From Alchemy to Science

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-219
Author(s):  
Jonathan Pettit
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Traditional Medicine ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Traditional Healing ◽  
Research Center ◽  
Herbal Drugs ◽  
Research Centers ◽  
Surface Mount ◽  
The Past

Abstract In premodern China, Daoist priests cultivated and traded herbal drugs. Many priests served as doctors for royal and aristocratic families. Given this long history, it is not surprising that Daoist institutions in present-day China have tapped into a demand for traditional healing. Many temples offer clinics for walk-in patients, and some have established research centers devoted to studying traditional medicine. This paper begins with a vignette from a contemporary temple on Mount Yaowang 藥王山 (Mount Pharma-king), where leaders are currently redeveloping an ancient temple into a research center. On the surface, Mount Yaowang merely carries on the traditions of the past. Throughout the multi-acre compound, visitors are greeted with numerous placards, brochures, and exhibitions emphasizing how the knowledge of Mount Yaowang’s past Daoist doctors still lives on today. Beneath this veneer of antiquity, however, a new and different form of Daoist healthcare is emerging. To recognize the new forms of Daoist healing, this paper builds toward a long-range understanding of Daoist healthcare in traditional and twentieth-century China. The author concludes that despite the apparent conservatism of Daoist leaders’ incorporation of the past, it is actually a radical departure.

Nine Centuries of Man

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
Court Records ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Police Reports ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Scottish History ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

What did it mean to be a man in Scotland over the past nine centuries? Scotland, with its stereotypes of the kilted warrior and the industrial ‘hard man’, has long been characterised in masculine terms, but there has been little historical exploration of masculinity in a wider context. This interdisciplinary collection examines a diverse range of the multiple and changing forms of masculinities from the late eleventh to the late twentieth century, exploring the ways in which Scottish society through the ages defined expectations for men and their behaviour. How men reacted to those expectations is examined through sources such as documentary materials, medieval seals, romances, poetry, begging letters, police reports and court records, charity records, oral histories and personal correspondence. Focusing upon the wide range of activities and roles undertaken by men – work, fatherhood and play, violence and war, sex and commerce – the book also illustrates the range of masculinities that affected or were internalised by men. Together, the chapters illustrate some of the ways Scotland’s gender expectations have changed over the centuries and how, more generally, masculinities have informed the path of Scottish history

Modernism Under Review: Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-194
Author(s):  
Marjorie Perloff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
First World

This essay offers a critical re-assessment of Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era. It argues that Kenner's magisterial survey remains important to our understanding of Modernism, despite its frankly partisan viewpoint. Kenner's is an insider's account of the Anglo-American Modernist writing that he takes to have been significant because it sought to invent a new language consonant with the ethos of the twentieth century. The essay suggests that Kenner's impeccable attention to the Modernist renovation of language goes beyond formalism, since, for him, its ‘patterned energies’ (a term derived from Buckminster Fuller's theory of knots) relate Modernism to the larger complex of artefacts within which it functions and, beyond these, to what he takes to be the great works of the past and to the scientific-technological inventions of the present. But the essay also points out that Kenner's is an eccentric canon, which makes no room for Forster, Frost, Lawrence, or Stevens. Furthermore, Kenner's emphasis on the First World War as a great cultural rupture, while plausible, works less well for Joyce and Williams than it does for Pound and Eliot.

Collective Memory: Between Values and Historical Knowledge

2020 ◽  
pp. 124-142
Author(s):  
VICTOR BURLACHUK
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The State ◽  
Main Element ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

At the end of the twentieth century, questions of a secondary nature suddenly became topical: what do we remember and who owns the memory? Memory as one of the mental characteristics of an individual’s activity is complemented by the concept of collective memory, which requires a different method of analysis than the activity of a separate individual. In the 1970s, a situation arose that gave rise to the so-called "historical politics" or "memory politics." If philosophical studies of memory problems of the 30’s and 40’s of the twentieth century were focused mainly on the peculiarities of perception of the past in the individual and collective consciousness and did not go beyond scientific discussions, then half a century later the situation has changed dramatically. The problem of memory has found its political sound: historians and sociologists, politicians and representatives of the media have entered the discourse on memory. Modern society, including all social, ethnic and family groups, has undergone a profound change in the traditional attitude towards the past, which has been associated with changes in the structure of government. In connection with the discrediting of the Soviet Union, the rapid decline of the Communist Party and its ideology, there was a collapse of Marxism, which provided for a certain model of time and history. The end of the revolutionary idea, a powerful vector that indicated the direction of historical time into the future, inevitably led to a rapid change in perception of the past. Three models of the future, which, according to Pierre Nora, defined the face of the past (the future as a restoration of the past, the future as progress and the future as a revolution) that existed until recently, have now lost their relevance. Today, absolute uncertainty hangs over the future. The inability to predict the future poses certain challenges to the present. The end of any teleology of history imposes on the present a debt of memory. Features of the life of memory, the specifics of its state and functioning directly affect the state of identity, both personal and collective. Distortion of memory, its incorrect work, and its ideological manipulation can give rise to an identity crisis. The memorial phenomenon is a certain political resource in a situation of severe socio-political breaks and changes. In the conditions of the economic crisis and in the absence of a real and clear program for future development, the state often seeks to turn memory into the main element of national consolidation.

Aftershocks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seva Gunitsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
International System ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sudden Rise ◽  
The World ◽  
National Borders

Over the past century, democracy spread around the world in turbulent bursts of change, sweeping across national borders in dramatic cascades of revolution and reform. This book offers a new global-oriented explanation for this wavelike spread and retreat—not only of democracy but also of its twentieth-century rivals, fascism, and communism. The book argues that waves of regime change are driven by the aftermath of cataclysmic disruptions to the international system. These hegemonic shocks, marked by the sudden rise and fall of great powers, have been essential and often-neglected drivers of domestic transformations. Though rare and fleeting, they not only repeatedly alter the global hierarchy of powerful states but also create unique and powerful opportunities for sweeping national reforms—by triggering military impositions, swiftly changing the incentives of domestic actors, or transforming the basis of political legitimacy itself. As a result, the evolution of modern regimes cannot be fully understood without examining the consequences of clashes between great powers, which repeatedly—and often unsuccessfully—sought to cajole, inspire, and intimidate other states into joining their camps.

Comparative Study of the Biologically Active Substances Composition and Content in Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria (L.) Maxim) Crude Herbal Drugs (Herb, Leafs, Flowers) of Russian Origin

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Olegovich Bokov ◽  
Tatyana Yuryevna Kovaleva ◽  
Valentina Alekseevna Ermakova ◽  
Daria Aleksandrovna Trashchenkova ◽  
Ekaterina Anatolievna Dorovskih ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Medicine ◽  
Neurotropic Activity ◽  
Comparative Investigation ◽  
Biologically Active ◽  
Total Flavonoids ◽  
Herbal Drugs ◽  
Filipendula Ulmaria ◽  
Pharmacopoeial Monograph ◽  
Total Extractives ◽  
Layer Chromatography

Filipendula ulmaria (L.) Maxim. (Meadowsweet) is known in traditional medicine as anti-inflammatory, wound-healing,astringent and antibacterial remedy. However recent studies show that it also has neurotropic activity. In Russia meadowsweet flowers are used as crude herbal drugs (temporary pharmacopoeial monograph 42-1777-87), also leafs and herb are used in the traditional medicine. Objective of the study was to carry out comparative investigation of composition and content of major biologically active compounds (BAC) in Filipendula ulmaria herb, flowers and leafs by thin-layer chromatography, differential spectrophotometry with aluminum chloride reagent (total flavonoids in terms of rutoside), gravimetry (total extractives, extracted by water), permanganatometric titration (total tannins in terms of tannin). Rutoside, tannin, gallic acid and salicylic acid were identified in Filipendula ulmaria herb, flowers and leafs by TLC. Also we analyzed content of substances extracted by water, flavonoids and tannins. Total extractives, extracted by water in F. ulmaria herb is 13.12±0.10%, in leafs – 13.98±0.37%, in flowers – 18.09±0.17%. Total tannins in F. ulmaria herb is 11.87±0.47%, in leafs – 12.06±0.18%, in flowers – 12.26±0.29%. Total flavonoids in F. ulmaria herb 4.34±0.17%, in leafs – 6.98±0.23%, in flowers – 11.75±0.57%. The obtained data will be used for development of a pharmacopoeial monograph project "Filipendula ulmaria (L.) Maxim., herba" for inclusion in the State Pharmacopoeia of the Russian Federation.

Review on Efficacy of Herbal Antiviral Drugs against COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 1116-1121
Author(s):  
Pooja P. Thakre ◽  
Vinod Ade ◽  
Shweta Parwe
Keyword(s):  
Physical Contact ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Herbal Drugs ◽  
Plant Origin ◽  
Respiratory Pathway ◽  
Traditional Medicines ◽  
The Past ◽  
Primary Health ◽  
Coronavirus Infection ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

Coronavirus disease (CoViD-19) is an infection of the respiratory system caused due to various viruses affects the respiratory pathway, and it can spread from one person to another by coughing, sneezing or physical contact. Commonly include cough, cold, fever are the symptoms. Viral diseases increase worldwide concern, including emerging and chronic viruses. The invention of new anti-viral drugs from plants has implicit in the past. The Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) caused due to severe acute respiratory syndrome, which is a transmittable and pathogenic viral infection. Several traditional medicines of plant origin having antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties some have been studied for their anti-viral properties and immune-modulating effects. Herbal drugs are now in massive requirement in the developing countries for primary health care not because of their economical but also for better civilising adequacy, improved compatibility with the human body and significantly fewer side effects. This review gives an overview of some critical traditionally used medicinal herbs with anti-viral properties—the literature regarding the drugs of this group, collected from Ayurveda classics. Research articles are collected from published material and discussed per therapeutic actions. Most of the Herbs are with Katu Rasa (pungent) and Ushna Virya (hot potency). They are indicated in diseases, viz. Kasa (cough), Shwas (asthma), Krumi (worm/ infection). Krumihara property drugs which are correlated with anti-viral action helps to prevent against Novel coronavirus infection.

An Overview on Phytochemical and Pharmacological Profile of Morus alba Linn.

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arpita Paul ◽  
Monami Rajiung ◽  
Kamaruz Zaman ◽  
Sushil Kumar Chaudhary ◽  
Hans Raj Bhat ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Medicine ◽  
Morus Alba ◽  
Biologically Active ◽  
Pharmacological Profile ◽  
Pharmacological Activities ◽  
Significant Information ◽  
The Past ◽  
Comprehensive Information ◽  
The Family ◽  
White Mulberry

Background: Morus alba Linn. commonly known as white mulberry, belongs to the family Moraceae, is a promising traditional medicine. In Asia, besides its use in the preparation of delicacies, every part of this plant is utilized in traditional medicine. Over the past decade, studies related to identification and isolation of biologically active compounds, with flavonoids as the major class of phytoconstituents, from this plant has been reported. These phytoconstituents are not only found to be beneficial for the maintenance of general health but also are associated with a range of potential pharmacological activities such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, anticancer, hepatoprotective, cardioprotective, neuroprotective to name a few. Objective: This review aims to provide upgraded and comprehensive information regarding the phytochemical, ethnomedicinal use and pharmacological profile of the plant Morus alba Linn. Method: The significant information has been collected through various database viz. PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct based on the recent findings, using different terms of Morus alba. Results: The outcome of the study suggests that Morus alba is a multifunctional plant numerous phytochemicals, and possess a range of pharmacological activities. Conclusion: The data assembled on Morus alba will be beneficial to trigger research in various fields of pharmaceutical and allied science to explore the medicinal importance of this unique plant.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Tweedie
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Media Archaeology ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Heritage Industry ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter introduces the concept of the “archaeomodern” and its connection to the aging of the quintessential modern medium of film. It sketches the historical and cultural background of the archaeomodern turn in the late twentieth century, including the development of an obsession with the past in the heritage industry and the rise of postmodernism. It then discusses two phenomena from the 1980s and 1990s—a mannerist or baroque revival, and the development of media archaeology—that complicate the habitual association between tradition and the past or modernity and the future. The introduction suggests that archaeomodern cinema was characterized by the return to failed or abandoned modern experiments and other relics from the modern past.

The Obligation to Choose

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Crossland
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
The Past ◽  
Light Quanta ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Wave Particle Duality ◽  
Night And Day ◽  
Scientific Ideas

Chapter 1 explores Woolf’s writings up to the end of 1925 in relation to scientific ideas on wave-particle duality, providing the ‘retrospect of Woolf’s earlier novels’ which Michael Whitworth has suggested shows that she was working ‘in anticipation of the physicists’. The chapter as a whole challenges this idea of anticipation, showing that Woolf was actually working in parallel with physicists, philosophers, and artists in the early twentieth century, all of whom were starting to question dualistic models and instead beginning to develop complementary ones. A retrospect on wave-particle duality is also provided, making reference to Max Planck’s work on quanta and Albert Einstein’s development of light quanta. This chapter pays close attention to Woolf’s writing of light and her use of conjunctions, suggesting that Woolf was increasingly looking to write ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’. Among other texts, it considers Night and Day, Mrs Dalloway, and ‘Sketch of the Past’.

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