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Minerals and Gems in Indian Alchemy

Unani Medicine in India during the Delhi Sultanate

Why did the Scientific Revolution take place in Europe and not elsewhere?

The ideal of orderly family life in early modern Germany did not exclude drinking. In fact, drinks shared at the family table were closely tied to early modern notions of the marital bond and were also a necessary component of normal work relations. Drinking became a problem only when it threatened the stability of the household. The amount of alcohol involved in such cases might be as little as one drink if the circumstances were unsuitable. On the other hand, drinking that would by our standards be viewed as excessive or chronic could be considered acceptable. Even during and immediately after the period of Reformation, when polemical and prescriptive literature addressing the household was dominated by the problem of sin, drunkenness was rarely treated as a spiritual issue. The primary concern of both authorities and populace was not to protect the health or the rights of individuals but to protect the sanctity of the household and the stability of the community.

Previous studies have shown that oesophageal and gastric cancers are the most common causes of cancer death in the Golestan Province, Iran. In 2001, we established Atrak Clinic, a referral clinic for gastrointestinal (GI) diseases in Gonbad, the major city of eastern Golestan, which has permitted, for the first time in this region, endoscopic localisation and histologic examination of upper GI cancers. Among the initial 682 patients seen at Atrak Clinic, 370 were confirmed histologically to have cancer, including 223 (60%) oesophageal squamous cell cancers (ESCC), 22 (6%) oesophageal adenocarcinomas (EAC), 58 (16%) gastric cardia adenocarcinomas (GCA), and 58 (16%) gastric noncardia adenocarcinomas. The proportional occurrence of these four main site-cell type subdivisions of upper GI cancers in Golestan is similar to that seen in Linxian, China, another area of high ESCC incidence, and is markedly different from the current proportions in many Western countries. Questioning of patients about exposure to some known and suspected risk factors for squamous cell oesophageal cancer confirmed a negligible history of consumption of alcohol, little use of cigarettes or nass (tobacco, lime and ash), and a low intake of opium, suggesting that the high rates of ESCC seen in northeastern Iran must have other important risk factors that remain speculative or unknown. Further studies are needed to define more precisely the patterns of upper GI cancer incidence, to test other previously suspected risk factors, and to find new significant risk factors in this high-risk area.

The discovery of the premaxillary bone (os incisivum, os intermaxillare or premaxilla) in humans has been attributed to Goethe, and it has also been named os Goethei. However, Broussonet (1779) and Vicq d'Azyr (1780) came to the same result with different methods. The first anatomists described this medial part of the upper jaw as a separate bone in the vertebrate skull, and, as we know, Coiter (1573) was the first to present an illustration of the sutura incisiva in the human. This fact, and furthermore its development from three parts:-(1) the alveolar part with the facial process, (2) the palatine process, and (3) the processus Stenonianus-can no longer be found in modern textbooks of developmental biology. At the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth century a vehement discussion focused on the number and position of its ossification centers and its sutures. Therefore, it is hard to believe that the elaborate work of the old embryologists is ignored and that the existence of a premaxillary bone in humans is even denied by many authors. Therefore this re-evaluation was done to demonstrate the early development of the premaxillary bone using the reconstructions of Felber (1919), Jarmer (1922) and data from our own observations on SEM micrographs and serial sections from 16 mm embryo to 68 mm fetus. Ossification of a separate premaxilla was first observed in a 16 mm embryo. We agree with Jarmer (1922), Peter (1924), and Shepherd and McCarthy (1955) that it develops from three anlagen, which are, however, not fully separated. The predominant sutura incisiva (rudimentarily seen on the facial side in a prematurely born child) and a shorter sutura intraincisiva argue in this sense. The later growth of this bone and its processes establish an important structure in the middle of the facial skull. Its architecture fits well with the functional test of others. We also focused on the relation of the developing premaxilla to the forming nasal septum moving from ventral to dorsal and the intercalation of the vomer. Thus the premaxilla acts as a stabilizing element within the facial skeleton comparable with the keystone of a Roman arch. Furthermore, the significance of the premaxillary anlage for the closure of the palatine was documented by a synopsis made from a stage 16, 10.2 mm GL embryo to a 49 mm GL fetus. Finally the growth of the premaxilla is closely related to the development of the human face. Abnormal growth may be correlated to characteristic malformations such as protrusion, closed bite and prognathism. Concerning the relation of the premaxillary bone to cleft lip and palate we agree with others that the position of the clefts is not always identical with the incisive suture. This is proved by the double anlagen of an upper-outer incisor in a 55 mm fetus and an adult.

A number of important insights into the peopling of the New World have been gained through molecular genetic studies of Siberian and Native American populations. While there is no complete agreement on the interpretation of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome (NRY) data from these groups, several generalizations can be made. To begin with, the primary migration of ancestral Asians expanded from south-central Siberia into the New World and gave rise to ancestral Amerindians. The initial migration seems to have occurred between 20,000-15,000 calendar years before present (cal BP), i.e., before the emergence of Clovis lithic sites (13,350-12,895 cal BP) in North America. Because an interior route through northern North America was unavailable for human passage until 12,550 cal BP, after the last glacial maximum (LGM), these ancestral groups must have used a coastal route to reach South America by 14,675 cal BP, the date of the Monte Verde site in southern Chile. The initial migration appears to have brought mtDNA haplogroups A-D and NRY haplogroups P-M45a and Q-242/Q-M3 to the New World, with these genetic lineages becoming widespread in the Americas. A second expansion that perhaps coincided with the opening of the ice-free corridor probably brought mtDNA haplogroup X and NRY haplogroups P-M45b, C-M130, and R1a1-M17 to North and Central America. Finally, populations that formerly inhabited Beringia expanded into northern North America after the LGM, and gave rise to Eskimo-Aleuts and Na-Dené Indians.

While S4 is known as the voltage sensor in voltage-gated potassium channels, the carboxyl terminus of S3 (S3C) is of particular interest concerning the site for gating modifier toxins like hanatoxin. The thus derived helical secondary structural arrangement for S3C, as well as its surrounding environment, has since been intensively and vigorously debated. Our previous structural analysis based on molecular simulation has provided sufficient information to describe reasonable docking conformation and further experimental designs (Lou et al., 2002. J. Mol. Recognit. 15: 175–179). However, if one only relies on such information, more advanced structure–functional interpretations for the roles S3C may play in the modification of gating behavior upon toxin binding will remain unknown. In order to have better understanding of the molecular details regarding this issue, we have performed the docking simulation with the S3C sequence from the hanatoxin-insensitive K+-channel, shaker, and analyzed the conformational changes resulting from such docking. Compared with other functional data from previous studies with respect to the proximity of the S3–S4 linker region, we suggested a significant movement of drk1 S3C, but not shaker S3C, in the direction presumably towards S4, which was comprehended as a possible factor interfering with S4 translocation during drk1 gating in the presence of toxin. In combination with the discussions for structural roles of the length of the S3–S4 linker, a possible molecular mechanism to illustrate the hanatoxin binding-modified gating is proposed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Part 1 of this paper examines views on melancholy from the Hellenic era (especially Hippocrates), the Roman era (especially Galen), Arab physicians (Ishaq Ibn Imran, Rhazes and Avicenna) and the views of physicians from the Renaissance period. The medical orthodoxy followed Galenic theory as late as the sixteenth century, regarding melancholy as a disease of the body.

In his 1672 Two Letters of Advice on the study of divinity the English polymath and antiquarian Henry Dodwell recommended the diligent pursuit of "Philological Learning" for all those interested in the biblical text. To read the Bible properly demanded discipline and a steadfast attention to "the Tongues and Phrases" of the biblical authors, which "will be gotten by reading ancient Authors in their own words." Sometimes, however, words were not enough. To understand "matters of Fact" in their entirety, readers would have to turn to "the thing it self." "It will be necessary to study and compare History, and Chronology, and Geographical descriptions" of the biblical lands, Dodwell explained, nor could one neglect either the "Doctrinals ... and the Traditions of the Jewish Church" or the histories told by the "ancientest Greek Poets."1 The deist Anthony Collins was mocking, but at the same time recognizing, this totalistic ideal that shaped biblical scholarship as it developed in the later seventeenth century when he remarked in 1713 that "there is not perhaps in the World so miscellaneous a Book, and which treats of such Variety of things as the Bible does": There is a natural History of the Creation of the whole Universe..and a Civil and Ecclesiastical History of all Mankind from the Beginning of the World for above 2000 years. ... There are contain'd in it the municipal Laws of a Country, the Institution of two Religions ... several natural and miraculous Phaenomena of Nature; Descriptions of magnificent Buildings, References to Husbandry, Sailing, Physick, Pharmacy, Mathematicks, and every thing else that can be named.2 The idea of ordering this immense variety of information was, for Collins, the ultimate joke. But other scholars were far more serious about this pursuit, not least Dodwell himself, who suggested that the "professed Divine ... make the Bible his Common place Book for all his other Studies." In doing so, the divine would find himself able to organize (in memory and on paper) the enormous quantities of information available about the biblical world.' Dodwell the antiquarian was not alone in his catholic aspirations for the pursuit of scholarship. This was, after all, a time when antiquarianism-as Arnaldo Momigliano reminded us fifty years ago and as the "new antiquarianism" pioneered by scholars like Anthony Grafton, Blandine Barret-Kriegel, and Peter Miller reminds us today-became a dominant form of literary expression, as it experimented with new methods of historical research, new evidentiary protocols, and new comprehensive visions of the scholarly task.4 Dodwell was firmly within this context, but his suggestion that the Bible become a pragmatic tool for organizing information nonetheless bears some scrutiny. It came at a time of particular anxiety that, as Richard Yeo has put it, "the growth of books had reached a crisis point." "How is it possible to understand the whole universe?" asked one puzzled scholar in 1643, and his voice was only one of a chorus complaining of the overwhelming amount of sheer data available for scholarly processing.5 But unlike other scholars content to lament this state of affairs, Dodwell had in mind a solution, one that was independent of the materials studied, one that was wholly formal and functional. The quantity of information, he intimated, could be brought to heel through the intercession of a technique of organization that would allow for the flexible arrangement and display of virtually all the materials that might fall into the hands of the biblical scholar, the commonplace book. In this article I will focus on techniques for presenting and organizing materials as they were developed within biblical scholarship in response to what this forum is calling the "information overload" of the early modern period. My goal is neither to rehearse the anxieties felt by scholars (nicely detailed here by Ann Blair and Richard Yeo), nor is it to explore the varieties of theological, historical, and philological knowledge developed within early modern biblical scholarship. …

For early modern men and women and their medical practitioners, the experience and understanding of pregnancy was primarily uncertain. This uncertainty extended to the whole process of pregnancy--from the moment of conception to delivery, the detection and bearing of a 'true fruit' was doubtful. This 'uncertainty' was heightened by the fact that both body and language could conceal the truth. The woman herself was frequently uncertain and could be mistaken in her interpretation of the condition of her belly. This ambiguity is expressed in the vague and faltering language used to describe such experiences. Women's bodies were believed to conceal the truth more readily than their male counterparts. Equally a woman's physical narrative was more likely to be distrusted. Tensions surrounding the appropriate nature of women's 'knowledge' of such hidden 'secrets' also affected the ways in which women and their practitioners described the 'truths' of the belly. This article traces the ambiguities faced by women and their midwives/accoucheurs through three areas of pregnancy: quickening, false conceptions, and the threat of miscarriage. The much-neglected source of medical texts and observations is drawn upon, alongside letters and diaries and judicial material.

The second half of the twentieth century saw an increased interest in childhood and its history. Many factors influenced the historical study of childhood. The popularity of Freudian psychoanalysis and Piaget's studies of child development played a large role. The appearance of such books as Erik Erikson's Young Man Luther inspired new historical biographies that included childhood influences on great men's lives. Philippe Aries's Centuries of Childhood and the development of social and cultural history in the 1970s moved the study of childhood away from the more individual, introspective approach toward a discussion of general childrearing practices. The inspiration to study childhood, however, was also connected to a new generation of historians in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to write the history and experiences of people who had previously been omitted from history books: children, women, ethnic and racial groups, immigrants, peasants, and laborers. With the aid of computers, historians were able to reconstruct demographic patterns that included children as well as adults. The study of these social groups in literature was aided by the move away from the canon to include more popular literary texts. The intersection of social/cultural history and literature also moved literary historians to study women, children, and other groups. Art historians responded critically to Aries's rather superficial use of artistic representations of children. One of the great advantages that medievalists have had is that scholars from different disciplines read each other's work, thereby enriching fields of medieval studies, including that of childhood. Medievalists have been doing cultural studies long before it became trendy. Some very basic questions have arisen in our studies of medieval childhood. One is whether or not concepts of childhood have remained much the same from the Middle Ages to the modern period. Early historians of childhood, as we shall see, have argued that the perceptions of childhood changed substantially from the medieval period to the early-modern one. Scholars of medieval childhood have, for the most part, seen more continuity than discontinuity. Another issue for medievalists was Aries's statement that the Middle Ages did not recognize a life stage of childhood

A partir d'un point de vue theorique et historique, l'A. decrit la relation religion/medecine en Iran en demontrant le changement de cette relation resultant d'une modernisation theorique de la medecine et d'une evolution socio-politique

Where did this mixture of urine and blood come from? The rattling of the coach over stones and ruts in the road had jostled and shaken the ambassador, and his bodily fluids along with him. He believed that an outflow was generally purifying, and one did well to give it time. Early modern perceptions of the body were marked by this attentiveness to bodily fluids and juices, to their motions, interruptions, consistency and purity in interaction with heat, cold, emotions, nourishment and movement, such as coach travelling.2 In 1767, Tissot, the Swiss popularizer of the medical Enlightenment, still defined health as a state in which none of the bodily fluids had too much or too little movement.3 Thus many symptoms that early modern sources describe as matter-of-fact and normal are quite alien to our own systems of meaning. The 1689 funeral sermon for the wife of the Wurttemberg publisher and bookseller Philibert Brunn, for example, describes how in January of that year she was plagued by Seitenstechen, sharp pains in her sides. They did not, however, prevent her from attending the burial of her mother-in-law, the late Frau Cotta, in May. There, she was so overcome 'by a complete attack of hectic' (eine Hectic) that despite all efforts, and 'the physician's and her husband's indefatigable loyalty, attentions and care', the consuming heat could not be reduced so that 'her strength and vital juices' dried up and did not flow.4 Was fever the cause of death? What were these sharp pains in the side? Contemporary definitions make it difficult to say with any certainty that she was suffering from

Ever since the Middle Ages, the art of Emilia Romagna (a region of Italy), and more generally of the Po Valley, has been characterised by great attention to aspects of daily life. This particular situation has undoubtedly encouraged the relations and links between the world of art and that of science. And, indeed, in Emilia Romagna throughout the modern age a large number of painters worked on commission for naturalists and an equally large number of scientists and ‘amateurs’ themselves undertook the illustration of nature, or were interested in the problems and techniques of the figurative arts, or collected objets d'art.

The history of depression remains unwritten, yet historians harbour plentiful assumptions about its pre-1800 past. These views are necessarily coloured, even shaped, by modern views of depression formed after its nineteenth-century medicalization. A history of depression from ancient to modern times is an impossible task to complete successfully and would require, as a minimum, the historian's utmost vigilance to nuance, difference, and the inclusion of non medical literature, especially poetry, drama and non-didactic prose. Nevertheless, five points about depression's pre-1800 European profile can confidently be made: (1) it developed along lines of female rather than male gender; (2) was transformed in the long eighteenth century when it blended with male madness under the sway of the cults of a pan-European sensibility movement; (3) always embedded a problematic pseudo-depressive state, or feigned version, which acted to permit female escape from dire socio-economic situation; (4) included sustained chronic duration as a requirement in its theory from the Renaissance forward; (5) is richly documented in its pre-1800 versions in imaginative literature, its often overlooked genealogy.

This article sets out to investigate aspects of the uptake of Renaissance law and medicine from some of the logical and natural-philosophical components of the university arts course. Medicine is shown to have a much laxer operative logic than law, reflecting its commitment to the theory of idiosyncrasy as opposed to the demands made upon the law by the need for a uniform application of justice. Symptomatic of the different uptake are the contrasting meanings of "regulariter" and "generaliter" in the two disciplines. Whereas the law treats the rule as inviolable and the exception as only valid if made explicit in due legal form, medicine is able to conceive of a nature as a field of knowledge broader than that encompassed by its rules of art. Both law and medicine approach evidence in ways which reflect their attempts to keep apart the process of information-gathering from that of interpretation; this is exemplified by the legal computation of competing testimony on the one hand and by the various medical modes of sign interpretation on the other.

Medieval and Renaissance tales are remarkable for their frank discussion of sexual practices, including birth control. Italian and French writings are the most explicit. Contraception and abortions are often treated as 'secrets', esoteric practices acquired from experts. The concealment of pregnancy is presented as an alternative form of birth control, often used after the others have failed. In the narratives, the use of birth control is mostly confined to premarital relations, although contraception by married women appears at the end of the period in a few French examples.

The work of the chroniclers served as a source of information about the occurrence of mental diseases among the Incas. From this source it appears that melancholy was by far the most important disease among mental disorders. The disease did not only affect the common Incas: melancholy was rather frequent among the family of the Inca emperor. Like other diseases, mental diseases were treated by the Incas with a mixture of magic and empirical medicinal products. The latter were mainly of botanical nature, but also some minerals were applied to treat depressive disorders. Some typical syndromes of contemporary folk medicine, such as susto and related ailments, were not mentioned by the chroniclers.

Gold was first used in dentistry over 2500 years ago, and its dental applications have increased steadily, especially during the past 100 years, to the point where they now absorb over 80 tons of gold per annum. Course of these developments is outlined in this review.

L'histoire de l'evolution de la chimie physiologique est etudiee du XVI e au XIX e siecle en montrant la relation entre la chimie et la physiologie au niveau du metabolisme animal et de l'etude des fonctions vitales

Demirhan Erdemir Ayşegül. The importance of Anise (Fructus anisi vulgaris) from the point of view of Turkish Medical History and its place in the traditional treatments in Turkey. In: Revue d'histoire de la pharmacie, 84ᵉ année, n°312, 1996. Actes du XXXIe Congrès International d'Histoire de la Pharmacie (Paris, 25-29 septembre 1995) pp. 359-362.

The article concerns breastfeeding and infant feeding in late imperial China, as described in medical texts and family records. Special instructions on nursing appeared in Chinese medical writings from the tenth century on as pediatrics became a medical profession. Instructions changed over time, as did the notion of human milk itself. Advice dealt with how best to select a wetnurse and with how and when to provide solid foods as a complementary and supplementary infant diet. Practical examples from medical case records, and biographical and family documents, reveal people's real experience with breastfeeding and infant feeding.

Experimental studies in the localisation of brain function did not begin with Flourens, nor did clinical studies with the phrenologists or physicians like Auburtin, Bouillaud, or Dax, shortly afterward. Although the pre-1820 literature is moderate, some of it is worth examining because of the problems associated with interpreting it. There are three separate but related problems: philosophical, methodological, and conceptual. Philosophically, whether one saw the brain as the main organ of sensibility, as did the Hippocratic writers and Galen, or the heart, as did Aristotle, determined the attention given to the brain. The methodological problems arose from the gross structure of the brain not being immediately obvious and the dominant technique of dissecting the brain in transverse sections revealing the ventricles and their immediately associated structures more readily than other structures. Conceptually, the ventricles were seen as the sites through which sensations were transferred to the muscles. Observations relevant to localisation were thus related to the ventricles or to structures lying outside the cerebrum. What are now considered major structural landmarks were not discovered until late: the Sylvian fissure in about 1640 and the fissure of Rolando in 1829, the former being dependent on new methods of dissection. In general, it was not until the first half of the nineteenth century that the cerebral structures were properly differentiated. Consequently, calls for comparative clinical studies of the effects of lesions in different parts of the brain inevitably fell on ears tuned to a framework which could not incorporate them. So, did the results of the earlier experimental studies.