THE GENERAL STATE OF AMERICAN PEDIATRICS IN 1855 WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO PHILADELPHIA

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1957 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 456-461
Author(s):  
Ernest Caulfield

IN VIEW of the tremendous advance in pediatrics during the past half century, one might think that a full century ago no one could have known very much about the care of children. To read the newspapers of that day, one might also conclude that it was an age primarily of quacks and patent medicines—of worm cures, hive syrups and of little liver pills. But to appreciate the true status of American pediatrics in 1855 one must judge it not only by the standards of our time but also by the standards of a century earlier, and when that is done it will be seen that American pediatrics in the mid-Nineteenth Century had also made considerable progress. In 1755 the care of the sick was generally in the hands of well-meaning yet untrained practical nurses whereas in 1855 people were turning to physicians who were usually medical school graduates, well acquainted with a vast number of new and important publications. More and more pediatric articles were appearing in the many American journals; and in the review of a new book, one writer mentioned "the numerous publications on the management of infants and children with which the press has been loaded." Indeed, the press was loaded, for the Philadelphia physician had at his command no less than 8 fairsized textbooks in English devoted exclusively to the care of children. The second quarter of the Nineteenth Century saw a definite trend toward pediatrics as a specialty. There is no need to discuss here the numerous elementary guides which were intended primarily for mothers and which were precursors of the textbooks, or the many systems of general medicine with their chapters on pediatric subjects, especially since this trend may be well illustrated by mentioning only the impressive list of textbooks published in Philadelphia.

Author(s):  
John Emsley

You may think of polymers as entirely manufactured and therefore unnatural, but they are often the chemists’ attempts to supplement and improve on the biological polymers that nature produces. Cotton, ivory, leather, linen, paper, rubber, silk, wood and wool are wonderful materials made from the biological polymers that plants and animals produce, and which have evolved to serve such useful ends as providing protective outer layers, insulation, reinforcement, weaponry and so on. Humans learned that with a little modification they could turn these polymers into quite useful articles, such as briefs and briefcases, condoms and tea cosies, tickets and toothpicks. Sometimes we want polymers with features that never evolved in nature, such as non-cracking insulation for electric cable, clothes that can be unpacked after a long voyage and still be without creases, or pans in which to fry eggs without them sticking. For these polymers we have had to look to chemists. Most of the portraits in this Gallery are of these kinds of polymers—materials that do not have natural equivalents. Polymers are rather special kinds of molecules consisting of long chains, usually made up of carbon atoms, to which other atoms, such as hydrogen, fluorine and chlorine, are attached. The older name for polymers is plastics, and you probably know several of them by name— polythene, polystyrene, Teflon, Orion—but these are only a few of the many that now play an important role in our lives. Whatever role polymers play, they cause many of us to adopt quite strong attitudes towards them. A few of us admire them, many of us ignore them, but a growing number despise them and a few abhor them and will avoid them at all costs. To a chemist, this opposition to polymers seems rather strange. By the time you come to the end of this exhibition I hope that visitors with strong views will have seen enough to persuade them to change their mind. Attitudes towards plastics have changed over the past half-century. In the 19305, when cellophane, PVC, polystyrene, Perspex and nylon were launched, plastics were welcomed.


Clay Minerals ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Wilson

AbstractThe origin and formation of soil clay minerals, namely micas, vermiculites, smectites, chlorites and interlayered minerals, interstratified minerals and kaolin minerals, are broadly reviewed in the context of research over the past half century. In particular, the pioneer overviews of Millot, Pedro and Duchaufour in France and of Jackson in the USA, are considered in the light of selected examples from the huge volume of work that has since taken place on this topic. It is concluded that these early overviews may still be regarded as being generally valid, although it may be that too much emphasis has been placed upon transformation mechanisms and not enough upon neoformation processes. This review also highlights some of the many problems pertaining to the origin and formation of soil clays that remain to be resolved.


Author(s):  
Coll Thrush

This concluding chapter reviews the gallery “London Before London,” which is described as a vision of indigenous humanity. Upon viewing “London Before London,” one could be reminded of the many museums that have been established by Indigenous communities and nations in the past half century, in which Indigenous people have taken charge of the public interpretation of their lived history and culture, presenting themselves not as static denizens of a distant past, but as active, dynamic participants in survivance. Out of this impression, the chapter argues that this new kind of Indigenous story had percolated its way back to the center of the empire, transforming the way Londoners told stories about their own indigenous ancestors.


2010 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 21-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dessen

The author discusses “score streams,” a compositional method in which notations are displayed dynamically on computer screens and interpreted by improvisers. These works are informed by contemporary explorations in telematic performance and by the many methods devised over the past half century in composer-improviser traditions, where works by individuals are understood as catalysts for profoundly collaborative real-time acts of creation. Referencing polyphony both literally and metaphorically, the author points to a richly generative dialogue between recent histories of improvised music and new forms of digital networking technologies.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-124
Author(s):  
Philip L. Martin

Japan and the United States, the world’s largest economies for most of the past half century, have very different immigration policies. Japan is the G7 economy most closed to immigrants, while the United States is the large economy most open to immigrants. Both Japan and the United States are debating how immigrants are and can con-tribute to the competitiveness of their economies in the 21st centuries. The papers in this special issue review the employment of and impacts of immigrants in some of the key sectors of the Japanese and US economies, including agriculture, health care, science and engineering, and construction and manufacturing. For example, in Japanese agriculture migrant trainees are a fixed cost to farmers during the three years they are in Japan, while US farmers who hire mostly unauthorized migrants hire and lay off workers as needed, making labour a variable cost.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.


1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (4I) ◽  
pp. 321-331
Author(s):  
Sarfraz Khan Qureshi

It is an honour for me as President of the Pakistan Society of Development Economists to welcome you to the 13th Annual General Meeting and Conference of the Society. I consider it a great privilege to do so as this Meeting coincides with the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the state of Pakistan, a state which emerged on the map of the postwar world as a result of the Muslim freedom movement in the Indian Subcontinent. Fifty years to the date, we have been jubilant about it, and both as citizens of Pakistan and professionals in the social sciences we have also been thoughtful about it. We are trying to see what development has meant in Pakistan in the past half century. As there are so many dimensions that the subject has now come to have since its rather simplistic beginnings, we thought the Golden Jubilee of Pakistan to be an appropriate occasion for such stock-taking.


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