T racheostomy is one of the oldest surgical procedures reported in ancient medicine books. It became widely used in the 19th century during the diphtheria epidemics in Europe, and then in the 20th century following a series of devastating poliomyelitis epidemics in the 1950s [1–3]. Around the turn of the 20th century, JACKSON [4] standardised the indications for tracheostomy, the technique itse...

In the past two decades Albania and the former Yugoslavia have become associated with some of Europe’s most dramatic emigration movements. During the four decades of the communist regime, the Republic of Albania was a blind spot in the imagination of Europe and the world. It was brought back into the collective consciousness in 1991 when media all over the world showed dramatic pictures of impo...

This presentation follows the “classic” paper of Bensaude-Vincent (1) rather closely, but with some additional points and emendations to her argument. One of the first points Kaji makes—that Mendeleev was ambivalent about the status of the atomic theory—can be related to what Bensaude-Vincent delineates as the “strict positivist tradition” to which he belonged. Kaji, however, give this philosop...

Recently, considerable attention has been paid to word embedding algorithms inspired by neural network models. Given a large textual corpus, these algorithms attempt to derive a set of vectors which represent the corpus vocabulary in a new embedded space. This representation can provide a useful means of measuring the underlying similarity between words. Here we investigate this property in the...

When revolutions for independence broke out, religious life in the Spanish American world was ruled by the Indian patronage regime [patronato], which gave the monarch tight control over ecclesiastical institutions. Patronage included, among many other prerogatives, presenting candidates to the pope, appointing parish priests and doctrine teachers, the right to allow or deny the dissemination of...

Like all artifacts, 19th century bottles reveal different kinds of information. Formal characteristics, contextual pattems, and behavioral correlates to patterns of material culture, are all familiar avenues of inquiry in archaeology. An ongoing project at the University of Arizona depends on the analysis of bottles in large measure, in order to study pattems of alcohol consumption among select...

Until the mid-19th century, there had not been a single resident physician in the Holy Land. However, by the first World War in 1914, 19 hospitals had been established in Jerusalem. The reasons for this unusual phenomenon were religious, political, and sectarian. This does not apply to The Marienstift Kinderhospital, which was unique in 19th century Jerusalem. The hospital was founded and opera...

Absinthe, a bitter spirit containing wormwood (Artemisia absinthium L.), was banned at the beginning of the 20th century as consequence of its supposed unique adverse effects. After nearly century-long prohibition, absinthe has seen a resurgence after recent de-restriction in many European countries. This review provides information on the history of absinthe and one of its constituent, thujone...

This overview reflects the extensive changes in the health care system which had significant effects on the apothecaryâs profession and education. In the 18(th) century Maria Theresia assigned Gerard van Swieten to modernize the medical curriculum and to work out reforms for health care. The resulting sanitary bill released in 1770 and amended in 1773 became effective for the whole empire and i...

This study outlines an analysis of selected anthropo-demographic data of Der Bielitzer Zion population from parish registers and historical sources. The analysis focuses on three epidemics: cholera (two) and typhoid fever (one) which took place in mid-19th century in Bielitz. The aim of this paper is to explore the demographic structure of the fatalities due to the epidemics and to propose poss...