Alisha Rankin, Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany

Alisha

 

Rankin

 , 

Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany

 , 

Chicago

:  

University of Chicago Press

,  

2013

. Pp. 312. $46. ISBN 978 0 226 92538 7.

Katherine Allen

Soc Hist Med (2017) 30 (2): 460-461.

 

DOI:

 

https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkw137

Published:

 

12 January 2017

Alisha Rankin’s book examines the medical activities of noblewomen in early modern Germany. It proposes that the noblewomen’s medical practices should be viewed as part of the history of science in European courts and of the wider world of early modern science. This is one of the first in-depth studies to situate elite women’s healing within a broader context of early modern medical culture. Rankin argues that ‘noblewomen became fêted healers not in spite of their gender, but because of it’ and that healing was something that German ‘princesses did’ (p. 3). Furthermore, she claims that the local and epistolary communities of these gentlewomen’s courts helped develop an interest in empiricism and experiential knowledge as a means of assessing medical efficacy.

The book is divided into two sections. Part I...

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine.

Anti-vaccine groups act as early warning sign against epidemics

Anti-vaccine groups act as early warning sign against epidemics http://bit.ly/2oMhViS @HorizonMagEU

25 April 2017

by Steve Gillman

 

Measles outbreaks could be first seen in anti-vaccine groups. Credit: Flickr/ Dave Haygarth

For some people the issue of vaccination isn’t about facts, it’s a matter of faith, and this unshakable belief has become an opportunity for health workers to prepare for potential outbreaks.

In 2015, a child died of diphtheria in Spain, while an 18-month-old toddler died of measles in Berlin, Germany.

Fears of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine have remained since 1998 when Andrew Wakefield, a former British gastroenterologist, claimed it could cause autism.

Wakefield’s research was later debunked as he was proven to have financial interests in other vaccine development while his methodology was not scientifically sound either. However, the seed was planted in the public sphere and its roots can still be seen today.

‘Vaccination acceptance decreased tremendously (after Wakefield) and in England it resulted in an increase in measles cases, measles hospitalisation and measles deaths,’ said Dr Jim van Steenbergen, an infectious disease control physician at the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and Environment. ‘That is something that could happen again.’

It’s common practice to plant roses on the outskirts of a vineyard because of their susceptibility to different diseases. If a rose gets a particular infection then a farmer can prepare his vineyard with the appropriate treatment. Researchers are taking a similar approach with anti-vaccine groups so they can prevent potential epidemics and protect society as a whole by monitoring them for disease outbreaks.

Reasons for not vaccinating vary from one group to the next. Some are sceptics, others can’t afford it, such as Roma communities, and then there are those who have strict religious beliefs.

‘If you are able to contact them, (you) can get important information (that can be used) as an early warning for disease and better understanding for other opinions or determinants for non-vaccination,’ said Dr van Steenbergen, who is the project coordinator of E-COM@EU, an EU-funded project aiming to help health professionals communicate the benefits of large-scale measures such as vaccination.

‘They are the first ones where you can see an epidemic or an outbreak.’

Dr Jim van Steenbergen, Dutch National Institute for Public Health and Environment, the Netherlands

When it comes to other anti-vaccine issues, such as adverse side effects of vaccinating children too early, Dr van Steenbergen believes these groups often take an idea too far, and the most they should be worried about is some redness or swelling.

Other sceptics avoid vaccines because they believe big pharmaceutical companies are milking money from the public. Again, Dr van Steenbergen acknowledges how such ideas develop but doesn’t doubt the effectiveness of the vaccines and thinks their concerns should be placed elsewhere.

‘Money is an important driver for vaccine development, (rather than) public health. Sometimes, indeed, vaccines are developed because pharmaceutical companies have an impression they can create the market and the market is best in the rich industrialised world, not in the developing world where they are needed even more.’

Outbreaks

Members of the project are now visiting each EU Member State to show people new ways of managing outbreaks that involve anti-vaccine communities.

But changing how public health institutes deal with infectious diseases takes a lot of resources that these organisations generally don’t have.

The outcome of the E-COM@EU project was a series of recommendations for healthcare agencies so they can prepare for a disease outbreak. However, as a result of the lack of resources at health agencies, E-COM@EU has already encountered difficulty in seeing their strategies being implemented on a national level.

Dr van Steenbergen believes public health institutes need to listen more to anti-vaccine groups to find solutions or, at least, compromises. However, another risk has emerged as the sceptical public have begun to persuade more doctors, midwives and nurses by asking pseudo-scientific questions that they can’t answer.

The relationship most people have with their local doctor is still one of a trusted source for medical advice. The problem is that a small number of these trusted people are getting different ideas about vaccines.

‘We learned a while ago that it’s not the percentage of the (anti-vaccine) population that’s the problem, it’s the way they amplify their concerns,’ said Dr Heidi Larson, an anthropologist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK.

‘(Doctors) are confronted with patients or parents that bring new questions and negative information and some are struggling to have answers and then start wondering themselves.’

Health professionals are generally not trained to deal with these confrontations. As Dr Larson explains ‘they are armed with facts’ without any kind of preparation in dealing with sceptics, which leaves them susceptible to being persuaded.

These doctors, such as Andrew Wakefield, end up having a stronger influence and their impact of echoing misinformation is therefore higher.

‘We need to do a much better job in helping health professionals deal with difficult conversations,’ said Dr Larson, who works on ADVANCE, an EU-funded project developing ways to better communicate vaccine benefits and support decision-making.

The project, funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative, a collaboration between the EU and private drug companies, brings together industry, academics and national health institutes under the objective to maintain public confidence in vaccines, which according to Dr Larson is needed in Europe more than ever.

‘In Europe, which has some of the best access to healthcare and the highest education in the world, the public is at the same time one of the most sceptical regions in the world when it comes to vaccine safety and that is a bit of a surprise.’

ADVANCE is developing a system that will rapidly provide the best available scientific evidence on vaccination benefits to help the public make the most well-informed decisions at the right time, and recently published a code of conduct for vaccine developers.

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Bristol: the city that lauds the slave trader | David Olusoga

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/27/bristol-city-slave-trader-edward-colston?CMP=share_btn_tw

The American Scholar: The Fox in the Big House - Stephanie Bastek

https://theamericanscholar.org/the-fox-in-the-big-house/#.WQXvc5TAMs8.twitter via @theamscho

Putting down roots: the transformation of a farm garden

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/30/dan-pearson-country-life-transforming-a-farm-garden?CMP=share_btn_tw&page=with:img-7#img-7

Travelling Images: Photographs from colonial Indonesia and the Meaning of Colonial Space around 1900

Leiden Southeast Asia Seminar By Sophie Junge Images from the Dutch East Indies have been legitimizing Dutch colonial activity since the 17th century.Especially 19th century-photography was used to repress indigenous populations and to demonstrate Dutch authority on the archipelago. Nevertheless, it was not photography but the reproduction of photographic images that made the colony a place to be seen. Throughout the 19th century only few local studios took pictures of the Dutch East Indies and even fewer photo albums travelled back to the Netherlands in the luggage of retired colonial staff to stay in the private space of the family. It was not until the introduction of mass-reproduced images around 1900 that the visibility of the colony drastically increased. The seminar examines the medial and trans-colonial circulation of printed photographic images on picture postcards, in illustrated magazines and travel guidebooks that reached broad audiences within the colony and beyond its borders. These images, often produced by a transnational network of photo studios, printers and publishers, give insight in the meaning of colonial space and the meaning of the photographic image around 1900. In extending postcolonial research on representations of indigenous “Others”, the paper argues that photographs of colonial space could only be understood in specific visual or textual framings, which combined existing photographic imagery with European postcarddesigns, Art Nouveau decorations and/or textual information. The paper analyses representations of colonial space to find out more about the creation of a specific canon of images, the reception of colonialism in the beginning of the 20th century and its meaning in terms of Dutch national identity. Dr. Sophie Junge works at the Centre for Studies in the Theory and History of Photography at the Institute of Art History of the University of Zürich. Currently, she is also affiliated at Leiden University as a research fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation to prepare a Postdoc project on photographic images from the Dutch East Indies after 1900. Her book Art Against AIDS. Nan Goldin’s Exhibition Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing has been published in 2016. Date: Thursday 11 May 2017 Time: 15.30 h – 17.00 h Venue: KITLV, room 138, Reuvensplaats 2, Leiden Please register if you wish to attend: kitlv@kitlv.nl

Having Their Cake: Ingredients and Recipe Collecting in the Nineteenth Century

By Rachel A. Snell

Between 1835 and 1870, Sarah L. Weld of Cambridge, Massachusetts collected twenty-three recipes for gingerbread. This repetition of recipes, particularly recipes for baked goods, was not uncommon in nineteenth-century recipe collections. In fact, it was the norm. In my last post, I offered three explanations for the prevalence of cake recipes in the manuscript cookbooks I study: evolving technology, new ingredients, and shifting social expectations that are indicative of changes in women’s work and roles over the course of the nineteenth century. The repetition of recipes for popular types of cake, like gingerbread, illuminates my third point: that changes in the availability and quality of ingredients influenced women’s recipe collecting. Sarah Weld’s collection of gingerbread recipes reveals how the availability of flour, sugar, and chemical leaveners transformed baking during her lifetime.[1]
Wheat flour, the basic ingredient for most baked items, was seldom used in early America. The prevalence of mildew rust on wheat crops lead early settlers to abandon growing wheat in favor of local and hardier grains and most daily baking relied on proprietary blends of rye flour, Indian (corn) meal, and small amounts of wheat flour. Most cooks saved costly wheat flour for fine cakes and pastry made for special occasions. In the mid-nineteenth century improved milling techniques, a growing transportation infrastructure, and the development of fertile agricultural land in the Canadian and American west along with the adoption of the hardier Turkey red wheat made wheat flour more available and accessible. Rather than growing their own wheat, consumers could purchase refined wheat flour by the barrel. Consequently, American wheat consumption soared.
Sugar, like flour, was an expensive commodity that became more accessible during the nineteenth century. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, recipes relied on less expensive byproducts of sugar production like molasses and brown sugar to sweeten baked goods. The invention of a vacuum system of evaporation and the centrifuge made the production of refined white sugar more efficient and, consequently, lowered the price. As refined white sugar became more accessible, it was praised by domestic advisors like Sarah J. Hale as sweeter and of a finer texture than brown sugar and, therefore, best used in baking. By 1871, loaf sugar was replaced by granulated sugar preserving women from the labor of grinding their own sugar.

Engraving: American Baking Powder, c. 1855. McCord Museum. http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/collection/artifacts/M930.50.7.36

Chemical leaveners brought about the most visible transformation in American baked goods. These additives allowed women to make cakes more easily (less strenuous beating of ingredients) and more inexpensively by using smaller quantities of eggs and butter. Most significantly, chemical leaveners brought cakes to new heights and transformed their texture from dense, sweet breads to light and airy ones. The first of these, pearlash, stemmed from the Native American technique of combining potash, produced by leaching wood ashes, with the meal. This process, called nixtamalization, created an alkaline solution that released amino acids and niacin in the grain making the resulting product more nutritious. Further, since corn will not react with yeast, the potash provided a small amount of leavening. Innovative American cooks developed a concentrated form of potash called pearlash that when combined with an acidic substance like sour milk, citrus, or molasses would create a quick and reliable leavening agent.
Beginning in the 1840s, pearlash would be slowly supplanted by chemical leaveners that improved the leavening properties of pearlash: saleratus, cream of tartar, and baking powder. Saleratus or baking soda sped up the chemical reaction that produced carbon dioxide in baked goods and yielded more consistent results. Cream of tartar helped activate the baking soda and neutralize the unpleasant alkaline aftertaste left by the soda. In the 1850s, the process of baking was further streamlined by the introduction of baking powder, which combined baking soda and cream of tartar into one product.

“Lafayette Gingerbread” Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats (1828).

“New York Gingerbread” The Boston Cooking School Cookbook (1912)

Together, changing technology and ingredients revolutionized cooking during the nineteenth century. The yeast-raised cakes of the past never entirely vanished from American cookbooks (Election Cake remained a perennial favorite), but chemically leavened butter and sponge cakes largely supplanted their popularity. Recipes for gingerbread from Eliza Leslie’s classic Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats (1828) and The Boston Cooking School Cookbook (1896) by Fannie Merritt Farmer reflect these changes in the process of baking. Technology that made baking easier along with improved ingredients transformed the appearance of baked goods, particularly cakes. As refined sugar and wheat flour became more affordable and chemical leaveners became more reliable, dessert became increasingly more elaborate. In the 1870s and 1880s, layer cakes dominated American baking filled first with jelly and later with caramel, chocolate, fruit, or nut fillings. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the variety of cakes increased exponentially with confections named White Mountain Cake, Devil’s Food, Angel Cake, Moonshine Cake, Chocolate Marshmallow Cake, Boston Cream Pie, and Mocha Cake. Thus, women not only collected cake recipes for the practical reason that technology and ingredients had changed, but also because they were so many new and exciting options for cake baking.

Further reading:
Nancy Carlisle and Melinda Talbit Nasardinov with Jennifer Pustz, America’s Kitchens (Boston: Historic New England, 2008).
Abigail Carroll, Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal. New York: Basic Books, 2013.
Alice L. McLean, Cooking in America, 1840-1945 Daily Life through History, Edited by Ken Alba. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006.
Sandra L. Oliver, Food in Colonial and Federal America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005).
Susan Williams, Food in the United States, 1820s-1890 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006).

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[1] Sarah L. Weld, Cookbook, 1835-1870. Schlesinger Library. 010117969.

The relative importance of pollinator abundance and species richness for the temporal variance of pollination services.

Ecology. 2017 Apr 26. doi: 10.1002/ecy.1876. [Epub ahead of print]

Genung MA¹, Fox J², Williams NM³, Kremen C⁴, Ascher J⁵, Gibbs J⁶, Winfree R¹.

Author information

1

Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, 08901.

2

Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada, T2N 1N4.

3

Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of California, Davis, California, USA, 95616.

4

Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA, 94720.

5

Department of Biological Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117543.

6

Department of Entomology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, R3T 2N2.

Abstract

The relationship between biodiversity and the stability of ecosystem function is a fundamental question in community ecology, and hundreds of experiments have shown a positive relationship between species richness and the stability of ecosystem function. However, these experiments have rarely accounted for common ecological patterns, most notably skewed species abundance distributions and non-random extinction risks, making it difficult to know whether experimental results can be scaled up to larger, less manipulated systems. In contrast with the prolific body of experimental research, few studies have examined how species richness affects the stability of ecosystem services at more realistic, landscape scales. The paucity of these studies is due in part to a lack of analytical methods that are suitable for the correlative structure of ecological data. A recently developed method, based on the Price equation from evolutionary biology, helps resolve this knowledge gap by partitioning the effect of biodiversity into three components: richness, composition, and abundance. Here, we build on previous work and present the first derivation of the Price equation suitable for analyzing temporal variance of ecosystem services. We applied our new derivation to understand the temporal variance of crop pollination services in two study systems (watermelon and blueberry) in the mid-Atlantic United States. In both systems-but especially in the watermelon system-the stronger driver of temporal variance of ecosystem services was fluctuations in the abundance of common bee species, which were present at nearly all sites regardless of species richness. In contrast, temporal variance of ecosystem services was less affected by differences in species richness, because lost and gained species were rare. Thus, the findings from our more realistic landscapes differ qualitatively from the findings of biodiversity-stability experiments. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

KEYWORDS:

Price equation; abundance; biodiversity; composition; ecosystem services; richness; variance

Extending the fossil record of Polytrichaceae: Early Cretaceous Meantoinea alophosioides gen. et sp. nov., permineralized gametophytes with gemma cups from Vancouver Island.

Am J Bot. 2017 Apr;104(4):584-597. doi: 10.3732/ajb.1700002. Epub 2017 Apr 19.

Bippus AC¹, Stockey RA², Rothwell GW^2,3, Tomescu AMF¹.

Author information

1

Department of Biological Sciences, Humboldt State University, Arcata, California 95521 USA acb613@humboldt.edu mihai@humboldt.edu.

2

Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331 USA.

3

Department of Environmental and Plant Biology, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701 USA.

Abstract

PREMISE OF THE STUDY:

Diverse in modern ecosystems, mosses are dramatically underrepresented in the fossil record. Furthermore, most pre-Cenozoic mosses are known only from compression fossils, lacking detailed anatomical information. When preserved, anatomy vastly improves resolution in the systematic placement of fossils. Lower Cretaceous deposits at Apple Bay (Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada) contain a diverse anatomically preserved flora that includes numerous bryophytes, many of which have yet to be characterized. Among them is a polytrichaceous moss that is described here.

METHODS:

Fossil moss gametophytes preserved in four carbonate concretions were studied in serial sections prepared using the cellulose acetate peel technique.

KEY RESULTS:

We describe Meantoinea alophosioides gen. et sp. nov., a polytrichaceous moss with terminal gemma cups containing stalked, lenticular gemmae. Leaves with characteristic costal anatomy, differentiated into sheathing base and free lamina and bearing photosynthetic lamellae, along with a conducting strand in the stem, place Meantoinea in family Polytrichaceae. The bistratose leaf lamina with an adaxial layer of mamillose cells, short photosynthetic lamellae restricted to the costa, and presence of gemma cups indicate affinities with basal members of the Polytrichaceae, such as Lyellia, Bartramiopsis, and Alophosia.

CONCLUSIONS:

Meantoinea alophosioides enriches the documented moss diversity of an already-diverse Early Cretaceous plant fossil assemblage. This is the third moss described from the Apple Bay plant fossil assemblage and represents the first occurrence of gemma cups in a fossil moss. It is also the oldest unequivocal record of Polytrichaceae, providing a hard minimum age for the group of 136 million years.

© 2017 Botanical Society of America.

KEYWORDS:

Bryophyta; Cretaceous; Polytrichaceae; anatomy; fossil; gametophyte; gemmae; lamellae; moss; permineralized

1895: Taffy, The Laird, and the Clowder of Town Topics Office Cats on Fifth Avenue

Posted: 1st April 2017 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories
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In May 1895, the first official cat show in New York City took place at Madison Square Garden. More than 200 felines ranging from humble street cats (such as Brian Hughes’ Nicodemus) to the high-society cats of Mrs. J.J. Astor and Mrs. Stanford White were all on display at the first National Cat Show.
Although they did not take home any ribbons, a trio of black cats belonging to Colonel William D’Alton Mann, publisher of the Town Topics society magazine, were the center of attraction that year.

According to Helen Maria Winslow, author of “From Concerning Cats: My Own and Some Others,” the three cats were named Taffy, The Laird, and Little Billee. They were all jet black and 14 months old.  The New York Times reported that the handsome cats reposed on a red cushion and slept for most of the time.
Although The New York Times article claimed the cats were named Little Billie, Leo, and David, I’m more prone to believe that Ms. Winslow has it right. (I also don’t think Leo and David are suitable names for cat-show participants.)
Not only was Ms. Winslow familiar with Colonel Mann and his office cats, but Taffy, Little Billee, and The Laird were popular names during this time: These were the names of the leading male characters in a long-running play called Trilby, which was based on the 1894 novel by George due Marurier. Trilby had opened at the Garden Theatre on Madison Avenue just one month before the cat show.

When this photo was taken in 1895, Trilby was on the Garden Theatre marquee. The theater, on the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 27th Street, opened on September 27, 1890, and closed in 1925. New York Public Library Digital Collections

In 1895, when this story takes place, Colonel William D’Alton Mann was the owner and publisher of Town Topics, a weekly magazine of social gossip. The Town Topics office was located on the top floors of 208 Fifth Avenue near 26th Street, overlooking Madison Square Park.
According to Ms. Winslow, Colonel Mann was a devoted lover of animals who had a standing order: Should any of his employees see a starving kitten on the street, they were not to leave it to suffer and die. Hence, the Town Topics office was a sanctuary for unfortunate cats. As Ms. Winslow writes, “One may always see a number of happy-looking creatures there, who seem to appreciate the kindness which surrounds them.”
Had Colonel Mann only exhibited some of that same kindness toward his readers, he may have avoided numerous lawsuits and prison time.
Colonel Mann, the War Hero and Extortionist

Colonel William D’Alton Mann during the Civil War.

Like the street cats he rescued, William Mann had a humble beginning.
Born in Sandusky, Ohio, in 1839, Mann grew up on his father’s farm and was one of thirteen children. From this simple start, he epitomized the American dream.
Mann was a Civil War hero at Gettysburg, an entrepreneur and inventor (he invented a luxury railroad car called the “Mann Boudoir Car”), and later a business tycoon, millionaire, and publisher. He was also a family man who doted on his daughter, Emma, and his office cats.
Alas, Colonel Mann also was a dirty blackmailer who extorted tens of thousands of dollars from New York’s millionaires via a column called “Saunterings” in Town Topics.

The Town Topics Bribery Scam
The weekly magazine had been founded in 1879 as J.R. Andrew’s American Queen, a National Society Journal. Louis Keller (founder of the Social Register) took over in 1883, and under his editorship, the publication was “dedicated to art, music, literature, and society.”
When the publication went bankrupt in 1885, William’s brother Eugene purchased it and renamed it Town Topics. Under Eugene D. Mann’s reign, the weekly magazine morphed into a scandal sheet that often identified high-society wrongdoers by name.

Colonel Mann (left) with Colonel Clem the Gettysburg Reunion of July 1913, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.

In 1891, Eugene went into hiding after being charged with sending obscene matter through the mail. Colonel Mann came to New York City and assumed ownership and editorship of the publication.
Much to the dismay of the Vanderbilts, Goulds, Morgans, and other millionaires, Mann took the art of scandal to a mastery level that would have put publications like today’s National Enquirer to shame.

Town Topics was part high-society rag / part elegant weekly that published promising literature, sporting news, and financial advice.

Many articles have been written about this Town Topics scandal, so I’ll sum it up in a few sentences.
What Colonel Mann did was establish a network of paid spies comprising servants, telegraph operators, hotel employees, seamstresses, butlers, and grocers to spy on the socialites and supply the magazine with juicy gossip.
Mann would then meet with the “guilty parties” at his favorite place–Delmonico’s–where they could negotiate for discretion.
The amount of money that Mann managed to extort from America’s wealthiest men was staggering. For example, William K. Vanderbilt paid $25,000 (that’s over $700,000 today), Charles M. Schwab paid $10,000, and Senator Russell Alger paid Mann $100,000 in shares of his lumber company’s stock.

This illustration appeared in the January 25, 1906, issue of The Inter Ocean. The article’s headline was: Some of the Fruitful Shrubs Colonel Mann Has Watered in His Town Topics Garden in New York.

As time went on, the well-to-do members of New York’s Gilded Age became so paranoid that their own maids and butlers were supplying gossip to Town Topics.

Colonel Mann expanded his scandalous publishing empire in 1900 when he founded Ess Ess Publishing Company to produce The Smart Set.

Sometimes they would make up gossip as a test to see if their own servants or associates could be trusted. If they read this made-up gossip in Town Topics, they knew there was a leak somewhere within their household or circle of “friends.”
Despite all this paranoia — or maybe because of it — Town Topics was the most widely-read magazine in society (of course no one would ever admit to subscribing to it).

Taffy and the Town Topics Cats
The Town Topics office cats made their home at 208 Fifth Avenue (aka 1128-30 Broadway), a Renaissance Revival designed by Berg & Clark for Alfred B. Darling in 1894. (Prior to this date, the address was a five-story brick and brownstone building occupied by the Chesterfield Hotel in the 1870s. See photo below.)
The new seven-story building at 208 Fifth Avenue had frontages on Broadway and Fifth Avenue and housed stores and offices. Until the Cross Building was constructed at 210 Fifth Avenue around 1904, a narrow, vacant lot separated the building from the famous Delmonico’s restaurant, which was on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 26th Street from 1876 to 1899.

This photo of Delmonico’s was published in the King’s Handbook of New York City in 1892 — two years before the brick and brownstone buildings to its left were demolished to make way for the new office building at 208 Fifth Avenue, where the Town Topics cats would make their home. 

In 1902 when this photo was taken, the Cafe Martin was leasing the building that had been home to Delmonico’s restaurant from 1876 to 1899. The Town Topics office at 208 Fifth Avenue is to the left and the St. James Hotel is in the background. Museum of the City of New York Collections

In the spring and summer months, Taffy, The Laird, Little Billee, and other Town Topics office cats would crawl out on the wide window ledge to enjoy the fresh air and the view of Madison Square Park below. Sadly, The Laird and Little Billee came to their deaths by jumping from their high perch to chase after some sparrows.
Following this tragedy, Colonel Mann put up a strong wire grating across the windows. From that point on, Taffy, described as a “monstrous, shiny black fellow,” was the leader of the Town Topics cat colony.

In this closeup of the top floors of 208 Fifth Avenue, you can see the marquee for Town Topics and the windows from which The Laird and Little Billee made their fatal leaps to the pavement below in the late 1890s.

The Demise of Town Topics
The bribery continued to escalate, leading to numerous lawsuits, and, in 1905, to the arrest of Colonel Mann on charges of perjury (the complainant in this case was Robert J. Collier of Collier’s Weekly).  Mann’s daughter, then Emma Mann Wray, bailed him out by offering as collateral the vacant lots at
810-828 West 38^th Street, where Mann was building new offices for Ess Ess Publishing (now a parking lot across from the Jacob Javits Center).
Mann was ultimately cleared of perjury, but by that time Town Topics lost most of its bite. Two years after Mann’s death in 1920, A. Ralph Keller organized the T.T. Publishing Company to buy Town Topics. The paper lingered on until eventually folding in the 1930s.

Here’s another photograph of the Cafe Martin in 1908 — but this time it has a new neighbor to the left: The skinny Cross Building at 210 Fifth Avenue. The Lincoln Trust Building where Town Topics once presided is to the left.

Here’s another view of 206 – 212 Fifth Avenue taken from the vantage point of Madison Square Park.  NYPL Digital Collections

A colorized photo of from 1908.

By 1915, when this photo was taken, Cafe Martin, which closed in 1913, had been replaced by a towering office building. Museum of the City of New York Collections

In 1919, four years after the Franklin Trust moved out, the ground floor of 208 Fifth Avenue was home to Charles W. Ackerman’s hat store. Charles was known as “The Hat Specialist.”

Today, all the buildings look pretty much as they did 100 years ago. The old Town Topics office is now one of 12 cooperative loft units that sell for about $2.5 million. Pet cats (and dogs) are permitted. Photo by P. Gavan

The Material Culture of Citizen Science: Workshop Friday 12 May at St Anne’s College

Posted: 28 Apr 2017 02:30 AM PDT The Material Culture of Citizen Science Friday 12 May 2017 9.00 – 5.30 Seminar Room 8 St Anne’s College, Oxford In recent years, citizen science has flourished in and out of the academy. Across the globe, via projects such as   Zooniverse, socially and intellectually-engaged members of the public contribute in crucial ways to the making of new scientific knowledge. Within academic discourse, scholars have embraced the term “citizen science” as a   heuristic analytical tool for thinking about activity both past and present.  Thus far, historical scholarship on citizen   science has tended to focus on people and institutions. This workshop extends the current conversation by  examining and reflecting upon the technologies and materials that have enabled citizen science to flourish. What are the practical means that fostered the break down of the divisions between professional and non-professional    science? What kinds of technologies and materials can be identified, and how did they shape the interactions among participants and thus, the production, circulation and use of scientific knowledge, in the digital age and before? Citizen Science practitioners, researchers from the Oxford-based project ‘Constructing Scientific  Communities: Citizen Science in the 19th and 21st Centuries’, and  members of the Max Planck working group “Working With Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge” will discuss these questions in historical perspective.  In particular, our conversations will concentrate on the use of paper as a central means to mediate between  seemingly divergent actors and spaces and those digital technologies that have replaced it. Programme: The workshop programme is available here  Registration: This is a closed workshop, but a limited number of free places are available to book. If you would like to book a place, please contact Alyson Slade on alyson.slade@ell.ox.ac.uk no later than 5.00 p.m. on Wednesday 3 May 2017 who will then confirm the place. Please also indicate if there are any dietary requirements.

EuroPharma Supports ABC Educational Mission through Turmeric Adoption

P.O. Box 144345, Austin, TX 78714-4345 
Phone: 512-926-4900 x129; Fax: 512-926-2345 
Contact: Public Relations
Website: www.herbalgram.org

PRESS RELEASE

AUSTIN, Texas (April 26, 2017) — The American Botanical Council (ABC) welcomes EuroPharma to the growing list of Adopt-an-Herb supporters though its adoption of turmeric (Curcuma longa). By adopting turmeric, EuroPharma helps ABC expand its nonprofit educational mission and keep its unique HerbMedPro database updated with the latest scientific and clinical research on this highly popular medicinal plant.

HerbMedPro is a comprehensive, interactive online database that provides access to important scientific and clinical research data on the uses and health effects of approximately 250 herbs.

ABC Founder and Executive Director Mark Blumenthal said: “All of us at ABC are deeply grateful to Terry Lemerond, Cheryl Myers, Lisa Joski, and the entire EuroPharma team for its adoption of turmeric, one of the most popular herbs in today’s market. There is so much scientific and clinical information being published each year on turmeric rhizome and its extracts — a veritable explosion of research findings — that it is quite challenging to keep up with reading and summarizing the literally hundreds of new papers cited in our robust HerbMedPro database.”

EuroPharma’s founder Terry Lemerond praised the Adopt-an-Herb initiative, and said: “Representing turmeric, an herb with such life-changing possibilities and significant clinical studies in the evidence-based database of ABC, is a great alignment with the mission of EuroPharma. We look forward to stewarding the ever-growing scientific and clinical data on this far-reaching herb, which contains the key component curcumin: a compound with an extraordinary scientific profile.”

Turmeric’s adoption page in ABC’s HerbMedPro database can be found here; the HerbMedPro record on turmeric is availablehere.

About Turmeric

The turmeric rhizome has a long history of use in Ayurveda, India’s oldest system of traditional medicine, and in traditional Chinese medicine. Traditionally, turmeric was used internally for indigestion and topically for skin sores and wounds. Many commercially available turmeric extracts are standardized to the level of curcuminoids, a group of biologically active phytochemicals in turmeric, which are collectively known in the marketplace as curcumin (although curcumin is also the name for one of the specific curcuminoids). The anti-inflammatory actions of curcumin may play a large role in its potential therapeutic benefits. Turmeric and curcumin are being investigated in research trials for their ability to treat a range of health conditions such as depression and cognitive decline, and as potential adjunct agents in certain types of cancer.

About Europharma

For more than 35 years, EuroPharma has provided the United States with lab-tested natural medicines and proprietary formulations. EuroPharma was founded by Lemerond, who has more than 40 years of experience in the health food industry and received ABC’s first Champion Award in 2015. In 2017, Lemerond was inducted into the New Hope Hall of Legends at Natural Products Expo West. EuroPharma’s Curamin^® formulas use clinically studied ingredients, including BCM-95^® curcumin extract, for a variety of health benefits.

About Adopt-an-Herb and HerbMedPro

EuroPharma is one of 44 companies that have supported ABC’s educational efforts to collect, organize, and disseminate reliable, traditional, science-based, and clinical information on herbs, medicinal plants, and other botanical- and fungal-based ingredients through the Adopt-an-Herb program. This program encourages companies, organizations, and individuals to “adopt” one or more specific herbs for inclusion and ongoing maintenance in the HerbMedPro database. To date, a total of 51 herbs have been adopted.

Each adopted herb is continuously researched for new articles and studies, which ensures that its HerbMedPro record stays current and robust. The result is an unparalleled resource not only for researchers, health professionals, industry, and consumers, but also for members of the herbal and dietary supplements community.

HerbMedPro is available to ABC members at the Academic level and higher. Its “sister” site, HerbMed, is free and available to the general public. In keeping with the ABC’s position as an independent research and education organization, herb adopters do not influence the scientific information that is compiled for their respective adopted herbs.

Workshop: Microscopic Identification of Botanicals

Announcement in American Herbal Products Association

Haley Chitty Director of Communications June 6-8 at Weber State University in Ogden, UT More info and registration >> http://www.ahpa.org/News/LatestNews/TabId/96/ArtMID/1179/ArticleID/803/Three-day-Workshop-Microscopic-Identification-of-Popular-Botanical-Materials.aspx This three-day workshop will familiarize participants with various plant parts at the microscopic level to help in understanding the characteristic cellular features of each plant part examined using botanical microscopy techniques. The basic structure of various tissue types will be discussed and identified using examples of some of the popular botanicals. The workshop's goal is to leave participants with the experience necessary to confidently conduct microscopic analysis on botanical materials. Discussion will be accompanied by hands-on training. Botanical materials in powder form will be examined. Participants will be trained on how to prepare and examine different sections of whole plant parts.

Participants Wanted for Aging Study (BC Women's Hospital)

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https://vancouver.craigslist.ca/van/vol/6068480798.html

A study of Aging and HIV

Study Leads: Drs Deborah Money, Neora Pick, and Melanie Murray

WE ARE ONLY LOOKING FOR WOMEN WHO FIT THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA:

Ethnicity: African/Caribbean/Black
- Ages 46-54
- Ages 34-42

Ethnicity: First Nations/Aboriginal/Indigenous
- Ages: 37-45


We are looking for women, biologically female, who are not pregnant, not living with HIV, and who can give informed consent. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of having HIV and taking anti-HIV drugs on aging in women and children. Other parts of the study also look at the bone health and hormones of adult women. In order to examine the possible impacts, comparisons need to be made with women and children who do not have HIV.

What we will require from you during your study visit:

Core Aging Study + Bone Health Study
Time: ~3 hours
Involves: medical history and women's health questions, bone health questions, blood work, 4 low radiation bone scans

A cash honorarium will be provided for your time. You will also receive the results of your bone density scans!

The study visit will involve giving a small blood sample of 35 mL (about 2 ½ tablespoons) or less. The study visits will take place at BC Women's Hospital.

The study is confidential, voluntary, and you may withdraw at any time. The UBC Research Ethics Board has approved this study. For more information or to discuss your eligibility for this study please call Shanlea at show contact info ext. 6706 or respond by email to show contact info .

We will be updating our search criteria every 3 to 6 weeks.