Medicine in Old Irish law

The use of complementary traditional medicine (CTM) is prevalent among patients with cancer. An understanding of cultural and religious values is needed to design an effective patient-centered supportive treatment program. To examine gender-related demographic and professional characteristics; treatment goals and approaches; and attitudes toward integration among Arab practitioners of CTM. Male and female Arab CTM practitioners treating patients with cancer were located by snowballing through practitioner and clientele networks. Participants underwent semi-structured, in-depth interviews which were analyzed thematically, with a focus on gender-related issues. A total of 27 Arab CTM practitioners participated in the study (17 males, 10 females). Female practitioners were found to be treating women exclusively, with male practitioners treating both genders. Female practitioners tend to be younger, unmarried, urban-based and non-Muslim. Male practitioners set out to "cure" the cancer, while female practitioners focus on symptoms and quality of life. Male practitioners employ a more schematic and structured therapeutic approach; female practitioners a more eclectic and practical one. Male practitioners employ a collectivist approach, involving family members, while female practitioners interact exclusively with the patient. Finally, male CTM practitioners see integration as a means for recognition, increasing their power base. In contrast, female practitioners perceive integration as a foothold in fields from which they have previously been shut out. A number of gender-related issues can have a significant impact on CTM therapy among Arab patients. Further research is needed in order to understand the implications of these differences.

The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland, by Brian James Stone

The work patterns of male and female dental practitioners in the United Kingdom

It is expected that the Register of Pharmaceutical Chemists of Great Britain will comprise a majority of female practitioners by about the year 2000. It is, therefore, pertinent to compare the opinions of male and female practitioners (pharmacists, doctors, dentists, nurses, optometrists and radiographers) about their practice. This study uses methodology published in an earlier paper to identify those opinions. Male and female practitioners had similar views in three areas: the concepts they considered important for the highest quality of practice, their valuation of patient safety, and the prevalence of conflict between National Health Service policies and professional ideas. There were three concepts which female practitioners considered more important than did males. One was confidentiality. Another was law (and, indeed, more male, than female, pharmacists were both investigated by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Statutory Committee and removed from the Register). The third was “health care art”: a new balance between the artistic and scientific sides of pharmacy is predicted when the majority of pharmacists are female. The one concept which male practitioners considered more important was independence. This may be related to the lower proportion of females than males who have risen to positions of authority.

Violence was a reality of life in early medieval Ireland (AD 400–1200). Its omnipresence is indicated from numerous narratives of regicide, mortal conflicts, battles and warfare that survive in ancient myths, legends and annalistic accounts. The archaeological evidence of violence and conflict is mainly identified in the osteoarchaeological record, and approximately 13% of all skeletal populations from excavated early medieval cemeteries in Ireland have shown evidence of weapon trauma. This study considers the osteological representation of violent deaths in two contemporaneous Irish skeletal populations dating to this period: Mount Gamble in County Dublin and Owenbristy in County Galway. This analysis involves assessing the different anatomical regions of the body for evidence of lesions that can be attributed to weapon trauma. The results indicate that these populations are likely to have been exposed to violence under differing circumstances; the evidence suggests that the individuals from Mount Gamble may have been well equipped or skilled at interpersonal battle, in contrast to the majority of individuals from Owenbristy who may have been unprotected and unprepared. The presence of two adolescents and two adult females amongst the victims from the latter population gives insight into a wider social dimension of weapon trauma in early medieval Ireland. There is also evidence of postmortem mutilations and decapitations, which reflect ritualistic aspects of violence. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Armagh and the Royal Centres in Early Medieval Ireland: Monuments, Cosmology and the Past. By N. B. Aitchison. Cadbury Castle, Somerset: The Early Medieval Archaeology By Leslie Alcock, with S. J. Stevenson and C. R. Musson. The Medieval Landscape of Wessex. Edited by Michael Aston and Carenza Lewis. Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian. By Bernhard Bischoff and Michael Lapidge. The English nobility under Edward the Confessor. By Peter A. Clarke. The Old English Lives of St Margaret. By Mary Clayton and Hugh Magennis. The Martyrs of Cordoba: Community and Family Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversion. By Jessica A. Coope. Scotland in Dark Age Europe. Edited by Barbara E. Crawford. The politics of dreaming in the Carolingian Empire. By Paul Edward Dutton. The Early Medieval Bible. Edited by Richard Gameson. The Viking‐Age Gold and Silver of Scotland AD 850–1100. By James Graham‐Campbell. Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary Reception of German Literature, 800–1300. By D. H. Green. Sidonius Apollinarus and the Fall of Rome, AD 407–485. By Jill Harries. Karl Martell in seiner Zeit. Beihefte der Francia, Band 37. Edited by J. Jarnut, U. Nonn and M. Richter. Manor, Vill and Hundred: The Development of Rural Institutions in Early Medieval Hampshire. By Eric Klingelhofer. Wisdom, Authority and Grammar in the Seventh century. Decoding Virgi‐lius Maro Grammaticus. By Vivien Law. Medieval Boat and Ship Timbers from Dublin. Medieval Dublin Excavations 1962–81. Series B, Volume 3. By Sean MGrail. Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation. Edited by Rosamond MKitterick. Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France. By Megan MLaughlin. Early Irish Contract Law. By Neil MLeod. Theodoric in Italy. By John Moorhead. Ausgewählte Probleme europäischer Landnahmen des Früh‐und Hochmit‐telalters. Methodische Grundlagendiskussion im Grenzbereich zwischen Archäologie und Geschichte. The Book of Kells: Proceedings of a Conference at Trinity College, Dublin, 6–9 September 1992. Edited by Felicity O'Mahony. The Poetic Art of Aldhelm. By Andy Orchard. Politik und Heiligenverehrung im Hochmittelalter. Edited by Jürgen Peter‐sohn Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianisation of Marriage during the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods. By P. L. Reynolds. The Formation of the Medieval West: Studies in the Oral Culture of the Barbarians. By Michael Richter. Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict. Medieval Iberian Peninsula Texts and Studies 10. By Norman Roth. The Reign of Cnut, King of England, Denmark and Norway. Edited by Alexander R. Rumble. The Earliest Irish and English Bookarts: Visual and Poetic forms before A. D. 1000. By Robert D. Stevick. Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul. By Raymond Van Dam.

Previous studies have shown that a large proportion of women invited for bowel cancer screening prefer endoscopists of the same gender. We tested whether women who are initially disinclined to undergo flexible sigmoidoscopy screening would be more willing to have the test with a female practitioner if they were also offered a decoy appointment with a male practitioner. We conducted two online experiments with women aged 35-54, living in England, who did not intend to undergo flexible sigmoidoscopy screening. In both experiments, women were randomised to two conditions: (1) control (appointment with a female endoscopist) and (2) decoy (two appointments to choose from, one with a male endoscopist and one with a female endoscopist). Experiment 1 (N = 302) verified the conditions for the decoy using a conventional intention scale, while experiment 2 (N = 300) tested how the presence of the decoy influences the likelihood of women choosing the appointment with the female practitioner in a discrete choice task. While experiment 1 showed that the presence of the decoy increased intentions to attend the appointment with the female practitioner (p = 0.02), experiment 2 confirmed that women were more likely to choose the appointment with the female endoscopist if they were also offered the decoy (p < 0.001). In both experiments, the presence of the decoy decreased perceived difficulty of the screening decision and cognitive effort required to make the decision. Offering disinclined women a male practitioner increased intention to have the test with an endoscopist of the same gender. This suggests that male screening practitioners can be used as decoy options to increase the likelihood that women choose female practitioners and facilitate the screening decision.

Cool intimacies of care for contemporary clinical practice

Writing History with Female Religious Communities:Medieval and Modern Hagiography1 Máirín MacCarron (bio) The importance of hagiographies for the study of early medieval history cannot be overstated. These texts are used to illuminate contemporary social, religious, and political practices, and to understand the intellectual environment of hagiographers. However, an over-emphasis on the hagiographer's agenda, though crucial for understanding a work's historical context, sometimes introduces too great a separation between their endeavour as an individual and the role of their protagonist's community in preserving and curating their own history. This disparity can be particularly pronounced for female religious figures, as the earliest surviving sources concerning their lives often came from outside their monasteries and were written by men. In early medieval Ireland, the most famous female saint, Bridget of Kildare, is venerated in three early lives, all believed to be written by men.2 During the same period in Britain, most of our information about religious women is preserved in the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which was written at his monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow.3 The double monasteries of Whitby and Coldingham, both ruled by abbesses and both featured in Bede's History, between them produced one surviving text, the Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, written by an unidentified member of the Whitby community around AD 700, which tells us little about life at Whitby and does not mention Hild (d. 680), the monastery's most famous abbess.4 The community of Barking recorded their early history, but this has only survived in excerpts preserved by Bede. And Bede is also the earliest surviving source for the community at Ely.5 The former Frankish queen, Radegund, who founded the monastery of Holy Cross at Poitiers, is an exception as her life was recorded by one of her sisters, Baudonivia, and this work has survived to the present day. However, the more celebrated account of Radegund's life is that by the acclaimed poet, Venantius Fortunatus, which [End Page 427] was commissioned by the community.6 The limited supply of first-hand information from female religious communities stands in sharp contrast to contemporary male institutions, such as, for example, Armagh, Iona, Lindisfarne, and Wearmouth and Jarrow, about which we know much because sources produced in and for these houses have survived.7 However, the nature of the surviving evidence should not lead us to overlook the role that women may have played in creating and preserving their own histories. I have spent many years studying hagiographies from early medieval Ireland and Britain, including examining the role and presentation of women in these texts, and my understanding of the genre of hagiography and the writing of history by members of a community was transformed by a year spent working for a modern religious congregation, the Poor Servants of the Mother of God. I worked on a biographical project about their foundress, Magdalen Taylor (1832–1900), as part of her canonisation cause. The following offers some reflections on my experience observing hagiography in action as a female religious community explored their own history. Focusing on charism and history The Poor Servants of the Mother of God were established in 1869 to address the diverse needs of the poor in Victorian London. Their foundress believed such needs were not being met by existing religious orders and ultimately decided to establish her own congregation to be active in society. Magdalen Taylor, born as Frances Margaret Taylor in Stoke Rochford, Lincolnshire, and in religion Mary Magdalen of the Sacred Heart, was the daughter of an Anglican minister and converted to Catholicism after working as a nurse in the Crimea from 1854–55. All her biographers agree that from an early age she was committed to helping others and her later vocation and subsequent foundation of a new religious congregation are presented as logical developments for a woman of her interests and abilities.8 The Poor Servants' distinctive charism inspired by Taylor's religious faith is their commitment to working with, rather than for, the poor. From the start, Taylor recognised the potential of teaching skills such as sewing to the poorest and most...

This qualitative study draws on hermeneutic phenomenology to explore how pharmacy practice was understood, enacted and developed in a cohort of pharmacy students graduating from The University of Queensland. Adopting this theoretical framework allowed me to interpret and describe the meaning of the lived experience of pharmacy practice among final-year pharmacy students and new graduates.In Phase 1, a cohort of final-year pharmacy students were invited to complete an online questionnaire containing open-ended questions relating to pharmacy practice. A total of 104/252 (41%) students participated. Responses were analysed using a phenomenological approach, involving an iterative process of synthesising how the work of the pharmacist was understood by each participant, identifying core dimensions in these understandings of pharmacy practice, and grouping the understandings of practice into categories with descriptors. The analysis revealed that pharmacy practice was understood in six distinct ways. One-third of participants understood pharmacy practice in the traditional sense of ‘dispensing and/or providing counselling, information and advice’, where medicines were the focus. The remainder understood pharmacy practice more broadly to varying extents, with patients/customers featuring more centrally at the more inclusive end of the spectrum, ‘providing an accessible healthcare service to all members of the community as part of a healthcare team’.In Phase 2, twelve recent graduates, working in hospital and community practice, participated in a longitudinal study. Participants were observed at work and interviewed, every six months, for two years. Observation notes and transcribed interviews were analysed using the principles of hermeneutic phenomenology, underpinned by Heidegger’s philosophical concepts. How each participant understood and enacted pharmacy practice was explored for each observation and conversational interview, using an iterative process of explicating meaning while staying true to participants’ lived experience.A distinguishing characteristic was how patients/customers featured in their practice, prompting further interpretation of the meaning of patient-centredness in pharmacy practice. These graduates initially understood and enacted patient-centredness in pharmacy practice in a range of ways. For some graduates, tasks and procedures were the frame of reference, with patients viewed as source and recipient of information, allowing them to complete a series of required tasks to ensure medicines were safe and appropriate. For others, patients featured more centrally, where completing the required tasks was necessary to achieve a broader goal of providing individualised care to optimise health outcomes from medicines.Understanding of patient-centredness remained largely unchanged for most participants during the two years of Phase 2, despite the passage of time, experience gained and feedback received. Experiences of work usually served to refine practice within the graduates’ existing understanding of practice and to reinforce existing ways of being pharmacists. However, for one graduate, a transformation in understanding of patient-centredness resulted in a noticeable change in practice and subsequent development. How pharmacy practice was understood was a key influence on how learning opportunities were interpreted and integrated into practice, and how development trajectories unfolded.This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge in pharmacy practice, pharmacy education and professional education from theoretical, methodological and empirical standpoints. Theoretically, this research demonstrates variability, complexity and ambiguity in the meaning of patient-centredness in pharmacy practice. Methodologically, the phenomenological approach provides a novel way of exploring pharmacy practice and development, in general, and patient-centredness, in particular. Empirically, the findings reveal the range of ways that pharmacy practice and patient-centredness were understood and enacted that do not always align with the recognized vision for the profession. In addition, the findings provide new empirical evidence in a cohort of professional graduates, to confirm a professional development theory and model in which understanding of practice forms the basis of the development of professional skill, and to support the notion that understanding of practice underpins many barriers to practice change in pharmacy.The findings point to ways forward for pharmacy educators and researchers, and the profession as a whole, to stimulate dialogue about what patient-centredness means in pharmacy practice and to facilitate the embodiment of this this aspirational concept into practice. The findings also confirm the importance for researchers and educators to take into account that the development of pharmacy practice is influenced by how it is understood. More specifically, there is a need for pharmacy educators at all levels to give greater emphasis on who students and graduates are becoming, to make explicit what effective contemporary pharmacy practice entails, and to promote more inclusive ways of being pharmacists, who fulfil their mandate to be patient-centred clinicians. Finding effective initiatives to broaden and deepen how pharmacy practice is understood through undergraduate programs into professional life, as well as providing the necessary knowledge and skills, holds promise to enable more pharmacists to embrace practice change and to overcome some of the barriers to the advancement of pharmacy as a profession.

The aim of the present study, based on in-depth semistructured interviews conducted in Israel with 18 social workers (nine women and nine men), working as probation officers who diagnose and treat sex offenders, was twofold: The first goal was to examine how treating sex offenders affects the male and female practitioners' daily lives and specifically, their parenting. Second, in light of the claim that support of colleagues and family members is very important for coping with secondary traumatization, the study investigated how working with sex offenders influenced the practitioners' ability to share their experiences with their colleagues in the workplace and with their partners at home. The study findings, based on a phenomenological analysis, revealed that male and female probation officers working with sex offenders experienced anxiety, suspicion, and concern for their children's safety. Their spousal and collegial relationships were also affected by their work. In addition to not receiving support from their colleagues and partners, they experienced loneliness and attacks "from the inside and from the outside," expressed in criticism, loathing, and disgust in relation to their work. The findings reveal, for the first time, the common and the distinct effects of male and female practitioners' experiences on their spousal and parental relationships. It also expands the understanding of the connection between exclusion and loneliness experienced by them, due to their limited ability of sharing their experience with colleagues and family members. The discussion offers theoretical explanations for these implications and recommends how to provide relief for male and female practitioners, who work with sex offenders.

Reviewed by: Céli Dé in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages Patricia M. Rumsey Céli Dé in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages. By Westley Follett. [Studies in Celtic History, XXIII.] (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press. 2006. Pp. xii, 253. $85.00. ISBN 978-1-843-83276-8.) The last major study of the Céli Dé was that of Peter O'Dwyer in 1977, which he revised with additions in 1981. This has been the standard work on the subject ever since, and many subsequent writers have adopted O'Dwyer's views unchallenged. Academic scholarship has waited thirty years for a reappraisal, and subsequently two major reassessments of this so-called "reform movement" in early medieval Ireland have appeared, including Westley Follett's work. O'Dwyer's work has had its critics, and writers such as Nora Chadwick and more recently, Colmán Etchingham, have questioned the categorization of the Céli Dé as a "reform," but their objections have been peripheral to the main thrust of their respective studies. Follett's work concentrates fully on reassessing the Céli Dé and is original in that it centers on the manuscript history of the various texts that have traditionally been associated with the Céli Dé monks. With painstaking thoroughness, Follett shows that the writings hitherto ascribed to the movement (if, as he says, it can be deemed a movement) are actually much fewer in number than O'Dwyer and other earlier commentators believed. Although this investigation of manuscript history forms the major part of the book, Follett also, in his long and detailed second chapter, explores Irish asceticism before the Céli Dé to put these monks in context. His carefully detailed study goes a long way to providing an up-to-date and much needed successor to John Ryan's now extremely dated Irish Monasticism. Etchingham argues that Irish monastic asceticism showed no sign of declining in the mid- to late-eighth century, and Brian Lambkin views Céli Dé as members of God's personal retinue who saw themselves accordingly as a kind of "religious elite." In his conclusions, Follett substantiates these premises of Etchingham and Lambkin, and it is, perhaps, the only disappointing element in his work that he takes these conclusions no further. However, it is in his methodology that he shows his originality. Whereas Lambkin based his suggestion mainly on the evidence provided by the poems of Blathmac and the Félire Óengusso, Follett examines and critiques all the texts that have been associated with the movement. He draws the conclusion that "céli Dé, at least in their eighth- and ninth-century manifestation, were more of a local phenomenon than a regional or general one, as has often been supposed" (218). [End Page 782] This is an important book both for the study of insular monasticism and for research into the history of early Irish texts. In the meticulousness of its scholarship it provides a model for the latter. It enters the current debate regarding the exact identity of the Céli Dé when this question is coming to the forefront of academic research and develops that debate in new and original ways by its examination of the manuscript history of crucial texts, showing how a more precise assessment of the authorship of these texts can assist in understanding Céli Dé identity. Although not everyone will agree with Follett's conclusions, by refining and narrowing the early medieval "database" of texts connected with the Céli Dé, he provides an important service to current and future scholarship. Patricia M. Rumsey University of Wales, Lampeter Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press

Despite the health benefit reputation of Thai stretching exercise "Ruesi dud ton", no scientific evidence is available. Therefore, we aimed to determine the effect of Thai style stretching exercise on physical health and oxidative stress markers including Malondialdegyde (MDA) level and the activities of main scavenger enzymes including Superoxide Dismutase (SOD), Catalase (CAT) and Glutathione Peroxidase (GSH-Px). We had determined the effect of 2-month Ruesi dud ton exercise on physical health of healthy volunteer using battery test comprising of zig zag running, hand grip strength, 1 min abdominal curl up, 30 sec. push up and sit and reach tests. In addition, the body composition, BMI, skinfold thickness and the alteration of oxidative stress markers including the activities of SOD, CAT and GSH-Px enzymes and the level of MDA in serum were also evaluated every month throughout the experimental period and at 1 month after the cessation of exercise. Our data showed the enhanced capacity of zig zag running test in male practitioner more than female practitioner. We also found the elevation of scavenger enzymes such as SOD and GSH-Px and the reduction of MDA in female practitioner while the elevation of GSH-Px activity was the only parameter observed in male practitioner. Therefore, our results suggested that Thai style stretching exercise or Ruesi dud ton could enhance agility in male practitioner and improved oxidative stress homeostasis in female practitioner. Thai style stretching exercise can be implemented to the training program of male athletes. Moreover, it can also be implemented to improve oxidative stress in female who exposed to various risks of health disorders related to oxidative stress. However, further researches are still essential.

Some studies suggest that female practitioners are more likely to provide guideline-concordant care than male practitioners; however, little is known about the role of practitioner gender in cardiology. The aim of the study was to measure the association between practitioner gender and adherence to the cardiovascular performance measures in the American College of Cardiology's ambulatory Practice Innovation and Clinical Excellence Registry. Patients with at least 1 outpatient visit with a unique practitioner were included. Among eligible patients, adherence to 7 guideline-supported performance measures for coronary artery disease, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation over 12 months after registry entry was compared by practitioner gender using hierarchical models adjusting for practitioner type (physicians vs advance practice practitioners) and number of visits. The study cohort included 1493 individual practitioners who saw 769 139 patients; 80% of practitioners were men. Male practitioners were more often physicians compared with female practitioners (98.2% vs 43.7%, P < .01). Accounting for practitioner category and visit frequency, guideline adherence rates were similar by practitioner gender for all measures with the exception of marginally higher rates for coronary artery disease performance measures for male practitioners compared with female practitioners (antiplatelet: rate ratio [RR] = 1.06; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.03-1.09; β-blockers: RR = 1.06; 95% CI, 1.01-1.10; and lipid-lowering drug: RR = 1.07; 95% CI, 1.04-1.10) and atrial fibrillation (oral anticoagulants: RR = 1.05; 95% CI, 1.01-1.09). Male practitioners marginally outperformed their female counterparts in ambulatory practices enrolled in a voluntary cardiovascular performance improvement registry program. Overall low adherence to some performance measures suggests room for improvement among all practitioners.

Reader in Applied Philosophy, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, MMU Cheshire, Crewe, UK and Visiting Professor of Philosophy as Applied to Medicine, University of Buckingham, Uk Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA Associate Professor, Department of General Practice, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand Director, University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, Toronto, ON, Canada Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada Professor of Values in Health Care, Associate Director, Social Dimensions of Health Institute, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK