Robert Angus Smith, F. R. S. and ‘sanitary science’

IN the library of the old Chemistry Department in Manchester University stood the busts of three ‘great chemists’, Lavoisier, Dalton, and Angus Smith. History has dealt less kindly with Smith than with the other two, but he does not deserve to be totally forgotten. As the first Alkali Inspector under the Act of 1863 (and for several years the only one) his effect on the face of industrial Britain should not be under-estimated. We are reserving this aspect of his work, however, for a broader treatment of the history of industrial pollution. In this paper we shall consider his life, and his contributions to what he called ‘sanitary science’; an ill-defined field of study, comprising aspects of those disciplines now called ‘public health’ and ‘environmental studies’. The present popularity enjoyed by these branches of applied science has tended to obscure the fact that they were pursued with a comparable vigour and urgency a century ago.

Author(s):  
Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen

The history of Danish political thought is a neglected field of study. This is due to scholarly traditions as well as to the lack of “great texts.” The present article presents a Danish manuscript mirror of princes, Alithia, written in 1597 by Johann Damgaard and presented to King Christian 4. The text itself is neither original nor of exceptional literary merit, but the King liked it and discussed it chapter by chapter with the author. In other words: Damgaard’s Alithia seems to have hit the bull’s eye of political correctness and royal taste. This makes it an interesting source for Danish political culture in the decades around 1600. It represents a synthesis of humanist and reformation ideology where humanism has determined the form while the contents is mostly traditional Christian kingship in the protestant tradition. An exploration of Damgaard’s sources reveals that Damgaard’s text represents a sofisticated writing up of material found in two earlier manuscript mirror of princes by Jens Skafbo from 1590 and 1592 respectively. Skafbo, on the other hand, compiled his mirror of princes on the basis of Paulus Helie’s Danish adaption (printed 1534) of Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Institutio principis christiani and diverse other texts mainly from the 1580’s. This plagiarism, as modern eyes would see it, was typical of the age. The interesting point is the thorough stylistic and ideological twist towards humanism that Damgaard gave his text. A last interesting point is that these mirrors of princes were not destined for the King alone. In more modest and shortened manuscript editions they circulated among the higher nobility. In one such edition of Damgaard’s Alithia one finds a paragraph with no parallel in the King’s version. It describes the relation between King and realm by means of a parable about a lion (the king) and a unicorn (the realm). If the lion behaves peace is assured, but if the lion offends the unicorn it will throw him out by means of its sharp and strong horn (the nobility). The paragraph ends with some barbed verses about the expulsion of King Chrsitian 2. in 1523. This is precious evidence for a radical aristocratic ideology which only occasionally, if at all, surfaces in the sources.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 2023-2029 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sayed Yousef Mojtahedi ◽  
Aliakbar Rahbarimanesh ◽  
Leila Khedmat ◽  
Anahita Izadi

AIM: The objective of this study was to evaluate the frequency of risk factors for bacteremia in children less than 15 years of age was determined in Bahrami Hospital during 2013-2016. METHODS: This study conducted on 84 children aged 3 months’ to15 years old, who hospitalised in the pediatrics ward and the PICU in Bahrami Hospital from 2012 to 2016. Our study consisted of 46 boys (54.2%) and 38 girls. Moreover, 24.1% of subjects (20 patients) were entered in the study as young as three months old, followed by three months to three years (49.4 %; 41 subjects), and 3 to 15 years of age (26.5%; 22 individuals). RESULTS: The average hospitalization duration was determined to be 15.30 ± 8.75 days. Moreover, our results revealed that a history of blood transfusion in 11.2% of patients. On the other hand, 35.7% of cases were determined to be positive for blood cultures. The microorganisms reported from positive blood cultures include Enterobacter (81.48%), Escherichia coli (11.11%) and Klebsiella (3.70%). Also, 50% of patients were hospitalised in the internal ward, 12% received immunosuppressive drugs, and 96.4% of the patients had a history of vaccination. CONCLUSION: Pediatric severe sepsis remains a burdensome public health problem, with prevalence, morbidity, and mortality rates similar to those reported in critically ill adult populations. International clinical trials targeting children with severe sepsis are warranted.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1957 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 651-656

"IF THE Government can have a department to look out after the Nation's farm crops, why can't it have a bureau to look after the Nation's child crop?" It was 1903 and Miss Lillian Wald, founder of New York's Henry Street Settlement, was writing to Mrs. Florence Kelley of the National Consumer's League. This was the beginning of the 9-year effort, in Congress and throughout the country, which led to the foundation of the Children's Bureau in 1912. Devotion, preseverance and steadfastness of purpose have marked the Bureau's leadership since its establishment, and Dr. Martha May Eliot, recently resigned Chief, has been an outstanding example of the fearless fighter for better care of children. Her resignation, to become Professor of Maternal and Child Health at Harvard University's School of Public Health, put to a close a period of 31 years in the Bureau, years full of striking progress and accomplishments. Martha Eliot's career and the history of the Children's Bureau are closely interwoven; to understand the one it is important to know the other. A happy coincidence is the recent appearance of a short history of the Children's Bureau providing an interesting and factual chronicle, beginning with the first efforts at the turn of the century to establish an agency for children.


1960 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. G. E. Hall

In this paper I propose to look at Southeast Asian history for the most part before the era of European political control. My object is on the one hand to avoid the distortions of the picture caused by the wealth of writings on European activities in the area, which have tended to thrust into the background die history of the peoples of the area, and on the other hand to convey some idea of the importance of their history as a field of study today. Incidentally, it is a field in which most of the progress has been made by scholars whose names are largely unknown outside the esoteric circles of orientalism.


Author(s):  
Mujiburrahman Mujiburrahman

<div><p><strong>Abstract :</strong> Sufism has influenced the religious life of Banjarese Muslims in South Kalimantan since the 18th century up to now. The tendency to combine ethical Sufism of al-Ghazali and metaphysical Sufism of Ibn Arabi, and the veneration of Sufi masters in the reading ritual of their hagiographies, and the emergence of certain heterodox Sufi  sects, all of these can be found along history of Islam in this region. On the other hand, there are social changes that have also influenced the colour of Sufism developed in certain period. In the 18th century, orthodox Sufism fought against pantheism which was presumably came from Hindu origin, but in the 19th and early 20th century, Sufism became a social movement, namely a certian Sufi Order that was involved in the war against the Dutch. In the later period, Sufism became the source of moral and spiritual strength in the face of social, cultural and political crisis. Moreover, since the Reformation Era, Sufi masters and their followers have become potential allies as voters for politicians.</p><p><em>Keywords : sufism, banjar, tradition, social changes</em></p><p> </p><p><strong>Abstrak :</strong> Tasawuf telah mempengaruhi kehidupan keagamaan Muslim Banjar di Kalimantan Selatan, sejak abad ke-18 hingga sekarang. Kecenderungan untuk menggabungkan tasawuf etis al-Ghazali dan tasawuf metafisis Ibn Arabi, penghormatan terhadap tokoh-tokoh sufi dalam ritual pembacaan manakib, dan munculnya kelompok-kelompok tasawuf sempalan, semua ini dapat ditemukan sepanjang sejarah Islam di daerah ini. Di sisi lain, ada berbagai perubahan sosial yang juga mempengaruhi corak tasawuf yang berkembang di masa tertentu. Pada abad ke-18, tasawuf ortodoks harus berhadapan dengan panteisme, yang diduga berasal dari Hinduisme, tetapi pada abad ke-19 dan awal abad ke-20, tasawuf menjadi gerakan sosial, yaitu tarekat tertentu yang terlibat dalam perang melawan Belanda. Dalam periode berikutnya, tasawuf menjadi sumber kekuatan moral dan spiritual dalam menghadapi krisis sosial, budaya dan politik. Selain itu, sejak Era Reformasi guru-guru tasawuf dan para pengikut mereka, menjadi sekutu-sekutu potensial sebagai pemilih bagi para politisi. </p><p><em>Kata kunci : Tasawuf, banjar, tradisi, perubahan sosial.</em></p></div>


2017 ◽  
Vol II (I) ◽  
pp. 119-134
Author(s):  
Muhammad Muzaffar ◽  
Robina Khan ◽  
Zahid Yaseen

This qualitative research analyzes the complexities for Pakistan regarding Saudi-Iran relationships. Saudi Arabia has serious reservations regarding asymmetric power and regional ambitions of Iran along with its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. A particular concern founded in Riyadh is the challenge to the legitimacy of the AlSaud family in the face of regional and domestic audiences by upstaging it on Pan-Arab issues especially after 1979. Pakistan has a long history of close relationship with Iran as an immediate neighbor and Saudi Arabia as an extremely crucial strategic partner. These worst bilateral relations between the two regional rivals left limited choices for Islamabad. Though Pakistan tried hard to create a balance between both, yet Pakistan found it very difficult to maintain that balance, as both the rivals are stuck in a security dilemma and zero sum game, where victory or benefit of one is the loss for the other and a friend of one is perceived an enemy by the other.


Inner Asia ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Caroline Humphrey

AbstractThis issue of Inner Asia ranges over diverse themes in the history and anthropology of Inner Asia. Lewis Mayo’s two-part article on ‘Illness, Threat, and Systems of Authority in Dunhuang’ is a notable contribution to the Journal because it relates history with anthropology in a theoretically innovative way. Medicine and politics,Mayo argues, are both forms of ‘event management’, and with this perspective we can see parallels between the management of disease at different historical periods in the same environment. The history of endemic disease in Dunhuang articulates a threefold linkage between sickness, geography and administrative power, in which each element helps to define and constitute the other. Describing the Dunhuang region involves constructing a history of the diseases to which that region has been prone, and the work that has been done in relation to them. On the one hand, modern public administration gives illness a geographical articulation, one that involves a distinctive local configuration of minerals and microorganisms. The geological and biological particularities of the Dunhuang area manifest themselves in the prevalence of certain kinds of diseases in the region, which public health authorities detect and seek to counteract. On the other, over a thousand years earlier, Dunhuang’s rulers were also scripting methods to keep the area safe from, threat, disease and instability. The battle against disease and misfortune was waged every year in an exorcism ceremony, but through analysis of particular late-9th-century texts Mayo relates an enhanced sense of threat to a specific political and institutional juncture – a particular combination of challenges to authority. In both cases, the prestige of physicians and political leaders rests in their calmness in the face of events, as well as their capacity to anticipate and prevent them. The medical manual, the gazetteer and the ritual guide all promise a mastery of events. Like the notion of the endemic disease, there is a regional profile to suffering, one that Mayo suggests is constituted by and helps constitute the local political order. The historical and anthropological analysis of illness must engage with the systems of authority whose actions and structures seek to regulate and eliminate it. In this sophisticated piece, Mayo argues that if we accept that our sufferings have an institutional form and often an institutional cause, we can grasp how the endless labour of reproducing co-ordination and regulation also generates its own structures of threat.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 44-47
Author(s):  
S. Hermanns ◽  
A. Bhan ◽  
K. Viney

Systematic screening for active tuberculosis (TB) provides public health benefits and is part of the End TB Strategy. However, two of WHO's generic principles for screening for disease state that the natural history of the disease in question must be well understood and that there must be benefits to earlier treatment. TB fulfills the first of these only in part, the other has been less well documented. This paper considers the ethical implications of uncertain individual benefits from screening and the current research gaps.


2001 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Klaes

According to a commonly held view, doctrinal history formed a largely uncontested part of the discipline of economics in the early years of the twentieth century. Economists like Edwin Cannan, Jacob Viner, and Joseph A. Schumpeter were at the same time respected economists and historians of economics. Contemporary historians of economics, on the other hand, tend to feel defensive about their field of study. The questions of why, how, and in which discipline one should pursue the history of economics is hotly debated among practitioners, while the number of universities and curricula still offering history courses is in steady decline. This is matched by a corresponding attitude among orthodox economists aptly summarized by Frank H. Hahn (1992, p. 165): “What the dead had to say, when of value, has long since been absorbed, and when we need to say it again we can generally say it much better.”


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