Giuseppe Levi, Natalia Ginzburg, and Lessico Famigliare (Family Lexicon): a seminal figure in the history of neuron cell biology and histology seen through his daughter's literary eyes.

One of the most important figures in the history of neurohistology, Giuseppe Levi (1872-1965) contributed in numerous ways to neuroscience, particularly in the fields of neuronal plasticity and the understanding of sensory ganglia. His daughter Natalia Ginzburg, née Levi (1916-1991), on the other hand, achieved fame as one of the most celebrated Italian writers of the twentieth century. Lessico Famigliare (Family Lexicon), from 1963, is a semibiographical account of her life in which she describes the life and character of her father in detail, providing depth and complexity to a seminal figures in the development of neuroscience. A thorough reading of the book enables modern neurologists to fully appreciate Levi's life and contributions, by means of humanizing him and giving context to his life and works. The present article provides a summary of Levi's and Natalia's lives and times as well as an analysis of the book and of the intimate, vivid descriptions of the neurohistologist's life.

Uma das figuras mais importantes da história da neuro-histologia, Giuseppe Levi (1872­1965) contribuiu de diversas maneiras para a neurociência, particularmente no campo da plasticidade neuronal e na compreensão dos gânglios sensitivos. Sua filha Natalia Ginzburg, nascida Levi (1916­1991), pelo contrário, adquiriu fama como uma das escritoras italianas mais célebres do século XX. Lessico Famigliare (Léxico familiar), de 1963, é um relato semibiográfico de sua vida, na qual ela descreve a vida e o comportamento de seu pai em detalhes, e confere profundidade e complexidade a uma figura seminal no desenvolvimento da neurociência. Uma leitura aprofundada do livro permite que neurologistas modernos apreciem a vida e as contribuições de Levi de forma mais completa, o humanizando e dando contexto a sua vida e suas obras. O autor resume as vidas e épocas de Levi e Natalia, bem como avalia o livro e as descrições íntimas, vívidas, da vida do neurohistologista.

Exploration of the body from the perspective of acupuncturists: based on the classification of body terms in Huangdi Neijing. / 针灸师视野中的身体.

There is a rich record on body terms in Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic). The authors classify them into 4 dimensions, including "structure of human body", "constant concern of human body", "symptoms" of disease and "sites" of acupuncture, which corresponds to anatomy, physiology, pathology (including diagnosis) and treatment from the perspective of acupuncture. It is based on the knowledge described by these 4 categories of body terms, acupuncturists recognize the body in treatment. Through the correlation among these terms, the acupuncturists understand acupuncture as a therapeutic technique delivered to "the site of needling" under the guidance of ancient anatomy, physiology and pathology.

A Psychoneuroimmunological Reading of Jane Austen's Persuasion in the Context of Bodily Aging.

Jane Austen normally avoids discussing appearance throughout her works. Persuasion constitutes the exception to the rule, as the story focuses on the premature aging experienced by her protagonist, Anne Elliot, seemingly due to disappointed love. Much has been written about Anne's "loss of bloom," but never from the perspective of psychoneuroimmunology, the field that researches the interrelation between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems. In this paper, we adopt a perspective of psychoneuroimmunology to argue that Austen established a connection between psychological distress, specifically lovesickness, and the development of early senescence signs, and vice versa, since the recovery of love is associated with happiness and physical glow. From a gender perspective, we discuss how Austen brightly reflected these interrelationships through the story of Anne, when the latest psychoneuroimmunological research has actually shown that women age earlier than men as a consequence of psychological turmoil.

Applying Lessons From Ars Moriendi to Foster Dying Well in Acute Care Settings.

Medical and technological advances have made it possible to keep people alive well beyond what was once possible, leading health care providers to focus on life-sustaining measures rather than questioning the futility of such measures and considering quality of life. In the midst of the struggle to foster dying well in a medicalized environment, acute care nurses may be challenged with shifting the focus to providing optimal end-of-life care because of lack of training, time, and resources. A remedy for the current western societal approach to medicalized dying is to look back in history to a time during the late Middle Ages, when death was an accepted part of medieval life. A literary genre called Ars Moriendi (translated "the art of dying") was written and illustrated to provide instruction on how to die well and how to care for the dying. Nurses can apply lessons from this text to fulfill the ethical obligation to practice with dignity and provide compassionate end-of-life care. These lessons include helping patients and families identify goals of care and accept finitude, encouraging the participation of loved ones at the bedside, and fostering reconciliation at the end of life.

"Inside Out of Mind": Alternative Realities, Dementia and Graphic Medicine.

Graphic medicine, an interdisciplinary field situated at the crossroads of comics and healthcare, operates as a medium through which the intricate nature of experiences with illness can be articulated, challenging orthodox medical dogmatism in an engaging and accessible way. Combining the affordances of comics and the narrative power of storytelling, graphic medicine elucidates the socio-cultural stigmatization of dementia influenced by a multitude of discourses. Diverging from existing discourses that depict individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) as zombies, brain-dead, or empty shells, graphic memoirs reconstruct these reductive notions and represent them as imaginative, productive, and perceptive. Taking these cues, the present paper close reads some sections of Dana Walrath's (2016) Aliceheimer's: Alzheimer's Through the Looking Glass in order to demonstrate how graphic medicine reconceptualizes the preeminent hallucinatory experiences of her AD-afflicted mother, Alice, as visions. Walrath deploys collage art to epitomize Alice's ordeal with AD. In particular, Walrath deploys thought-provoking fragments from Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland, strategically to proximate Alice's experiences with AD and tackle the problem of dementia and sociality. Additionally, the paper explores how the text fosters interdependence, respect, and trust to recognize and restore Alice's personhood. The paper concludes by discussing how Aliceheimer's operates as an alternative paradigm beyond the confines of biomedical and cultural models of dementia through the use of lexical puissance.

The quest for Homer's moly: exploring the potential of an early ethnobotanical complex.

The Homeric plant moly is a mysterious herb mentioned in Book 10 of the Odyssey. In the early 1980s, a pharmacological thesis to identify the plant was put forward for the first time, regarding the snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis L.) as candidate species. The proposal was inspired by the snowdrop's acetylcholinesterase (AChE)-inhibiting properties and its alleged morphological reminiscence to other plants called moly by ancient Greek herbalists. Here, we draw from a compilation of literature from various disciplines, together with an understanding of the Homeric epic as a repository of information based on oral traditions, to (i) show that the assimilation of Homer's moly to Galanthus nivalis is, at the very least, questionable and (ii) frame and support a new synthesis of the pharmacological thesis. We suggest that the uncertainty that revolves around the identity of Homer's moly can be tied to an unnamed phylogenetic clade of closely related Mediterranean native species with AChE-inhibiting properties. Further, we speculate that Homer's moly might represent an early record of an ethnobotanical complex, a sort of cultural taxon resulting from the cognitive crossbreeding of closely related taxonomic species that could have been interchangeably used due to their rough resemblance and common AChE-inhibiting properties. Such cultural taxon would have referred to the phytonym moly by the centuries-old oral traditions that ultimately crystallized in the poem. We also venture that sea daffodils (Pancratium spp.) could have greatly contributed to shaping the botanical archetype in the myth as we know it today.

Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, and gout.

Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was an experienced physician who treated gouty patients. A gouty character appears in The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter, a Sherlock Holmes novel. This offers the possibility of discussing gout from the peculiar perspective of a medical writer in light of the historical-medical context of the time. This study was conducted using Conan Doyle's autobiographical, scientific, and literary primary sources, as well as past and current medical literature. The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter was autobiographical. Conan Doyle himself was a rugby player and his wife died of tuberculosis. Furthermore, in 1884, in The Lancet, he described the hereditary case of a female gouty patient, presenting with ocular manifestations. In agreement with the concept of rich man's gout, the gouty patient of Sherlock Holmes' story, Lord Mount James, was a rich irascible noble but he was not addicted to the pleasures of food and sex. Following the usual funny representation of gouty patients, Conan Doyle made fun of Lord Mount James, but he misquoted a true case of gout cited in the literature. In his scientific and literary production on gout, Conan Doyle stuck to the most updated medical concepts of the time, demonstrating an uncommon knowledge of scientific literature.

Authority and medical expertise: Arthur Conan Doyle in The Idler.

Arthur Conan Doyle's medical and writing careers intertwined and his work has a history of being read in the light of his medical expertise. He wrote at a time when the professionalisation and specialisation of medicine had resulted in an increasing distance between the profession and the public, yet general practitioners relied financially on maintaining good relationships with their patients and popular medical journalism proliferated. A variety of contrasting voices often disseminated narratives of medical science. These conflicting developments raised questions of authority and expertise in relation to the construction of medicine in the popular imagination: how is knowledge constructed? Who should disseminate it? How and by whom is authority conferred? How can the general population judge experts in medical science? These are questions explored more widely in Conan Doyle's writing as he examines the relationship between expertise and authority. In the early 1890s, Conan Doyle wrote for the popular, mass-market periodical The Idler: An Illustrated Magazine His contributions to it address these questions of authority and expertise for a lay audience. First establishing the medical context of doctor/patient relationships in which these questions arose, this article undertakes a close reading of these mostly rarely studied single-issue stories and articles as a means of ascertaining how Conan Doyle and his illustrators identified the relationship between competing narratives, expertise and authority. It argues that rather than maintaining a distance between public and professional, Conan Doyle's illustrated work demonstrates to his readers that there are ways to successfully navigate the appearance of authority and recognise expertise as they confront entangled representations of advances in medical science.

Changes in the length of speeches in the plays of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries: A mixed models approach.

Since 2007 a number of investigators have compiled statistics on the length in words of speeches in plays by William Shakespeare and his contemporaries, focusing on a change to shorter speeches around 1600. In this article we take account of several potentially confounding factors in the variation of speech lengths in these works and present a model of this variation in the period 1538-1642 through Linear Mixed Models. We confirm that the mode of speech lengths in English plays changed from nine words to four words around 1600, and that Shakespeare's plays fit this wider pattern closely. We establish for the first time: that this change is independent of authorship, dramatic genre, theatrical company, and the proportion of verse in a play's dialogue; that the chosen time span can be segmented into pre-1597 plays (with high modes), 1597-1602 plays (with mixed high and low modes), and post-1602 plays (with low modes); that some additional secondary modes are evident in speech lengths, at 16 and 24 words, suggesting that the length of a standard blank verse line (around 8 words) is an underlying unit in speech length; and that the general change to short speeches also holds true when the data is viewed through the perspective of the median and the mean. The change in speech lengths is part of a collective drift in the plays towards liveliness and verisimilitude and is evidence of a hitherto hidden constraint on the playwrights: whether or not they were aware of the fact, playwrights as a group were conforming to a structure for the distribution of speech lengths peculiar to the era they were writing in. The authors hope that the full modelling of this variation in the article will help bring this change to the attention of scholars of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

"The Art of the Craft," From The Covenant of Water.

This Arts and Medicine feature excerpts a chapter from The Covenant of Water, the new novel from Abraham Verghese, which follows the lives of a family in South India over the 20th century who have a "condition" that consigns at least 1 member per generation to death by drowning.

"Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise"-Incorporating uncertainty in risk analysis from Shakespeare to today.

"Modest doubt is call'd the beacon of the wise."-William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida. Although the character Hector warns his fellow Trojans with this line not to engage in war against the Greeks, Shakespeare's works are replete with characters who do not incorporate modest doubt, or any consideration of uncertainty, in their risk decisions. Perhaps Shakespeare was simply a keen observer of human nature. Although risk science has developed tremendously over the last five decades (and scientific inquiry over five centuries), the human mind still frequently defaults to conviction about certain beliefs, absent sufficient scientific evidence-which has effects not just on individual lives, but on policy decisions that affect many. This perspective provides background on the Shakespearean quote in its literary and historical context. Then, as this quote is the theme of the 2023 Society for Risk Analysis Annual Meeting, we describe how "modest doubt"-incorporating the notion of uncertainty into risk analysis for individual and policy decisions-is still the "beacon of the wise" today.

+Literacia emocional: competências emocionais dos enfermeiros / +Emotional Literacy: Nurses Emotional Skills

O interesse pela inteligência emocional e desenvolvimento das competências emocionais tem vindo a aumentar. A iliteracia emocional gera problemas socio emocionais e conflitos (Goleman, 2010). O desenvolvimento das competências emocionais dá lugar à educação emocional e representa um dos objetivos primordiais– promover a Literacia Emocional dos Enfermeiros e consequentemente uma Saúde Mental Positiva.No âmbito da Promoção da Saúde Mental, pretende-se elaborar um Módulo “+Literacia Emocional: Competências Emocionais dos Enfermeiros” de acordo com as 5 dimensões, identificadas por Xavier e Nunes (2016): Conhecimento emocional; Autonomia emocional; Regulação emocional; Competência social; Habilidades de vida e bem-estar. A intervenção, baseada no modelo multifatorial de Saúde Mental Positiva, pretende ser um recurso para o programa de Promoção de Saúde Mental Positiva “+ por Ti”, recorrendo aos instrumentos de avaliação utilizados neste programa. A metodologia adotada tem como base o método exploratório e descritivo, com revisão sistemática da literatura. (AU)

Interest in emotional intelligence and the development of emotional skills has been increasing. Emotional illiteracy generates socio-emotional problems and conflicts (Goleman, 2010). The development of emotional competencies gives rise to emotional education and represents one of the primary objectives – to promote the Emotional Literacy of Nurses and, consequently, Positive Mental Health. Within the scope of Mental Health Promotion, this study sought to develop a Module “+Emotional Literacy: Emotional Competences of Nurses” according to the five dimensions identified by Xavier and Nunes (2016): Emotional knowledge; Emotional autonomy; Emotional regulation; Social competence; Life skills and well-being. Based on the multifactorial model of Positive Mental Health, the intervention intends to be a resource for the Promotion of Positive Mental Health programme “+ por Ti”, using the evaluation instruments used in this programme. The methodology adopted is based on the exploratory and descriptive method, with a systematic literature review. (AU)

“A beautiful mind” – Promoção da literacia em saúde mental / “A beautiful mind” - Promotion of mental health literacy

Introdução: Associado à iliteracia do que fazer para prevenir, retardar e quando procurar ajuda, perante a esquizofrenia, requer-se ao enfermeiro especialista em saúde mental um agir ético, alicerçado no conhecimento empírico, técnico-científico, envolvendo os deveres profissionais: dignidade, individualidade e autonomia. Objetivo: Promover a literacia em saúde mental, através da análise do adoecer de uma pessoa com esquizofrenia e das questões éticas associadas ao cuidar em enfermagem de saúde mental. Metodologia: Estudo de caso – filme “Uma Mente Brilhante”, de natureza qualitativa, exploratória-descritiva. Resultados e Discussão: A esquizofrenia transforma a forma de pensar, de sentir e de relação com as pessoas, conduzindo à estigmatização associada a mitos conectivos entre a doença mental e a violência, contribuindo para a dificuldade/exclusão no emprego, apoio social e procura de ajuda. Conclusão: Salienta-se a promoção da literacia do agir perante uma pessoa com esquizofrenia, e do cuidado ético em enfermagem inerente. (AU)

Introduction: Associated with the illiteracy of what to do to prevent, delay, and when to seek help, in the face of schizophrenia, the nurse specialist in mental health is required to act ethically, based on empirical, technical-scientific knowledge, involving professional duties: dignity, individuality and autonomy. Objective: To promote mental health literacy by analysing the illness of a person with schizophrenia and the ethical issues associated with mental health nursing care. Methodology: Case study – film “A Brilliant Mind”, of a qualitative, exploratory-descriptive nature. Results and Discussion: Schizophrenia transforms the way of thinking, feeling, and relating to people, leading to stigmatisation associated with connecting myths between mental illness and violence, contributing to difficulty/exclusion in employment, social support and seeking help. Conclusion: The promotion of literacy on how to act towards a person with schizophrenia, and the inherent ethical care in nursing, are highlighted. (AU)

A saúde mental na transição parental e a utilização da internet mediada pelos enfermeiros / Mental health in the parental transition and the use of the internet mediated by nurses

Enquadramento: A transição parental pode ter um significado relevante na saúde mental dos pais. Facilitar esta transição é uma importante função dos enfermeiros. A informoterapia pode beneficiar tomadas de decisão parentais. Um portal orientado para a promoção das competências parentais administrado pela internet, integrado no plano de cuidados individual, pode promover competências parentais, neste caso, relativamente à segurança do recém-nascido. Objetivos: Definir um modelo de dados relativo às oportunidades de desenvolvimento do conhecimento parental sobre segurança do recém-nascido articulado com a ontologia de enfermagem, definir conteúdos multimédia necessários para uma literacia promotora da transição parental saudável. Metodologia: Análise de conteúdo ao material usado nos cursos de preparação e apoio à parentalidade e gravidez em funcionamento nos anos 2020 e 2021, no âmbito das Unidades de Cuidados na Comunidade dos Centros de Saúde da Boavista e de Paranhos. O processo de análise foi realizado por 3 investigadores sem modelo de análise à priori. Resultados: Relativamente ao conhecimento sobre segurança, foram identificadas duas categorias: segurança rodoviária e segurança não rodoviária. Na categoria segurança rodoviária foram definidas vinte subcategorias do conhecimento. Para cada subcategoria determinaram-se questões a colocar aos pais e o elenco de respostas indicativas de conhecimento facilitador ou potencial para melhorar o conhecimento. Conclusões: O conhecimento associado à transição parental pode ser alterado pela ação do enfermeiro através da informoterapia. O uso da internet mediado pelo enfermeiro pode promover a literacia em saúde como parte do processo de cuidados, facilitando a mestria dos pais e a perceção da sua saúde mental. (AU)

Background: Parental transition can impact parents’ mental health. Facilitating this transition process is an essential role of nurses. Information therapy can benefit parental decision-making. A website oriented towards the promotion of parenting skills administered over the internet, integrated into the individual care plan, can promote parenting skills such as newborn safety. Objectives: To define a data model regarding the opportunities for developing parental knowledge about newborn safety, articulated with a nursing ontology, and to define multimedia content appropriated for literacy that promotes a healthy parental transition. Methodology: A content analysis on the material used in parenting and pregnancy courses was carried out under the scope of Boavista and Paranhos Health Centers in 2020 and 2021. The analysis was performed by three independent researchers without a prior analysis model. Results: In the domain of parents’ knowledge about newborn safety, two categories were identified: newborn safety in traffic and newborn safety other than traffic. In the newborn safety in the traffic category, twenty subcategories of knowledge were identified. For each subcategory, a set of questions were defined to be answered by parents and a set of possible answers that represents accurate knowledge and lack of knowledge on each issue. Conclusions: Parents’ knowledge about newborn safety can be modified by nursing therapeutics using information therapy. Nurse-mediated internet use can promote health literacy as part of the care process by facilitating parents’ mastery and perception of their mental health. (AU)