The rise and demise of pain exterminator Thomas S. McNeil: Every rose has its thorns.

United Brethren minister Thomas S. McNeil formulated an analgesic nostrum in 1848, most likely from opium, alcohol, ether, and other proprietary ingredients. Massaged on externally as a pain liniment, his so-called pain exterminator could also be mixed in sweetened water and imbibed as an analgesic, antitussive, and antidiarrheal. A familiar antebellum remedy for both Union and Confederate forces in the Civil War, McNeil's Pain Exterminator would be manufactured by McNeil's pastor and then successors, for more than a half-century after McNeil's accidental drowning in 1874.

An interdisciplinary study around the reliquary of the late cardinal Jacques de Vitry.

The reliquary of Jacques de Vitry, a prominent clergyman and theologian in the early 13th century, has experienced several transfers over the last centuries, which seriously question the attribution of the remains to the late Cardinal. Uncertainty about the year of his birth poses an additional question regarding his age at death in 1240. The reliquary, located in the Saint Marie d'Oigines church, Belgium, was reopened in 2015 for an interdisciplinary study around his relics as well as the Treasure of Oignies, a remarkable cultural heritage notably built from Jacques de Vitry's donation. Anthropological, isotopic and genetic analyses were performed independently on the remains found in the reliquary. Results of the analyses provided evidence that the likelihood that these remains are those of Jacques de Vitry is very high: the remains belong to the same human male individual and the historical tradition about his age is confirmed. In addition, a separate relic (left tibia) was analysed and found to match with the remains of the reliquary (right tibia). The unique Jacques de Vitry's mitre, made of parchment, was sampled non-destructively and the extracted parchment collagen was analysed by a proteomic method in order to determine the animal species. The results showed that, surprisingly, not all parts of the mitre were made from the same species. All together, these findings are expected to fertilize knowledge carried by historical tradition around the relics of Jacques de Vitry and his related cultural heritage.

Healthcare Chaplaincy as a Companion Profession: Historical Developments.

Chaplains, like professionals in a range of industries, have long sought to maintain and build occupational power by articulating their professional mandate and advocating for their work. I describe how leaders of the Association of Professional Chaplains and its predecessor organizations used multiple strategies to articulate and re-articulate their professional mandate between 1940 and the present to become a companion profession, one that comes alongside another without seeking to challenge its jurisdiction. I find chaplains seeking to develop an economic base, aligning interests across distinct segments of the profession and creating new professional associations, lobbying for legislative support, and offering their services in institutional voids. They further adopted the language of healthcare around questions of identity, charting, and accreditation and, chaplains used not just the frameworks but the methods of healthcare-evidence based research-to try to demonstrate their value. This history can help chaplains and chaplaincy leaders today to form a more comprehensive sense of their history and think more strategically regarding how to make the case for their profession going forward.

[Medical training did not give survival advantage; life expectancy of Dutch medical professionals born between 1550 and 1909]. / Medische opleiding gaf geen overlevingsvoordeel.

OBJECTIVE: To examine if, over a period of centuries, the Dutch medical establishment enjoyed a survival advantage over a population group with a comparable social background and level of education. DESIGN: Retrospective database research. METHOD: We used documents which provided data on the births and deaths of 15,649 male and 659 female medical professionals and of 15,304 male clergy. We calculated the remaining life expectancy at the age of 25 of those generations born between the middle of the 16th century and the beginning of the 20th century. We applied event history analysis to estimate remaining life expectancy, dependently of survival at the age of 25. In doing this we applied Gompertz distribution and made a maximum likelihood estimation. RESULTS: From the middle of the 16th century onwards, the development of the life expectancy of medical professionals and clergy was comparable; it was characterised by a continuing increase in remaining life expectancy which was only interrupted in those generations who were confronted with a series of epidemics. The level of the remaining life expectancy was also comparable. Only in the generation born in the first decade of the 20th century did the life expectancy of medical professionals become on par with that of the total male population. The remaining life expectancy of female medical professionals born from 1850 onwards was higher than that of the total female population. CONCLUSION: For a long time, medical training conferred no advantage on survival.

The Roman Catholic Church: A Centuries Old History of Awareness of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse (from the First to the 19th Century).

Debates in international forums and in mainstream media on the role, responsibility, liability, and response of ecclesiastical authorities of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) toward clerical child sexual abuse (cCSA) fail to take into account the historical roots and awareness of the problem. Reports also fail to mention the historic organizational laws RCC developed over centuries. In contrast, RCC documents evidence that the Catholic Church not only carried century's old history of cCSA, but also repeatedly condemned cCSA by successive papal authorities, organizational laws, and institutional management mechanisms. During the first millennium, however, church laws remained confined to the bookshelves and were not converted into appropriate management policies and infrastructural models. This was largely due to the absence of a central administrative organizational structure, which developed later in the 12th century, following the Second Council of Lateran (1139) when the Papacy asserted its authority to establish administrative control over the organizational church. It was only then that management policies started to be framed and institutional structures enacted to deal more appropriately with cCSA from the 14th to 20th centuries. Despite this, RCC developed a culture of secrecy using clandestine organizational management models and institutional laws prescribed in 1568, 1622, 1741, 1866, 1922, and 1962 which aimed to manage cCSA. The current study traces reported cCSA as far back as the first century and critically examines the organizational laws, and institutional policies developed by RCC to address clerical sexual misconduct up to the end of the 19th century.

"He Must Die or Go Mad in This Place": Prisoners, Insanity, and the Pentonville Model Prison Experiment, 1842-52.

The relationship between prisons and mental illness has preoccupied prison administrators, physicians, and reformers from the establishment of the modern prison service in the nineteenth century to the current day. Here we take the case of Pentonville Model Prison, established in 1842 with the aim of reforming convicts through religious exhortation, rigorous discipline and training, and the imposition of separate confinement in its most extreme form. Our article demonstrates how following the introduction of separate confinement, the prison chaplains rather than the medical officers took a lead role in managing the minds of convicts. However, instead of reforming and improving prisoners' minds, Pentonville became associated with high rates of mental disorder, challenging the institution's regime and reputation. We explore the role of chaplains, doctors, and other prison officers in debating, disputing, and managing cases of mental breakdown and the dismantling of separate confinement in the face of mounting criticism.

William Cooke MD MRCS (1785-1873) - General Practitioner, Founder of the Hunterian Society and Deacon of the Congregational Church.

Farmer's son William Cooke completed his medical training at Barts before embarking on a 60-year career as a general practitioner in and around London. In 1819, he was a co-founder, and for 20 years secretary, of the Hunterian Society which continues to provide education to its members. He was the author of several books where his views on the importance of post-mortem examinations and the interrelationships of body and mind in disease were discussed. He was a prominent non-conformist and became a deacon in the Congregational Church. He died in 1873, aged 87.

Schizophrenia: four examples of historical retrospective diagnosis.

It is difficult to know precisely the history of a functional disease, unlike the natural history of infectious agents, tumour processes or poly-malformative syndromes. In the case of psychiatry, and especially schizophrenia and psychotic disorders, a retrospective look at artistic productions (writings and drawings) makes it possible to reconstitute a whole section of this pathological context. Through four medieval and modern examples, we will see how it is possible to do a paleo-psychiatry: Opicinus de Canistris (14th c.), the Voynich manuscript (15th c.), Hieronymus Bosch (15th-16th c.), and the Codex Seraphinianus (20th c.).

[The pharmacopoeia of Father Morin in 1864]. / La Pharmacopée de l'abbé Morin en 1864.

The "pharmacopoeia or collection of divine remedies found in the documents of an old rural priest after his death" is a publication of nearly 400 pages including a long list of diseases with their associated treatments, followed by several recipes for the day to day life (such as: how to preserve wine, how to produce Champagne's wine, recipes for filler paste, etc.). A last part, very unique, is dedicated to evil spells, i.e. to diseases that do not have natural explanations and for which Saint Benoit's medal works wonders, according to the author. This pharmacopoeia of 1864 is a typical example of "incoherent collection" mentioned by Tardieu in 1862 concerning clergy and pharmacy. It is, from that point of view, the archetype that pharmacists wanted to see disappearing after the law of germinal year XI (1803), but that persisted until the beginning of the XXth century: the illegal practice of pharmacy by priests and nuns.

[Protestant clergymen among Hahnemann's clientele. Patient histories in letters]. / Evangelische Geistliche in Hahnemanns Patientenschaft. Krankengeschichten in Briefen.

As part of the research project, developments in the history of science and in the regional and ecclesiastic history of the late feudal petty state of Köthen-Anhalt have been assessed and numerous documents of the Nagel and Mühlenbein family histories examined that place the transcribed patient letters of the two Protestant clergymen within the context of the Hahnemann Archives. These findings complement and extend previous insights into Hahnemann's Köthen clientele, especially when it comes to the structure and milieu of the local clerical elite. Inspired by the interpretive methods of sequential textual analysis, form and content of the letters of the two clergymen and their relatives were also investigated as methodically structured lines of communication. The body of sources published here presents--embedded in the body-image (of sickness and health) prevalent at the time--the medical cultures of educated patients as well as the increasingly professionalized medical practices of Samuel Hahnemann in a flourishing urban doctor's surgery. The correspondence between the pastors Albert Wilhelm Gotthilf Nagel (1796-1835) and August Carl Ludwig Georg Mühlenbein (1797-1866), presented here in a standard edition, has been investigated at Fulda University as part of the project 'Homöopathisches Medicinieren zwischen alltäglicher Lebensführung und professioneller Praxis' ('Homeopathic medicine between everyday use and professional practice'). Of the altogether 78 transcribed documents, 53 are letters written by either of the two pastors, 16 are patient journals by Samuel Hahnemann, 9 letters by the pastors' wives and Mühlenbein's mother. The two series of letters, originally composed between 1831 and 1833 in old German cursive script, can now be used as sources for research into the history of homeopathy.

Reception of Homeopathy by the Hungarian Churches and Clericals during the 19-20. Centuries. / A prevenció gondolata az 1876. évi közegészségügyi törvényben..

This study gives a special overview of the history of homeopathy in Flungary focusing exclusively on the attitude of the Elungarian churches regarding this new healing method. Authors attempt to prove, that homeopathy actually was a system rooting in Christianity, and according to this fact several priests and eccelesiastical persons took part in the propagation of the method, especially during the 19. century. The essay lists the most important Flunga- rian homeopathic doctors with special regard on their close connections to Catholic priests or bishops and on homeopathic hospitals supported by Christian churches.

Sebastian Kneipp and the Natural Cure Movement of Germany: Between Naturalism and Modern Medicine.

This study discusses the historical significance of the Natural Cure Movement of Germany, centering on the Kneipp Cure, a form of hydrotherapy practiced by Father Sebastian Kneipp (1821-1897). The Kneipp Cure rested on five main tenets: hydrotherapy, exercise, nutrition, herbalism, and the balance of mind and body. This study illuminates the reception of the Kneipp Cure in the context of the trilateral relationship among the Kneipp Cure, the Natural Cure Movement in general, and modern medicine. The Natural Cure Movement was ideologically based on naturalism, criticizing industrialization and urbanization. There existed various theories and methods in it, yet they shared holism and vitalism as common factors. The Natural Cure Movement of Germany began in the early 19th century. During the late 19th century and the early 20th century, it became merged in the Lebensreformbewegung (life reform movement) which campaigned for temperance, anti-tobacco, and anti-vaccination. The core of the Natural Cure Movement was to advocate the world view that nature should be respected and to recognize the natural healing powers of sunlight, air, water, etc. Among varied natural therapies, hydrotherapy spread out through the activities of some medical doctors and amateur healers such as Johann Siegmund Hahn and Vincenz Prie ßnitz. Later, the supporters of hydrotherapy gathered together under the German Society of Naturopathy. Sebastian Kneipp, one of the forefathers of hydrotherapy, is distinguished from other proponents of natural therapies in two aspects. First, he did not refuse to employ vaccination and medication. Second, he sought to be recognized by the medical world through cooperating with medical doctors who supported his treatment. As a result, the Kneipp cure was able to be gradually accepted into the medical world despite the "quackery" controversy between modern medicine and the Natural Cure Movement. Nowadays, the name of Sebastian Kneipp remains deeply engraved on the memories of German people through various Kneipp spa products, as well as his books such as My water Cure and Thus Shalt Thou Live! Wörishofen, where Kneipp had served as catholic priest as well as hydrotherapist for 42 years from 1855, changed its name to "Bad Wörishofen" ("Wörishofen Spa" in German). The Kneipp Cure and the Natural Cure Movement became a source of ecologica l thought which is currently gaining more and more sympathy from German people. It is regarded as a lieu de mémoire (site of memory) reflecting the collective identity of German people.