for considering the ways that medical practitioners were renegotiating the relationship between the senses at the end of the eighteenth century. In particular, it focuses on the cultivation of touch as an authoritative and professionalised source of bodily knowledge. The article argues that Malacarne's obstetrical machine reflects an important moment of transition in the way medical practitioners were trained to interact with female patients, in which the manual exploration of a woman’s genitals was re-contextualised as an expression of scientific rationality and medical authority. A close examination of the use of obstetrical machines in midwifery training suggests, moreover, that women, too, whose touch had often been accused of irrationality and ignorance, had to be taught how to perform manual procedures in a rational and scientific manner.

Author(s):  
Nguyễn Quang Ngọc

Vietnam is a country of an early history establishment with three archaeological centres: Dong Son in the North, Sa Huynh in the Central, and Oc Eo in the South. In the long history, these three centres unite and gather into a unified block, step by step, becoming a mainstream development trend. By the eleventh century, Thang Long capital (Hanoi) is a typical representative, the starting point for the course of advancement to the South of the Vietnamese. Later, Phu Xuan (Hue) from the fourteenth century and Gia Dinh (Saigon) from the seventeenth century directly multiply resources, deciding the success of the course of territory expansion and determining the southern territory of the nation Dai Viet – Vietnam in the middle of the eighteenth century. The Tay Son movement at the end of the eighteenth century starts unifying the country, but the course is not completed with numerous limitations. The mission of unifying the whole country is assigned back to Nguyen Anh. Nguyen Anh continually builds Gia Dinh into a firm basement for proceeding to conquer the imperial capital of Hue and the citadel Thang Long, completing the 733-year journey to expand the southern territory (1069–1802) and unifying the whole country into a single unit. Hanoi – Hue – Saigon in the relationship and mutual support has become the three pillars that determine all successes throughout the long history and in each stage of expansion and shaping of territory and unification of the country.


Drug Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (08) ◽  
pp. 458-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
César Portela

AbstractTraditionally, the first step in the development of drugs is the definition of the target, by choice of a biological structure involved in a disease or by recognition of a molecule with some degree of a biological activity that presents itself as druggable and endowed with therapeutic potential. The complexity of the pathophysiological mechanisms of disease and of the structures of the molecules involved creates several challenges in this drug discovery process. These difficulties also come from independent operation of the different parts involved in drug development, with little interaction between clinical practitioners, academic institutions and large pharmaceutical companies. Research in this area is purpose specific, performed by specialized researchers in each field, without major inputs from clinical practitioners on the relevance of such strategy for future therapies. Translational research can shift the way these relationships operate towards a process in which new therapies can be generated by linking experimental discoveries directly to unmet clinical needs. Computational chemistry methods provide valuable insights on experimental findings and pharmacological and pathophysiological mechanisms, allow the virtual construction of new possibilities for the synthesis of new molecular entities, and pave the way for informed cost-effective decisions on expensive research projects. This text focus on the current computational methods used in drug design, how they can be used in a translational research model that starts from clinical practice and research-based theorization by medical practitioners and moves to applied research in a computational chemistry setting, aiming the development of new drugs for clinical use.


Author(s):  
Martina Domines Veliki

VISUALIZING POVERTY IN WORDSWORTH’S POETRY This paper departs from the assumption that Wordsworth’s poetry is highly visual in its quality and it focuses on his three “great period” poems, “Michael”, “The Old Cumberland Beggar” and “Resolution and Independence” (1798–1805) to show how Wordsworth represents poverty. By taking as its starting point some New Historicist readings of these poems (Simpson, Pfau, Connell, Liu) which highlighted Wordsworth’s blindness to social reality of the poor, it wants to enlarge the scope of historicist readings by introducing the framework of the New Poverty Studies (Korte, Christ). Furthermore, it insists on the assumption that the Romantic need to visualize landscape in the picturesque form becomes an important strategy of “configuring” (Korte) the reality of the poor. In other words, the way in which the poor are represented in Wordsworth’s poetry tells us something about practical engagements with poverty in late eighteenth-century England. Also, Wordsworth’s position of a middle-class observer who builds the tension between the seen and the deliberately unseen aspects of his social surrounding, show us how Wordsworth unconsciously falls under the spell of a larger class-related sensibility and thus fails in his humanitarian project.


Chronos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 95-118
Author(s):  
Rand Abou Ackl

In this article, I discuss a proskynetarion icon of the Holy Land and Jerusalem, called the Kharetat al mousafer, located in Saydnaia Monastery in Syria. The relationship between pilgrimages and proskynetaria, which served as a tool of Christian propaganda, will be discussed with a focus on the Saydnaia proskynetarion as a case study, showing the way of the Melkite painter, Issa al-Qudsi depicted the Holy Land topography. In this icon, the Holy Sepulchre (Church of Resurrection) was also represented, opening a discussion around proskynetaria in Syria during the eighteenth century.


2003 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. HOUSTON

Improper confinement of those alleged to be mentally troubled was a prominent issue for the literate and propertied classes of eighteenth-century England and one which has fascinated historians too. In contrast, Scots did not perceive wrongful incarceration of the mentally disabled to be a serious social or legal issue. This article seeks to explain the differences between Scotland and England by focusing on a case where the care of a mentally troubled person was fought over. The article explores the familial settings and relationships involved in the care of the mad and idiotic and it shows medical and lay understandings of mental incapacity. Finally, it gives insights into the eclectic medical regime used to treat the mentally troubled and into the relationship between law, medicine and society. The argument is that different legal and medical structures meant that Scots were much less exercised about wrongful confinement. The article concludes that respect for the transparency of Scottish courts, for their cheapness and for their relative speed helped prevent the development of any extensive critique of improper confinement in eighteenth-century Scotland. Coupled with this was the relative power of the family compared with that of medical practitioners in Scotland.


Author(s):  
Pedro Ruiz Pérez

RESUMENDesde la segunda mitad del XVII hasta mediados del siglo siguiente se extiende una línea poética que trabaja con elementos persistentes desde la primera fase del barroco, pero con una articulación y un significado en el que se perciben las huellas del cambio. Una de las líneas de esta estética bajobarroca representa un paso en la dirección adoptada después por la poética neoclásica e ilustrada, y puede concretarse en la reordenación de las relaciones entre sentimiento y razón. Este estudio toma como punto de partida el poemario anónimo Fragmentos del ocio (1668, reeditado en 1683), reconocido como de Juan Gaspar Enríquez de Cabrera, y, a partir de un análisis del empleo del término «razón» y su concepto, se apoya en las variantes de una diacronía que lo acerca al siglo XVIII para abordar una proyección de los rasgos observados en la caracterización de la poética bajobarroca. Se destacan como elementos distintivos un novedoso sentido de la inmanencia, la redefinición del lugar social de la poesía y de la posición de su autor y, finalmente, la tendencia a la poesía de circunstancias. Con ellas la sentimentalidad abandona su condición de componente definitorio de la lírica y abre paso a una racionalidad ligada a los nuevos modelos de sociabilidad e ideales expresivos.PALABRAS CLAVEEnríquez de Cabrera, Fragmentos del ocio, razón, bajo barroco, poética, campo literario. ABSTRACTSince the second half of the seventeenth century a poetic current is developed until the middle of the next century, working with persistent elements from the first phase of the Baroque, but with a joint and a meaning where the traces of change are perceived. One line of this bajobarroca aesthetic represents a step in the direction that the neoclassical and illustrated poetry take after, and it may be materialized in the reconstructing of the relationship between feeling and reason. This study takes as its starting point the anonymous book of poetry Fragmentos del ocio (1668, reprinted 1683), whose author was Juan Gaspar Enriquez de Cabrera. From an analysis of the use “reason” and its concept, the study is based in the variants in a diachrony that brings the work near the eighteenth century. So, it is possible to map out the features observed in the characterization of the low baroque poetic. They are outstanding categories a new sense of immanence, the redefinition of the social place of poetry and of position of the author, and, finally, the tendency to the poetry of circumstances. With them, the sentimentality leaves his condition of essential component of lyric and gives way to rationality linked to models  of sociability and expressive ideals.KEYWORDSEnríquez de Cabrera, Fragmentos del ocio, reason, low baroque, poetics, literary field


Author(s):  
Anne Mette Thorhauge ◽  
Jingyan Elaine Yuan ◽  
Jacob Ørmen ◽  
Andreas Gregersen ◽  
Patrick Vonderau

The focus of this panel is the material, organizational, and cultural conditions of digital markets. While the notion of economy refers to the more general production, distribution and allocation in society, the idea of markets represents specific contexts of economic exchange typical of capitalist economies (Carruthers & Babb, 2013). A more elaborate understanding of digital markets and their relationships with digital platforms can expand our understanding of the economic implications that specific types of platform architectures have at the level of economic interaction. The discussion takes as a starting point perspectives from economic sociology that emphasize how markets are embedded into broader social and societal structures (Granovetter, 2017) and conditioned upon cultural norms and conventions (Beckert, 2009). In addition, the panel is informed by the way economic sociology and STS have approached the material conditions of markets (Garcia-Parpet, 2007; MacKenzie, 2018) and the way these conditions frame and transform power relations and interaction patterns on specific markets. The panel consists of four papers that approach this issue from a range of perspectives: The relationship between platform architectures, open market strategies and the formation of ‘commodity money’ in the case of Steam, the relationship between platforms, markets, and state regulation in the case of Alibaba, the role of narratives, imagined futures, and collective action that frame patterns of buying and selling in global stock markets in the case of Gamestop shares and, finally, how the online engagement industry is organized in practice in the case of “click farms”.


2018 ◽  
pp. 93-113
Author(s):  
Catherine Packham

This paper discusses the role of “systems” in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, reading this foundational text of political economy as elaborating a system that linked national prosperity to the lives, bodies, and even health, of its subjects. Specifically, it explores the role of vitalism in eighteenth-century human sciences and addresses how a vitalist conception of life informs Smith’s economic system, with consequences for the way Smith theorizes labor, the human subject, and the relationship between subject and economic system. Political economy is thus demonstrated to be, at its inception, a bioeconomic practice. It concludes by considering the relations among nature, political economy, and imagination in Smith’s thought, and suggests that “nature” in Smithian political economy offers both the possibility of system and the potential for its own critique.


Author(s):  
Floris Verhaart

This chapter starts with a very concise discussion of how the different approaches to classical literature debated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be traced back to the ancient world and the Middle Ages. The rest of the chapter demonstrates how scholars in the early eighteenth century reflected on the work of their predecessors from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries based on their own scholarly concerns. The first example is Pieter Burman (1668–1741) and his Sylloge epistolarum (1724–7), the edition of unpublished writings by the French critic Henri Valois (1603–76; edition published in 1740), and the edition of George Buchanan (1506–82), published in 1725. In the Sylloge, for example, Burman focuses on letters that show how eminent scholars thought about the correct reading of classical texts, while a ‘popularizer’ like Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) is criticized. Valois’s work was used as a starting point to reflect on what Burman and his nephew Pieter Burman the Younger (1713–78) saw as the downfall of French textual criticism. Finally, Burman’s own interest in the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of texts also allowed him to avoid involvement in politically sensitive matters, as was the case for Buchanan’s views in contemporary Scotland. The final example discussed in this chapter is the prefatory material written by Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736) for the edition of Erasmus’ Opera omnia (1703–6), in which Le Clerc dwells on the relationship between the study of ancient literature and other academic disciplines such as philosophy and theology.


2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW R. HOLMES

AbstractIn his presidential address to the Belfast meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1874, John Tyndall launched what David Livingstone has called a ‘frontal assault on teleology and Christian theism’. Using Tyndall's intervention as a starting point, this paper seeks to understand the attitudes of Presbyterians in the north of Ireland to science in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century. The first section outlines some background, including the attitude of Presbyterians to science in the eighteenth century, the development of educational facilities in Ireland for the training of Presbyterian ministers, and the specific cultural and political circumstances in Ireland that influenced Presbyterian responses to science more generally. The next two sections examine two specific applications by Irish Presbyterians of the term ‘science’: first, the emergence of a distinctive Presbyterian theology of nature and the application of inductive scientific methodology to the study of theology, and second, the Presbyterian conviction that mind had ascendancy over matter which underpinned their commitment to the development of a science of the mind. The final two sections examine, in turn, the relationship between science and an eschatological reading of the signs of the times, and attitudes to Darwinian evolution in the fifteen years between the publication ofThe Origin of Speciesin 1859 and Tyndall's speech in 1874.


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