What are we reading? 6/05/2024

[RussellinVT]

I wonder if the misuse of “transpontine” for “transatlantic” is due to a vague idea that it’s derived from “the pond”.

[Berkley]

Logger24 wrote: "I wonder if the misuse of “transpontine” for “transatlantic” is due to a vague idea that it’s derived from “the pond”."

That's as good an explanation as anything I can think of. Also, is it still true that Latin is taught in some schools in the UK and continental Europe? And thus that American writers might have relatively vague ideas about this kind of Latin-derived word compared to those from the UK or Ireland, even the younger generations? Not sure about NZ and Australia, etc.

Canada is, in its usual shamefully dependent manner, pretty much in lock-step with the US. We never had any Latin at any point in our schools, that I know of. Not that I'm saying it's necessary to a practical education in this day and age, of course.

[Paul]

Bill wrote: "I recently said that Stevenson's New Arabian Nights was the only place I'd encountered the word "transpontine". Much to my surprise I saw it again today in the Ange Mlinko's review ..."

I may be wrong but I believe that transpontine popped up 200 some pages ago in Pynchon's Mason & Dixon but no way, no how am I going to search for it in the miasma and dick jokes

[Gpfr]

Berkley wrote: "is it still true that Latin is taught in some schools in the UK and continental Europe?..."

It's still taught in France, but not compulsory.

[Paul]

It's still taught in the classical or standard high school in Italy, as is ancient Greek. Not Greek, Ancient Greek. Deader than Plato, which even living Greeks don't understand. I have a son going to high school soon, and I've had a discussion with him regarding useful knowledge and knowledge pissed into the winds of time. In my days in the USA, Latin was an option for second language in my school, but few took it. It wasn't going to help you pick up the ladies, that's for sure.

Here in Italy the argument is that it helps you 1) "appreciate the roots of the Italian language" or it could be useful 2)"if you want to become a medical doctor" or 3) it helps you better appreciate the classics. 1) I don't need to dig up the tree in order to enjoy the apple and 2) I passed the MCATs hung over with nary a lesson in Latin and 3) I think we've all read Dostoevsky without speaking Russian and still managed to appreciate it.

[Paul]

Logger24 wrote: "The Emperor of All Maladies – Siddartha Mukherjee (2010)

A long and interesting book, balancing human stories of awful suffering (and the occasional heartening success) against centuries of scient..."

Unfortunately, cancer biology is not really much better understood now than 10 years ago for precisely the same reason that CRISPR genome editing is likely to play very little role in cancer therapy: because the underlying causes of cancer are not strictly genetic or epigenetic. My good friend recently published a paper at The Crick Institute that showed that the toxins and pollutants induce cancer without leading to mutation. Rather, the disease is much more systemic involving immunological, stress and metabolical imbalances with a genetic contribution. While the Human Genome Project was a tremendous achievement (and I was on the lawn at Cold Spring Harbor when Watson and McCombie et al announced it), the subsequent sequencing push has laregly been a waste. Sequencing the genome has not led to a significantly better understanding of most diseases, rather it's refined prior knowledge and specified earlier observation.

[Gpfr]

Paul wrote: "It's still taught in the classical or standard high school in Italy, as is ancient Greek ..."

Yes, Greek is also an option here in France, but Latin is more frequent. My grandsons aren't doing either though.
I did Latin at school (England) and so did both my children (France). I also had to take a Latin module at university which I'm afraid we didn't take at all seriously.

[scarletnoir]

Paul wrote: "(Latin is) still taught in the classical or standard high school in Italy, as is ancient Greek. Not Greek, Ancient Greek. Deader than Plato, which even living Greeks don't understand ..."

I did two years of Latin in grammar school (1959-61) but chose French when given the option to drop it. The poem going around at the time was:

Latin is a language
As dead as dead can be.
First it killed the Romans,
And now it's killing me!

I had no strong feelings about it as a subject, except that the teacher was uninspiring and the textbook was very old fashioned. I don't regret my decision as in my experience lessons are never retained for long unless there is some interest or commitment from the pupil - which usually needs a decent teacher as a prerequisite. Since then, I have of course needed to research certain terms and have developed an interest in etymology, without becoming obsessive about it.

I can see that Latin may, perhaps, be of value in certain professions (medicine - though your experience seems to contradict this - and the law), but it should not be regarded with reverence. Given that Boris Johnson studied Classics as part of his course at Oxford, it's hard to see that such subjects lead to any especial benefits either intellectually or morally. (A quick glance at his Wikipedia entry suggests that he - or given his well publicised idleness, a friend or retainer - has recently edited the entry to emphasise the positive...)

[scarletnoir]

Paul wrote: "Unfortunately, cancer biology is not really much better understood now than 10 years ago..."

Thanks for that interesting post.

A question - it does seem that cancer 'treatments' are moving ahead in terms of effectiveness, and indeed have done so in the last 10-15 years - at least, in some areas. Are you saying that in pure theoretical terms cancer is 'not better understood', whilst accepting that in a treatment/technological way, 'things have improved'? (Sort of like a split between pure and applied mathematics?)

I ask because, in 2012 I was treated for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) - at that time, chemotherapy was the main option available. Nowadays, there are several other therapies on offer, some of which appear to give better results - or at least, to be less risky (not a 'kill or cure' option). It feels as if a tremendous amount has been learnt about the condition and about potential treatments in that period.

There is a terrific online support group for this condition at: https://healthunlocked.com/cllsupport
with very well informed administrators. (The odd crank does post - it's not a closed forum.) This enables sufferers to check the latest research information about the condition, and to discuss personal experiences. From this I get the impression that much has been learnt...

[RussellinVT]

Berkley wrote: "...Also, is it still true that Latin is taught in some schools in the UK and continental Europe? ..."

I believe Latin, and Ancient Greek, are still offered as options in some schools in the UK, though I would guess more in the private sector than in state schools. I learned from a quick look at the internet that there are circa 5,000 students studying Classics at the eight British universities that have courses in the subject, so they must have learned it somewhere. Government statistics show that fewer than 2% of A Level entries in 2023 were for Ancient Languages, but surprisingly this was an increase of 20% over 2022.

[CCCubbon]

I learned Latin in those distant days at school and still find a use for it surprisingly - all to do with words and word definition for as I cannot remember who once said ‘ the clues are there’..
For Latin at GCE level which I went back to school to take, one had to translate parts of Julius Caesar ( cannot remember which history that was) from Latin to English and vice versa. Blessed with a very good memory then I learned a few key words from each page and regurgitatated . But as I said I still find my little knowledge very useful.

[RussellinVT]

Paul wrote: "Logger24 wrote: The Emperor of All Maladies – Siddartha Mukherjee ... "

Unfortunately, cancer biology is not really much better understood now than 10 years ago for precisely the same reason that CRISPR genome editing is likely to play very little role in cancer therapy: because the underlying causes of cancer are not strictly genetic or epigenetic...."

Very interesting, thanks, and how depressing. Mukherjee definitely leaves you thinking that genetics is the way forward, even though any one cancer may apparently involve forty to eighty mutated genes – or now, it seems, none.

[Paul]

scarletnoir wrote: "Paul wrote: "Unfortunately, cancer biology is not really much better understood now than 10 years ago..."

Thanks for that interesting post.

A question - it does seem that cancer 'treatments' are ..."


No problem, Yes cancer medicine is getting better and it is getting more powerful and less toxic year by year.

CLL is a great example, it has become a survivable cancer for most patients because it has a host of targeted medicines directed against the underlying genetic drivers of the tumor. It is one of the those tumors for which genetic determinants are really associated with pathology and outcome. The issue here is that those genetic determinants were discovered in the 80s and 90s, long before the DNA sequencing revolution.
For the most part, no (or few) new oncogenes or primary motivating genetic mutations have been discovered from DNA, instead usually you see a melange of many, many mutations with no clear functional relevance (or targetability) for tumor therapy.

For most tumors, particularly solid tumors the genetics of thre tumor are far more fluid and even within the same tumor, many different mutations can lie alongside one another in different cells. Whether those mutations confer a selective advantage to chemotherapy or whether it's just a jackpot effect is not usually veru clear.

The biggest strides against cancer are in immunotherapy, which targets the patient's own immune system against a tumor. These generally target non-mutated proteins. OR, in the case of a new class of very, very, very imprtant drugs (The ImmuneCheckpoint Inhibitors) they target many, many different tumor associated proteins (and who knows what they may or may not be).

At the moment, DNA sequencing is largely economic. It's important to determine which patients will best respond to a given therapy, but it's not of much use to identify targets in patients that would not respond. That work is really in the hands of immunologists desigining antibodies or vaccines or checkpoint inhibitors or CAR-T cell therapies.

[Gpfr]

At my grammar school, we all learnt French and in the first form, all did Latin. Those who were good at Latin continued with it, those who were middling did German, and those were not so good did Spanish (!).

I quite enjoyed it, we had a good teacher. The texts were Caesar's Gallic Wars and poems by Catullus. It was one of the O Levels that we could take in the 4th form. However, we finished the syllabus by the end of the 3rd year and spent the 4th just going over it again. We hadn't been terribly thrilled by the Gallic Wars the first time around ...

At university, those reading English had to do a short Latin module. Most people did it in the first year, but some of us did it in the 2nd. We did some Virgil, some Juvenal ... As I wrote earlier, we didn't take it at all seriously and used cribs shamelessly. For the end of course test, we were left unsupervised to do our translations. So we decided to not cheat wholesale: we would combine our efforts but not use cribs. Obviously the staff didn't take it very seriously either :)

[giveusaclue]

Did O level Latin. My best and favourite subject

[Paul]

Gpfr wrote: "At my grammar school, we all learnt French and in the first form, all did Latin. Those who were good at Latin continued with it, those who were middling did German, and those were not so good did S..."

That is still relatively common in Italian universities as well, but it seems fairly archaeic. Does one need to appreciate the horse's spinal column before becoming a mechanical engineer or study the black humors before learning surgery? At least in Italy, the study of Latin is tied up with their "Culture" (because Italians as a whole confuse culture with tradition) and it is not possible to simply move onwards. At least for other high schools (artistic, business, technical, etc) Latin is not compulsory. For the linguistic curricula, it makes perfect sense, but for the scientific curriculum its utterly worthless.

[Bill]

I took a year of Latin as a high school freshman and found it fairly excruciating. By the end of that year, my interest in music was flourishing and it determined my resolve to switch to German for the next three years. Masses, Gregorian Chant, and the occasional motet couldn’t compete with Schubert, Wagner, and Beethoven.

I think I owe my instant recognition of the meaning of “transpontine” more to Italian than Latin. An Italian restaurant located on Bridge Street of a NJ town on the Delaware River is named Via Ponte.

Pynchon may well have used “transpontine” in Mason & Dixon – it’s been some time since I read it and, unlike @Paul, wouldn’t mind a re-read. After all there are not just dick jokes, but also geometry jokes, the Ghastly Fop, a mechanical duck, a Golem, an uncredited appearance by Popeye the Sailor, and a bookish sailor, Seaman O’Brian who knows all the nautical terms unknown to the ship’s captain.

[Paul]

Bill wrote: "I took a year of Latin as a high school freshman and found it fairly excruciating. By the end of that year, my interest in music was flourishing and it determined my resolve to switch to German for..."

Oh, I'm loving Mason & Dixon, but I'm not looking to put myself through that again anytime soon. Not only is there a reference to Popeye The Sailor, but one to The Hebrewness of Spock on the very same page. There is also a sympathetic Electric Eel, Feng Shui, an Eyes Wide Shut-like orgy, a psychotic Chinese general and Dutch ketchup.

[AB76]

Paul wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Paul wrote: "Unfortunately, cancer biology is not really much better understood now than 10 years ago..."

Thanks for that interesting post.

A question - it does seem that canc..."

any reduction in toxicity is a good thing ,i'm no expert but found your two posts very interesting Paul.

[AB76]

Gpfr wrote: "Paul wrote: "It's still taught in the classical or standard high school in Italy, as is ancient Greek ..."

Yes, Greek is also an option here in France, but Latin is more frequent. My grandsons are..."

i did latin from aged 6-11 but after that none at all. i found it very straightforward and easier than french but my 11-18 education was less traditional and more progressive

[AB76]

In The Flames of Calais by Airey Neave , the small timeframe and small geographical area of the battle greatly help the impact of this book

He very modestly inserts his own experience in the battle into the narrative and manages a very well told story of the battle. One element of the story which has intrigued me is the "fifth columnists" in Calais. Via my Hermans reading i have found accounts of German agents in Rotterdam causing trouble but never before linked to Calais

Neave describes regular sniper fire from buildings all around, machine gun fire from the main church in Calais and a general sense that within the perimeter of Calais, the defenders were not alone. Certainly in the chaos of retreat in mid may 1940, many people entered Calais but i do wonder how many were fifth columnists. According to Neave captured German paratroops did have french addresses on them which may suggest active sympathizers in the city.

[Bill]

Berkley wrote: "I thought it was "across the Pope", thanks for clearing that up!"

One might conceive of the pontiff as a bridge between the earthly and divine realms.

[FrancesBurgundy]

Just to touch base and lower the tone and show I've not forgotten you all, in fact I lurk every day, I was thinking this week about the following bit of 'Latin'. And I know there's something similar in French - if anyone knows it please remind me.

Caesar adsum jam forte
Brutus aderat
Caesar sic in omnibus
Brutus sic inat

And by the way, I think learning Latin was one of the most useful things I did at school.

[Tam]

FrancesBurgundy wrote: "Just to touch base and lower the tone and show I've not forgotten you all, in fact I lurk every day, I was thinking this week about the following bit of 'Latin'. And I know there's something simila..."

I think that is a case of 'dog latin', it's a thing you can look up on wikipedia. I also quite enjoyed Latin at my grammar school, but I was especially taken aback by Mr Athill's ability to flick a piece of chalk, to unerringly hit a pupils ear lobe, if they failed to reply in the proper manner!... He must have spent years perfecting that ability. As to Latin translations, this might amuse some here

'And Pigs Might Fly'

https://i.postimg.cc/wBc343vy/Harley-...

“The earliest known sighting of a pigasus occurred at Hilarius Abbey in 1276, as recorded by an anonymous monk in Harley Har. Har. MS 565:

‘The mighty beast unfurled its great wings and flew forth from this place, the creature known to us as the pigasus.’”

https://i.postimg.cc/25p2F9bj/John-St...

The celebrated American novelist John Steinbeck designed a small winged pig emblem that he too dubbed Pigasus, its origin stemming from a dismissive comment made to him long ago by his college professor who was sceptical about his claims that one day he would become a famous writer, replying sarcastically that this would happen only when pigs flew. Consequently, once Steinbeck did achieve fame, he made a point of inscribing Pigasus’s image in his books as a personal insignia, along with the cod Latin phrase “Ad astra per alia porci”, which he intended to mean “To the stars on the wings of a pig”, but which actually translates more closely as “To the stars through other pigs”.

'The Best laid plan of mice, men and pigs gang aft agley'

I had a few dismissive comments from some of my teachers, but to be fair, as a teenager, I was definitely a member of 'the awkward squad', so I feel for him...

I also note the difference between 'cod Latin', and 'dog Latin'... and find myself wondering, quite, what was the difference between the two?

[Berkley]

I did a couple of terms of Latin and Classics at university just for my own benefit - I had been drawn to ancient Greek and Roman history from my teenage years. I also once tried studying ancient Greek a little on my own and still hope to go back to it some day.

In terms of general education or culture I think of it as perhaps not necessary but certainly interesting and, as others have mentioned from their own experience, sometimes surprisingly useful.

Who knows, maybe Boris would have been an even worse person if he hadn't done Classics at Oxford!

[Tam]

Berkley wrote: "I did a couple of terms of Latin and Classics at university just for my own benefit - I had been drawn to ancient Greek and Roman history from my teenage years. I also once tried studying ancient G..."

You have certainly won my attention there, with your last sentence! And so I am busy, imagining, an even worse Boris!...

[AB76]

Berkley wrote: "I did a couple of terms of Latin and Classics at university just for my own benefit - I had been drawn to ancient Greek and Roman history from my teenage years. I also once tried studying ancient G..."

i would like to try Greek....i remember on the latin side learning "Caecilius est in horto cantatit", something about his dog sleeping as well. If i remember this mid 1980s latin syllabus was based around Pompeii but i didnt get to the end of the course as i changed schools where latin was definately not "cool"

[RussellinVT]

Rather topically, I just finished:

Seneca: Six Tragedies – trans. Emily Wilson

In school we learned that Seneca was a model for Shakespeare and Jonson, but he sounded deeply dour and I stayed away. Then Emily Wilson did such a wonderful job on The Odyssey that I thought an up-to-date translation by her of his plays might be appealing.

I found them impressive and, while hardly a light read, rather magnificent. The style is mostly one long speech after another, so they seem more like staged recitations than plays as we would think of them. The weight of emotion is immediate, the language is splendidly vigorous and expressive, and the force of the drama is never for a moment lightened by diversion or levity. It is all very black, the atmosphere thick with menace.

Greek myth supplies the subject matter of all these short, dense pieces (each 30-35 pages). It is interesting that Seneca could assume his Roman audience were intimately familiar with even the secondary myths. I had to refer often to the notes.

The motivations are jealousy, hatred, remorse and revenge. Always there are the three unities of time, place and action. I would add a fourth, the sense of fatality and death that runs throughout. The stoicism I was expecting was barely present, except in the very general sense that there was no avoiding one’s fate. When in The Trojan Women Agamemnon urges moderation in victory, the advice is dismissed out of hand by the murderous Pyrrhus, son of Achilles. Passion and gore are dominant.

The form EW uses is mainly blank verse, though varying anywhere from three to seven feet to a line. The iambic metre comes and goes, providing more cohesion than you might think. EW explains that Latin verse, as well as having a longer line, has a quantitative metre which is impossible to render in translation - meaning the poetry comes from a balance in the length of syllables - rather than the stressed metre we are accustomed to in English.

If there can be a favorite when each is excellent, I would pick Phaedra, for the elegance of its internal movement.

[Robert]

I'm reading Colleen McCullough's Caesar's Women, which includes the occasional Latin term, defined in the appendix and in the insets in her maps of Romes. Really, I'd rather that her characters would say "firm ground" rather than "terra firma."

The novel had a slow start, partly due her decision to rebuild Caesar's world. However, the book has taken off thanks to a strong narrative.

[FrustratedArtist]

Bill wrote: "Berkley wrote: "I thought it was "across the Pope", thanks for clearing that up!"

One might conceive of the pontiff as a bridge between the earthly and divine realms."


As a BBC podcast I am listening to at the moment reminded me, the word "pontiff" comes from the Roman name for the high priest, pontifex maximus, which literally means, chief bridge builder. So, in a sense, the Pope is a bridge builder.

There is something so satisfying about tracing words to their origin! Listening to Radio 3 recently I learned that the word "tragedy" comes from the Greek word for goat song ( “tragos” (τράγος), meaning “goat”, and “oidos” (οἰδός), meaning “song” or “ode”). There is some connection with songs sung by satyrs in Ancient Greek drama.

[FrancesBurgundy]

FrancesBurgundy wrote: " I know there's something similar in French..."

It came to me:

Caesarem legato alacrem eorum

[Gpfr]

Having finished Le Mage du Kremlin / The Wizard of the Kremlin, (my posts #21, #93, #110), I'm not sure what I think. A certain sense of dissatisfaction, I was more impressed at an earlier stage. I'm not sure there are real insights here.

[AB76]

Gpfr wrote: " Having finished Le Mage du Kremlin / The Wizard of the Kremlin, (my posts #21, #93, #110), I'm not sure what I think. A cert..."

is this only in french GP?

TLS reviewed two modern crime novels by Kurkov and somebody else( a female author) set in communist times, 1920s i think

[AB76]

My next modern novelwill be Three O'Clock In the Morning by Gianrico Carafiglio.

I liked The Silence of the Wave and am keen to explore his non-crime novels, as i'm no fan of modern crime fiction at all. The idea and setting look very interesting

[Gpfr]

AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: " Having finished Le Mage du Kremlin / The Wizard of the Kremlin, (my posts #21, #93, #110), I'm not sure what I ..."

No, it's been translated: The Wizard of the Kremlin.

[AB76]

Joseph Chamberlains keen pursuit of "public" over "private" ownership of public utilities is something that should be taught to counter the post 1979 neo-liberal swing towards the wonderful, phantom magic of the private sector, which in reality is a vampire.

Reading his common sense approach to creating a modern city like Birmngham as it grew is sobering when i look at how almost no public utilities remain in public hands, local or national in the UK. Pacelled off, profit making, shareholder pleasing private companies are a crime.

Birmingham Council in 2024 is facing huge financial challenges due to central govt funding cuts. Joe Chamberlain would be turning in his grave

[Bill]

Seeing this posted on bluesky, I imagined a novel that consists of nothing but a 200 page Content Warning.

[AB76]

Bill wrote: "
Seeing this posted on bluesky, I imagined a novel that consists of nothing but a 200 page Content Warning."

disordered eating? is that a new word for anorexia?

[Bill]

AB76 wrote: "disordered eating? is that a new word for anorexia?"

I assume that if one has an "eating disorder", the result is engaging in "disordered eating", which I suppose may include over- and binge eating as well as anorexia-type disorders.

[AB76]

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "disordered eating? is that a new word for anorexia?"

I assume that if one has an "eating disorder", the result is engaging in "disordered eating", which I suppose may include over- an..."

ah yes, bulimia too

[giveusaclue]

Disordered eating - breakfast at 3pm, lunch at 8pm, dinner at 2 am

[scarletnoir]

Paul wrote: "Yes cancer medicine is getting better and it is getting more powerful and less toxic year by year..."

Thanks for your detailed reply - which I more or less understood! I had read somewhere that CLL was an 'easy' cancer to research as blood samples are much easier to take than biopsies from solid tumours. Treatment effectiveness was also checked by bone-marrow sampling - a less pleasant procedure, but not too bad really.

It's encouraging that new approaches are being developed all the time, and that overall effectiveness is improving.

[scarletnoir]

Paul wrote: "for the scientific curriculum its utterly worthless.."

I'd have thought Latin might be useful in Biology and medicine... at our grammar school, those studying Chemistry and Physics had to take a course in Scientific German in the 6th form, presumably because there was a lot of scientific research in those subjects published in German at that time.

[Gpfr]

Tam wrote: "I also hoped to see the Impressionists, Paris 1847, which I noted a long time ago, but alas I find that it finishes in July, so I will have missed the 'Impressionistic boat'.

But I would be grateful for any reviews, if anyone here happens to go and see it...."

Have just booked, June 5th. Looking forward to it!

[Paul]

scarletnoir wrote: "Paul wrote: "Yes cancer medicine is getting better and it is getting more powerful and less toxic year by year..."

Thanks for your detailed reply - which I more or less understood! I had read some..."
No problem, yes all lymphomas and leukemias are easy to monitor by blood draw. The problem is that they tend to be fairly non-descript presenting as persistent infection or exhaustion. With chronic forms, CML and CLL, they tend to develop slowly. For the acute forms, AML and ALL (which I research) they grow like brush fires and in the case of AML there is not much to do. Bone marrow taps look horrible, I imagine they must feel pretty unpleasant.

As for medicine and biology, it is all English now. If you don't have a good command of English you are behind the times. Knowing the origin of the terms from the time of leeches and mustard poultices doesn't help you much nowadays. Add in the functional scientific illiteracy of most doctors outside of oncology.. if my doctor knows Latin, frankly I'm looking for a second opinion

[AB76]

Paul wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Paul wrote: "Yes cancer medicine is getting better and it is getting more powerful and less toxic year by year..."

Thanks for your detailed reply - which I more or less underst..."

is there any clinical reason for why cancers develop with almost no symptoms? It seems unusual but i guess its not till the disease starts to seriously interfere with our systems that it shows? (ie for years its just "dormant"

i had a rodent ulcer removed in 2000, due to sun exposure from sailing. i'm fair skinned but i do tan, unusual for a redhead but then my hair is more streaked with blonde than full red. But since then, no more ulcers (yet).

[scarletnoir]

Berkley wrote: "Who knows, maybe Boris would have been an even worse person if he hadn't done Classics at Oxford!"

Now we really are entering the realms of fantasy...

[Fuzzywuzz]

What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon reading the very interesting comments here.

At the moment I'm reading The Silent Wife by Karin Slaughter and dipping into Black Phone and other stories by Joe Hill. The former is in the Crime genre (so I'll not bore those of you who aren't interested, and the latter is a collection of horror stories, which so for I have enjoyed.)

Regarding the discussion about cancer treatments, looking for a root cause (in order to develop a treatment stratagem) is like looking into a horses shed after it has bolted. Like Paul has said earlier, a lot of cancers are multifactorial in origin and individual variabilities can determine whether treatment will be effective or not.

@AB76 - I guess clinical reasons for cancers to appear unknown to a patient (obviously internal ones, not visible) would due to the fact the malignant tumour growth has not yet impinged on the form/function of the normal tissue in which it is growing (or the surrounding tissues).

Most organs have a high degree of functional reserve, meaning that quite a degree of damage/loss of function of the tissue/organ can occur before the clinical manifestations of that loss become apparent. Maligancy is a rather insidious beast - a lot of early symptoms overlap with non-malignant aetiologies, which may be dismissed as such by individuals.

[scarletnoir]

AB76 wrote: "Birmingham Council in 2024 is facing huge financial challenges due to central govt funding cuts. Joe Chamberlain would be turning in his grave."

The reasons you give for this shocking state of affairs are, of course, entirely valid.

[Tam]

Gpfr wrote: "Tam wrote: "I also hoped to see the Impressionists, Paris 1847, which I noted a long time ago, but alas I find that it finishes in July, so I will have missed the 'Impressionistic boat'.

But I wou..."

Lucky you. Do let me know how you find it. I am tempted to do a brief visit before the end in July, but, as I will be there in September that seems a bit over indulgent somehow! But I would welcome a companion for going round the Cluny Museum, if you feel like it? Dave's not that interested and finds walking long distances a trial these days. It would have to be Tuesday 17th September. Let me know... We are staying in the Latin Quarter which was my occasional stamping ground, of old...