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The Cadière-Girard trial of 1730-1731 is an early example of a sensational, nationally publicized French trial in which the major parties were private individuals. Cadière, a female penitent, accused Girard, her Jesuit confessor, of bewitching and raping her; Girard claimed that Cadière was guilty of slander. It was to be the last witchcraft trial in the francophone world. Another notable feature of the trial was its publicity, in which the contesting parties almost immediately became stand-ins for the Society of Jesus and for its Jansenist adversaries. This paper argues that certain anti-Jesuits, particularly Cadière's defence team and in the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence, acted to prolong the trial with the aim of creating as much bad publicity as possible for the Society of Jesus; it also shows how Jansenist publicists took advantage of the lengthy process, creating literature that "burned Girard in spirit," and with him, the Jesuits as a whole.

Objectives: To explore and evaluate Alora placebo patch application and maintenance habits of women in order to identify the factors that influence adhesion success., Methods: This single-center, open-label, placebo, randomized, multiple-application, parallel-group study involved 99 healthy naïve users of transdermal patches. Participants applied and wore an Alora placebo patch for ten consecutive applications of approximately 3.5 days each and evaluated adhesion of the patches twice-daily. Three subgroups comprising participants achieving low, moderate or high adhesion success took part in focus groups to discuss their wear habits, practices and attitudes regarding transdermal patches., Results: There was a significant behavioral component involved in patch adhesion. The habits, practices and attitudes of high achievers were clearly different from the other two subgroups. The three most important issues identified to improve adhesion were: mastering the removal of the patch liner, identifying the best site of application, and developing and implementing techniques to maintain patch adhesion. The Alora placebo patch was well tolerated throughout the study., Conclusion: The data showed that there is a learning curve involved in achieving maximal adhesion with a transdermal patch. During the study, a novel patch application method ('press, fold and slide') was demonstrated for the participants. This method was very well received by all participants and was more easily executed than the previous method. An adaptation of this method was incorporated into the Alora patient information leaflet, together with several other changes to help improve adhesion success.

This study tested the hypothesis that differences in the processing of raw coffee beans can account for some of the variability in gastric effects of coffee drinking. Coffees were selected to represent several ways that green coffee beans are treated, ie, processing variables. These included instant and ground coffee processing, decaffeination method (ethyl acetate or methylene chloride extraction), instant coffee processing temperature (112 degrees F or 300 degrees F), and steam treatment. Lower esophageal sphincter pressure, acid secretion, and blood gastrin was measured in eight human subjects after they consumed each of the different coffees. Consumption of coffee was followed by a sustained decrease in lower esophageal sphincter pressure (P less than 0.05) except for three of the four coffees treated with ethyl acetate regardless of whether or not they contained caffeine. Caffeinated ground coffee stimulated more acid secretion that did decaf ground coffees (P less than 0.05), but not more than a steam-treated caffeinated coffee. Instant coffees did not differ in acid-stimulating ability. Ground caffeinated coffee resulted in higher blood gastrin levels than other ground coffees (P less than 0.05). Freeze-dried instant coffee also tended toward higher gastrin stimulation. It is concluded that some of the observed variability in gastric response to coffee consumption can be traced to differences in how green coffee beans are processed.

Earlier psychophysical research on single human fungiform taste papillae employed a procedure which limited subjects to selecting only one taste to describe the sensations they experienced. That procedure precludes the possibility of determining whether single papillae can mediate complex tastes, i.e., tastes consisting of more than one sensation experienced simultaneously. By using highly trained subjects and allowing them freedom to describe all sensations simultaneously elicited by a given taste stimulus, single papilla taste profiles were obtained. It is suggested that obtaining taste profiles may increase the utility of single papillae as models for study of the taste system.

The subjective intensity of one taste quality can be increased by prior exposure of the tongue to a different taste quality stimulus. This phenomenon, called cross-enhancement, may be the result of interactions among the physiological mechanisms that code taste quality. Another possible explanation is that the water solvent of the second stimulus acquires a taste after exposure of the tongue to the first stimulus. This water taste could add to the taste of the solute in the second stimulus and result in an increase of its subjective intensity. A third possibility is that taste receptors on the tongue may be sensitized by exposure to a taste stimulus. Using a small number of highly trained subjects, we have demonstrated that sucrose can enhance the intensity of an acid taste on the single papilla. Neither water taste nor sweet taste system activation played any role in the mediation of this enhancement. Through a series of experimentally derived inferential steps, we conclude that this phenomenon depends on the removal of protons from the acid receptors. In addition, we have demonstrated in the single papilla, that suppression of the acid taste when in mixture with sucrose can occur without sweet system activity. We conclude that sugars, through their capacity to bind protons, act to reduce the availability of protons to the acid receptors.

This work examined the effects of consuming relatively small amounts of caffeine, from 20 to 160 mg, on performance and self-reports of mood in a group of caffeine users. A group of non-caffeine users were studied after ingesting 160 mg of caffeine. At regular intervals after consumption subjects were tested on several behavioral measures and blood samples were taken for caffeine analysis. Results showed caffeine users had higher blood caffeine levels and lower blood pressure at some doses than did non-users. Regular caffeine users showed a tendency toward better performance on a rotary pursuit task than non-caffeine users given a placebo treatment. They also experienced a performance decrement, relative to users given placebo, when blood caffeine levels were relatively high. Caffeine users showed no sign of caffeine withdrawal when compared to non-users before caffeine treatment. Performance of non-users given caffeine was poorer than control performance, and they tended not to report altering effects of caffeine. However, in caffeine users, the ratio of alertness:tension self-ratings tended to roughly track plasma caffeine with the lowest ratios occurring when plasma caffeine peaked after 160 mg dose. Low ratios were also found after 0, 20, and 40 mg caffeine treatments. The ratio was highest after 80 mg caffeine, suggesting that an optimum caffeine dose might exist for peak alertness:tension, with higher or lower doses resulting in a decrease of that ratio. These data suggest that real or expected mood and perhaps performance benefits experienced by caffeine users contribute to the motivation for consumption.