Sacred heresies: the Harrowing of Hell in early modern English literature

Sacred Heresies traces the English literary tradition of the Harrowing of Hell out of the Catholic Middle Ages, through the Protestant Renaissance, and into the proto-scientific Restoration period. I argue that Christ's theatrical descent into hell serves as source material for authors wishing to depict characters overcoming evil through confrontation with the devil or demonic figures. Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Margaret Cavendish draw on the narratives associated with the Harrowing in order to represent (or question) the lawful or righteous use of magic to combat spiritual, social, and political enemies. The ultimate source for these characterizations and actions is the Jesus Christ of the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, a multi-faceted version of Christ who is rebel, magician, warrior, advocate, and kinfolk simultaneously. The early modern writers who discovered this Christ in their reading of texts like William Langland's Piers Plowman and their viewing of the vestiges of the cycle plays found a virtuous subject encountering and often debating with diabolical forces, acts that have previously denoted either witchcraft or exorcism. By offering the Harrowing Christ-figure as a third alternative to these codified subject positions, my project puts scholarship on religious change into conversation with investigations of witchcraft trials and proto-scientific discourse in a way that redefines how we understand magic in early modern England. Scholarship that connects magic and religion has focused almost exclusively on the negative aspects of the relationship. Stuart Clark observes that accusations of witchcraft were "endemic in the discourse of religious difference," and Genevieve Guenther notes that the instrumental aesthetics of conjuring on stage threatened to damn the audience for simply observing events. Given these deleterious associations, any desire to practice magic seems blatantly ludicrous. This study contributes an alternative model for the magical practitioner, a model powerful enough to overcome the damning effects of consorting with Lucifer himself--that of the Harrowing Christ. In the investigation of the motivations for laudable uses of magic in these literary texts, it became clear that magical practice provided a sense of human agency over supernatural events that responded to the lack of agency implied by new Protestant emphases on contemplation and predestination. If as Ian McAdam states, "Radical Protestant internalization of faith placed an almost unbearable burden of responsibility on the believer," modeling behavior on Christ's defeat of Satan countered this tendency by empowering the subject to more fully participate in his or her own salvation by confronting damnation directly. Reading the literary texts alongside Tudor and Stuart theological debates about Christ's descent into hell unearthed an unexpected element in the trajectory of the reinterpretations of the Harrowing of Hell. Whereas poets, playwrights, and prose writers were crafting characters based on the model of Christ, theologians were fashioning Christ himself for new contexts and audiences. For example, an image published with Adam Hill's 1592 The Defence of the Article: Christ descended into Hell portrays Christ as climbing out of a coffin onto a dragon and a skeleton in order to connect Christ with St George, the patron saint of England. By William Allen's 1697 sermon titled A Practical Improvement of the Articles of Christ's Descent into Hell, the fact that scientists have the ability to prove how "the Body of Man becomes that of another" through "successive Transmigration" serves as proof that the infinitely more powerful Christ is "a most intelligent Agent" who can "order and watch the Particles of a Humane Body" in order to raise the dead to everlasting life (D3v). These surprising interpretations of the third article--Christ as nationalistic hero or Christ as scientist extraordinaire--support the claim made by scholars like Dewey Wallace and Patrick Collinson that the English used contested theological positions to separate themselves from both the Catholics and the Puritans and construct a stable identity for the Anglican Church that contributed to the emerging sense of England as a nation-state

Dressing-related pain in patients with chronic wounds: an international patient perspective

This cross-sectional international survey assessed patients’ perceptions of their wound pain. A total of 2018 patients (57% female) from 15 different countries with a mean age of 68.6 years (SD = 15.4) participated. The wounds were categorised into ten different types with a mean wound duration of 19.6 months (SD = 51.8). For 2018 patients, 3361 dressings/compression systems were being used, with antimicrobials being reported most frequently (n = 605). Frequency of wound-related pain was reported as 32.2%, ‘never’ or ‘rarely’, 31.1%, ‘quite often’ and 36.6%, ‘most’ or ‘all of the time’, with venous and arterial ulcers associated with more frequent pain (P = 0.002). All patients reported that ‘the wound itself’ was the most painful location (n = 1840). When asked if they experienced dressing-related pain, 286 (14.7%) replied ‘most of the time’ and 334 (17.2%) reported pain ‘all of the time’; venous, mixed and arterial ulcers were associated with more frequent pain at dressing change (P , 0<001). Eight hundred and twelve (40.2%) patients reported that it took ,1 hour for the pain to subside after a dressing change, for 449 (22.2%) it took 1–2 hours, for 192 (9.5%) it took 3–5 hours and for 154 (7.6%) patients it took more than 5 hours. Pain intensity was measured using a visual analogue scale (VAS) (0–100) giving a mean score of 44.5 (SD = 30.5, n = 1981). Of the 1141 who reported that they generally took pain relief,21% indicated that they did not feel it was effective. Patients were asked to rate six symptoms associated with living with a chronic wound; ‘pain’ was given the highest mean score of 3.1 (n = 1898). In terms of different types of daily activities, ‘overdoing things’ was associated with the highest mean score (mean = 2.6, n = 1916). During the stages of the dressing change procedure; ‘touching/handling the wound’ was given the highest mean score of 2.9, followed by cleansing and dressing removal (n = 1944). One thousand four hundred and eighty-five (80.15%) patients responded that they liked to be actively involved in their dressing changes, 1141 (58.15%) responded that they were concerned about the long-term side-effects of medication, 790 (40.3%) of patient indicated that the pain at dressing change was the worst part of living with a wound. This study adds substantially to our knowledge of how patients experience wound pain and gives us the opportunity to explore cultural differences in more detail

Cross-cutting principles for planetary health education

Since the 2015 launch of the Rockefeller Foundation Lancet Commission on planetary health,1 an enormous groundswell of interest in planetary health education has emerged across many disciplines, institutions, and geographical regions. Advancing these global efforts in planetary health education will equip the next generation of scholars to address crucial questions in this emerging field and support the development of a community of practice. To provide a foundation for the growing interest and efforts in this field, the Planetary Health Alliance has facilitated the first attempt to create a set of principles for planetary health education that intersect education at all levels, across all scales, and in all regions of the world—ie, a set of cross-cutting principles

Global patterns of nitrate isotope composition in rivers and adjacent aquifers reveal reactive nitrogen cascading

Remediation of nitrate pollution of Earth’s rivers and aquifers is hampered by cumulative biogeochemical processes and nitrogen sources. Isotopes (δ15N, δ18O) help unravel spatiotemporal nitrogen(N)-cycling of aquatic nitrate (NO3−). We synthesized nitrate isotope data (n = ~5200) for global rivers and shallow aquifers for common patterns and processes. Rivers had lower median NO3− (0.3 ± 0.2 mg L−1, n = 2902) compared to aquifers (5.5 ± 5.1 mg L−1, n = 2291) and slightly lower δ15N values (+7.1 ± 3.8‰, n = 2902 vs +7.7 ± 4.5‰, n = 2291), but were indistinguishable in δ18O (+2.3 ± 6.2‰, n = 2790 vs +2.3 ± 5.4‰, n = 2235). The isotope composition of NO3− was correlated with water temperature revealing enhanced N-cascading in warmer climates. Seasonal analyses revealed higher δ15N and δ18O values in wintertime, suggesting waste-related N-source signals are better preserved in the cold seasons. Isotopic assays of nitrate biogeochemical transformations are key to understanding nitrate pollution and to inform beneficial agricultural and land management strategies

American College of Rheumatology Provisional Criteria for Clinically Relevant Improvement in Children and Adolescents With Childhood-Onset Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

10.1002/acr.23834ARTHRITIS CARE & RESEARCH715579-59

Sour Beer at the Boar’s Head: Salvaging Shakespeare’s Alewife, Mistress Quickly

Using William Shakespeare&rsquo;s character Mistress Nell Quickly as an example, this article contends that familiarity with both the literary tradition of alewives and the historical conditions in which said literary tradition brewed aids in revising our interpretation of working-class women on the early modern stage. Mistress Quickly, the multi-faceted comic character in three history plays and a city-comedy, resembles closely those women with whom Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have lived and worked in their day-to-day lives. Rather than dismissing her role as minor or merely comic, as previous criticism largely has, scholarship can embrace this character type and her narrative as an example to complicate teleological progressions for women

Resultados maternos e perinatais de dez anos de assistência obstétrica a portadoras do vírus da imunodeficiência humana

OBJETIVOS: avaliar a transmissão vertical do vírus da imunodeficiência humana (HIV) e os fatores de risco associados à infecção perinatal. MÉTODOS: estudo descritivo de 170 gestantes infectadas pelo HIV e seus 188 recém-nascidos, admitidas na Maternidade do Hospital das Clínicas da UFMG, no período de junho de 1994 a setembro de 2004. Foram analisados as características demográficas, o perfil sorológico e a via de parto das gestantes, assim como os resultados perinatais. As crianças foram acompanhadas por período de 18 meses após o nascimento. Os dados foram armazenados e analisados no Epi-Info, Versão 6.0. Estabeleceu-se intervalo de confiança a 95% (p<0,05). RESULTADOS: o diagnóstico da infecção pelo HIV foi confirmado durante a gestação em 84 (45,4%) pacientes. A carga viral era inferior a 1000 cópias/mL em 60,4% das pacientes. O esquema predominante de uso dos anti-retrovirais foi a terapia tríplice (65,5%). Foi alta a taxa de cesariana: 79,5%. A taxa de prematuridade foi 18,2%. Entre os 188 recém-natos houve 184 (97,8%) nativivos e quatro (2,2%) mortes perinatais. Dos nascidos vivos, 97,8% receberam zidovudina após o nascimento. A taxa global de transmissão materno-fetal global foi 3,8%. As taxas de transmissão vertical do vírus, por período, foram: 60%, até 1996; 28%, entre 1996 e 1998; 0,68%, entre 1999 e 2004. Não foram encontrados fatores de risco significativamente associados à infecção perinatal pelo HIV, devido ao pequeno número de recém-nascidos infectados (n=6). CONCLUSÃO: houve grande redução da transmissão vertical do HIV no período analisado. A taxa atual de transmissão é zero, confirmando que, adotando-se medidas adequadas, pode-se prevenir a transmissão perinatal do vírus

Itch intensity in prurigo nodularis is closely related to dermal interleukin‐31, oncostatin M, IL‐31 receptor alpha and oncostatin M receptor beta

Prurigo nodularis (PN) is a chronic skin dermatosis with hyperkeratotic and intensely pruritic nodules. Managing PN-associated itch is difficult because its aetiology is still unknown. This study aimed to investigate the correlation between itch intensity in PN and the expression of a pruritogenic cytokine interleukin (IL)-31, its receptor complex components IL-31 receptor α (IL-31RA) and oncostatin M receptor β (OSMRβ), and oncostatin M (OSM), which is a ligand of OSMR β, through immunofluorescence staining examination. Itch intensity in PN was closely correlated with the number of dermal IL-31(+) cells (Spearman's r = 0.551, p  0.05). Major cellular sources of dermal IL-31 were T cells (27.0% of total IL-31-expressing cells) and macrophages (35.0%), while those of OSM were mainly T cells (49.8%) and mast cells (26.8%). IL-31RA-expressing dermal cells were mostly mast cells (49.3%) and macrophages (36.6%), and OSMRβ was mainly expressed by macrophages (51.8%) in the dermis. These findings indicate that IL-31 (mainly from macrophages and T cells) and OSM (principally from T cells and mast cells) stimulate dermal cells expressing IL-31RA and OSMRβ (e.g. macrophages), which may further promote itch and inflammation in PN. This complex dermal milieu of cell/cytokine/receptor network can be a therapeutic target for PN-associated itch