Rotation therapy for maniacs, melancholics and idiots: theory, practice and perception in European medical and literary case histories

This article examines the development and use of rotation therapy in the emerging field of psychiatry at the beginning of the 19th century, and the cross-fertilization between British, Irish, German, French and other European proponents of ‘Cox’s Swing’. Its short-lived popularity is linked to prevalent Enlightenment thought, to the development of an industrial and technological society, to the modern medical theories of irritability, and to the new practice of ‘moral management’ of the mentally ill. Case studies documenting the use of the Swing are considered from these perspectives, and are compared with contemporary public reactions in the form of publications in newspapers and of a literary text by German Romantic author Ludwig Achim von Arnim

It Doesn\u27t Pass the \u3ci\u3eSell\u3c/i\u3e Test: Focusing on The Facts of the Individual Case in Involuntary Medication Inquiries

Criminal defendants who are incompetent to stand trial have a significant liberty interest in refusing the antipsychotic medication that could restore their competency. The Supreme Court cautioned that instances of intrusion upon that right “may be rare,” and, in Sell v. United States, it laid out what it believed to be stringent criteria for when a defendant could be medicated against his will. Yet, since Sell, trial courts have ordered over sixty-three percent of defendants involuntarily medicated. These individuals did not pose a danger to themselves or others, and they were rarely accused of crimes that involved damage to individuals or property. But the medication of these defendants, once predicted to be “rare,” has instead become routine. In this article, I argue that the overmedication of non-dangerous defendants is a result of the structure of the Sell test and its tilt in favor of the government. The use of a checklist of four threshold elements favors the issuance of medication orders because the court need not balance the defendant’s liberty interest in avoiding medication against the government’s interest in administering it. In addition, three of the four boxes on the checklist concern medical questions about the efficacy and side effects of antipsychotic medication that will fall in the government’s favor in the vast majority of cases. However, while the Sell test contains the seeds of the overmedication problem, it also contains the solution. The first factor of the test requires courts to consider whether the government interest at stake is “important,” and it mandates that courts assess the “facts of the individual case” to determine if the government interest crosses that bar. While few courts have delved deeply into this factor, some have looked to the nonviolent nature of the crime or the government’s minimal likelihood of success on the underlying criminal charge in concluding that the government interest in prosecuting the defendant was not important. I argue that more courts can and should follow this path. Such an approach would limit the involuntary medication of defendants to those exceptional cases where it is truly warranted

Emasculated Men: The Perception and Treatment of Shell-Shocked Soldiers During World War I

World War I differed from wars of the past in a variety of ways. Thus, it created a host of modern medical and psychological problems for soldiers, military leaders, and physicians to overcome such as shell shock. Since shell shock was a relatively new phenomenon in warfare, the medical and military communities were uncertain about how to interpret its appearance and decrease its occurrence in their armed forces. As a result, shell shock fell victim to several social constructs of the time. One of the main societal factors that fueled the negative stigmatization of shell-shocked soldiers during the war was militarized masculinity. Using a variety of primary sources including military recruitment posters, medical journals, and other military and medical records, this paper aims to contribute to the current historiographical literature on the period by focusing exclusively on how societal perceptions of masculinity ultimately influenced the American and British military’s attitudes towards shell-shocked soldiers and determined the types of treatments used by medical practitioners to relieve soldiers of their debilitating and “effeminate” symptoms

Complete Mouth Rehabilitation and Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease: Conventional and Contemporary Treatment Approaches

This report describes the diagnosis and prosthodontic management of 2 patients with a history of chronic gastroesophageal reflux disease and worn dentition. Different treatment approaches were used for oral rehabilitation. Use of conventional and contemporary restorative materials resulted in functional and esthetic prosthodontic rehabilitation with a favorable prognosis. Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a “condition which develops when the reflux of stomach contents causes troublesome symptoms and/or complications. Reflux episodes can be intensified by dietary habits, smoking, physical exercise, and obstructive sleep apnea.Complications of GERD are regurgitation, chest pain, esophagitis, Barrett’s esophagus, esophageal adenocarcinoma, cough, asthma, and dental erosion.GERD is associated with dental erosion and sleep bruxism,and dental erosion may be the only symptom of GERD. The purpose of this report was to present the oral diagnosis and management of 2 patients with chronic GERD who presented with tooth wear and required complete mouth rehabilitation. The restoration of dentition was achieved by following different treatment modalities

The Public Funding of Health Care: A Brief Historical Overview of Principles, Practices, and Motives

Nationally sponsored programs designed to fund health care for the general public are largely a twentieth century phenomenon. Yet a long glance backward at the medical and public health history of Western civilization, extending from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth century, reveals earlier periods when governments, religious institutions, and other groups provided some measure of medical relief for the sick, the poor, and the homeless. In this essay, I will provide not an exhaustive but rather an illustrative account of this oft forgotten fact. My objectives are threefold. First, to remind us that the active concern of society for the health of its citizens is hardly a new development arising full born, as it were, out of the biomedical revolution and refined moral sensibilities of our present age. As I will suggest, our current interest in public health, and the related question of how to allocate medical resources fairly, is part of a larger evolutionary social process. Second, to conjecture that the impulse of caring for the sick and injured, using public or private resources,1 is typically driven by a variety of sometimes overlapping motivations, both religious and secular in origin. Third, to indicate that no single monolithic philosophy of providing medical care for the masses emerges from the historical record. That is, no unified pattern of health care organization or individual or communal motivation can plausibly account for this seemingly altruistic behavior, behavior which is putatively aimed at promoting the common good of all members of society. Given the interdisciplinary scope of this discussion, my inquiry will weave together sociological, psychological, and philosophical strands of evidence. Constraints of length will limit us primarily to developments in Europe and the United States. In the end, a limited sampling of societal practices, individual or communal motivations, and philosophical considerations will indicate that no simple story can be told about the public or private funding of health care. Proceeding more or less chronologically, I will introduce evidence demonstrating that redemptive, utilitarian, prudential, and charitable impulses (among others) are at work in the humane decision to use public or private funds to provide medical care for the benefit of the sick or infirm. While I do not claim that these four motivations constitute a complete list, they do emerge as a recurring and significant typology — helping to solidify the emerging modern public health movement in England, the United States, and elsewhere in the West by the late nineteenth century