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Language as a topic is articulated according to a logic intrinsic to the text. This logic enables Balzac to overcome the traditional binary opposition, of which war is a paramount manifestation, to move towards a symbolic battleground where language represents the only possible form of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explored the analgesic effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the motor cortex on postamputation phantom limb pain (PLP). Eight subjects with unilateral lower or upper limb amputation and chronic PLP were enrolled in a crossover, double-blind, sham-controlled treatment program. For 5 consecutive days, anodal (active or sham) tDCS was applied over the motor cortex for 15 minutes at an intensity of 1.5 mA. The 5-day treatment with active, but not sham, tDCS induced a sustained decrease in background PLP and in the frequency of PLP paroxysms, which lasted for 1 week after the end of treatment. Moreover, on each day of active tDCS, patients reported an immediate PLP relief, along with an increased ability to move their phantom limb. Patients' immediate responses to sham tDCS, on the contrary, were variable, marked by an increase or decrease of PLP levels from baseline. These results show that a 5-day treatment of motor cortex stimulation with tDCS can induce stable relief from PLP in amputees. Neuromodulation targeting the motor cortex appears to be a promising option for the management of this debilitating neuropathic pain condition, which is often refractory to classic pharmacologic and surgical treatments. Perspective The study describes sustained and immediate effects of motor cortex stimulation by tDCS on postamputation PLP, whose analgesic action seems linked to the motor reactivation of the phantom limb. These results are helpful for the exploitation of tDCS as a therapeutic tool for the management of neuropathic pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reads the Indian travelogues of Eliza Fay, Maria Graham, and Fanny Parks along the trajectory of a discourse of sympathy that the writers employ as a via media between sentimental participation in and detached appreciation of cultural difference. Thanks to intellectually engaging and ethically nuanced approaches, these narratives offer examples of a new sensibility in action in the community of Anglo-Indians undergoing the transition from colonising subjects to imperial agents. Despite the markedly nineteenth-century tone of their rhetoric, Fay's, Graham's, and Parks endorsement of colonial sympathy draws extensively on its most sophisticated and authoritative eighteenth-century British apologists, namely Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and William Jones. Their composite outlook on the Indian question throws an interesting light on the complex and, as yet partly uncharted, cultural revolution that accompanied the rise of imperial liberalism in Britain. The paper intends to show how sympathy accommodates a double-edged discourse, caught between imperial gaze and anti-conquest rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A man aged 51 with dextrocardia and right common and internal carotid artery agenesis is described. Cerebral blood flow is allowed internally by the left carotid and left vertebral antegrade flow, while right artery has only the function to drain the blood from the left side of vertebral system. A small external right carotid does exist, but it is separated from the cerebral hemodynamics. Diagnosis of dextrocardia was made on the basis of the standard chest X-ray, that of carotid agenesis on the basis of selective digital arteriography, color-Doppler and magnetic resonance. The diagnosis of congenital agenesis was based on the absence of a foramen caroticus and of a canalis caroticus. Large anasthomosis between the left and right side of cerebral system permit a normal perfusion to left cerebral hemispherium and a quite normal life.

A patient with Von Hippel disease is described. The Von Hippel syndrome is a genetic disease characterized by a retinal angiomatosis and multiple tumors (renal and pancreatic sites are common). The pheochromocytoma is-on the contrary-very uncommon and the association with 2 pheochromocytomas has probably never been reported. In our case, a double pheochromocytoma (the first in 1973, the second in 1986) was present, in conjunction with a thyroid tumor and with an anomalous renal vein (circumaortic ring). The clinical picture was characterized by a severe hypertension and a fourth stage retinopathy. A correct diagnosis was established only 10 years after the clinical exordium. The thyroidectomy and the ablation of both the pheochromocytomas were necessary.

The patients were subdivided into 3 groups, in accordance with clinical, echographic, laboratory and laparoscopy criteria: without liver disease, with liver disease and with alcoholic cirrhosis. In alcoholics with liver disease (with or without cirrhosis), we found a constant significant decrease in lead during abstinence, while in patients with cirrhosis zinc has a significant increase. Always lower to normal the blood selenium. The cadmium in the serum increases also after a month.