From 1920 to 1940 in Minnehaha County there was an apparent striking increase in the incidence of fatal myocarditis and chronic myocarditis. Based on an analysis of the interment records of the Mt. ...Pleasant Cemetery, word frequency studies in two prominent American medical journals and a general review of related medical publications, we explore this increase. We conclude that there was no actual increase in the frequency of inflammatory disorders of the myocardium in Minnehaha County during this period. Rather, it appears that the use of the diagnostic terms was a matter of choice among local physicians that was not supported by contemporaneous clinical and pathophysiologic publications in available journals.
Drowning is currently the second leading cause of injury-related death for children 1-4 years of age in the United States and is the leading cause of death worldwide for boys ages 5-14 years. The ...World Health Organization (WHO) classifies it as a public health threat and advocates for reducing drowning deaths by understanding geographical, cultural, and societal risk factors. To these three we added a fourth: historical studies. To that end, we analyzed accidental causes of death between January 1, 1880, and December 31, 1939, in Minnehaha County, South Dakota, based on interment records from the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery. From these six decades (1880-1939) of data, we classified 217 cases as accidental deaths. Drowning was the leading cause of accidental mortality, accounting for 50 accidental deaths (23%). Drowning deaths were analyzed by the decedents' age and date of death. We discuss specific historical drowning risk factors and hypothesize how they may have affected drowning deaths from 1880-1939 in Minnehaha County.
Blood and blood products are essential medical treatments for all age groups. The primary source for blood products in the U.S. is volunteer donors. Thus, donor recruitment and donor retention are ...vital factors for a blood bank to maintain its supply. We proposed that developing a better understanding of donors' motivations to donate would improve a blood bank's ability to secure a more robust supply of blood.
Individuals ages 18-36 were approached to participate in the study during their blood donation appointment by completing a questionnaire. SAS software was used to statistically analyze the responses. Univariate analysis was done using Fisher's exact test. A multivariate model was constructed controlling for age and marital status, including the variables that were significant in univariate analysis.
No individual motivating or inhibiting factor reached statistical significance. The odds ratio for subsequent donation for donors with 10-plus donations versus those with one to three donations was 4.296 (p-value 0.004). The odds ratio regarding donors' likelihood of returning to donate for those donating within three to six months versus 1-plus year was 4.806 (p-value < 0.001). No employer was found to discourage blood donations.
Although no individual factors were found to be statistically significant, the identification of optimal time intervals and total number of donations at which donors are more likely to return may allow for more strategic scheduling of blood drives, increasing the likelihood of a donor returning while also increasing the total number of donations for that individual.
Providing laboratory external quality assessment (EQA) programs for countries in need requires special considerations not ordinarily part of EQA for laboratories in industrialized countries. ...Cultural, professional, service and economic factors must be understood and accommodated in order to carry out successful programs. Coordination of worldwide efforts for countries in need requires more resources and planning than have thus far been devoted to the enterprise.
Reviews the books, The Mind Stealers: Psychosurgery and Mind Control by Samuel Chavkin (1978) and Mind Control by Peter Schrag (1978). A forceful journalistic expose, Chavkin's Mind Stealers ...concentrates its attack on the biologistic ideology and concomitant practices of medical-model "therapy," drugs, electroshock, and especially psychosurgery. For Chavkin, psychosurgery is not only morally, ethically, and legally objectionable as a mode of social control; it is also scientifically absurd, since it ignores the sources of deviance. Schrag's Mind Control is suffused with a generally negative ethico-moral evaluation of contemporary American techniques for controlling behavior. Schrag's eminently readable volume more than succeeds in its attempt to analyze these methods of social control in their sociohistorical context. Mind Control traces the development of the methods and their invasion of extra institutional "private" life. Polemic aside, both are interesting, powerful books that will amply reward careful reading. Chavkin and Schrag raise fundamental issues that deserve professional refection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
A Case of Silent Q Fever Endocarditis Shaikh, Kashif; Travers, Henry; Anuwatworn, Amornpol ...
South Dakota medicine
69, Številka:
12
Journal Article
Q fever endocarditis is a rare, culture negative endocarditis caused by Coxiella burnetii, a spore-forming gram negative coccobacillus. Presenting symptoms can be very non-specific; thus, diagnosis ...may be delayed. We present a case of a 65-year-old male patient with history of aortic aneurysm who complained of chronic fatigue. He was found to have aortic valve vegetation on routine echocardiography. Q fever endocarditis was diagnosed based on elevated Q fever serology; there was absence of fever. This case illustrated a rare, under-recognized and atypical manifestation of Q fever endocarditis. We would like to encourage physicians of rural states like South Dakota to remain vigilant when it comes to screening for the suspected cases of Q fever, specifically in cases of unexplained fatigue and valvulopathy.
Axiomatization of Homans' exchange theory has occasioned reexamination and clarification of many chronic issues central both to Homans' theory and its empirical assessment and to sociological theory ...and research at large. Often debated in the critical literature on Homans' work, these issues represent complicated, perennial controversies about such problems as tautology, codification of divergent perspectives, the theory-data chasm, and causality. Far from passe, these problems have important bearings on the conduct of contemporary sociological inquiry. Reappraising one such issue, reductionism, this paper analyzes (1) the historical vicissitudes of sociology's reductionism problem, (2) Homans' role in contemporary resurgence of interest in it, (3) the meaning of his "ultimate psychological reductionism" (4) his numerous critics' misconceptions of his position and the inappropriateness of their application of reductionist labels to it, and (5) his contribution to a refined conceptualization of reductionism. This conception is delineated; and implications for sociological theory and research are suggested.
A balanced and grounded appraisal of Zetterberg's axiomatic method as a tool for sociological theory construction reveals: (1) that the advantages of Zetterberg's method include its (a) insistence on ...differentiated analytic and synthetic assertions; (b) enhancement of conceptual and propositional clarity and precision; (c) demand for attention to empirical matters: (d) facilitation of communication about theories; and (e) (indirect) responsibility for refining notions about deductive explanation and related topics; (2) that realization of these advantages requires precise application of its components and careful exposition of results; (3) that most sociological theories share the dominant positivistic assumptions underlying the method; (4) that the method's limitations – (a) enormous cost in analytic time and effort; (b) evocation of sociologists' resistance to "reworking" their colleagues' work and to "further formalization"; and (c) lack of determinate formation and transformation rules for performing the method's operations – offset the expectation of the feasibility and fruitfulness of its continued use; and (5) that these limitations suggest that exploration of the symbolic-logical predicate calculus for utilization within the method would be the next step.
