The paper technology of confinement: evolving criteria in admission forms (1850-73).

This paper investigates the role of admission forms in the regulation of asylum confinement in the second half of the nineteenth century. Taking the Toronto Lunatic Asylum as a case study it traces the evolution of the forms' content and structure during the first decades of this institution. Admission forms provide important material for understanding the medico-legal assessment of lunacy in a certain jurisdiction. First, they show how the description of insanity depended on a plurality of actors. Second, doctors were not necessarily required to indicate symptoms of derangement. Third, patients' relatives played a fundamental role in providing clinical information. From an historiographical perspective, this paper invites scholars to consider the function of standardized documents in shaping the written identity of patients.

The American and Canadian wartime godmothers of Belgian soldiers. Joseph de Dorlodot's Correspondence and Documentation Office (1915-1919).

Lieutenant Joseph de Dorlodot (1871-1941), a Belgian aristocrat and philanthropist, was the Director of the Belgian Correspondence and Documentation Office in Folkestone, England. This article uses the 'Joseph de Dorlodot' archive collection (Archives Générales du Royaume de Belgique, Bruxelles) to investigate the emotional support provided by the Correspondence Office during the First World War. Throughout the conflict, its mission was to facilitate the sending of mail between Belgians, to provide them with legal advice and to offer humanitarian assistance to those who were in material and emotional distress. This was particularly the case of soldiers at the front. In the spring of 1916, the Office set up a mail system between Belgian soldiers and wartime godmothers - 'marraines' - from Canada and the USA. Lieutenant de Dorlodot imposed a precise moral and political framework for correspondence, where an intimate space was created in order to strengthen patriotic sentiment on the one hand, and control masculinities and femininities on the other. Through their letter exchanges with soldiers, godmothers participated in the war effort by bringing emotional reinforcement to the front line, from their homes, through a type of caring work often ignored or at least disconnected from any notion of work in the history of the Great War.

Sugar industry influence on the scientific agenda of the National Institute of Dental Research's 1971 National Caries Program: a historical analysis of internal documents.

BACKGROUND: In 1966, the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) began planning a targeted research program to identify interventions for widespread application to eradicate dental caries (tooth decay) within a decade. In 1971, the NIDR launched the National Caries Program (NCP). The objective of this paper is to explore the sugar industry's interaction with the NIDR to alter the research priorities of the NIDR NCP. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We used internal cane and beet sugar industry documents from 1959 to 1971 to analyze industry actions related to setting research priorities for the NCP. The sugar industry could not deny the role of sucrose in dental caries given the scientific evidence. They therefore adopted a strategy to deflect attention to public health interventions that would reduce the harms of sugar consumption rather than restricting intake. Industry tactics included the following: funding research in collaboration with allied food industries on enzymes to break up dental plaque and a vaccine against tooth decay with questionable potential for widespread application, cultivation of relationships with the NIDR leadership, consulting of members on an NIDR expert panel, and submission of a report to the NIDR that became the foundation of the first request for proposals issued for the NCP. Seventy-eight percent of the sugar industry submission was incorporated into the NIDR's call for research applications. Research that could have been harmful to sugar industry interests was omitted from priorities identified at the launch of the NCP. Limitations are that this analysis relies on one source of sugar industry documents and that we could not interview key actors. CONCLUSIONS: The NCP was a missed opportunity to develop a scientific understanding of how to restrict sugar consumption to prevent tooth decay. A key factor was the alignment of research agendas between the NIDR and the sugar industry. This historical example illustrates how industry protects itself from potentially damaging research, which can inform policy makers today. Industry opposition to current policy proposals-including a World Health Organization guideline on sugars proposed in 2014 and changes to the nutrition facts panel on packaged food in the US proposed in 2014 by the US Food and Drug Administration-should be carefully scrutinized to ensure that industry interests do not supersede public health goals.

Ancient administrative handwritten documents: X-ray analysis and imaging.

Handwritten characters in administrative antique documents from three centuries have been detected using different synchrotron X-ray imaging techniques. Heavy elements in ancient inks, present even for everyday administrative manuscripts as shown by X-ray fluorescence spectra, produce attenuation contrast. In most cases the image quality is good enough for tomography reconstruction in view of future applications to virtual page-by-page `reading'. When attenuation is too low, differential phase contrast imaging can reveal the characters from refractive index effects. The results are potentially important for new information harvesting strategies, for example from the huge Archivio di Stato collection, objective of the Venice Time Machine project.

Did Emperor Moctezuma II's head injury and subsequent death hasten the fall of the Aztec nation?

This article analyzes the head injury of Emperor Moctezuma as one of those injuries that affected the course of history. The Emperor's death arguably changed the fate of an entire nation and led to the destruction of the Aztec civilization. Moctezuma died in the evening hours of June 30, 1520, in his palace in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, while a prisoner of the Spanish conquistadors. The Emperor had been speaking to his people in an effort to persuade them to cease hostilities against Hernán Cortés, his Spanish soldiers, and Indian allies. Both Spanish and Indian contemporary sources document that he sustained a severe head injury when one of his own warriors hit him with a rock thrown from a sling. However, after the Conquest of Mexico some of the information collected by Spanish friars from Indian stories, songs, and pictorial representations raised the possibility that Moctezuma died of strangulation or stabbing at the hands of the Spaniards. There is even a suggestion of suicide. This issue remains unresolved and emotionally charged. The historical and clinical analysis of the events surrounding Moctezuma's death indicates that the Emperor most likely died as a consequence of head injury. The author has attempted to present a neutral analysis but agrees with Benjamin Keen that neutrality may be unattainable, no matter how remote the subject of historical inquiry is from the present.

Novel approach to documenting expert ECG interpretation using eye tracking technology: a historical and biographical representation of the late Dr Rory Childers in action.

The 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) is a complex set of cardiac signals that require a high degree of skill and clinical knowledge to interpret. Therefore, it is imperative to record and understand how expert readers interpret the 12-lead ECG. This short paper showcases how eye tracking technology and audio data can be fused together and visualised to gain insight into the interpretation techniques employed by an eminent ECG champion, namely Dr Rory Childers.

[Notes from the medical clinic of professor Józef Dietl]. / Notatki z kliniki lekarskiej prof. Józefa Dietla.

Jozef Dietl was one of the most eminent physicians of 19th century. His influence on the development of medical clinic in Krakow was decisive. Educated in Vienna, Dietl became familiar to the patterns of the s. c. Younger School, becoming one of the major proponents of its ideas. Writen by him Praktische Wahrnehmungen nach den Ergebnissen them Wiedner --Bezirkskrankenhaus (1845) became a kind of "manifesto" of the new, based on close pathological study medicine. How much these ideas were practically implemented in the academic teaching is the subject of comparative studies, which preliminary results are presented in this article. This text refers the manuscript collection of the Department of the History of Medicine of Jagiellonian University, including the recently known lecture notes by written down by then medical student Hippolytus Rychlicki. In light of the documents related directly to clinical teaching should go research to what extent Dietl's official declarations given in Praktische Wahrnehmungen (1845) and Aphorisms on the strict clinical study (1862-4).

[Autopsy records in Vienna since Lorenz Biermayer--a complete documentation of 195 years]. / Obduktionsbefunde in Wien seit Lorenz Biermayer - eine durchgehende 195jährige Dokumentation.

Vienna has a long tradition of clinical autopsies. In the period from 1817 to 2012 there are over 300,000 autopsies documented in the Vienna General Hospital. From five other community hospitals with departments for pathology and some closed hospitals, autopsy reports exist since 1865. Until the nineteenth century the reports are written in Kurrent, then Latin script and since the 1920s they are stored as machine written copies. This incredible high number of preserved reports was only possible because of the tradition started by Rokitansky and the possibility of storing this large amount of records in the Pathologic anatomical collection in the Narrenturm, the Vienna Municipal Archives and various hospitals. The aim of this study was to create a documentary of the repositories of the autopsy records, to make the records available and easier accessible for different kinds of research. The autopsy records should be easier to find and access, be it for the use in statistics or other scientific projects.

Inventing the medical portrait: photography at the 'Benevolent Asylum' of Holloway, c. 1885-1889.

In 1885, Holloway Sanatorium, an asylum for the 'mentally afflicted of the middle classes' opened in Egham, Surrey, 20 miles outside London. Until 1910, photographs of about a third of the patients--both those 'Certified Lunatic by Inquisition' and the 'Voluntary Boarders' who admitted themselves--were pasted into the asylum's case books. This paper analyses the photographs that were included in the very first of these, when there was a great uncertainty as to how to represent these patients, or whether to represent them at all. The photographs are unlike any other institutional images of the period, and raise critical questions about the imagined incompatibility between documentary photography and personal agency.

Marketing of menthol cigarettes and consumer perceptions: a review of tobacco industry documents.

OBJECTIVE: To examine tobacco industry marketing of menthol cigarettes and to determine what the tobacco industry knew about consumer perceptions of menthol. METHODS: A snowball sampling design was used to systematically search the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) (http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu) between 28 February and 27 April 2010. Of the approximately 11 million documents available in the LTDL, the iterative searches returned tens of thousands of results from the major US tobacco companies and affiliated organisations. A collection of 953 documents from the 1930s to the first decade of the 21st century relevant to 1 or more of the research questions were qualitatively analysed, as follows: (1) are/were menthol cigarettes marketed with health reassurance messages? (2) What other messages come from menthol cigarette advertising? (3) How do smokers view menthol cigarettes? (4) Were menthol cigarettes marketed to specific populations? RESULTS: Menthol cigarettes were marketed as, and are perceived by consumers to be, healthier than non-menthol cigarettes. Menthol cigarettes are also marketed to specific social and demographic groups, including African-Americans, young people and women, and are perceived by consumers to signal social group belonging. CONCLUSIONS: The tobacco industry knew consumers perceived menthol as healthier than non-menthol cigarettes, and this was the intent behind marketing. Marketing emphasising menthol attracts consumers who may not otherwise progress to regular smoking, including young, inexperienced users and those who find 'regular' cigarettes undesirable. Such marketing may also appeal to health-concerned smokers who might otherwise quit.

[Bright's disease is mentioned in an official Hungarian medical document in the 19th century]. / A Bright-féle vesebetegség említése egy XIX. századi magyar nyelvu, hivatalos orvosi dokumentumban.

The World Kidney Day was announced for the fifth time in 2011, that calls attention to chronic renal failure as it attains the title of endemic. Richard Bright (1789-1858), a British doctor was the first to recognize and describe the uremic state and the kidney diseases leading to it. There are many aspects that the readers should remember him about especially in connection with the World Kidney Day. During his European study tour's stage in Hungary, he was not so much interested in the country's medical and health conditions, rather in its economic and cultural life, natural history and geography. He travelled to Hungary on two occasions and recorded his experiences in a personal travel documentation illustrated with his own drawings. He finally established himself in London in 1820 and together with Thomas Addison and Thomas Hodgkin they formed the Guy's Hospital's world-famous "scientist trio". Bright described the nephritis's classical image, nowadays known as Bright's disease for the first time at the age of 38 years in 1827. A presently turned up Hungarian medical certificate from 1870 contains the Bright's disease described by Richard Bright as a written diagnosis. This 140-year-old document also confirms that we can be proud of our predecessors concerning our knowledge of kidney diseases and their application in daily use in Hungary, because in the past they were the ones who used the most advanced knowledge in their practices. One of today's greatest challenges for us is to be able to inform healthy and ill people alike properly about kidney diseases and their prevention or management. Place this in order to stem the epidemic of chronic renal failure and still pay homage to this disease's greatest scientist, Richard Bright.

Infanticide in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania: documents from four centuries (1570-1842).

In this study we present an unprecedented comprehensive overview of cases of infanticide in the region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, from the end of the 16th century to the middle of the 19th century. Using the Faculty of Law's verdict files stored in the University of Rostock's archives, we analysed and evaluated 362 cases. Changes in the prosecution of this crime, in the way the trials were conducted and in the passing of sentences illustrate the judicial conceptions of the academics, as well as being of great social interest. For the almost exclusively female defendants, behavioural patterns occurred repeatedly: shame, confusion and hopelessness triggered concealment of the pregnancy and ultimately the deliberate or negligent killing of the newborn child.

Interpreting seventeenth-century probate documents: John Carter, master carpenter in St Albans.

This is a study of a successful seventeenth-century carpenter in St Albans, John Carter, using probate and other documents, assisted by a large-scale computer database of St Albans residents of the period. Sections of the article cover his family, his work and his house and its contents, which have been reconstructed from his probate inventory and from knowledge of the structure of other local houses of the period. Carter's social standing is discussed, both in its local context and in relation to previous probate inventory analyses. This micro-study sheds unusual light upon aspects of the life of a 'middling sort' of person, living in a thriving market town in close proximity to London, at the beginning of the consumer age.

Hell in the family: married women and madness before institutionalization at the St-Jean-de-Dieu Asylum, 1890-1921.

Research in Montreal's St-Jean-de-Dieu Asylum archives has revealed a number of letters from family members and local physicians pleading for asylum care for married women between 1890 and 1921. When added to other admission documents in patients' medical files, these letters allow an intimate glimpse into private lives of families and highlight the pain and distress of dealing with mentally ill people in the home before the introduction of community mental health services. Far from easily abandoning a spouse or mother, close-knit French Canadian families struggled until they could no longer cope before seeking help. To comply with asylum regulations, family members (primarily husbands, who were often illiterate) and local physicians were required to justify their applications for admission, but they did so in different ways.

[Splinters and germs of thought. Freud's notebooks from 1901 till 1910]. / Gedankensplitter - Gedankenkeime. Freuds Notizbüchlein aus den Jahren 1901 bis 1910.

The authors discovered a series of small notebooks from the years 1901-1915 in the Freud Collection of the Library of Congress (two of them being not yet accessible). The article provides a first impression of their form, content and characteristics. Some events in Freud's life and his preoccupation with certain matters can now be dated more precisely; some ideas can be related to the treatment of certain patients; the origins of certain metapsychological theories can be pursued. A number of personal contacts are mentioned in these booklets, Freud's travels are often precisely documented. Some aphoristic formulations shed a new light on Freud's self-image.

The form, the permit and the photograph: an archive of mobility between South Africa and India.

Inspired by recent scholarship that calls for a more critical engagement with archives and knowledge production, this article plots the biography of an archive in Cape Town. Unravelling the layers of paperwork, it locates the origins of the archive in a repressive state project of excluding Indian immigrants and controlling those within the borders of the Cape Colony. The paper trail reveals documents of identity and the state's attempts to verify identity. In seeking to answer the question as to how the historian should approach such an archive of control and surveillance, it concludes that a social history and gendered approach to migration is possible and the real treasures are those documents that enter the archive beyond the limits of state intentions.

[Expert reconstruction of the true circumstances of the shooting of the Emperor Nikolai II, members of his family, and those who accompanied them into exile at Ekaterinburg].

Analysis of the materials of the criminal case, historical, archive, and forensic medical documents permitted for the first time to reconstruct the circumstances of the shooting of Emperor Nikolai II, members of the royal family, and those who chose to accompany them into exile in the house of the engineer N.N. Ipatiev, Ekaterinburg, on the night of 16-17th July (Grigorian calendar) 1918. The results of the study allowed the true picture of the assassination to be reconstructed including the mutual positions of the victims and the executors in the semi-basement room No 2, the total number of participants, the number and direction of shots, the types of the weapons used, and the sequence of actions of each person involved in the event. It was shown, that in the beginning most shots had been fired at the emperor and tsarevich Alexei.

[The potato in hospital nutrition as an approach to its introduction in the urban diet: the case of Vitoria (Alava, Spain)]. / La patata en la nutrición hospitalaria como aproximación a su introducción en la dieta urbana: el caso de Vitoria (Álava, España).

INTRODUCTION: Introduction: given the lack of historical documentary sources about the beginning of potato effective consumption in Vitoria (Alava, Spain), its introduction in the urban diet is estimated from cultivation and production data. This only allows asserting the introduction of the cultivation at the end of the 18th century, the recognition of two quantitative jumps during the Independence and First Carlist Wars, and that it was the second cultivation in quantity by 1857. Objective/method: from the hypothesis of a good correspondence between hospital diet and ordinary urban diet, evidenced in other studies for Vitoria, it is proposed to document the chronology of potato introduction in the urban diet from its analysis in the city hospital, as well as to contextualize concurrent historical events, through the review and analysis of primary and secondary documentary sources. Results: the hospital keeps a record of food acquisitions since 1743. The first purchase of potatoes was paid on September 17, 1834. Acquisitions continue in very variable quantities and dates, which are normalized from 1844. Contextually, there is a major subsistence crisis with cholera as the most immediate and necessary cause in synergy with the first carlist war and the devastation of crops in a summer storm. In 1854 the potato was established in the urban diet. Conclusions: the first acquisition of potatoes was made in September 1834 in the immediate context of cholera together with the carlist war and catastrophic weather effects.

INTRODUCCIÓN: Introducción: dada la carencia de fuentes documentales históricas sobre el inicio del consumo efectivo de patata en Vitoria (Álava, España), su introducción en la dieta urbana se estima a partir de los datos de cultivo y producción. Ello solo permite aseverar la introducción del cultivo a finales del siglo XVIII, el reconocimiento de dos saltos cuantitativos durante las guerras de independencia y primera carlista, y que era el segundo cultivo en cantidad en 1857. Objetivo/método: desde la hipótesis de una buena correspondencia entre la dieta hospitalaria y la dieta ordinaria urbana, evidenciada en otros estudios para Vitoria, se propone documentar la cronología de la introducción de la patata en la dieta urbana a partir de su análisis en el hospital de la ciudad, así como contextualizar los acontecimientos históricos concurrentes mediante la revisión y el análisis de fuentes documentales primarias y secundarias. Resultados: el hospital conserva el registro de alimentos adquiridos desde 1743. La primera compra de patatas se abona el 17 de septiembre de 1834. Se continúa con adquisiciones en cantidades y fechas muy variables que se normalizan a partir de 1844. Contextualmente, existe una crisis mayor de subsistencia con el cólera como causa más inmediata y necesaria en sinergia con la primera guerra carlista y la devastación de cultivos en una tormenta veraniega. En 1854 la patata está asentada en la dieta urbana. Conclusiones: la primera adquisición de patatas se realizó en septiembre de 1834 en el contexto inmediato del cólera junto a la guerra carlista y efectos catastróficos meteorológicos.