“An Opinion of Our Own”: Education, Politics, and the Struggle for Adulthood at Dartmouth College, 1814–1819

On the night of November 11, 1817, nineteen-year-old Rufus Choate rushed to Dartmouth Hall from his Hanover boarding room to answer a call of alarm from his classmates. Professors from Dartmouth University, an institution recently created by legislative action, “had violently attacked” the student library under Choate's care “and, after an unsuccessful attempt to force the lock, literally hewed down the door” with an axe. Choate, who rejected these professors as figures of authority, joined his peers to temporarily lock the intruders in an adjoining room while they removed their books. News of the incident enraged the already volatile debate about the future of Dartmouth. Because the library riot involved generational violence, the professors accused the students of immaturity in an effort to exclude them from the Dartmouth debate. But students found that claims of immaturity could cut both ways. Although students occupied a liminal position between dependence and independence, it was not despite their youth, but because of it that they influenced the outcome of the case. The library riot, then, is important not only for understanding the social context of the Dartmouth case, but also the ways young men interpreted the meaning of youth and maturity in the Early Republic.

Andrea Cavalcanti

The Count of Monte Cristo entered the adjoining room which Baptistin had designated as the blue drawing—room, and found there a young man of graceful demeanour and elegant appearance who had arrived in a fiacre about half an hour previously. Baptistin had...

Irony and Purity: Mishima

Tokyo: 25 November 1970, midday. The parade ground of the Self Defence Force's Ichigaya garrison was crowded with personnel. All looked up at the balcony of the main hall, knowing that in the adjoining room the commandant had been taken hostage. On the parapet of the balcony stood one captor, dressed in a brown uniform and donning a headband with an ancient samurai motto, shichishōhōkoku (‘serve the nation for seven lives’). He was Mishima Yukio, the famous writer and founder of a militia named Tatenokai (Shield Society). Hardly able to make himself heard through the wail of sirens and the jeers from the crowd, Mishima held a speech in which he called the constitutional curtailment of the military a threat to Japan's culture. Nothing new, as he had been flirting openly with the extreme right for years. His plea to the men below to follow him in a revolt was greeted with howls of derision.

The use of antiseptic sprays for air sterilization: A summary of a report to the Medical Research Council

Experiments on the bactericidal properties of mists were performed in a closed room of 850 cu. ft. capacity. The test organism was sprayed into the room through an Atmozon nebulizer operated from a mechanically driven Austin diaphragm compressor; the pressure was maintained at 7 lb./sq. in. Air to the compressor was taken through rubber tubing from an adjoining room to avoid accidental admixture of antiseptics into the air used to atomize the bacteria. The output of the nebulizer was 0·22 c.c./min. In the majority of the experiments the test organism was sprayed for 2 min. To ensure that an adequate mist was being emitted, the culture was nebulized in the dark against a dark background, and examined frequently with a light beam. Even distribution of the mist in the room was ensured by convection currents from a large hot-water pipe which ran along the length of two walls about 2 ft. from the floor, and by a small electrically driven fan placed immediately behind the nebulizer.

Epidemic of epidemic encephalitis. Duzar, Balo (Jahrb. f. Kingerheilk., Bd. 99)

The authors describe an illness that spread in the breast department of a pediatric clinic in Budapest. The first child was admitted on the 4th day of the illness, which began at once with fever, vomiting, and diarrhea; unconsciousness, shortness of breath, and intestinal phenomena led at first to assume acute food intoxication. After 4 days, a child lying in an adjoining room became ill, 2 days later the next, and then, at intervals of 2 to 3 days, the infection spread throughout the ward, infecting 11 children.