Hygiene as individual practice and as an instrument of the State. / Higiene como prática individual e como instrumento de Estado.

This study outlines some understandings of the word "hygiene." The notion that originated in ancient Greece first began to be adopted as a system of diet and morals to prolong the lifespan. From a type of self-care, this idea transformed into a concept of governance to extend the lives of subject-citizens. The theoretical debate about what public hygiene used to be shows its eminently political side: not only was hygiene a branch of the political economy, the ideas of hygienists were also analyzed as to the degree of impact they had on policy. After political and scientific battles, certain understandings of government action emerged victorious, while others were forgotten and neglected.

Higiene como prática individual e como instrumento de Estado / Hygiene as individual practice and as an instrument of the State

Resumo O estudo esboça algumas compreensões sobre a palavra "higiene". A partir do Renascimento, a ideia advinda da Grécia Antiga voltou a ser trabalhada, primeiramente como método para uma organização dietética e moral da vida que visava ao seu prolongamento. De uma espécie de cuidado de si, transformou-se em conceito de governança, cujo objetivo era o prolongamento da vida dos súditos/cidadãos. O debate teórico sobre o que era higiene pública mostra sua faceta eminentemente política: não apenas era um ramo da economia política, mas também eram analisadas as propostas dos higienistas de acordo com seu maior ou menor impacto na política. A batalha político-científica resultou na vitória de certas compreensões de ação estatal, e no esquecimento e na negligência de outras.

Abstract This study outlines some understandings of the word "hygiene." The notion that originated in ancient Greece first began to be adopted as a system of diet and morals to prolong the lifespan. From a type of self-care, this idea transformed into a concept of governance to extend the lives of subject-citizens. The theoretical debate about what public hygiene used to be shows its eminently political side: not only was hygiene a branch of the political economy, the ideas of hygienists were also analyzed as to the degree of impact they had on policy. After political and scientific battles, certain understandings of government action emerged victorious, while others were forgotten and neglected.

Selection and Management of Medical Official during the Yuan Dynasty.

Although the healthcare system of the Yuan Dynasty followed that of the Song Dynasty, there are certain differences between these two dynasties in terms of practices. Including appointing 'Yihus' in 'Zhusehuji' and setting up 'Guanyitijusi' to oversee Yihus, the Yuan Dynasty developed an effective management system for their physicians and, soon after the coronation of Khubilai, built 'Yixue (Medical school)' all over its territories in order to establish an organized and substantial medical training system. Moreover, the Yuan Dynasty not only revived the civil service examination system system between 1314 and 1320 as well as the medical examination system, but also increased the quota for qualification to twice that of Confucian examination in Song. These changes resulted in producing many brilliant people at the time. In the second half of the reign of Emperor Chengzong it was decided that the incompetence of the government healthcare organizations and the abundance of charlatans could not be neglected any longer. Existing policies and systems was limited in educating and training proper physicians, and this problem was not restricted to the field of medicine. The need for new systems that could reform the social order led to the restoration of the civil service examination system. The civil service examination system for Confucianism and for medicine began in 1314 and 1316, respectively. The purpose of the medical examination system was to select medical officials. The medical examination system which started in 1316 had a significant impact on the medicine of the Yuan dynasty for many reasons. Firstly, the qualification to apply to the medical examination did not remain constricted to 'Yixue' but opened to all 'Zhusehuji'; and secondly, the examination system did not have a restriction on the number of applicants was not restricted. The most important aspect of the examination system was that the number of test takers that passed the first test was one hundred and the number of passers of the second test were thirty, which were not low compared to the number of passers of the Confucianism examination. As such, the impact of the medical examination on the Yuan society was substantial. The Confucian examination selected 300 persons to pass the first test. The second test had 100 test takers which was equally divided among the four social classes at 25 percent each. The medical system selected 100 persons in the first test and 30 in the second. What is important is that unlike the Confucian examination system, the medical system was not divided into four classes. Hypothetically, the 30 qualified persons could all be South Chinese. In terms of the number of passers, it was much more promising for the South Chinese to flourish through the medical test than through Confucian examination test. Such facts support the claim that the Yuan Dynasty emphasized the field of medicine compared to the Song Dynasty. Although the Song Dynasty implemented the civil service examination system early on, the medical system was not implemented until 1115, which started with the founding of 'Yixue' across the country and assigning student capacity. During the Song Dynasty, the number of students in the medical system was 15 percent of that in the Confucianism system, and compared to that in Yuan, it raised to 30 percent, which is twofold. The indications of the Yuan Dynasty valuing medicine and making an effort to educate and train medical experts can be seen in the 'Yihu system', 'Guanyitijusi', Yixuetijusi', and medical school as well as the ratio of the medical system capacity.

Between state power and popular desire: tobacco in pre-conquest Manchuria, 1600-1644.

Tobacco entered Manchuria on the same wave of early modern globalization that brought it from the Americas to other parts of Eurasia in the early seventeenth century. Introduced into northeast Asia sometime after 1600, it began to circulate widely in Manchuria precisely at a time when Hong Taiji (1592-1643) was building the early Qing state. This essay examines Hong Taiji's efforts to criminalize tobacco in the 1630s and 1640s, arguing that these prohibitions were largely directed at gaining state control over a valuable economic resource. However, within the commercialized milieu of seventeenth-century Liaodong, a region with ties to broader transregional circuits of trade, tobacco's lucrative profits and its pleasurable allure simply overpowered state efforts to monopolize it. As in most other early seventeenth-century Eurasian societies, the Qing tobacco bans quickly gave way to legalization and taxation.

Review essay: empires, ancient and modern.

This essay drews attention to two books on empires by historians which deserve the attention of sociologists. Bang's model of the workings of the Roman economy powerfully demonstrates the tributary nature of per-industrial tributary empires. Darwin's analysis concentrates on modern overseas empires, wholly different in character as they involved the transportation of consumption items for the many rather than luxury goods for the few. Darwin is especially good at describing the conditions of existence of late nineteenth century empires, noting that their demise was caused most of all by the failure of balance of power politics in Europe. Concluding thoughts are offered about the USA.

What adult worker model? A critical look at recent social policy reform in Europe from a gender and family perspective.

Analyses regularly feature claims that European welfare states are in the process of creating an adult worker model. The theoretical and empirical basis of this argument is examined here by looking first at the conceptual foundations of the adult worker model formulation and then at the extent to which social policy reform in western Europe fits with the argument. It is suggested that the adult worker formulation is under-specified. A framework incorporating four dimensions­the treatment of individuals vis-à-vis their family role and status for the purposes of social rights, the treatment of care, the treatment of the family as a social institution, and the extent to which gender inequality is problematized­is developed and then applied. The empirical analysis reveals a strong move towards individualization as social policy promotes and valorizes individual agency and self-sufficiency and shifts some childcare from the family. Yet evidence is also found of continued (albeit changed) familism. Rather than an unequivocal move to an individualized worker model then, a dual earner, gender-specialized, family arrangement is being promoted. The latter is the middle way between the old dependencies and the new "independence." This makes for complexity and even ambiguity in policy, a manifestation of which is that reform within countries involves concurrent moves in several directions.

Framing the new midwifery: media narratives in Ontario and Quebec during the 1980s and 1990s.

After long periods of activism and policy debate, Ontario and Quebec were the first two provinces to integrate midwifery into their health-care services. Despite its success and growing popularity in the post-legislative era, midwifery was a highly contentious policy issue, with debates emerging at every level of policy development. In this essay, the authors explore how these debates played out in media. Specifically, the authors suggest that the frames produced by newspapers during this period served to align midwifery with broader provincial socio-political discourses, which in turn legitimized state intervention in the area of reproductive health. At the same time, however, the authors demonstrate that where Ontario media representations muted differences between midwives and physicians, representations in Quebec emphasized them. Thus, the authors show that in very different ways, media representations of midwifery in Ontario and Quebec both established a discursive context in which the state had to "act on" midwifery and midwives, and also challenged the potential of midwifery to transform women's birth experiences.

Correspondence of Charles Darwin on James Torbitt's project to breed blight-resistance potatoes.

The most prolific of Darwin's correspondents from Ireland was James Torbitt, an enterprising grocer and wine merchant of 58 North Street, Belfast. Between February 1876 and March 1882, 141 letters were exchanged on the feasibility and ways of supporting one of Torbitt's commercial projects, the large-scale production and distribution of true potato seeds (Solan um tuberosum) to produce plants resistant to the late blight fungus Phytophthora infestans, the cause of repeated potato crop failures and thus the Irish famines in the nineteenth century. Ninety-three of these letters were exchanged between Torbitt and Darwin, and 48 between Darwin and third parties, seeking or offering help and advice on the project. Torbitt's project required selecting the small proportion of plants in an infested field that survived the infection, and using those as parents to produce seeds. This was a direct application of Darwin's principle of selection. Darwin cautiously lobbied high-ranking civil servants in London to obtain government funding for the project, and also provided his own personal financial support to Torbit.

'Interrupted by fits of weeping': Cicero's major depressive disorder and the death of Tullia.

The letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 Bc), the Roman statesman, lawyer, orator and author, were analysed as part of a larger study that systematically examined ancient Greek and Roman literature to recover descriptions of mental illness. A degree of necessary caution was exercised, but the wealth of material revealed in the letters about Cicero's physical and emotional state enable a diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder to be made with some certainty according to the DSM-IV-TR. Cicero appears to have experienced increasingly severe bouts of suicidal depression that seriously impaired his relationships with his friends, family and political colleagues, and possibly shortened his life. His last depressive episode following the death of his daughter Tullia is addressed here in some detail.

Contending medical ideologies and state formation: the nineteenth-century origins of medical pluralism in contemporary Colombia.

This article addresses the encounter between contending medical ideologies in nineteenth-century Colombia. The first era of medical pluralism, in colonial Latin America, developed from the imposition of Hispanic medicine on existing indigenous medical systems through an imperial structure. This produced a "colonial medical spectrum" incorporating various medical ideologies that came under attack by practitioners of scientific medicine in the 1800s. As scientific physicians gained privileged access to state resources, they undertook partially successful campaigns to deny Hispanic, homeopathic, and other medical systems the right to be practiced. As the state authorized scientific medicine, other practices became "popularized," thereby laying the foundation for the medical pluralism of contemporary Colombia that juxtaposes "academic" and "traditional" medicines.

[Archeology in medicine: digging up into the tophi of Popes, Dukes and Kings]. / Archeologia medica: scavando nei tofi di Papi, di Duchi e di Re.

According to an Anglo-Saxon pun, "gout is the king of diseases and the disease of Kings". In fact, it is well-known that in past times a quantity of famous persons, including Kings and Popes, were affected with this rheumatic disorder. In this paper biographical anecdotes on several Popes (Pius III, Julius II, Julius III, Clement VIII, Innocent XI, Clement XII and Pius VIII), King George IV and Queen Anne of England, as well as on some members of the Lorraine lineage, all suffering from gout, are sketched out. These historical data are briefly discussed in relation to the celebrated Hippocrates's aphorisms on gout.

[Textual research on Shi Kan and Shi zai zhi fang (Shi Zaizhi's Prescriptions)].

Shi Kan, also known as Zaizhi, was born in Emei, Sichuan, and Zaizhi was more popularly known. He lived in the Northern Song dynasty, and was a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations. As a government official, he was promoted to the position of governor. When he cured the constipation of Cai Jing only with a single herb Aster root, people considered that he had excellent medical skill as famous doctor Xu Shuwei. He was one of the representatives who were doctors as well as government officials. His book Shi zai zhi fang (Shi Zaizhi's Prescriptions) was a typical formula work of the Song dynasty. In this book he emphasized the treatment principles on strengthening the vital and dispelling the evil. He also underlined the theory of yunqi (five elements' motion and six kinds of natural factors). He had many new ideas about the application of herbs and pulse - taking. According to the book, Zhi zhai shu lu jie ti (Zhizhai's Interpretation on Collected Books), Shi had a 2 - volume book titled Zhi nan fang (Guide Prescriptions). There were different views on whether Guide Prescriptions was the other name for Shi Zaizhi's Prescriptions. By studying the contents of citations from Shi's Guide Prescriptions quoted in Hong shi ji yan fang (Hong's Collections of Proved Recipes), Quan sheng zhi mi fang (A Guidebook of Recipes for Saving Lives), and by combining it with the textual research made by various scholars of the Qing dynasty, the author claims that Guide Prescriptions is another book rather than the other name of Shi Zaizhi's Prescriptions.