scholarly journals Osler Centenary Papers: Osler, inscribed

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (1130) ◽  
pp. 637-641 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary K K Hague-Yearl

BackgroundAs the centenary of Sir William Osler’s death approaches on 29 December 2019, it is worth pausing to reflect on the relationship between the Osler Library of the History of Medicine at McGill University and the image of William Osler, for the two are arguably inextricable. When Osler died he had not yet completed his library, yet his donation to McGill included nearly 8000 volumes that represented the foundations of western medicine. The Osler Library now boasts over 100 000 titles and is recognised globally as a centre for the study of medical history.MethodsThe approach taken here was to examine inscriptions in the books that William Osler bequeathed to the McGill Medical Facultyin order to learn more about William Osler, the man.ResultsBy examining inscriptions William Osler and others made in his books, it was possible to learn more about how Osler interacted with his friends, his patients, and also his books.ConclusionIt is argued that these inscriptions are as instructive as they are enriching. They reveal information about Osler’s priorities and his personal and professional relationships; future scholars will likely find it useful to examine inscriptions more broadly, to gain insight into such topics as the book trade and world events.

Author(s):  
Christopher Lyons ◽  
David S Crawford

Sir William Osler bequeathed his library to McGill University in 1919, and the 8000 volumes arrived in Montreal a decade later. Then, as now, the collection consisted of both primary works (rare books) and secondary commentaries, and current works on the history of the health sciences. In the last 80 years, the collection has grown considerably, and the library now adds about 1000 books each year, mainly current publications, and receives 200 current serial titles. The Osler Library, which is one of the largest "history of medicine" libraries in the world and the largest in Canada, tries to collect current material on the history of the health sciences from all over the world and attempts to collect all medical history published in Canada. The Osler offers its resources to researchers through its Web site, publications, and Research Travel Grant program.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Lyons ◽  
David Crawford

Sir william Osler bequeathed his library to Mcgill University in 1919; a decade later, the 8000 volumes arrived in Montreal. Then, as now, the collection consisted of primary works (“rare books”), secondary commentaries, and current works on the history of the health sciences. In the last 80 years the collection has grown considerably and the library now adds about 1,000 books to its collection yearly (mainly current publications) and receives 200 current serial titles. The Osler Library is one of the largest “history of medicine” libraries in the world and the largest of its kind in Canada. The library tries to collect current material on the history of the health sciences from all over the world and attempts to collect all medical history published in Canada. The Osler offers its resources to researchers and students through its website, publications and Research Travel grant programme.


This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real artificial intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed, and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue. Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. These chapters explore the revealing prehistory of key concerns of contemporary AI discourse, from the nature of mind and creativity to issues of power and rights, from the tension between fascination and ambivalence to investigations into artificial voices and technophobia. Part II focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which a greater density of narratives emerged alongside rapid developments in AI technology. These chapters reveal not only how AI narratives have consistently been entangled with the emergence of real robotics and AI, but also how they offer a rich source of insight into how we might live with these revolutionary machines. Through their close textual engagements, these chapters explore the relationship between imaginative narratives and contemporary debates about AI’s social, ethical, and philosophical consequences, including questions of dehumanization, automation, anthropomorphization, cybernetics, cyberpunk, immortality, slavery, and governance. The contributions, from leading humanities and social science scholars, show that narratives about AI offer a crucial epistemic site for exploring contemporary debates about these powerful new technologies.


1986 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 59-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Nelson

Recent discussions of the history of American communism have generated a good deal of controversy. A youthful generation of “new social historians” has combined with veterans of the Communist party to produce a portrait of the Communist experience in the United States which posits a tension between the Byzantine pursuit of the “correct line” at the top and the impulses and needs of members at the base trying to cope with a complex reality. In the words of one of its most skillful practitioners, “the new Communist history begins with the assumption that … everyone brought to the movement expectations, traditions, patterns of behavior and thought that had little to do with the decisions made in the Kremlin or on the 9th floor of the Communist Party headquarters in New York.” The “new” historians have focused mainly on the lives of individuals, the relationship between communism and ethnic and racial subcultures, and the effort to build the party's influence within particular unions and working-class constituencies. Overall, the portrait has been critical but sympathetic and has served to highlight the party's “human face” and the integrity of its members.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (03) ◽  
pp. 1113-1129
Author(s):  
Kali Murray

This essay considers what tools should be used to study the legal history of intellectual property. I identify three historiographical strategies: narration, contest, and formation. Narration identifies the diverse “narrative structures” that shape the field of intellectual property history. Contest highlights how the inherent instability of intellectual property as a legal concept prompts recurrent debates over its meaning. Formation recognizes how intellectual property historians can offer insight into broader legal history debates over how to consider the relationship between informal social practices and formalized legal mechanisms. I consider Kara W. Swanson's Banking on the Body: The Market in Blood, Milk and Sperm in Modern America (2014) in light of these historiographical strategies and conclude that Swanson's book guides us to a new conversation in the legal history of intellectual property law.


Stroke ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Umar Farooq ◽  
Kathie Thomas

Background and Objectives: Migraine is a common neurological disorder affecting 38 million people in the United States. Hemorrhagic stroke accounts for 13% of all stroke cases and the risk of having a hemorrhagic stroke is 94 in 100,000 or 0.94%. There are two types of hemorrhagic stroke; intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) and subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Previous research has investigated the association between migraine and vascular disease, with several studies demonstrating a possible link between migraines and ischemic stroke. The relationship between migraine and hemorrhagic stroke remains unclear. Methods: A retrospective review from January 2012-December 2014 of hemorrhagic stroke patients (n=3682) from 30 Michigan hospitals using a Get With the Guidelines (GWTG) database was conducted. Stroke subtypes and patient medical histories were examined. This sample set was comprised of 46.95% males and 53.05% females. Results: It was found that the risk for hemorrhagic stroke increased from 0.94% to 2.12% with a medical history of migraines. The risk of ICH with a history of migraine in this study was 1.41%, while the risk of SAH with a history of migraine was 3.11%. The median age for a hemorrhagic stroke in this sample set was 67 years. A patient with a medical history that included migraines, had a median hemorrhagic stroke age of 55 years. Of these patients with a history of migraine who developed a hemorrhagic stroke, 74.7% were female and 25.3% were male. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that a higher risk of hemorrhagic stroke is associated with a history of migraines. The median age for an individual with a hemorrhagic stroke and history of migraine was significantly lower (12 years) than the median age of the sample, which indicates that migraines as a risk factor for stroke might be more significant in middle age. Additionally, this risk seemed to impact females much more than males. A limitation of this study is that GWTG Stroke does not include whether the patient has a migraine with or without aura. Migraine with aura has been associated at a higher rate with ischemic stroke than migraine without aura. It would be beneficial for future studies regarding migraine and hemorrhagic stroke to include whether the migraine was associated with or without aura.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Raúl Pino Andrade

Modernity has brought with it a series of scientific advances that, in the medical field, have improved not only the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, but also the quality of life of patients. This is undeniable. It is enough to carry out an exercise of imagination and place our life in two different historical settings: first the Renaissance, and second the XXI century or contemporary era. Leaving cultural or historical affinities aside, to the question: In which of these historical periods would you like to live? The most prudent answer is very likely: now, in this century. The advances of medicine can be traced historically, we cannot think about it without thinking in Vesalius, or Paré, and many others; however, it is true that the history of medicine accelerated markedly in the 20th century. Although it is true that in just over a hundred years the greatest scientific discoveries have been made in all fields of knowledge, modernity has also meant a change in time itself. Everything unfolds at previously unimaginable speeds: material and knowledge production, teaching and learning, communication and interpersonal relationships. The latter point should be highlighted, and the changes due to the acceleration of the relationship between doctors and their patients should be pointed out on time. It is as if life should climb the assembly line and obey a Fordist logic. It must be recognized that the acceleration of certain aspects is significant, such as the expansion of diagnostic tests, creation of procedures and medications, immediate response to emergencies, among others. But all these advantages seem to carry with them, as a current, all areas of life including what must necessarily be paused.


Africa ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Berntsen

Opening ParagraphIn their initial interaction with the Colonial powers, several East African peoples such as the Maasai, the Turkana, the Sebei, the Karamojong, and the Nandi—all organized through some type of age-based institution—united around prophetic leaders, diviners, or ritual experts who mobilized men from several territorial sections to confront the intruders. This ad hoc military unity was necessarily short-lived, usually ending with the defeat of the people by the colonial power and see the imprisonment or death of the prophetic leader involved. (See Fosbrooke 1948: 12-19; Merker 1910: 67-105; Jacobs 1965: 20-108; Dyson-Hudson 1966: 15-16; Gulliver 1950: 229, 240; Meinertzhagen 1956: 222 ff; Weatherby 1962: 200-12; 1967: 133-44; Lamphear 1976: 225-43.) While ethnological studies of various age-organizations often mention that diviners or prophets provided professional services for the members of an age-group at their ceremonies, no one has examined the process by which a prophetic leader or diviner established his legitimacy during periods of peace so that he might lead the people during times of crisis. An examination of the prophetic institution among the Maasai and the relationship between the prophets and the members of the age-sets may provide some insight into the process, especially the manner in which prophets emerged as leaders of the people during two major crises in the history of the Purko-Kisongo Maasai: the Ilaikipiak war and the rinderpest pan-zootic.


1999 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHARLENE HESSE-BIBER ◽  
MARGARET MARINO ◽  
DIANE WATTS-ROY

This study provides insight into factors that determine whether women in the college population who exhibit eating-disordered behavior during their college years recover during their postcollege years. The study assessed changes in the eating patterns of 21 women across a six-year time period, from sophomore year in college to two years postcollege. Eleven of the women get better during their postcollege year, whereas 10 of the women continue to struggle with disordered eating. The major differences between the two groups revolve around the relationship between autonomy and relation. Women who get better negotiate the tension between autonomy and relatedness and are more likely to have higher selfesteem based on a more positive self-concept; this, in turn, leads to healthier relationships with food and body image. Two factors that appear to influence this negotiation include (I) one's history of chronic physical or sexual abuse and (2) the quality of familial messages about food, body image, relationship, and autonomy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Molly Greene

Abstract Monasteries and the records they produced are a promising source base for writing a history of the mountains of the western Balkans. These mountains are, by and large, absent from accounts of the Ottoman presence in the Balkans and, as with mountainous areas more generally, are often considered to exist outside of the main historical narrative. Using the example of a monastery that was founded in the Pindus mountains in 1556, I argue that the monastery’s beginnings are best understood within the context of the Ottoman sixteenth century, even as due regard for Byzantine precedent must also be made. In addition, I pay close attention to the monastery’s location, for two reasons. First, this opens up a new set of questions for the history of monasteries during the Ottoman period; to date most studies have focused on taxation, land ownership and the relationship to the central state. Second, the monastery’s location offers a way into the environmental history of these mountains at the Empire’s western edge. This article aspires to extend the nascent field of Ottoman environmental history into mountainous terrain.


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