Like Curtis Bullard herself, the novel's protagonist, Christine, first uses fiction and later employs the essay as vehicles to advocate for women's sexual, legal, marital, and political ...self-determination. In entering her story to assert the power of her own writing and the cultural influence of fiction, Curtis Bullard offers a reminder to suffrage scholars: in this centennial year, as we assess the history of woman suffrage, we need to include its literary history. The novel's subplots gesture outward from its suffrage argument, dramatizing the four types of marriage identified by Margaret Fuller as prevailing in the nineteenth century, along with women's need for legal rights relating to custody, property, and divorce.
Christine Bullard, Laura Curtis; Kohn, Denise M
01/2011
eBook
When Laura Curtis Bullard wrote the novelChristinein 1856, she created one of antebellum America's most radical heroines: a woman's rights leader. Addressing the major social, political, and cultural ...issues surrounding women from within an unusually overt feminist framework for its time,Christineopenly challenges a social and legal system that denies women full and equal rights.
Christine defies her family, rejects marriage, and leaves a job as a teacher to embark on her career, rewriting the script for a successful nineteenth-century heroine. Along the way, she recreates domesticity on her own terms, helping other young women gain economic independence so that they, too, have the autonomy to make their own choices in love and life. One of the triumphs of the novel is the author's ability to create a sympathetic heroine and a fast-paced plot that intertwines vivid scenes of suicide, destitution, and an insane asylum with theoretical and political discussions-so skillfully that the novel successfully appealed to otherwise hesitant middle-class readers.
Women with insulin-requiring gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) are at high risk of developing diabetes within a few years postpartum. We implemented this phase II study to test the hypothesis that ...vildagliptin, a dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor, is superior to placebo in terms of reducing the risk of postpartum diabetes.
Women with insulin-requiring GDM were randomized to either placebo or 50 mg vildagliptin twice daily for 24 months followed by a 12-month observation period (EudraCT: 2007-000634-39). Both groups received lifestyle counseling. The primary efficacy outcomes were the diagnosis of diabetes (American Diabetes Association (ADA) criteria) or impaired fasting glucose (IFG)/impaired glucose tolerance (IGT).
Between 2008 and 2015, 113 patients (58 vildagliptin, 55 placebo) were randomized within 2.2–10.4 (median 8.6) months after delivery. At the interim analysis, nine diabetic events and 28 IFG/IGT events had occurred. Fifty-two women withdrew before completing the treatment phase. Because of the low diabetes rate, the study was terminated. Lifestyle adherence was similar in both groups. At 24 months, the cumulative probability of postpartum diabetes was 3% and 5% (hazard ratio: 1.03; 95% confidence interval: 0.15–7.36) and IFG/IGT was 43% and 22% (hazard ratio: 0.55; 95% confidence interval: 0.26–1.19) in the placebo and vildagliptin groups, respectively. Vildagliptin was well tolerated with no unexpected adverse events.
The study did not show significant superiority of vildagliptin over placebo in terms of reducing the risk of postpartum diabetes. However, treatment was safe and suggested some improvements in glycemic control, insulin resistance, and β-cell function. The study identified critical issues in performing clinical trials in the early postpartum period in women with GDM hampering efficacy assessments. With this knowledge, we have set a basis for which properly powered trials could be performed in women with recent GDM.
NCT01018602.
•Treatment with vildagliptin suggested positive effects on β-cell function and HbA1c.•Treatment with vildagliptin was safe.•Contraindication of vildagliptin during lactation led to exclusion of women with early postpartum diabetes.•Slow enrolment and high drop-out rates are major challenges in studies of women with GDM.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin broke publishing records and made Harriet Beecher Stowe in her time one of the world’s most famous authors. The book was a bestseller in Britain and was translated into some forty ...languages. Yet today Stowe tends to be seen wholly in the context of American literary history. Transatlantic Stowe: Harriet Beecher Stowe and European Culture is the first book to consider multiple aspects of Stowe’s career in an international context. The groundbreaking essays of Transatlantic Stowe examine the author’s literary and literal forays in Europe and the ways in which intellectual and cultural exchanges between the Old and New Worlds shaped her work. It was a crucial moment in the transatlantic discourse, a turning of the tide, and Stowe was among the first American novelists to be lionized in Europe---and pirated by publishers---in the same way that European writers had been treated in America.Blending historical and cultural criticism and drawing on fresh primary material from London and Paris, Transatlantic Stowe includes essays exploring Stowe’s relationship with European writers and the influence of her European travels on her work, especially the controversial travel narrative Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands and her “Italian novel" Agnes of Sorrento.Interdisciplinary and itself transatlantic, the collection discusses visual art and material culture as well as literature and politics and includes contributions from Britain, Ireland, and the United States. Together these essays offer new interpretations of Stowe’s most popular novel as well as new readings of her many other works, illuminate the myriad connections between Stowe and European writers, and thus rewrite literary history by returning Stowe to the larger political, historical, and literary contexts of nineteenth-century Europe.
To study adrenal crisis (AC) in patients with congenital adrenal hyperplasia due to classical 21-hydroxylase deficiency (21-OHD). AC was defined as an acute state of health impairment requiring i.v. ...glucocorticoid administration and hospital admission.
In a cross-sectional study with detailed retrospective assessment, AC was studied following two approaches: i) questionnaire based: 122 adult 21-OHD patients (50 men, 72 women, median age 35 years, range 18-69 years) completed a disease-specific questionnaire; and ii) patient chart based: charts of 67 21-OHD patients (32 males, 35 females, median age 31 years, range 20-66 years) were analyzed from diagnosis to last follow-up with regard to frequency and causes of AC since diagnosis.
Evaluation of questionnaires revealed 257 ACs in 4456 patient years (py; frequency 5.8 crises/100 py), while patient charts documented 106 ACs in 2181 py (4.9 crises/100 py). The chart-based evaluation showed that gastrointestinal infections (29%) and salt-wasting crisis (18%) were the main causes of AC. In 14%, the cause remained uncertain. There was no difference in the overall frequency of AC in males and females. AC mostly occurred during childhood, with more than 70% of AC in the first 10 years of life and one-third of AC in the first year of life. Still, 20% of cases of AC were observed in adults (>18 years).
Our data demonstrate a significant risk of AC in patients with 21-OHD over lifetime. Specific age-adapted and repeated crisis prevention training may help to reduce morbidity due to AC in 21-OHD.
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