Family influence and psychiatric care: physical treatments in Devon mental hospitals, c. 1920 to the 1970s

‘What is it that appears to make the mentally ill so vulnerable to therapeutic experimentation?’1 One commentator wrote in the 1990s, regarding mental hospitals as repressive, coercive and custodial institutions where medical staff subjected patients to orgies of experimentation. A careful study of surviving documents of the Devon County Lunatic Asylum (DCLA), however, paints a different picture. Rather than medical staff, patients’ relatives and the wider community exercised a considerable influence over a patient's hospital admission and discharge, rendering the therapeutic regime in the middle of the 20th century the result of intense negotiations between the hospital and third parties

Dressing and addressing the mental patient: the uses of clothing in the admission, care and employment of residents in English provincial mental hospitals, c. 1860–1960

Scholars of insanity and its historical antecedents have paid very little attention to personal and institutional clothing. Such dress, distributed to patients in mental institutions, has always been inscribed with the conflicting narratives of the period in which it was made and worn. The language of civil and medical authority is more evident than personal choice in the shape and address of the attire. This article examines clothing worn by patients in three Devon mental hospitals during the century before 1960. We consider the ways in which institutional clothing formed part of a hospital regimen of overt control, as well as suiting considerations of economy and employment that figured in these institutions

On a nonlinear partial differential algebraic system arising in technical textile industry: Analysis and numerics

In this paper we explore a numerical scheme for a nonlinear fourth order system of partial differential algebraic equations that describes the dynamics of slender inextensible elastica as they arise in the technical textile industry. Applying a semi-discretization in time, the resulting sequence of nonlinear elliptic systems with the algebraic constraint for the local length preservation is reformulated as constrained optimization problems in a Hilbert space setting that admit a solution at each time level. Stability and convergence of the scheme are proved. The numerical realization is based on a finite element discretization in space. The simulation results confirm the analytically predicted properties of the scheme.Comment: Abstract and introduction are partially rewritten. The numerical study in Section 4 is completely rewritte

Vom Dorfbackofen zur digitalen Plattform

Sharing Economy kann mit Wirtschaft des Teilens übersetzt werden. Gemeint sind neue und wiederentdeckte Formen des Teilens und Tauschens – von Wohnraum, Autos, Werkzeugen, Nahrungsmitteln und vielem mehr. Es geht dabei um eine neue Art, wie wir wirtschaften, und weniger darum, was wir besitzen, konsumieren oder erledigen lassen. Häufig wird der Austausch durch digitale Plattformen erleichtert. Einige davon sind profitorientiert, andere gemeinnützig. Von der dank Internet riesigen Auswahl und der leichten Auffindbarkeit profitieren AnbieterInnen und BezügerInnen gleichermassen

Ein Einkaufsladen, bei dem die Kaufenden mitbestimmen

Rubrik: Sharing Economy: Teilen und Teilhabe

Food Sharing : engagiert gegen Lebensmittelverschwendung

In immer mehr Städten engagieren sich Lebensmittelretterinnen und -retter gegen Foodwaste, also das Wegwerfen noch einwandfreier Lebensmittel, die nicht mehr verkauft werden können. Diese werden eingesammelt und kostenlos an Esserinnen und Esser verteilt. So retten etwa die Organisationen Foodsharing und Restessbar Lebensmittel von Restaurants, Läden, Take-aways und Bäckereien, je nach Standort auch von Grossverteilern oder Gemüse-Marktfahrern

Bibliotheken : Vorreiterinnen des gross-gemeinschaftlichen Teilens

Rubrik: Sharing Economy: Teilen und Teilhabe