EXCERPT: An article from Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry that discusses the concept of ‘moral disability’ and brain trauma in Victorian times includes a fascinating section on what was presumably thought to be the science of ‘knocking some sense into the brain’. The piece is by medical historian Brandy Shillace who researches Victorian scientific ideas and how they affected society. Sadly, the article is locked (quite rightly, humanities can kill if not used correctly) but this is the key section...
EXCERPT: As Halloween approaches, we were swapping ghost stories around the ol' PEOPLE offices. Though we're based in New York, staffers here come from all over, and so it got us thinking about what we like to call the Haunted States of America: What "ghost story" defines your state? This infographic is assembled from a variety of sources – in some cases, it's the "most famous" ghost in each state, in others, it's the one we found the most interesting....
"On Jan. 17, 1946, a psychiatrist named Walter Freeman launched a radical new era in the treatment of mental illness in this country. On that day, he performed the first-ever transorbital or "ice-pick" lobotomy in his Washington, D.C., office. Freeman believed that mental illness was related to overactive emotions, and that by cutting the brain he cut away these feelings.
Freeman, equal parts physician and showman, became a barnstorming crusader for the procedure. Before his death in 1972, he performed transorbital lobotomies on some 2,500 patients in 23 states.
One of Freeman's youngest patients is today a 56-year-old bus driver living in California. Over the past two years, Howard Dully has embarked on a quest to discover the story behind the procedure he received as a 12-year-old boy."
STAMFORD, Conn., Oct. 22 (UPI) -- "Ebola plush toys have been selling so fast in response to this year's outbreak that a Connecticut manufacturer, Giantmicrobes Inc., can't keep them in stock.
The company, which was founded a decade ago, makes stuffed toys based on the appearance of microbes like Ebola, Chicken pox, bed bugs, and even non-harmful microscopic organisms things like brain and red blood cells.
The items are meant to be educational tools for young children, Laura Sullivan, vice president of operations, told CBS News.
Thank God i have never been so burdened by email... an never will be... that i woud need this new app... which to me... looks like it woud make it easier to overlook important stuff an make email more complicated.!!!