Crediting women in the early modern English economy

No abstract available

Worthless witnesses? Marginal voices and women's legal agency in early modern England

This article explores the distribution of women witnesses in a selection of English church courts between the mid-sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries, in order to assess the extent to which women's participation as witnesses in these jurisdictions might be characterized as a form of legal agency. It shows that women's participation was highly contingent on their marital status and between places and over time and was shaped by the matters in dispute as well as the gender of the litigants for whom they testified. Although poverty did not exclude women witnesses (higher proportions of female witnesses than male claimed to be poor or of limited means), women were more vulnerable than were men to discrediting strategies that cast doubt on their authority in court. Such findings show that the incorporative dimensions of state formation did not deliver new forms of agency to women but depended heavily upon patriarchal norms and constraints

The pleasures and pains of breast-feeding in England, c.1600-c.1800

No abstract available

Multilocus Genetic Investigation of Species Limits in the Caddo Mountain Salamander (Plethodon caddoensis)

Alexandra D. Hahn is an undergraduate student in the School of Biological Sciences at Louisiana Tech University. Donald B. Shepard is an Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Louisiana Tech University

Minding their own business: married women and credit in early eighteenth-century London

Taking a micro-historical approach, this paper explores the business activities of Elizabeth Carter and Elizabeth Hatchett, two married women who operated together as pawnbrokers in London in the early decades of the eighteenth century. Based on a protracted inheritance dispute through which their extensive dealings come to light, the discussion assesses married women’s lending and investment strategies in a burgeoning metropolitan economy; the networks through which women lenders operated; and the extent to which wives could sidestep the legal conventions of ‘coverture’ which restricted their ownership of moveable property. It is argued that the moneylending and asset management activities of women like Carter and Hatchett were an important part of married women’s work that did not simply consolidate neighbourhood ties but that placed them at the heart of the early modern economy

Change and Exchange: Economies of Literature and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

The introductory essay outlines the way in which Change and Exchange places literature, and, in a wider sense, imaginative practice, at the centre of early modern economic knowledge. Probing the affinity between economic and metaphorical experience in terms of the transactional processes of change and exchange, it sets up the parameters within which the essays in the volume collectively forge a language to grasp early modern economic phenomena and their epistemic dimensions. It prepares the reader for the stimulating combination of materials that the book presents: the range of generic contexts engendered by emergent economic practices, structures of feeling and modes of knowing made available by new economic relations, and economies of transformation in discursive domains that are distinct from ‘economics’ as we understand it but cognate in their intuition of change and exchange as shaping agents

Corticosteroid-Induced Immunosuppression ultimately does not compromise the efficacy of antibiotherapy in murine mycobacterium ulcerans Infection

Buruli ulcer (BU) is a necrotizing disease of the skin, subcutaneous tissue and bone caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans. It has been suggested that the immune response developed during the recommended rifampicin/streptomycin (RS) antibiotherapy is protective, contributing to bacterial clearance. On the other hand, paradoxical reactions have been described during or after antibiotherapy, characterized by pathological inflammatory responses. This exacerbated inflammation could be circumvented by immunosuppressive drugs. Therefore, it is important to clarify if the immune system contributes to bacterial clearance during RS antibiotherapy and if immunosuppression hampers the efficacy of the antibiotic regimen. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We used the M. ulcerans infection footpad mouse model. Corticosteroid-induced immunosuppression was achieved before experimental infection and maintained during combined RS antibiotherapy by the administration of dexamethasone (DEX). Time-lapsed analyses of macroscopic lesions, bacterial burdens, histology and immunohistochemistry were performed in M. ulcerans-infected footpads. We show here that corticosteroid-immunosuppressed mice are more susceptible to M. ulcerans, with higher bacterial burdens and earlier ulceration. Despite this, macroscopic lesions remised during combined antibiotic/DEX treatment and no viable bacteria were detected in the footpads after RS administration. This was observed despite a delayed kinetics in bacterial clearance, associated with a local reduction of T cell and neutrophil numbers, when compared with immunocompetent RS-treated mice. In addition, no relapse was observed following an additional 3 month period of DEX administration. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These findings reveal a major role of the RS bactericidal activity for the resolution of M. ulcerans experimental infections even during immunosuppression, and support clinical investigation on the potential use of corticosteroids or other immunosuppressive/anti-inflammatory drugs for the management of BU patients undergoing paradoxical reactions.This work was supported by a grant from the Health Services of Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, and the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) fellowships SFRH/BD/41598/2007, SFRH/BPD/64032/2009, SFRH/BPD/68547/2010 and SFRH/BD/33573/2009 to TGM, GT, AGF, and JBG, respectively. MS is a Ciência 2007 fello

Phage therapy is effective against infection by Mycobacterium ulcerans in a murine footpad model

Author Summary: Buruli Ulcer (BU), caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans, is a necrotizing disease of the skin, subcutaneous tissue and bone. Standard treatment of BU patients consists of a combination of the antibiotics rifampicin and streptomycin for 8 weeks. However, in advanced stages of the disease, surgical resection of the destroyed skin is still required. The use of bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) for the control of bacterial infections has been considered as an alternative or a supplement to antibiotic chemotherapy. By using a mouse model of M. ulcerans footpad infection, we show that mice treated with a single subcutaneous injection of the mycobacteriophage D29 present decreased footpad pathology associated with a reduction of the bacterial burden. In addition, D29 treatment induced increased levels of IFN-γ and TNF in M. ulcerans -infected footpads, correlating with a predominance of a mononuclear infiltrate. These findings suggest the potential use of phage therapy in BU, as a novel therapeutic approach against this disease, particularly in advanced stages where bacteria are found primarily in an extracellular location in the subcutaneous tissue, and thus immediately accessible by lytic phages.This work was supported by a grant from the Health Services of Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, and the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) fellowships SFRH/BPD/64032/2009, SFRH/BD/41598/2007, and SFRH/BPD/68547/2010 to GT, TGM, and AGF, respectively. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript