Oxford University Press's Blog, page 292

A holy revolution

With hundreds of churches built, rebuilt, or restored in the nineteenth century, they can be found nearly everywhere today. Out of thousands of possible choices, below are five characteristic specimens — four small churches and one large synagogue — that explain Victorian belief.

St Matthew’s Otterbourne, Hampshire, UK

Just south of Winchester, just north of Southampton, and just east of the M3 motorway, Otterbourne is a place people drive through or, more likely, past. Its church – small, bluish-bricked, and (if we’re honest) a little unprepossessing from the outside – is probably circumvented too. But step inside and you’ll find a revolution underway.

As originally constructed in the 1830s, the building looked back to the old, Georgian conception of church architecture. It was, to all intents and purposes, a preaching box: a space which maximized the power of the human voice and minimized any sense of mystery. Built to accommodate 400 worshippers, it was filled with box pews and galleries and designed, above all, to ensure that everyone could hear the sermon delivered from a high pulpit.

But St Matthew’s also contained some signs of how things were changing. It was Gothic. It was shaped like a cross. And it was going to be transformed from the 1840s onwards, as it was ornamented, its windows were filled with stained glass, statues were acquired, the pews and galleries removed, and the importance of the altar was heightened.

Saltaire United Reformed Church, Yorkshire, UK

Travel north to the model village of Saltaire, just outside Bradford, and you’ll find another sort of Victorian church: not Anglican, but what was known as Non-Conformist — a Congregationalist chapel built by the businessman and philanthropist Titus Salt in the 1850s.

Now, this neo-classical chapel is still a preaching-box: an auditorium for preaching and singing. All eyes are turned to face the organ and the platform at one end. But it also speaks of how ideas about architecture were changing even for pious Protestants. The lavishness or the ornamentation and the quality of the workmanship don’t just reflect the growing wealth and power of Non-Conformity (though they do that too). They also show just how much the Victorians began to take sight as well as hearing into consideration when they designed religious buildings. The fact that this was a structure intended to reform its inhabitants as well as house them is equally significant. No longer mere receptacles, churches were increasingly seen as active agents in their own right.

St Peter’s Hornblotton, Somerset, UK

Back down south in Somerset, the little church of Hornblotton takes some finding. Set at the end of a succession of single-track roads, you have to know what you’re looking for. Once there, however, and safely parked in the shade of a tree, you can’t help but fall in love with the place. Outside, it’s all golden stone and pantiles. Inside, it’s like a little jewel. Built by the arts and crafts architect T. G. Jackson in the early 1870s, St Peter’s is an almost unique survival of a process known as sgraffito work: the carving of layers of plaster to reveal beautiful, brightly-coloured patterns.

These patterns and pictures are not merely alluring. They all tell us about the way in which church buildings were reimagined by Victorians. They came to see them as a vehicle of communication: a sort of theological text in their own right. Using pictures and texts, paintings and stained glass, flowers and fabrics they hoped to convey ideas as well as house worshippers. At Hornblotton, the profusion of images and Biblical quotations is almost overwhelming: converting a piece of architecture into a myriad of messages.

St Peter’s parish church, Hornblotton by ChurchCrawler. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Prince’s Road Synagogue, Liverpool, UK

Come to Liverpool and we’ll see that it wasn’t only Christian architecture that was reshaped by these developments. A fashionable synagogue for fashionable people in a fashionable street, it was built at the same time as Hornblotton church in yet another style: a fusion of Gothic and Moorish influences, intended to domesticate an ‘oriental’ religion.

Inside, you’ll encounter a dazzling array of ornament. Although it’s obviously set up as a synagogue, its stained glass, florid columns, and rich marble pulpit are more than suggestive of a church. In part this reflected the desire of an immigrant community for assimilation. In part, it reflected the tremendous wealth of generous benefactors. But above all, this gorgeous building is a symbol of how far-reaching this revolution in religious architecture actually was. By the 1870s sacred space was understood as vibrant, visual, communicative, and uplifting whether you were Christian or not.

St Thomas and St Denis, Berkeley County, SC, USA

And these changes weren’t confined to England, or even to the British Empire. Drive north east out of North Charleston, South Carolina, and you may find – if you can see it through the trees – a tiny church which beautifully illustrates the themes we’ve been exploring. Known as the “White Church” or the “Brick Church”, it was built in 1819 to replace an older edifice which had burnt to the ground. It is a compact, chaste, mildly neo-classical structure whose history shows that the nineteenth-century revolution in sacred space was so all-encompassing that we no longer even notice it.

As originally constructed, the church perfectly illustrated all the principles of eighteenth-century design. Here was a plain, brick-built, stucco-coated box in which to preach. Worshippers entered though a formal doorway set in the centre of the south wall. Once inside and seated, they sat facing north: all eyes (and, more importantly) all ears trained on the pulpit. In the nineteenth century, however, the church was radically reoriented. The south door was blocked up, the pulpit relocated, the pews rebuilt. All eyes were now focused on the altar to the east. Without the money to engage in all the additions – the stained-glass, the ornaments, furnishings, pictures, and other elaborations – which transformed so many other churches, it is only partially converted. But its reorientation, its new focus on the visual rather than the aural elements of worship, speaks volumes.

Featured image credit All Saints Church Margaret Street, London by Diliff. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons .

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Three millennia of writings – a brief history of Chinese literature

Chinese scholars traditionally have considered the Han fu-rhapsody, Tang shi-poetry, Song ci-song lyrics, and Yuan qu-drama, as the highest literary achievements of their respective dynasties. However, Chinese literature embraces a far wider range of writing than these four literary genres. In addition to these “belles lettres”, Chinese literature has developed into a treasure trove that offers rich information about Chinese society, thought, customs, and social and political movements. From Ancient Pre-Quin writing and the emergence of drama during the Yan dynasty—right through to novels responding to the socio-political issues of the 1940s, a rich literary history has developed over three millennia.

The Pre-Qin to Northern and Southern Dynasties

This period, stretching from Ancient times to the early medieval period, is marked by two collections of poetry: the Shi jing (Classic of Song, the earliest anthology of Chinese poetry), and the Chuci (Songs of Chu), an anthology of southern poems of the Warring States and Han periods. This era is also represented by the newly established genre, fu (rhyme-prose, rhapsody), which obtained prominence in the Han dynasty, and continued to be a major genre in the Chinese literary tradition.

Two of China’s standard histories, the Han shu (History of the Former Han) and Shi ji (Records of the historian) are rich sources of information on literature, and two works of the sixth century have become literary classics: the Wen xuan (Selection of Refined Literature), the earliest extant Chinese anthology, and the Wenxin diaolong (Embellishments on the Heart of Literature), traditionally regarded as the most important and influential treatise on Chinese literary theory. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, palace style poetry, an ornate and gentle poetic style, was in vogue. Religious Daoist and Buddhist writings also flourished.

Chinese, Mural, Dynastie Tang by janeb13. Public domain via Pixabay.

The Tang and Song dynasties periods

Lasting from the 7th century to the late 13th century, this period was known for rhymed shi-poetry. Regulated verse composed mostly in five—or seven—syllable lines reached maturity in the Tang dynasty and continued to be flourish in the Song. Tang poets Du Fu and Li Bo are generally regarded as the greatest Chinese poets. The ci-song lyric, a verse form with distinctive prosodic characteristics first appeared in the Tang dynasty, and reached maturity during the Song dynasty.

During this period some scholars rejected the ornate style associated with the court and advocated a literary reform based on ancient classical principles. The resulting ancient-style prose movement did not involve slavish imitation of ancient style, but rather an innovation that was informed by ancient ideals of clarity, originality, and practicality.

The Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties

These dynasties, ruling from the 14th century to the late 19th century, are known for the emergence of drama and vernacular fiction. In the Yuan the form known as qu, which means ‘colloquial song’, ‘dramatic aria’, and ‘drama’ emerged. During the Ming and Qing periods, classical and vernacular novels became the dominant literary forms. Works such as Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and Story of the Stone are among the best-known works of pre-modern Chinese literature. Chuanqi (Southern play or drama) is another popular dramatic form of this era. In the Ming dynasty, literary groups battled against antiquarianism and plagiarism. They condemned poets and prose writers who blindly imitated the writers of the Tang and Song periods; they believed that ‘spirit’ and ‘vital energy’ were the essence of literature.

China, Chinese Character, Books by quillau. Public domain via Pixabay.

The Republican era

In this period, lasting from 1911 to 1945, The May Fourth Movement (an anti-traditional cultural and political campaign) is considered the watershed separating China’s premodern and modern eras. The movement opened the door to Western literature and Western concepts of science and democracy. Writing in everyday spoken language instead of the traditional classic language was encouraged. Xinshi (new poetry) no longer followed prescribed patterns, allowing the poet room for expression of personal sentiments. During this period a significant amount of Western works was translated into Chinese. Chinese writers no longer concealed their sentiments, and even wrote about the struggle between traditional ethics and natural human desires.

The Contemporary era

After World War II, during the conflict between the Communists and Nationalists, writers began to write about social and political problems in a form designated as “reportage literature.” In later years, reportage literature was infused with new life, covering all subjects from current events to modern social life. Since the late 1970s, poets began to write “poetry of opacity“, in which they did not follow the standard grammatical patterns, and used language that is often vague and incomprehensible.

After the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), more readers turned to martial arts novels searching for heroes with lofty principles and ambitions. Since then, martial arts fiction has become the most widely read literary form of modern Chinese literature. When the internet age arrived in the late 1980s, writings designated for publication or distribution via the internet or in an interactive online context came into fashion. Internet literature, including blogs and literature in the form of email, has become popular among younger readers.

Featured image credit: Roof, China, Dragon by 3dman_eu. Public domain via Pixabay .

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Defining moments in cardiology

In 1967, Christiaan Barnard carried out the first ever human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. The patient and recipient of a new heart was 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky, and the success of the operation took centre-stage in the world’s media as hourly bulletins followed his recovery. Though the heart functioned normally following the operation, and continued to do so until his death, Washkansky sadly succumbed to pneumonia and passed away 18 days after the operation. It is considered that the immunosuppressive drugs that he had been prescribed in order to stop his body from rejecting the new heart had left him susceptible to picking up infections, allowing the pneumonia to take hold. Other patients undergoing the trail-blazing surgery in subsequent years also suffered similar fates.

Following this, the 1970s saw significant developments in immunosuppressive drugs, namely the introduction of ciclosporin, which helped to greatly improve the prognosis and survival rates for patients undergoing cardiac transplant surgery in later decades. To this day, Barnard’s pioneering operation remains a milestone in cardiovascular medicine, and indeed medical history, and cardiac transplantation continues to be performed today to treat heart failure and other diseases, though rejection of the new organ remains problematic.

Explore our interactive timeline below to discover other defining discoveries and events in the history of cardiovascular medicine and cardiac surgery. From the first description of the anatomical structure of the heart in the 18th century, to the Nobel Prize-winning physician who performed the first cardiac catheterisation in the 1920s (on himself!), and the implantation of the world’s first leadless pacemaker in recent years, the field of cardiovascular medicine continues to evolve. Looking forward, the fast-changing technological landscape offers a realm of opportunity for the future: only time will tell how advances such as 3D printing, nanobots, and gene therapy will come to change the face of this specialty.

Featured image credit: National Institute of Cardiology Mural painting by Diego Rivera. CC BY 4.0 via Wellcome Images.

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Allowing the past to speak

Beginning in January a new editorial team will take over the OHR, bringing in some fresh voices and new ideas. Before we hand over the reins, we asked the new team, composed of David Caruso, Abigail Perkiss, and Janneken Smucker, to tell us how they came into the world of oral history. Check out their responses below, and make sure to keep an eye on our social media pages in the coming weeks for more.

David Caruso

It’s really hard to get dead people to talk to you. Séances don’t count. For my doctoral degree at Cornell University I researched the history and use of American military medicine from the Spanish-American War through to the First World War. I buried myself in various archives, digging my way through voluminous folders to find answers to a plethora of questions. I read memos and reports, analyzed admission applications and equipment orders, and pulled out as much information as I could from the century-old records, and then coupled all of those with personal memoirs written in the aftermath of war. But there was no one left alive who could answer my questions directly—I had to use my training in historical research to come up with the most likely truths that the archives and books could provide.

I also had the opportunity to work on smaller, contemporary projects that focused on the history of science, involving both archival research and the chance to actually speak to scientists and engineers. The frustrations I felt when researching the history of American military medicine were nowhere to be found when working on these contemporary projects. Near the end of my graduate career there was a job opportunity at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, an independent, history of science-based research library in Philadelphia. The position entailed interviewing biomedical scientists who received an early-career grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts; I saw it as an opportunity to better understand the history of modern biomedical research funding by talking to the individuals whose work benefitted from that financial support.

I came to oral history not through a formal degree program but by realizing the limitations of traditional historical records, and deciding that I needed to talk to people to understand history better. While working on the biomedical scientists’ project, I ensconced myself in the world of oral history, fortuitously meeting Roger Horowitz when he was a fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Roger introduced me to Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region, which led me to the Oral History Association.

Abby Perkiss

As an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr College, I studied sociology, history, and creative writing with the intention of carving out a life at the intersection of storytelling and social change. My last year there saw the US invade Iraq, and I undertook an independent senior thesis to examine whether and how Americans were using the memory of Vietnam as a way to understand and engage with the current conflict. My thinking was that I would interview folk singers from the 1960s and contemporary folk singers/singer songwriters, as the creators of collective memory, to see how each cohort was conceiving the situation in Iraq. Over a few months in the spring of 2003, I interviewed more than a dozen musicians, including Pete Seeger, Janis Ian, and Mary Travers. The project was completely flawed, methodologically and conceptually, but I was hooked.

It’s really hard to get dead people to talk to you. Séances don’t count.

From there, I studied documentary writing at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Maine, and then completed a joint JD/PhD in US history at Temple University. Oral history played a central role in my dissertation research, and continues to define a significant part of my scholarly and pedagogical identity.

Today, I am an Assistant Professor of History at Kean University in New Jersey, where I teach courses in US history, African American history, legal history, and oral and public history. From 2013-2016, I worked with undergrads at Kean to develop a longitudinal oral history project on the relief and recovery efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. I will be using those interviews as the backbone of a narrative monograph documenting the uneven recovery of Hurricane Sandy along the New Jersey coastline.

Janneken Smucker

Looking back over the last 20 years, there’s no specific moment when I began to self-identify as an oral historian, but somehow the method has been a reoccurring theme in my academic career. As a college senior, I interviewed individuals for my senior seminar paper at Goshen College about the origins of the college’s Women’s Studies program. When I began studying quilts from an academic perspective, my first paper was based on an oral history interview I conducted with my elderly grandmother about the quilts she and her Amish-Mennonite peers made as young women in the 1920s in eastern Ohio. I then conducted around thirty interviews for my doctoral dissertation research focused on the relationship of Amish quilts to the art market and consumer culture. All of sudden, it felt like I’d become a bit of an oral historian, which made sense since much of my research focused on contemporary history topics from the 1970s and 80s.

I now regularly teach with oral history, working with my students at West Chester University to create digital public history projects, interpreting and providing access to archival oral history interviews, by building classroom/archive partnerships that take advantage of open source technologies. In the spring 2018 semester, I’ll be teaming with WCU colleague Charlie Hardy to teach a new course, Immigration and Digital Storytelling, which will draw on a collection of oral history interviews Charlie conducted in the early 1980s with immigrants who moved to Philadelphia from Europe early in the twentieth century.

 Join us in eagerly welcoming the new team in the comments below and on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Google+.

Featured image credit: Listen by Simon Law. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Flickr.

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Christmas at King’s College, Cambridge

Every Christmas Eve King’s College, Cambridge holds its famous annual ‘Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s.’ Andrew Hammond, Chaplain of King’s College, takes us behind the scenes of this year’s service.

I got into a major grump a little while ago in a well-known store when I stumbled into their Christmas section. I really didn’t need to hear ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’ in the middle of October.

There is a slight irony in this, of course, as the Christmas season is something that takes up a lot of head-space here at King’s from quite a long time before October, primarily due to our service on Christmas Eve, the famous ‘Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s.’ As I find myself pointing out at carefully selected moments, this goes out to around 140 million listeners. Live. That tends to concentrate the mind. It certainly concentrates our minds.

You might think the formula is so settled, the annual regularity of it so fixed, that every element simply happens smoothly, like a beautiful, well-kept classic car. In some senses that is true: you fiddle with something so honed at your peril, but like that car, it takes a great deal of loving attention to keep it not just a classic but performing optimally. So, if continuing with the automobile idea, perhaps it is more like a Formula 1 car than a Morse jag.

There is a big team of people whose preparatory work and efforts for this event are both complex and vital, and often require being ready to act swiftly and effectively in the moment. Liturgical and musical planning are a big part of this, but there is also the management of the event itself in terms of ticketing and admission. This involves people-movement and security, the maintenance and preparation of the building itself, the social media operation, accommodating the BBC team and their equipment, chaperoning the choristers, and so much more.

Choir of King’s College, Cambridge by Kevin Leighton. Used with permission.

For the last 35 years, one of the constants in this process has been the involvement of Stephen Cleobury, the renowned Director of Music at King’s College. This year, as always, we will perform a newly-commissioned carol. This is an important part of the tradition of Christmas Eve here, a continuing sense of refreshment within a burnished tradition. The last two years have been by Oxford University Press composers, happily!

Stephen Cleobury particularly enjoys the process of commissioning a new carol each year, telling us: ‘one of the things I enjoy about the annual commissioning process is that, far from having a planned list of composers to approach, each commission arises from a unique set of circumstances. For example, I met Judith Weir at a Christmas party, and a carol followed the following year. I discussed the possibility of writing a carol for us with Harrison Birtwistle as I waited with him backstage before I conducted a piece of his at the Proms. And so on.

The process generally starts early in the year, and begins with identifying a text, and my briefing the composer on the size and vocal ranges of the Choir and so on. I have wanted to invite composers who write in the mainstream of music to show that liturgical choirs can be part of this world, too. The bar does not need to be lowered for us!’

This year, the challenge will include singing in Welsh, as the new piece is by Huw Watkins, who studied at King’s as an undergraduate and is now Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music. The carol is part of the welsh Plygain carol Carol Eliseus, and was chosen by former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, now Master of Magdalene College here in Cambridge.

Reflecting on this commission, Watkins said: ‘I was particularly delighted to have been asked to write this year’s new carol, having been an undergraduate at King’s in the ‘90s. As a non-Welsh-speaking Welshman, I was also thrilled and slightly daunted when Stephen Cleobury suggested a Welsh text. My mother (a native speaker) has helped me with the sounds and stresses of the words, and I feel like setting this language has unlocked an indefinable Welshness in my music. I wanted to write something pure and somehow artless, and all the time I’ve had that glorious acoustic in my head.’

This will only be my third year as a participant in the Christmas Eve service, less than a tenth of Stephen Cleobury’s involvement, and with his retirement gradually appearing over the horizon, we are aware of wanting to make the last years of his epic tenure appropriately celebratory and well-marked; not the least of this is the serendipitous arrival of the centenary of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in 2018. The privilege and responsibility in which we share are quite unmatched; as thrilling as the building itself, you might say, and true to the fine ambition of our royal founder, Henry VI.

Featured image credit: Choir of King’s College, Cambridge with director Stephen Cleobury in the Chapel at King’s College by Kevin Leighton. Used with permission.

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Brexit versus UK higher education

Higher education has generally been reckoned to be one of the UK’s success stories, competing with the best American universities and setting the standard against which universities in other European countries measure themselves. Perhaps that’s surprising for a few smallish islands off the north-west coast of Europe, known for rain and fog. Much of this success relates to the outward-looking orientation of UK universities, perhaps reflecting an island heritage: 28% of academic staff at UK universities are from abroad, with 16% of that total coming from other European Union (EU) countries – a much higher proportion than in most countries. UK universities have, then, snapped up talent wherever they found it and have prospered as a result: islands need outsiders if they’re going to be successful.

UK universities have also been leaders in EU research, particularly in the big multiyear “Framework” programs across the sciences and social sciences, involving teams of researchers in universities and other organizations from right across Europe. UK universities receive roughly €1bn a year from European programs, as well as scooping up many of the brightest students from around Europe who want to study in Britain (the English language helps, of course, but that’s only part of the story). UK science, in particular, has benefited from EU-funded projects such as the nuclear fusion project known as JET, which has come closer than anyone else to generating electricity from fusion – the holy grail of sustainable energy. Advanced projects such as this attract the best scientific brains from around the world, who may work collaboratively with UK universities and perhaps take up jobs in Britain when their project work ends. It’s a virtuous spiral, of international collaboration driving up standards locally, which makes future international work more likely, attracting more smart people, and the businesses who want to work with them, from around the globe.

What’s not to like? Well, plenty, apparently. All these good things depend on the UK being a member of the EU, and the British government has decided that it wants to play no further part in this kind of European collaboration. Britain thinks it will save money as a result – being a relatively rich country, the UK is a net contributor to the EU budget – but the government doesn’t seem to understand that in academic work, money is only part of it: people are more important. (You might think that politicians would get the people thing.) Even if in the improbable event that the UK government fills the €1bn hole in university budgets, exclusion from joint European projects will put British research out on a limb, detached from mainstream European work. An island drifting off into the Atlantic mists, as our European friends see it.

As a result, an unintended message is received by people in other European countries, and beyond: Britain doesn’t value you. This is already making it difficult for UK haulage firms, for example, to recruit the truck drivers needed from abroad: what will be the effect on researchers who could get a job tomorrow at a top university anywhere in the world? Is it likely that they will choose a country that is pulling out of European commitments, seeking to cut itself off? Universities in other European countries, long used to operating in the shadow of UK higher education, are realising that a wonderful opportunity is opening up: they will be sad to lose contact with their British friends, sure, but they will be able to recruit the international students who would probably otherwise have gone to Britain, gain the research contracts that would otherwise have gone to the UK, and recruit the academic staff to go with them.

Advanced manufacturing in areas such as aerospace and pharmaceuticals – both British strengths – will slowly migrate to other European centres as the international companies concerned decide that they need to be able to operate freely across European markets, not just in the British one. (The move of the European Medicines Agency from London to Amsterdam, for example, will encourage pharmaceutical firms to follow it.) The “knowledge economy” to which universities have both contributed and benefited from will gradually weaken in the UK and strengthen in mainland Europe. Britain will become an island in more than the strictly geographic sense.

Featured image credit: Books Study Literature Learn Stack by CongerDesign. Public domain via Pixabay .

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Pain relief and palliative care around the world

Around the world access to pain relief and to palliative care services is emerging as a growing public health issue. In many countries getting appropriate pain relieving drugs for those with advanced disease is constrained by overly-zealous laws and procedures. Likewise the provision of palliative care education, research and delivery, although making some headway and achieving policy recognition in places, is still extremely limited, often where the need is greatest. In such a context of halting progress, the recent report from the Lancet Commission on Pain and Palliative Care is most welcome.

I was fortunate to be asked to join some 61 co-authors from 25 countries to assist in the Commission, though the bulk of the activity was driven forward by a small group of people who played major roles in the research and writing. I believe they have brought something new to the table that merits serous attention. Let’s first put it in context.

In 1990 the World Health Organization set out the scope and definition of palliative care and began to suggest how these should be pursued as public health issues. Twenty four years later the World Health Assembly, the governing body of WHO,  passed a resolution calling on all governments to integrate palliative care across the life course into their strategies and plans, with a particular focus on community interventions. The years in between saw the publication of two world maps of palliative care development, in 2008 and 2013. We have also seen the strengthening of palliative care advocacy organisations such as IAHPC and WHPCA, which now do a great deal to create awareness about and encourage the development of palliative care services around the world. Many countries have palliative care policies, guidelines, and strategies. The ‘field’ of palliative care is growing, with more specialist practitioners, training programmes, research, and knowledge centres.

Image credit: “Doctor Medical Medicine Health Stetoscope” by DarkoStojanovic. CC0 via Pixabay.

If there has been any tendency to self-congratulate over all this, the Commission’s report sweeps it aside in a chilling blast of new data, ambitious recommendations and an emotive call to action.

The report is a stark description of the obdurate problems that remain and the massive injustices that prevail around the world when it comes to pain relief and palliative care. But with that the authors bring new approaches and recommendations. Likewise, if the Commission’s report is lengthy and detailed, nevertheless, passion and a commitment to change leap off every page.

This report does four things:

It quantifies (for the first time) the heavy burden worldwide of ‘serious health-related suffering’ that can be ameliorated by palliative care and pain relief.
It describes and gives costings for an ‘essential package’ of palliative care and pain relief health services that might alleviate that burden.
It emphasises the inequitable access and unfair costing of ‘off patent’ oral and injectable morphine and what it would cost to make this key drug adequately and fairly available in all countries.
It advocates strongly that access to pain relief and palliative care should become a part of Universal Health Coverage in all countries – requiring strategies at the national and global level.

In 2015, an estimated 25.5 million people died with serious health related suffering – equivalent to nearly half of all deaths worldwide. This includes 2.5 million children aged under 15 years. In addition, another 35.5 million people experienced serious health-related suffering, but did not die.

The Commission therefore produces a devastating new metric. The total number of people needing palliative care per year is over 61 million, including 5.3 million children. That’s equivalent to the entire population of Italy. Yet more than 80% of those people needing palliative care are found not in situations of affluence, but in low and middle-income countries.

We know already that most palliative care capital and resources are concentrated in the rich countries. But where the need for palliative care is greatest, the level of provision, if it exists at all, is often patchy and quite incommensurate with what is required by way of response. In his comment on the report, Lancet editor Richard Horton puts it unambiguously: ‘The Commission has uncovered an appalling oversight in global health. It is time for that oversight to be remedied’.

My sense is that we have gone to a different level with the Commission’s report. Its analysis is compelling. It will rally support and engagement. It rightly calls for more and better research to support its implementation. In the coming weeks and months we will see how other communities of interest respond, particularly palliative care specialists. The report is not only a manifesto for action; it is also a strategic intervention that will no doubt provoke wider debate and commentary.

This post was originally published on the University of Glasgow’s End of Life Studies blog on 13 October 2017.

Featured Image Credit: ‘388344’ by Samuel Scrimshaw Public Domain via Unsplash 

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Using evolutionary history to save pangolins from extinction

Pangolins, or scale-bodied anteaters, are a unique lineage of mammals exclusively feeding on ants and termites. Eight species are distributed across Africa and Asia. They all show extraordinary adaptation to myrmecophagy (specialized diet of ants and termites), including a scaled armor covering the body and tail that protects them from bites (both from bugs and large predators!), powerful arms and claws to rip anthills and termite mounds open, toothless jaws, and a long, sticky tongue that can reach 70 cm in the largest species (the giant pangolin).

Much can be learnt from the etymology of animal names. The genus name Manis, often applied to all the species of pangolins, comes from the Latin manes meaning “ghost” or “spirit of the dead” in Roman mythology. It echoes the nocturnal and secretive way of life of pangolins, but also their uncommon, scaly appearance. The common name “pangolin” is derived from the Malay word “Peng-guling”, meaning “the roller” as the animal curls into a ball when threatened. Sadly, this trait is a reflection of the pangolins’ easy-to-catch nature, predestining them to heavy exploitation by humans.

Pangolins have traditionally been highly-valued for their meat –considered a delicacy– and the purported healing properties of their scales. An anonymous article published in 1938 in Nature details customary pangolin use in Asia: “Dried scales are roasted, ashed, cooked in oil, butter, vinegar, boy’s urine, or roasted with earth or oyster-shells, to cure excessive nervousness and hysterical crying in children, women possessed by devils and ogres, malarial fever and deafness”. Many of these practices continue, including the use of pangolin scales as aphrodisiacs and to cure maladies such as toxicosis, scabies, inflammation, rheumatisms, asthma, poor blood circulation, and more recently, breast cancer.

Pangolins are easy-to-catch, highly sensitive to habitat degradation and have low reproduction rates; as such, they are one of the mammalian groups most prone to extinction. They are currently considered to be the most trafficked mammals and are often portrayed as the flagship species of the illegal wildlife–or bushmeat–trade. During the last several decades they have been literally “eaten to extinction” because of an unsustainable demand from large urban centers. For example, the Chinese traditional medicine market consumes over 135,000 tons of pangolins annually.  Recent seizures in Hong Kong and China suggest that as Asian pangolins become more scarce, traffickers are increasingly focusing on African populations using some of the same criminal networks that were set up for the ivory trade.

A common African pangolin waiting for a Chinese buyer to purchase her in Benin. Photo Credit: Philippe Gaubert. Used with permission.

As a consequence, all eight species of pangolins have been raised to vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered status on the IUCN Red List and have been moved to Appendix I of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 2016, thus receiving full international trade ban.

Documenting and controlling the pangolin trade is complicated by the elusive criminal networks that feed the market and the variety of forms through which pangolins are traded, including smoked carcasses, chopped meat, scales and scale powder, paws and embryo soups. Moreover, our lack of knowledge of pangolin evolutionary and natural history complicate attempts to assess the impact of pangolin trade and to develop tools and knowledge to design comprehensive management plans.

In 2005, when I started to study pangolins at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), the high number of animals sold on African bushmeat markets was a shock and motivated me to develop a genetic framework and complete pangolin phylogeny that could address many unanswered questions including what species of pangolin are sold, and where do they come from? Together with collaborators from eight countries, a worldwide initiative was launched to obtain samples from these secretive species with most of the samples provided by the bushmeat markets. The list was completed by assessing museum specimens and their degraded–but useful–DNA, as was the case with the small population of Palawan pangolins.

Skinned, chopped and frozen carcass of a giant pangolin sold on a bushmeat market in Cameroon. Photo Credit: Flobert Njiokou. Used with permission.

Our ultimate objective in this initiative was to revise classical pangolin taxonomic boundaries using a comprehensive phylogenetic framework and to identify the most suitable genetic markers and tools for the molecular tracking of the worldwide pangolin trade.

Combining mitogenomic and nuclear gene datasets, we first estimated that extant pangolins represented an ancient mammalian lineage of Upper Eocene origin that split into Asian and African lineages before the Oligocene-Miocene boundary.

Our taxonomic analyses based on genetic and morphological data revealed (i) a new subfamily of small African pangolins, the Phatagininae and (ii) an important level of cryptic (previously undetected) diversity within the African common pangolin, the most common species in the African tropics, suggesting that new species of pangolins remain to be described.

Importantly, we set up a new generation of molecular tools (markers) that will improve our ability to trace the worldwide pangolin trade. These markers included full mitogenomes, which are ‘super markers’ providing > 5,000 diagnostic sites among pangolins’ species and lineages. We also designed more traditional and affordable approaches that targeted diagnostic portions of specific genes, both from the mitochondrial and the nuclear genome.

By generating thousands of diagnostic sites across the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes our study provides an unprecedented resource with which to efficiently track the worldwide pangolin trade. To date, only a few studies have used genetic tools to explore the geographic structure of pangolins and trace their seizures. Our results will facilitate more in-depth analyses of geographic subdivisions in the pangolins’ ranges and will help monitor pangolin trade worldwide, providing crucial information to local and global conservation and wildlife trade groups. By better understanding the history and incredible diversity among pangolins, we hope to help save pangolins from extinction, before it is too late.

Featured image credit: Pangolin by Adam Tusk. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr. 

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Nine of diamonds, or the curse of Scotland: an etymological drama in two acts. Act 2, Scene 2

See the previous posts with the same title. We are approaching the end of the drama. It will be a thriller without a denouement, a tragedy without catharsis, but such are most etymological dramas. Putting the kibosh on the origin of a hard word or phrase is an almost impossible endeavor.

Heraldry for etymologists and a note on unlikely candidates

It has been said, and for good reason, that, whenever people played cards, every man whose unpopularity made him hated by the people and bearing as arms nine lozenges could be referred to as the curse of Scotland. The literature on armorial bearings is not easy to read, for the entire vocabulary is French. Today, easily understood is perhaps only bent sinister, alluding to bastardy, with its typical French word order (an adjective after the noun it modifies, as in heir apparent, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, court martial, and so forth). Sinister of course means “left.” While reading descriptions of arms of mail, one should be ready to understand phrases like or on a saltire azure (that is, a geometrical figure like St. Andrew’s cross against the background of gold).

[image error]“This is bent sinister. Great people, William the Conqueror, or William the Bastard, among them, wore it proudly. Apparently, there is nothing sinister about it. Bent sinister also happens to be the title of a novel by Nabokov.” Image credit: Argent a bend sinister gules by Ipankonin. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Daniel Shawfield’s coat of arms has already been mentioned (see the comment on the first installment of this series). The expected nine lozenges do not appear there. Then there was a certain Colonel Packer, who presumably was on the scaffold when Charles I was beheaded and afterwards commanded with great severity in Scotland. No version of the armorial bearings of the Packers looks in any way like the nine of diamonds. It is also most unlikely that such a visible person would have survived the end of the Civil War. In any case, Packer does not appear among the regicides. See also below on the confusion of names in printed sources! Then comes John Dalrymple, the Earl of Stair, and his coat of arms fits the plot and brings us to the Massacre of Glencoe.

The Massacre of Glencoe and Lord Stair

In the previous post, the bloody events that attended the Jacobite movement in England were touched upon. The root of the word Jacobite is the Latinized form of James. The deposed James II was the last Stuart (and the last Catholic) king of England. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Mary and her husband William (that is, Mary II and William III) ruled the country, but their ascension to the throne did not end the period of turmoil. The subject that concerns us centers on the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. Scotland had many catholic sympathizers and remained a hotbed of political unrest. There is no need to describe in detail the events that led to the tragedy of February 3, 1693, in the Highlands of Scotland. Whatever the causes of that tragedy, one thing remains undisputed. On that day, 38 McDonalds from the clan MacDonald of Glencoe were killed treacherously, and 48 women and children died of exposure, after their homes were burned.  Even those who supported the assailants agreed that such atrocities cannot be exonerated.

“This is the Dalrymple coat of mail. The lozenges are here all right.” Dalrymple Coat of Arms courtesy of Culloden Battlefield.

Lord Stair was Secretary of State for Scotland and fought for obtaining allegiance to William and Mary. He was  (and is) mainly remembered for the role he played  in concluding the 1701 Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, which resulted in the creating of Great Britain. In Scotland, many people looked upon this treaty as a disaster. Lord Stair’s coat of arms did contain nine lozenges (see above), but whether we have solved the riddle of the card remains unclear. James Murray, whose letter I quoted in full in the previous post, did not know the origin of the phrase the curse of Scotland as applied to the playing card. He only referred to The Imperial Dictionary and asked a question. In that dictionary, mention is made of Colonel Parker, a cruel commander in Scotland after the death of Charles I. He must be the same person who appeared in the pages of The Gentleman’s Magazine as Colonel Packer, and I wonder which name is correct. In any case, we don’t owe the phrase under investigation to him.

When the time came for explaining in the OED the curse of Scotland, Murray wrote that its origin is doubtful, but that a connection between the armorial bearings of Lord Stair, his role in bringing about the Union, and the name of the card is not unlikely. In the OED online, this statement has not been revised. The Century Dictionary says the same. However, the contributors to The Imperial Dictionary, the OED, and The Century Dictionary had not yet discovered the short text in The British Apollo. The Massacre of Glencoe took place in 1693, and Apollo was published in 1708. It is hard to imagine that fifteen years after the tragedy no one remembered the association between the mastermind behind the event and the phrase that allegedly referred to him.

“Glencoe. The apotheosis of war.” The Massacre of Glencoe courtesy of Scotland Info Guide.

Apollo’s editors knew only the folklore about every ninth king of Scotland being a tyrant. In my opinion, the phrase predates 1693; I believe that it was tied to Lord Stair in retrospect. There is a legend that when Robert Bruce was in flight on the water of Cairn in the Galloway district, the heel of his boot became loose. The treacherous or careless Rob McQuechan undertook to mend the boot and wounded Bruce badly in the heel. Robert Burns, according to the recollections of his friend, spoke of the wound as of NINE inches in extent, even though the popular proverb says as gleg [quick] as MacKeachan’s elshin [awl], that went through six plies blend leather, and half an inch into the king’s heel. Nine seems to be as important number in Scottish oral tradition as in all European folklore and mythology. Burns probably wanted the nail to go all the way to Bruce’s heart. The name of the blood red card with its nine sharp diamonds can trace to this or any other similar tale. In 1893, Murray wrote: “I have not at present any grounds for thinking that the phrase is of Scottish origin.” But it probably is, and the entry in the OED points to Murray’s change of mind on this issue.

Enter Fool

In such a drama, one cannot do without an anticlimax. There is a story that in the second half of the seventeenth century, a certain George Campbell attempted to steal the crown out of Edinburgh castle, but succeeded only in abstracting nine jewels from it. To replace the diamonds, a heavy tax was laid on the whole kingdom; hence, allegedly, the curse of Scotland. The story was repeated as late as the 1830. I was unable to find anything on this event, but at one time, the nine of diamonds was indeed called George Campbell.

“The indomitable Robert Bruce. No awl, even nine inches long, could rob him of victory.” Image credit: Robert the Bruce kills Sir Henry de Bohun on the first day of the Battle of Bannockburn by James William Edmund Doyle. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Behind the scenes

A bibliographical note

In periodicals, the idiom was discussed in four waves: in The Gentleman’s Magazine, beginning with 1786, and in Notes and Queries [NQ] in 1849-1851, the 1870’s, and the 1890’s. The best early survey of the existing conjectures will be found in NQ, 5th Series/IV: 20. In The British Apollo, the pages are not numbered. To make the search easier, I’ll give the reference: see the issue for September 3-September 8, 1708 (this edition existed for one year only!), p. 2, the left-hand column.

Featured Image Credit: “Statue Queen Victoria Glasgow Square Scotland” by skeeze. CC0 via Pixabay. 

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Test your knowledge of the English legal system

The English legal system has a long history of traditions and symbolism. Do you know your periwigs from your powdered wigs, your judicial dress from your barrister’s robes, and your green bags from your gavels? While some of the quirks and traditions of the English legal system may seem archaic, even bizarre, they from part of the fundamental constitution of UK culture and are therefore of relevance to anyone with an interest in it.

Questions and answers are taken from Geoffrey Rivlin, First Steps in the Law, 7th edition and Martin Partington, Introduction to the English Legal System 2017-2018.

Featured image credit: Justicia goddess of justice by Birga. CC0 Public domain via Pixabay

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