Alchemical Lexica in Syriac: planetary signs, code names and medicines

Technical terminology and Decknamen represent key hallmarks of the alchemical literature in different traditions. The opacity of this vocabulary makes the reading of alchemical texts difficult and, in order to cope with similar challenges, Byzantine, Syriac and Arabic scholars soon started compiling technical vocabularies. In my paper I shall investigate two (partially overlapping) lexica, which open the BL Syriac alchemical MSS Egerton 709 and Oriental 1593. On the one hand, I will explore the variety of sources used by the anonymous compiler(s) to assemble these useful tools (Byzantine alchemists as well as the Greek medical tradition; Syro-Arabic lexicography). On the other, particular attention will be given to the structure and mise en page of the two lexica, which will be compared with analogous alchemical dictionaries in the Byzantine (e.g. MS Marcianus gr. 299) and Arabic (e.g. MS Gotha 1261) traditions.

Paul ANGHEL (1869 – 1937) - a reputed surgeon, an empathetic teacher and a poetic spirit

Paul Anghel was an outstanding surgeon of the Iași Faculty of Medicine illustrating its first decennia of existence. He contributed to the development of the Romanian medical school by his activity and disciples. Trained in Iasi, Bucharest and also in Paris, as was the case with many of his remarkable compatriots, Anghel practiced general surgery but specialized in orthopedics, where his creative mind and experience enabled him to imagine and achieve new surgical techniques, including bone transplant, and prosthetic devices. He was a university professor at the Iași Faculty of Medicine, head of clinic at the ‟St. Spyridon” Hospital in the same city and member of important scientific societies. Dr. Anghel equally dealt with basic topics such as antisepsis and asepsis, wound treatment and war medicine that continued to be main concerns at the dawn of the XX-th century. A silent introspect with a poetic spirit, a cultivated and knowledgeable analyst of his time, Paul Anghel was interested in medical history, too. His scientific reviews always included retrospective glances into history. He pointed out some aspects of the history of the Faculty of Medicine of Iași and of the national medical tradition, and sketched the portraits of several Romanian medical and cultural personalities, proving his affective attachment to their memory. A skilled doctor, an innovative specialist, an empathetic teacher, and an emotional character, Professor Anghel was awarded medals and orders in recognition of his human qualities and civic involvement. He remained a personality of the Iași surgical school, a forerunner of modern orthopedics in his country and a role model.

Ethical issues in biomedical research using electronic health records: a systematic review

Digitization of a health record changes its accessibility. An electronic health record (EHR) can be accessed by multiple authorized users. Health information from EHRs contributes to learning healthcare systems’ development. The objective of this systematic review is to answer a question: What are ethical issues concerning research using EHRs in the literature? We searched Medline Ovid, Embase and Scopus for publications concerning ethical issues of research use of EHRs. We employed the constant comparative method to retrieve common ethical themes. We descriptively summarized empirical studies. The study reveals the breadth, depth, and complexity of ethical problems associated with research use of EHRs. The central ethical question that emerges from the review is how to manage access to EHRs. Managing accessibility consists of interconnected and overlapping issues: streamlining research access to EHRs, minimizing risk, engaging and educating patients, as well as ensuring trustworthy governance of EHR data. Most of the ethical problems concerning EHR-based research arise from rapid cultural change. The framing of concepts of privacy, as well as individual and public dimensions of beneficence, are changing. We are currently living in the middle of this transition period. Human emotions and mental habits, as well as laws, are lagging behind technological developments. In the medical tradition, individual patient’s health has always been in the center. Transformation of healthcare care, its digitalization, seems to have some impacts on our perspective of health care ethics, research ethics and public health ethics.

Negotiating medical services in the Madras Presidency: the subordinate perspectives (1882–1935)

The historiography of western medicine in colonial India has predominantly been analysed from the perspectives of the elite services – the Indian Medical Service (IMS) and their recruits. Unfortunately, perceiving colonial medical practices through the lens of the IMS has remained inadequate to provide a nuanced understanding of the role played by Indians in the semi-urban and rural areas of colonial India. This article examines the contributions of local administration and the role played by the recruits of the Subordinate Medical Service. This article uses the Madras Presidency as its case study and focusses on the medical subordinates who were pivotal in establishing a western medical tradition in the region. This will shift the urban-centric focus and examine mostly the rural parts of the presidency, in particular, the district hospitals and dispensaries located in the districts, taluks and villages. The article analyses the transformation in the Madras medical administration from the late nineteenth century until 1935 to argue how subordinates were the ones controlling the local medical services, and thus pulling the strings of health administration in the presidency. This will also demonstrate the uniqueness of Madras and how it disseminated western medical care with an active participation and involvement of the local residents.

Quantifications of the Secondary Qualities, Heat and Cold, on the Earliest Scales of Thermoscopes

While scaled thermoscopes were developed only at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the medical tradition had already started to quantify some secondary qualities towards the end of sixteenth century. However, degrees of heat and cold were only meaningful in connection with Galenic-Aristotelean ontology, consisting of elements, temperaments and degrees of the four humours. The first graduated thermoscopes transformed the prevailing conceptualizations of heat and cold. By delegating some specific senses of heat and cold to an external contrivance, together with the evolution towards a linear numerical scale, these qualities became objectified as observable phenomena. The degree of expansion and compression of air, and later liquid, became an observable measure of temperature and narrowed down the existing conceptualizations of temperature. The paper also discusses the three types of scale that were used in the early thermoscopes between 1610 and 1640.

Expanded Possibilities for Teaching Asian Medicines

Asian Medicine is inaugurating a new type of article in this issue, the pedagogical forum. For our launch of this new format, forum editors Zanolini and Hanson invited a range of scholars and practitioners teaching East Asian medicine within diverse institutional contexts to contribute. Their different approaches to teaching can be more broadly applied to any medical tradition in Asia.

WOMEN'S MODERNISM IN MEDICAL SCIENCE OF WESTERN UKRAINE – SOFIA OKUNEVSKA-MORACHEVSKA, SOFIA PARFANOVYCH AND VOLODYMYRA KRUSHELNYTSKA

The aim: The purpose of this article is to identify through the analysis of biographical and scientific Sofia Okunevska-Morachevska, Sofia Parfanovych and Volodymyra Krushelnytska common features of personal and professional development to understand the scientific, social and cultural parts of their activities in the context of the history of national medical tradition. Materials and methods: We will try to consider in general terms the life and professional path of Sofia Okunevska-Morachevska, Sofia Parfanovych, Volodymyra Krushelnytska, highlighting common features and analyzing them in contexts of social, political, and cultural features of the era. Conclusions: Analyzing the biographical milestones and scientific achievements of women physicians in Western Ukraine in the late XIX – early XX century, we concluded that these personalities of Ukrainian medicine can be combined with a number of characteristics, thus demonstrating the continuity and longevity of the national female medical elite in Ukraine.

The making of the ‘useless and pathological’ uterus in Taiwan, 1960s to 1990s

During the 1960s and 1970s, the notion that the uterus is a useless and pathological organ after a woman has had ‘enough’ children emerged alongside news reports of excessive hysterectomy in Taiwan. This notion and hysterectomy became two sides of the same coin, the former pointing to the burden of birth control and cancer risk, and the latter to sterilization and removing cancer risk. I explore how, in post-war Taiwan, the notion became commonplace through the intersection of three historical formations: the medical tradition of employing surgery to manage risk (such as appendectomy for appendicitis), American-dominated family planning projects that intensified the surgical approach and promoted reproductive rationality, and cancer prevention campaigns that helped cultivate a sense of cancer risk. The gender politics operating in the family planning and cancer prevention projects were apparent. The burden of birth control fell mainly on women, and the cancer prevention campaign, centring almost exclusively on early detection of cervical cancer, made cancer into a woman’s disease. I argue that the discourses of reproductive rationality and disease risk were parallel and, in several key ways, intersecting logics that rendered the uterus useless and pathological and then informed surgeons’ practice of hysterectomy. Exploring the ways in which the uterus was envisioned and targeted in the history of medicine in Taiwan, this paper shows overlapping bio-politics in three strands of research in an East Asian context – namely women’s health, family planning and cancer prevention – and offers a case for global comparison.

Health and the Origins of the Miqveh

Use of rock-cut stepped pools for immersion in harvested rainwater is first attested in Judean source material of the second century BCE and on archaeological record shortly thereafter. As argued here, the practice became widespread due to the impact of Greco-Roman ideas about health and well-being. Immersion of the body in water was seen in the Greek medical tradition as a beneficial activity; it balanced the humors, opened harmful blockages in the skin membrane, and helped facilitate unction. Once these ideas became widespread in Judea, local purification rituals followed, and began incorporating immersion in water. The rabbinic dichotomy between purification and cleansing was likely irrelevant for most Judeans in the late Second Temple period, who probably also saw immersion as beneficial for personal hygiene. For this reason, stepped pools nearly disappear from archaeological record with the rise of public bathhouses, which offered the convenience of large and well-maintained immersion pools in exchange for a fee.