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Claude Cahun was a female Symbolist and Surrealist artist of The French Third Republic. Born under the name Lucy Schwob in 1894, Cahun moved to Paris in 1922 where she became close with Andre Breton and the Surrealist circle. Her artistic output is eclectic and includes creative writing, photographic self-portraits, photomontages and found objects. Many of her works and writings play on seemingly modern and postmodern themes of gender, sexuality and identity. This essay explores the way in which the historiography has developed since the publication of the first substantial piece of research, a biography by Francois Leperlier, in 1992. I discuss how subsequent analyses by feminist and gender historians endlessly replicated the themes outlined in Leperlier’s work and argue that this created a limited understanding of the topic. Many of these historians use poststructuralist deconstructions to explain Cahun’s work, make assumptions about her knowledge and ignore the necessity of thorough historical contextualisation. I argue that by resituating Cahun within the socio-cultural and political context of The Third Republic we will improve our understandings of her artistic output and of the sites of resistance from which minorities could refuse dominant republican and conservative ideas.

BACKGROUND: Graft ABO incompatibility has not been thought to aflect patient survival after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation, although it may be associated with prolonged erythroid aplasia and immediate or delayed hemolysis. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: A retrospective analysis of a cohort of 292 allogeneic transplant recipients measured survival in a subgroup of ABO-incompatible bone marrow graft recipients. RESULTS: Patients with acute myelogenous leukemia or myelodysplastic syndrome receiving non-T-cell-depleted bone marrow grafts had an 85-percent greater risk of death within 100 days of transplant (relative risk, 1.85, 95% Cl, 1.33–2.58; p = 0.003) than comparable patients receiving ABO-compatible grafts. Both ABO major- and minor-mismatched graft recipients were at risk. The increased mortality rate was not due to an increase in graft failure or acute graft-versus-host disease; rather, patients died of multiple-organ failure and sepsis, which is consistent with regimen-related toxicity. This effect was not seen in a larger group of 112 chronic myelogenous leukemia patients undergoing similar treatment. CONCLUSION: ABO incompatibility may be a significant prognostic risk factor after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation in susceptible subgroups of recipients. Care is necessary to design hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell-processing and -transfusion policies to minimize this risk.

BACKGROUND: Red cell use in patients undergoing Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) 209 procedures (major joint and limb reconstruction procedures of the lower extremities) has been shown to have large, unexplained interhospital variations. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: Abstracted records of 2590 consecutive DRG 209 patients at five university hospitals from January 1992 to December 1993 were stratified by procedure and preoperative blood deposit status. Patient characteristics and transfusion and in-hospital outcomes were compared across hospitals. RESULTS: Blood use among patients who did not preoperatively deposit blood was similar across hospitals. Significant differences were found across hospitals for total hip replacement patients in the percentage of patients preoperatively depositing blood (59–80%), percentage of patients receiving transfusion(s) (51 to > 99%), the mean number of units collected per patient (1.6-2.9), and the mean number of unused autologous units per 100 patients (1–185). No significant differences were found in the percentage of those who deposited blood and then required allogeneic units. There was little variability in length of hospital stay or in last hematocrits. Findings were similar for total knee replacement patients. CONCLUSIONS: Interhospital variations in red cell use for primary total hip and knee reconstruction are primarily due to hospital-specific differences in autologous blood collection and transfusion.