Insane Patients in London Workhouses

1865 ◽  
Vol 11 (55) ◽  
pp. 327-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Edmund Anstie

The present seems to be a favorable moment for directing the attention of the profession to the condition of those insane paupers who are confined in workhouses. A general disposition to criticise the management of these establishments exists in the public mind, and the profession has given unequivocal evidence that it shares in this feeling and is determined to carry out the inquiry thoroughly. If may be safely affirmed that, if this is to be done, there is no part of the subject which demands earlier attention than the condition of those workhouse-inmates who are insane; for the circumstances which call so loudly for reform in the management of “indoor” paupers, especially those who are sick, exist in an extreme degree in the instance of the insane. The upshot of all careful inquiries into these matters, and notably of that inquiry now proceeding in the columns of ‘The Lancet’, is to make prominent the fact that those workhouses which are situated in populous cities are rapidly becoming great hospitals, instead of refuges for tired or lazy vagrants: while, as yet, the guardians who manage them cannot (or will not) understand that this is the case, but persist in treating the inmates as much as possible on the old system, by which the workhouse was a penal residence intended to disgust and repress the applicants for public relief. Under such a régime it has been shown that numbers of acutely sick persons suffer great hardship and have their chances of recovering health and strength materially interfered with; while as for the patients suffering from chronic disease and debility, it can hardly be said that they receive any proper care at all; and it is my purpose in the present paper to show particularly that the insane are the most deeply injured of all classes of indoor paupers by the system usually followed.

1892 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-55
Author(s):  
Blackie

I will commence by stating that three reasons have moved me to bring this subject before the Society—(1) Because I found everywhere loose and even altogether false ideas possessing the public mind on the subject; (2) because I much fear that we, the academical teachers of the Greek language, are chiefly to blame for the currency of these false ideas; and (3) because, if Greek is a living and uncorrupted language, and dominating large districts of Europe and the Mediterranean, as influentially as French on the banks of the Seine and German on the Rhine, it follows that a radical reform must take place in our received methods of teaching this noble and most useful language. Now that the current language of the Greeks in Athens and elsewhere is not, in any sense, a new or a corrupt language, as Italian is a melodious and French a glittering corruption of Latin, may be gathered even a priori; for languages are slow to die, and the time that elapsed from the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 and the establishment of the Venetian power in the Morea in 1204, to the resurrection of Greek political life in 1822, was not long enough to cause such a fusion of contrary elements as produced the English language from the permanent occupation of the British Isles by the Normans.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Lilienthal

AbstractThis paper by-passes the various public tropes, such as “marriage equality”, and concentrates on determining whether or not a same-sex marriage law would be sophistically effective in Australia. It revives the ancient Greek sophistical rhetorical skill of proposing a law, and applies it as a critical context to the topic of legislating for same-sex marriage. The objective is to assess whether or not a same-sex marriage law will be effective in its legislative objects. It proposes to discuss whether the parliament could introduce such a law so that the law’s objects were achieved effectively in the public mind. Argument will try to show that introducing a law to create same-sex marriage would fail because of subsisting priestly legislation on the subject of marriage. Its two hypotheses are that the canon law and other English priestly legislation restrict the scope of marriage regulation, and marriage could not be re-defined to cover same-sex marriage. Sections of the paper examining the law historically employ the historiographical method of identifying underlying norms, the effect of which is occasional reverse chronologies. The article’s conclusion will assert that a statute for legal and duly registered same-sex marriage likely would be, according to sophistical rhetorical reasoning, a fiction misrepresenting the truth of the subsisting legal and social institutions of marriage.


Author(s):  
Sarah Brommer

AbstractThe writing skills of today's youth often make great waves when mentioned in the public media. The following article is based on 671 comments made about the writing skills of young people in selected newspapers and magazines from 1994 to 2005. The opinions and criteria presented will be analysed and patterns of reasoning which repeat themselves in their structure will also be identified. In addition to descriptions of discourse content, their structure will be presented and their connection with related discourses considered. This empirical study distinctly shows in which context and manner the subject of writing skills in young people is broached by the media. However, it also shows which image of writing skills in young people dominates in the public mind, as well as presenting to what degree this image is based on objective criteria or just a cliché


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-141
Author(s):  
Gabriela Glăvan

Abstract Although one of the most influential figures of Romanian Communism, Elena Ceaușescu has been the subject of a rather limited literature exploring her historical figure. I intend to revisit the political humour of Romanian communism in order to reveal the manners and strategies employed by this type of folklore in affirming the hyperbolized clichés that defined the dictator’s wife in the public mind of that age. I also intend to bring into discussion the common traditional prejudice that blamed Elena Ceaușescu for her husband’s catastrophic politics that impoverished and isolated Romania in the Eastern Bloc.


1922 ◽  
Vol 26 (133) ◽  
pp. 23-39

At the time when the question of the development of civil aviation is so much in the public mind, I am most grateful to the Royal Aeronautical Society for giving me this opportunity of summarising the technical position of the airship to-day.It seems to me that if air transport is to take its place with other existing forms of transport the long distance routes of the world must be established, and my object in summarising the present technical position of the airship is to enable you to form an opinion as to whether the modern airship is capable of taking its place in establishing these routes.I have confined my remarks to the rigid as it is the large airship which is the most suitable for this long distance work.As this long distance work has a distinct bearing, in my opinion, on the value of the airship for naval purposes, I have made a brief reference to this aspect of the subject.


1884 ◽  
Vol 29 (128) ◽  
pp. 459-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Campbell Clark

Seven years ago Dr. Clouston read a paper to this Association “On the Question of Getting, Training, and Retaining the Services of Good Asylum Attendants.” Such a paper could scarcely fail to attract considerable notice and elicit a very hearty discussion, for the subject is one of far-reaching importance to us as asylum physicians, and of very great moment in the interest of the insane. To get the best raw material possible, and to manufacture out of it the best asylum attendant possible, were two great aims suggested by Dr. Clouston, and the subsequent discussion of his paper showed that the Association was fully alive to these, and the serious obstacles which lay in the way of their accomplishment. If the aims here indicated should be more fully realised in the future than in the past, we will probably find that the third desideratum, viz., the keeping of our attendants for a reasonable length of time, will be realised in like proportion as the others. We all willingly admit that the first serious difficulty is how and where to get them. What will attract the best raw material into the asylum market ? or, putting the question in a negative way, what is it that does not attract the best raw material into asylums? These questions will admit of a variety of answers, many having their root in the idea of non-respectability. Undoubtedly the status of an attendant is at present an inferior one in the industrial scale. Some common popular notions are that the rougher and stronger the material the better is the attendant; that it is not a trade for men, and is suited only for the coarser types of women; that it leads to nothing reliable or desirable as a permanent occupation; and that as a life-work it is not sufficiently respectable to satisfy an average ambition. These and other considerations materially affect the supply of good attendants. Seeing, therefore, that in attendants themselves we find the best advertisement, and through them may command the highest success, it is worth considering, whether or not it is possible for us to advertise asylums, in such a way as to attract to them the better raw material which we crave so much after, and which we need so much. If the public mind must be educated to better purpose we must go upon a new tack. We shall require to bring more elevating influences to bear upon our attendants. In raising their social and industrial status we shall raise them in the estimation of the public and themselves, and may reasonably expect a more marketable article by-and-bye. It is surely fair, in the interest of all concerned, that attendants should receive from us the best possible training of which they are capable. There is reason enough for it in this, that as medical helps they will then develope more fully, and their work will become a life-work worthy of the name.


1905 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
William Brockie Paterson

The growth and development of life assurance has formed the subject of many papers read by Presidents and other distinguished members of the Faculty and of the Institute of Actuaries, who have traced in their writings its progress from very feeble beginnings to the position of importance it now occupies in the public mind, and have shown how a great system based upon large experience has evolved by degrees from the arbitrary methods of earlier days. The life assurance funds of the companies having their head offices in Great Britain and Ireland, according to the returns published by the Board of Trade last year, now exceed £255,000,000, their annual premium income £22,400,000, and the sums assured on their books £660,000,000—figures which demonstrate in a practical and conclusive way the immense confidence with which these institutions are regarded, especially when it is remembered that the contracts, the fulfilment of which is relied upon, are in most cases either lifelong or maturing only after many years. Even prior to the passing of the Life Assurance Companies Act, 1870, the hold that the companies had obtained upon public esteem was by no means insignificant, as life assurance funds of £87,000,000 and a premium income of over £9,000,000 testify; but without the publicity which the returns prescribed by the Act have secured, it would have been much more difficult, if not altogether impossible, to put forward the appeal to have the contracts of life offices admitted as trustee investments which it is the object of this paper to initiate. The advantages that have accrued from the Act are, I believe, recognised by all insurance men, and there is no occasion to enlarge upon them here, beyond the simple statement that the security afforded by the contract of an insurance company has been greatly enhanced thereby, and that the means of discrimination essential for the present purpose have been adequately supplied through its provisions.


Author(s):  
Charles Jellicoe

It is now somewhat more than twelve months ago that the decimal coinage question was brought under the notice of this Institute, and that a resolution was thereupon unanimously come to approving of the plan recommended by the Committee of the House of Commons. Since that decision, public attention has been repeatedly called to the subject; and although various plans have been proposed and discussed, founded on a different basis from the one thus recommended, it must, I think, be conceded, that none of them have made any serious impression on the public mind, but that, on the contrary, the one proposed by the Committee has made some if not considerable progress in the course of the sifting which the question generally has undergone.


Author(s):  
Maxim B. Demchenko ◽  

The sphere of the unknown, supernatural and miraculous is one of the most popular subjects for everyday discussions in Ayodhya – the last of the provinces of the Mughal Empire, which entered the British Raj in 1859, and in the distant past – the space of many legendary and mythological events. Mostly they concern encounters with inhabitants of the “other world” – spirits, ghosts, jinns as well as miraculous healings following magic rituals or meetings with the so-called saints of different religions (Hindu sadhus, Sufi dervishes),with incomprehensible and frightening natural phenomena. According to the author’s observations ideas of the unknown in Avadh are codified and structured in Avadh better than in other parts of India. Local people can clearly define if they witness a bhut or a jinn and whether the disease is caused by some witchcraft or other reasons. Perhaps that is due to the presence in the holy town of a persistent tradition of katha, the public presentation of plots from the Ramayana epic in both the narrative and poetic as well as performative forms. But are the events and phenomena in question a miracle for the Avadhvasis, residents of Ayodhya and its environs, or are they so commonplace that they do not surprise or fascinate? That exactly is the subject of the essay, written on the basis of materials collected by the author in Ayodhya during the period of 2010 – 2019. The author would like to express his appreciation to Mr. Alok Sharma (Faizabad) for his advice and cooperation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 16-23
Author(s):  
S. A. Akhmadeeva ◽  
M. J. Gadzhieva

This study was aimed at identifying new effective forms that could facilitate the achievement of a practice-oriented result, i.e. students’ ability to communicate in any speech situation, as well as their readiness for various kinds of oral and written examination tests, including the public defence of projects in the 10th grade and writing December essays in the 11th grade. The article considers rhetorical competitions as a means of developing communicative and linguistic competencies among 10th–11th grade students of a polycultural school. The article provides recommendations on organizing such competitions, criteria for evaluating presentations, examples of oral presentations. A textual analysis of the folklore material of Dagestanian and Russian fairy tales and proverbs allowed the authors to conclude that an inexhaustible set of universal themes that have become the subject of reflection in different nations, can teach students to respect other cultures and extend their knowledge of the world and other people. The experience of a rhetorical competition in high school on the basis of fairy tales and proverbs of different nations is expected to help students form such core competencies as critical thinking, creativity, communication and cooperation (ability to work in a team).


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