Oxford University Press's Blog, page 655

World Blood Donor Day 2015: blood types [infographic]

World Blood Donor Day 2015 is celebrated on 14 June each year. This Sunday, the theme is “Thank you for saving my life,” a chance for everyone who has benefited from a blood donation to thank the donors that selflessly donated to the cause. The demand for blood is always high as the shelf life of donated blood is only 42 days. We’ve gathered information about blood types, blood donation, and Clinical Haematology from Oxford Medicine Online for the following infographic on what you need to know about blood.

Download the infographic as pdf or jpg.

Headline image credit: Blood test. CC0 via Pixabay.

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How much do you know about Dracula? [quiz]

One of the greatest horror stories in English literature, Dracula, is the novel that spawned a myth and a proliferation of vampire franchises in film, television, graphic novels, cartoons, and teen fiction. Now that the second very spooky season of the Oxford World’s Classics Reading Group is drawing to a close, let’s see how much you have learnt from reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Do you know the best way to keep a vampire at bay? Or who the gruesome real life inspiration for Count Dracula was? Test your knowledge of all things vampire with our creepy quiz.

Quiz image credit: Wax figures 3 by earl53. Public Domain via morgueFile.

Featured headline image: Moonlight. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Magna Carta: the international dimension

The importance of Magna Carta—both at the time it was issued on 15 June 1215 and in the centuries which followed, when it exerted great influence in countries where the English common law was adopted or imposed—is a major theme of events to mark the charter’s 800th anniversary. But such is the focus on England and English common law that it’s easy to overlook the charter’s international dimension: the part played in its making by ideas, events, and people in other European countries.

The basic purpose of Magna Carta, to define and limit the powers of the crown, had parallels and precedents in southern France and Spain, and even in distant Hungary. Perhaps that is unsurprising, since the English monarchy in around 1200 was an international one. King John was not only king of England, he was also lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy, count of Anjou, and duke of Aquitaine, the ruler of an empire covering most of western France. He spoke French and owned French books.

The power of the English crown intimidated the rulers of Wales and Scotland, and made enemies as well as allies for its wearer among the great lords of France. These were exploited by Philippe II, king of France, and thus John’s overlord for his continental possessions. John’s second marriage, to Isabella of Angoulême, entailed overriding the prior claims to her hand of a French count, Hugues de Lusignan, and so gave Philippe grounds for confiscating the English king’s French lordships. Unlike his elder brother, Richard I, John had little military talent, and by the end of 1204 had lost all his lands north of the Loire.

Many English magnates also lost lands, especially in Normandy, and sometimes made efforts to retain them through negotiations with King Philippe. William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, did so, and aroused John’s easily-induced suspicions as a result. No less distrusted was Stephen Langton, whose elevation to the archbishopric of Canterbury by Innocent III in 1206 brought John into conflict with another external power, the papacy. Langton was a Lincolnshire man by birth, but his having studied, and then taught, at the University of Paris since around 1165 made John refuse to accept him as the head of the English church. To force the king’s compliance, in 1208 Innocent placed England under an interdict (a general prohibition of the holding of religious services), and excommunicated John himself in 1209. Most of the English bishops, and many other clerics, refused to serve an excommunicated king and went abroad, nearly always to France.

John’s loss of French lands and quarrel with Rome coloured events for much of the rest of his reign—his huge efforts to recover Normandy, in particular, lay behind many of the activities condemned in Magna Carta, as he collected money to raise troops and finance allies. Thus it placed limits on his ability to raise money through ‘reliefs’ (in effect inheritance taxes, as addressed in chapter 2 of the charter), to institute other taxes without the consent of his leading subjects (chapter 12), to impose fines out of all proportion to the offence (chapter 20), and to sell justice (chapter 40). It also forbade him to employ foreign soldiers, men like Girard d’Athée and Falkes de Bréauté who became deeply unpopular (chapters 50-51), and reversed his harsh treatment of the Welsh and Scots (chapters 57-59). The Welsh prince Llywelyn ab Iorwerth had responded to John’s actions by making an alliance with King Philippe. Conspicuously lacking in man-management skills, John always found it easier to compel than to persuade men to support and follow him, often by taking hostages from them (chapter 49).

The Magna Carta (originally known as the Charter of Liberties) of 1215. British Library. Cotton MS Augustus II 106. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

John’s methods bred resentment (his summoning English barons to serve in armies in France provoked much discontent), then resistance. In 1212 he learnt of a plot against his life led by two leading barons, Eustace de Vescy and Robert Fitzwalter; on its discovery, Eustace fled to Scotland, Robert to France. A year later they returned to England after John came to terms with the pope—he accepted Langton as archbishop, and even became a papal vassal, thus effectively making Innocent III his ally. With that embarrassment removed, in 1214 John brought his plans for war in France to fruition. But a double attack on the French king, by one army led by John himself in the south, and another in the north largely made up of his allies, failed utterly. The battle of Bouvines, in which the northern forces were crushed on 27 July, was decisive for events in England as well as in France. When John returned home defeated, rebellion was imminent.

Magna Carta was intended to prevent civil war. Opinions differ as to the influence exerted upon it by canon law, the international law of the church, but its crucial insistence that a king should act in accordance with law had formed part of Langton’s teaching at Paris. The concessions it extracted were too much for the king, though not enough for his baronial enemies who were exasperated by years of oppression. The pope soon annulled Magna Carta, as extracted from the king under duress, and in the autumn of 1215 civil war broke out in earnest, with the barons making up for their own lack of military strength by offering the throne to Louis, the eldest son and heir of King Philippe.

The extent to which these events took place in a world of fluctuating loyalties extending well beyond England is demonstrated in the actions of two other men of continental origin. In 1216 the fleet which brought Prince Louis and his men to England was commanded by Eustace the Monk—a mercenary born in the county of Boulogne who had previously served King John before switching his loyalties. Then, following King John’s death in October 1216 a group of royalists oversaw a re-issue of Magna Carta. They were headed by the papal legate, Guala Bicchieri. The actions of this Italian prelate did much to rescue the Plantagenet dynasty, and the Great Charter as well.

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The greatest charter?

On 15 June 2015, Magna Carta celebrates its 800th anniversary. More has been written about this document than about virtually any other piece of parchment in world history. A great deal has been wrongly attributed to it: democracy, Habeas Corpus, Parliament, and trial by jury are all supposed somehow to trace their origins to Runnymede and 1215. In reality, if any of these ideas are even touched upon within Magna Carta, they are found there only in embryonic form. Some were not invented until the seventeenth century or even later; others can be found long before Runnymede, in the laws of the Anglo-Saxons or even in the laws of ancient Athens or Rome.

The Runnymede charter survived as English law for less than a dozen weeks. By September 1215, it had been repudiated by King, Pope, and barons. Why then does this document continue to inspire celebration not just in England but the USA and across the globe? Why do all shades of political opinion, from the most radical to the most reactionary, continue to venerate this failed peace treaty, almost as if it were holy writ?

The answer here lies in part with the document’s longevity. Stifled at birth by King John, it was revived just over a year later, in November 1216, following the death of John and the accession of his nine year-old son. The ministers of this boy king, Henry III, reissued Magna Carta in revised form. No longer a settlement imposed at sword point, it was now proclaimed as a promise of future good government. Shorn of the more obnoxious of the clauses agreed at Runnymede (above all of the subjection of the King to judgement by a committee of twenty-five barons) it was reissued again and again thereafter, more or less whenever political crisis forced the King into negotiation with his subjects. By 1297, it was being cited as a guarantee that the King would not tax his subjects without their consent: the principle of ‘No taxation without representation’, nearly five centuries in advance of the American Revolution of the 1770s.

The 1225 version of Magna Carta issued by Henry III of England. This copy is in the National Archives (London), DL 10/71. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Although in practice, Magna Carta failed to curb royal tyranny or misgovernment, it established a fundamental principle that kings ruled well only in so far as they ruled according to law. As an instrument restraining the untrammelled sovereignty of either monarchy or republic, the charter has since played a distinguished role not only in American independence but in the English Civil War of the 1640s, the French Revolution of 1789, and more recently in attempts to ensure that ruler and people, colonists and colonized are all established under the rule of law. Anniversaries are occasions for new discovery, not just for complacent celebration.

We now know a great deal more than we did, even a few years ago, about Magna Carta and the circumstances of its birth. We can appreciate the role played in its subsequent history by accident and myth making, by churchmen and lawyers, saints and sinners. Even in this anniversary year, new evidence has come to light, not least about the role that Magna Carta played, as recently as 1941, in fostering understanding between Britain and the USA. Churchill, Mandela and Gandhi are just a few of the statesmen who have appealed to the spirit of Runnymede. Their manipulation of Magna Carta has not always been in accordance with the thirteenth-century realities from which the document arose. Nonetheless, even the myths that we tell about ourselves can alter behaviour or determine the course of future events. Eight hundred years on, Magna Carta retains its fascination. Even now it has secrets to disclose.

Featured image credit: “Scroll”. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Darra Goldstein on food scholarship

What do Russians poets eat? When does food heritage become international politics? How has sugar been used as medicine? Darra Goldstein, the editor-in-chief to The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, shares her insights on how a three-year project transformed into the lively compendium of all things sweet. She takes us through the process of what it was like to oversee 265 contributors and over 600 entries, and the journey she took to get where she is today.

When food and scholarship converge

Building an Oxford Companion — a genesis

Building an Oxford Companion — in the pursuit of accuracy

 Building an Oxford Companion — sugar-coating the pill

Headline image credit: Sugar & Sweets on the Windowsill. Photo by Connie Ngo for Oxford University Press.

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Facing the challenges of palliative care: evolution

The 5th edition of the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine is dedicated to the memory of Prof Geoffrey Hanks, one of three founding editors of the textbook, who died in June 2013. With a legacy spanning almost four decades as a clinician, researcher, teacher and editor, Geoffrey was a man of great compassion, wisdom, and courage. While we are greatly saddened by his untimely death, we are inspired by his legacy.

The two decades since the first edition of this textbook have witnessed truly remarkable growth in palliative care. Such growth is challenging to master, and brings both uncertainties and optimism about the future. In this three-part series of articles, we’ll take a look at some of the complex and challenging issues of continuity, development, and evolution in the field of palliative care.

One of the early axioms of palliative care was that it sought to provide an alternative to ‘aggressive’ or ‘highly technical’ medical care. Indeed palliative care was often presented as ‘strong’ on care, ‘low’ on technology. In the sixties and early seventies, when these concepts were initially articulated, low technology options were indeed often the very best that could be offered to help relieve patient distress. At that time, there were very few truly effective palliative anti-tumour options beyond radiotherapy, endoscopy, and interventional radiology.

The extraordinary development of non-curative, but potentially beneficial interventions to address so many of the conditions, symptoms and complications confronted by patients, has created new opportunities, tensions, and dilemmas for palliative medicine clinicians.

New therapeutic opportunities

The last 20 years have seen dramatic changes in the non-curative treatment options for many of the conditions we encounter, particularly in cancer, HIV, and cardiology. These interventions have shifted the natural history of advanced illness. While they cannot cure, they have created new opportunities to prolong life while better controlling the ravages of disease. Some interventions may add months, others, possibly years to survival.

Whereas previously it was often the role of the palliative medicine clinician to present a counterpoint to the high morbidity and low likely benefit of chemotherapy, these developments have necessitated a change. Palliative medicine clinicians now must possess a more sophisticated understanding of disease-modifying palliative approaches for a broad array of common diseases. They must contribute to a discussion of the risks and burdens verses the potential benefits of these therapies, even as they encourage a broader understanding of the options for care.

New palliative interventions exist not only for specific disease states but also for specific disease complications. Endoscopic interventions and interventional radiology have radically broadened the range of options in the cases of obstruction of luminal structures. These approaches have altered the management of intestinal, biliary, ureteric, and bronchial obstruction, venous compression syndromes and, in select cases, pain management. Surgical approaches have made major contributions to the management of complications of cancer such as spinal cord compression, brain metastases, and impending fractures.

New tensions

Concern is often expressed that the increased availability of technical interventions somehow diminishes from the ability to care, or from the heart of palliative care. The worry is that palliative care is being excessively “medicalized” or “professionalized”.

However, just as there is a romantic image of the nineteenth century physician at the bedside of his patient, who offers perhaps a tincture of opium but primarily provides comfort through his mere presence, there is also a tendency to over-romanticize the early days of palliative care. Today, we and the patients we serve have better therapeutic options to promote the pursuit of our common goals. Increasingly, palliative care services are integrated with oncology, respiratory medicine, cardiology, and other medical specialties, so that appropriate sophisticated treatments may be used with the intent of either palliation or life prolongation. This integrated approach needs careful discussion with the patient and their family, including clear information about the likelihood of benefits, risks and alternative approaches.

Many dying patients are not in a rush to die, and their desire for life-prolonging treatments is understandable, and often within the bounds of potentially appropriate medical care. Although the World Health Organization’s definition of palliative care includes the statement that palliative care “intends neither to hasten nor postpone death,” one must recognize that there is a difference between prolonging dying and prolonging a life in the face of incurable illness. Unfortunately, this distinction is often confused, leading people to believe that non-curative disease modifying drugs or other high tech palliative interventions are not part of palliative care. The consequence of this confusion is substantial. Indeed, some patients are denied palliative care services because they are interested in these interventions or treatments, and others are denied access to treatments that would otherwise serve their goals of care because they are in a palliative care clinical pathway.

New Challenges

In some countries, service delivery models for palliative care were developed with the aim of offering a more cost-effective way of managing patients with incurable illness. Many programs are budgeted based on assumptions of great savings for the health care funders.

Cost savings is not a primary objective of palliative care, but it may be an unintended consequence of a focus on medically-appropriate care guided in shared decision-making by an informed patient and family. It is essential that policymakers understand this principle and also accept that cost savings is an aggregate concept. For some patients, palliative care is not inexpensive. Specialist palliative care always requires intensive skilled human resources, with adequate staff to allow for the provision of individualized care, and it may require costly technology or pharmaceuticals.

When a system of palliative care is supported in a capitated model, financial sustainability requires careful management of the care and a large enough group to benefit from a risk pool. In the United States, many hospices are small and are forced to limit access or deny treatment with accepted palliative interventions because reimbursements are too low. Even large hospices with access to a substantial risk pool cannot offer modern chemotherapy and targeted therapy for cancer, even if the treatment is clearly palliative and minimally life-prolonging. It is unknown how systems like this one and many others around the world, predicated on payment models that have not yet adapted to the evolving nature of palliative care, will cope with an ever-increasing need for services. The developed world has resources, but redistribution of funds to underwrite the development and dissemination of specialist palliative care is needed. Identifying the means to pay for this necessary care is among the greatest challenges we face.

Read the first two parts “Facing the challenges of palliative care: continuity” and “Facing the challenges of palliative care: development”.

Featured image: Flower By Marta Pawlik. CC0 via Unsplash.

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Hey everybody! Meet Yasmin!

Please welcome another newbie to the Social Media team at Oxford University Press, Yasmin Coonjah, who joined the gang in May 2015 as an OUPblog Deputy Editor and Social Media Marketing Assistant!

What’s the most surprising thing about working at OUP?

Probably how big the company is and how many sub-divisions in each department. I didn’t expect there to be so many but it’s not intimidating at all. And that there’s a gym on site, the range of facilities never cease to amaze me.

What is your favourite book?

It’s always changing with the more I read. At the moment it’s a tie between The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Both very funny books and shouldn’t be read in public for fear of looking like a giggling idiot.

What are you reading right now?

I’m reading two at the moment; The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman and New Media: The Key Concepts by David Beer and Nicolas Gane.

[image error]Yasmin Coonjah

If you didn’t work in publishing what would you be doing?

Either writing scripts, arts marketing, or a professional box-set binge watcher (what do you mean that doesn’t exist?)

Open the book you’re currently reading and turn to page 78. Tell us the title of the book, and the third sentence on that page.

“I loved the house, and the garden. I loved the rambling shabbiness of it.” (The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman)

What is your favourite word?

Sesquipedalian. It’s a long word for long words.

What drew you to work for OUP in the first place? 

The name alone, to have the opportunity to work  “behind-the-scenes” and to be surrounded by books.

What’s the first thing you do when you get to work in the morning?

Check my emails and then head downstairs to grab coffee, because as I have learnt the hard way it’s hard to be productive without caffeine.

What is the strangest thing currently on or in your desk?

I recently bought these two little guys to put on my desk, I don’t know about strange but they’re certainly cute!

Jon Snow and Thor pop vinyl figures. Photo by Yasmin Coonjah

Most obscure talent or hobby?

When the first Harry Potter film came out when I was eight, I watched it so much I was able to recite the film word for word….

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Vincent van Gogh’s images of motherhood

Vincent van Gogh’s turbulent relationship with mothers—especially his own—began a full year before his birth. On 30 March 1852, Anna Carbentus van Gogh gave birth to a son, Vincent Willem van Gogh, who was stillborn. Anna tearfully buried her son in the cemetery of the parsonage where the Van Goghs lived. A year later to the day, Anna would give birth to another son, whom she also named Vincent Willem van Gogh.

Each day, the young Vincent would walk by a grave marked with his name and exact birthday, and weekly, Anna would take Vincent to decorate the grave of his older brother with flowers. Vincent grew up unable to compare to the perfect, imaginary personality Anna had constructed for her dead child. In his letters, Vincent described his childhood as cold and withdrawn, and his relationship with his mother, tense at best. Rejected by his own mother in favor of an ideal to which he could never measure up, Vincent began his lifelong obsessive quest to replace his mother’s love, beginning with his own cousin, Kee.

Kee vos Stricker visited the van Gogh family at Etten after the death of her husband in 1881, bringing her young son Jan with her. Vincent was attracted to her immediately, quickly falling into a possessive infatuation that the family shunned. For her part, Kee was categorically disinterested in—and even frightened by—Vincent, rejecting him with the words, “No, never, never.” Vincent was stunned by this dismissal. He wrote repeatedly to Theo, insisting that he and Kee could be together, if only she were not so preoccupied with her past.

He wrote: “I sometimes shudder at the thought of K.V., seeing her dwelling on the past and clinging to old, dead notions. There’s something fatal about it, and oh, she’d be none the worse for changing her mind. I think it quite possible that her reaction will come, there’s so much in her that’s healthy and lively.” (Letter 193, December 1881).

The same, of course, could be said of Vincent’s mother, who was hung up on the perfect child that never was—the first Vincent Willem van Gogh. As seen in his letters, Vincent returned to a state of childlike petulancy, even going to his uncle’s house and dramatically demanding to see Kee by holding his hand over a flame.

Photo of Kee vos Stricker with her son, c. 1879/1880 by Albert Greiner; and Woman Seated (1882), public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Eventually, Vincent, estranged from his family and from the woman he loved, left for The Hague, where he encountered a pregnant prostitute, Clasina Maria Hoornik, called Sien, and her child. Moved by her destitute life, Vincent took her in in an attempt to rehabilitate her. During the course of their relationship, Vincent created a series of drawings of her performing household tasks like sewing or caring for her son. Despite the tumultuous reality of their relationship, Vincent depicted Sien in states of domestic bliss, deliberately constructing false images of the happy home life that had always eluded him. Thus, the Sien series calls to mind his past relationships with his mother and Kee. In Woman Seated, Vincent even draws Sien in a dress identical to one worn in a portrait of Kee with her son Jan.

In Sien with an Umbrella and Prayer Book, Sien looks startlingly similar to Vincent’s mother, a parson’s wife and severe woman whom Vincent would have seen constantly carrying a prayer book. Through his Sien series, Vincent hoped to create the life he had always wanted through his art—although, of course, he was unsuccessful. Eventually, unable to shape the strong-willed Sien into his idea of perfect domesticity, the two parted ways, leaving Vincent devastated.

For a time, it seemed that Vincent had abandoned his maternal obsession. However, as his mental health suffered previously unknown strains, Vincent returned to the motif of the mother once more. In 1888, Vincent would paint Memories of the Garden of Etten (The Ladies of Arles), one of his most poignant works. In it, he depicts his mother and a young woman, probably his sister Wil, walking through a swirling garden, flanked by a woman gardening brilliantly colored flowers. Remarkably, the young woman looks extremely similar to images Vincent had previously made of Kee and Sien. Indeed, the “memories” to which the title refers are of the summer of 1881 in which Vincent had first laid eyes on Kee. Wistful and supernatural, Memories is the pinnacle of Vincent’s obsession with his own mother and the women he had sought to replace her, reaching out to them through space and time.

Garden of Etten (The Ladies of Arles) (1888), Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Like many aspects of Vincent’s life, his relationship with his mother did not have a happy ending. The two were never fully reconciled, and Vincent suffered psychologically because of their estrangement. Regardless, Vincent’s images of motherhood allow us a glimpse into the mind of a man who sought, above all else, acceptance and affection.

Image Credit: “Wheat Field with Crows” by Vincent van Gogh, 1890, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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A Q&A with Work, Aging and Retirement Editor, Mo Wang

Recently, we sat down with the Editor of Work, Aging and Retirement, Mo Wang, to discuss how he got involved with the journal and the plans he has in store for Work, Aging and Retirement in the future.

How would you describe Work, Aging and Retirement to someone who has not heard of it?

Work, Aging and Retirement is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary journal that dedicates to publish evidence-based, translational research on worker aging and retirement, with the goal of enhancing understanding about these phenomena.

What is the most important issue in your field right now?

Currently, the most important issue in this field is to advance our understanding about how to achieve successful aging at work. To address this overarching issue, we need to reach more in-depth and comprehensive understanding about (1) how to facilitate and sustain longer working lives for older adults, (2) how to overcome barriers to reemployment in later adulthood, and (3) how to ease older workers’ transition and adjustment to retirement.

What led you to this particular field of study?

I have a joint Ph.D. degree in Developmental Psychology and Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Therefore, it is natural for me to combine my expertise in these two areas and study worker aging and retirement. I started this line of work in graduate school and continuously find it fascinating. Many worker aging and retirement phenomena are fundamentally intertwined with their specific socioeconomic and policy contexts. Changes have often occurred in these contexts over time (e.g., economic boom due to technology innovation, Social Security reform, health care reform, the recent economic downturn, and early retirement incentive practices), which can alter the research questions investigators ask. Accordingly, there are always new topics and issues that surface in this research field, which constantly pique my curiosity and inspire me to conduct creative research to address them.

In addition, this is a research field that a scientist-practitioner model thrives. Most of the time the research questions in this field map directly to issues emerged in the real world, whether at the socioeconomic level, organizational level, family level, or individual level; and the research findings have a good opportunity to inform these issues and eventually impact our day-to-day life. For me, this direct match between science and practice results in great meaningfulness and constant feedback. Therefore, the research itself is intrinsically motivating to me.

Why did you feel it was important to launch Work, Aging and Retirement?

The research areas of worker aging and retirement have become more and more important in recent years. Demographic projections have shown that by 2018, nearly 23.9% of the total U.S. workforce will be age 55 or older, almost doubling the 12.4% in 1998 and representing a sizable increase from 18.1% in 2008. This rapid trend of labor force aging continues to lead to a steady increase in the number of people who will transition into retirement in the next decade. These same demographic and labor force change patterns were also seen in data from other countries and regions (e.g., Western Europe, Japan, China, and India), suggesting workforce aging and retirement are of global significance with influence on the sustainability of economic and social development of societies.

At the level of the individual, worker aging and transition to retirement are major life changing events that pose significant adjustment challenges for older employees. These are important issues for workers, their families, their employing organizations, and society as a whole. In addition, the context within which employees age and retire has changed significantly in the past thirty years. For example, employees who retire now have to work longer to receive the full Social Security benefit than those retiring twenty years ago. This policy change has occurred not only in the United States, but also in other developed countries, such as Germany and France. Most employers in the private sector have also replaced defined-benefit pensions with defined-contribution plans, which put investment risks on the employees’ side. Employers are eliminating health care benefits for retirees, thus requiring retirees to rely on the much less generous Medicare system for their growing health care needs. Changes such as these have inspired more research to address questions and issues related to worker aging and retirement. Nevertheless, before Work, Aging and Retirement, there is no single journal whose sole mission is to publish research on worker aging and retirement.

Further, in the past decade, U.S. government and governments of other countries (e.g., the European Union, China, Japan, and Australia) have been increasing their research funding for worker aging and retirement research every year. According to AARP, this trend will continue and many private foundations (e.g., Sloan Foundation and American Federation for Aging Research) are following this path. Therefore, Work, Aging and Retirement provides a forum for the publication of research results from this increased funding investment. It also improves the focus of the knowledge dissemination, allowing findings from high-quality research to be collected in order to inform policy-related decisions.

Finally, the launch of Work, Aging and Retirement helps to address methodological issues in research related to worker aging and retirement, contributing to establishing and maintaining standards related to measurement, data analysis, and finding interpretation. Given the multidisciplinary research nature, the methodological issues in this research area are tremendously important for generating meaningful findings, comparing research results, and informing effective policy decisions.

How would you describe Work, Aging and Retirement in 3 words?

Multidisciplinary, multilevel, and multinational.

Tell us about your work outside the journal?

I am currently serving as the Director for the Science of Organizations (SoO) Program at National Science Foundation. In that capacity, I strive to fund basic research that yields a scientific evidence base for improving the design and emergence, development and deployment, and management and ultimate effectiveness of organizations of all kinds. I also conduct research in areas other than older worker employment and retirement, including occupational health psychology, expatriate and newcomer adjustment, leadership and team processes, and advanced quantitative methodologies. The general theme of my research is to unpack how people adjust to changes in their internal qualities and external environment to maintain productivity and well-being.

Featured image credit: Busy office space, © Rawpixel Ltd, via iStock Photo.

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Bridget Bishop: first victim of Salem’s Gallows Hill

On 10 June 1692, the condemned Bridget Bishop was carted from Salem jail to the place that would later be known as Gallows Hill, where Sheriff George Corwin reported he “caused the said Bridget to be hanged by the neck until she was dead.” She would be the first of 19 victims executed during the Salem witch trials.

The Salem witch trials are notable for the prominent role played by spectral evidence. Indeed, all of the indictments against Bishop in 1692 mention only “spectral attack”—that is, the victims were assaulted by a spirit that was invisible to everyone except the afflicted. In addition to the spectacular testimony of the afflicted, however, there was also an extensive set of depositions by people – mostly men – who had been harmed by spectral attack and also by more typical and traditional maleficium, or harmful witchcraft allegedly practiced by Bishop. Maleficium could cause injury to livestock and crops, destruction of property, or even illness or death, but a witch need not employ a specter to cause such evil.

These depositions were an important bolster to the current accusation. The afflicted in 1692 where overwhelmingly teenage girls. Women and children rarely appeared in court. Indeed, you had to be more than fourteen years old to testify. Not only did the depositions of men strengthen the case, but they also suggested that Bridget had been a witch for some time, as the incidents these men referred to took place many years ago. This is not surprising considering that Bridget had first been accused of witchcraft in 1680. The only surviving deposition from that earlier case was made by John Ingersoll’s slave, Juan. He had allegedly seen Bridget’s specter spook a team of horses and steal an egg.

Apparently Bridget escaped these charges, but her neighbors remained suspicious, and many would come forward as witnesses against her at her trial on 2 June 1692. For example, Samuel and Sarah Shattuck testified that after Bridget visited their home in 1680, their young son “was taken in a very drooping condition.” The child soon began to suffer “grievous fits,” and ever since remained as if he were in a manner dead….falling either into fire or water if he be not constantly looked to.”

This substantial commercial block sits on the site of Bridget Bishop’s modest home, on Washington Street, Salem, Massachusetts. Photo by Emerson W. Baker

Richard Coman deposed that eight years earlier in the middle of the night, Bridget Bishop or her specter appeared at his bedside, and lay upon his “breast or body and so oppressed him that he could not speak nor stir…so much as to awake his wife.” John Louder testified about a similar nocturnal visit seven or eight years earlier. He awoke one night to “Bishop, or her likeness sitting upon my stomach” and she held him down and choked him until daybreak. Louder also believed Bishop was behind the “devil” with the body of a monkey and the claws of a rooster that attacked him and struck him dumb for three days. John Bly and his wife Rebecca testified that they bought a sow from Bridget’s husband, Edward Bishop, only to then get into a quarrel with Bridget over the payment. Soon afterwards the sow appeared bewitched. It was “taken with strange fits…seemed blind and deaf” and “foamed at the mouth.”

John Bly and his son William provided even more incriminating evidence. They had been hired by Bishop in 1685 to carry out some repairs on her home. When they took down the cellar wall, they found in the holes between the stones “several poppets made up of rags with hogs’ bristles with headless pins in them with the points outward.” Poppets with pins in them refers to what today people call “voodoo dolls.” These are small dolls that were clothed in part with some hair or possessions stolen from the victims and then stuck with pins or otherwise damaged to inflict pain on the victims. Poppets were all too clear evidence of image magic. The Blys did not produce the actual poppets, but this short, simple testimony would have been viewed as tangible proof of black magic, far more damning than spectral evidence.

The Shattucks’ testimony supported the Blys’ contention that Bridget had poppets. Samuel was a dyer, and once Bridget brought him “sundry pieces of lace some of which were so short that I could not judge them fit for any use.” This statement implied that the tiny pieces of lace were being dyed for clothing for the poppets Bridget made.

Unfortunately, Bridget’s record extended far beyond a past charge of witchcraft. Her stormy marriage to her late second husband, Thomas Oliver, was well-known to all. The two were often seen and heard quarreling. Once on the Sabbath a witness heard Bridget call Thomas an “Old Devil” and an “Old Rogue.” Bridget was “seen at one time face bloody and at other times black and blue.” On at least one occasion, she fought back, landing several blows on Thomas. Such behavior brought them before the court several times. Bridget even had to stand for an hour in the marketplace, wearing a note describing her offense – public humiliation for her bad behavior. More recently she had been accused of theft.

Bridget’s repeated brushes with the law made her a likely witchcraft suspect and meant that people were unlikely to believe her protests. A twelve-year record of spectral attack and maleficium, highlighted with multiple witnesses testifying to the use of poppets, and combined with the fits of a group of teenage girls in the courtroom made for a most convincing case. Given the weight of evidence against her, it is likely Bridget would have been convicted of witchcraft in any English court – be it in Salem or London.

Thomas Newton, the Crown’s Attorney who organized the prosecutions in Salem, knew he had his strongest case against Bridget Bishop. So even though she was not the first accused, Newton decided to try her first. As the trials progressed the evidence would grow weaker. However, the conviction of Bridget Bishop proved that the witchcraft conspiracy was real, so the convictions continued. In perhaps the most disturbing record in American legal history, the Court of Oyer and Terminer would convict all 28 people it tried. If there is a silver lining to this dark cloud it is that Governor William Phips dismissed the court before it could execute all 28.

Featured image: Photo courtesy of Emerson W. Baker.

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