From the 15th century to the present day, Christian art has portrayed people who suffer from epilepsy as attributes in illustrations of Saint Valentine (SV). The objective of our study was to interpret the works of art from a modern epileptological perspective on the basis of a collection of portrayals of SV in Europe that was as comprehensive as possible. The people depicted as attributes were...

Barton reviews a book based on extensive medical/historical detective work which suggests that the King suffered from a rare physical illness which baffled his doctors and made his later life a misery. a common cause of discoloration of urine is inges-tion of rhubarb and senna, drugs frequently administered to George III during his illness. A rare cause is porphyria. A common form of 'madness' ...

Researchers have warned that causal illusions are at the root of many superstitious beliefs and fuel many people's faith in pseudoscience, thus generating significant suffering in modern society. Therefore, it is critical that we understand the mechanisms by which these illusions develop and persist. A vast amount of research in psychology has investigated these mechanisms, but little work has ...

The code of Hammurabi specified a “trial by surviving in the river” as a way of deciding whether an accusation was true. This system is puzzling for two reasons. First, it is based on a superstition: We do not believe that the guilty are any more likely to drown than the innocent. Second, if people can be easily persuaded to hold a superstitious belief, why such an elaborate mechanism? Why not ...

This study examines beliefs about depression as a function of ethnic background (British Bangladeshis vs. British Whites) and age. A total of 364 participants completed a 65-item questionnaire, containing general questions regarding depression and anti-depressive behaviour; the causes of depression, and treatments for depression. The hypotheses were broadly supported; there were significant int...

OBJECTIVE To find out the superstitions regarding health problems in different ethnic groups, their implications over the socio-economic development of that group and to what extent can those superstitions be related to their level of literacy. METHODS The study was a questionnaire-based survey, 20 subjects from each ethnic group were selected by cluster sampling of residential areas where th...

T he Enlightenment was a philosophical, intellectual and cultural movement of the late 17 century that stressed reason, science and freedom of thought over dogma, blind faith and superstitious deism. One of the driving forces of the Enlightenment was the oppression of research and original thought imposed by the Catholic Church. The most extreme example was when astronomers were told that they ...

surprise to both the medical profession and the laity to hear that the subject of dreams is still imperfectly understood. Ancient philosophers endeavoured to attach ?to dreams a prophetic meaning, and even to-day, among the superstitious and ignorant, dreams form a basis for prophecy, necromancy, and the like. There 'is no question about the influence of dreams on modern life and thought. There...

A digital-computer program has been written to operate a psychological experiment. This program is designed to be used by experimenters who are not skilled in computer technology. The program ensures that a properly initialized and fully documented experiment will be conducted. The psychological experiment itself is designed to investigate the ability of human subjects to predict successive num...

The Protestant reformers’ iconoclasm was not only a theoretical objection to what they considered the idolatry of religious images, but was, as well, a campaign for the removal (more or less violent in different places) and destruction of church art of all kinds. In sixteenthcentury England there was less rioting and smashing than in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, but the end result...