Historical Dutch Research Articles

Racism and discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic: Experiences of Turkish migrant women in the Netherlands

As observed in numerous historical crisis scenarios, the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated unfavorable perceptions of ‘foreigners’ and ‘migrants’ in the Netherlands. The construct of a ‘foreigner’ has been socially fashioned as a label that distinguishes what is dissimilar from the norm, and within the context of the COVID-19 crisis, the concept of the “other” has gained prominence. Building upon this central premise, the present study aims to probe into the occurrence of racism and discrimination directed at Turkish migrant women in the Netherlands, a nation often characterized as progressive and liberal, with an intersectional approach. Considering the increased awareness surrounding Dutch colonial history, exemplified by events like the Black Lives Matter protests, the research also delves into whether migrant women draw connections between their experiences of racism and the historical Dutch colonial past. How have migrant women experienced and reacted to racism during the pandemic? Does the encounter with racism and discrimination prompt an intensified identification with or detachment from their migrant identities? To unravel answers to these inquiries, the article draws from semi-structured interviews with fifteen migrant women alongside a non-governmental representative, an artist, and an activist in the Netherlands. Through the personal narratives of these women, this article illuminates the ongoing discussions surrounding racism and discrimination within the broader discursive landscape of the Netherlands during the pandemic.

An assessment of the fourth law of Kuryłowicz: does prototypicality of meaning affect language change?

AbstractAccording to the (in)famous fourth law of Kuryłowicz (K4), when a morphological doublet arises in a language, the newer form becomes associated with the prototypical, basic meaning, while the old form takes a secondary meaning. This paper takes a first attempt at a more thorough inquiry of K4 to assess whether prototypicality of meaning has an effect on morphological change. Three studies on historical Dutch are taken on: -enversus -splurals, the apocope of schwa and the apocope of -de.The effects of prototypicality are analysed both on a token level (differences in meaning within lemmas) as well as on a type level (differences between lemmas). As proxies for prototypicality of meaning (psycho)linguistic predictors are used, such as concreteness, age of acquisition, chronology of meaning, meaning frequency and metaphor. Results show no clear effect of prototypicality on a token level, but they do suggest an effect on a type level: more concrete meanings tend to show up more often with the newer variant. Yet these results may also be ascribed to iconicity as the newer variants in these cases are the shorter ones and concrete meanings tend to be represented by shorter words than abstract ones.

A comparison of latent semantic analysis and correspondence analysis of document-term matrices

Abstract Latent semantic analysis (LSA) and correspondence analysis (CA) are two techniques that use a singular value decomposition for dimensionality reduction. LSA has been extensively used to obtain low-dimensional representations that capture relationships among documents and terms. In this article, we present a theoretical analysis and comparison of the two techniques in the context of document-term matrices. We show that CA has some attractive properties as compared to LSA, for instance that effects of margins, that is, sums of row elements and column elements, arising from differing document lengths and term frequencies are effectively eliminated so that the CA solution is optimally suited to focus on relationships among documents and terms. A unifying framework is proposed that includes both CA and LSA as special cases. We empirically compare CA to various LSA-based methods on text categorization in English and authorship attribution on historical Dutch texts and find that CA performs significantly better. We also apply CA to a long-standing question regarding the authorship of the Dutch national anthem Wilhelmus and provide further support that it can be attributed to the author Datheen, among several contenders.

Violence in the Hebrew Bible: Between Text and Reception. Edited by Jacques van Ruiten and Koert van Bekkum

There is a sharp dichotomy in existence in contemporary biblical studies and hermeneutics. On the one hand is a school of thinking which is content—even eager—to unmoor the text entirely from its traditional interpretations and its ‘original meaning’. On the other is an ongoing tradition of critical study which has developed enormously in recent years but continues in an unbroken line from its forebears, and appears indifferent to challenges from the reception-critical side. But the space between these positions, though contested, can be a fertile one. It is within this space that this book, Violence in the Hebrew Bible: Between Text and Reception, seeks to operate. The book is a collection of papers (all written in English) presented at the triply joint meeting of the Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap in Nederland en België (the Society for Old Testament Study in the Netherlands and Belgium), the British Society for Old Testament Study, and Die Ou-Testamentische Werkgemeenskap van Suid Afrika (Old Testament Society of South Africa) held in 2018. As such, it comprises principally contributions from these four countries. Perhaps it is a reflection of the historical Dutch–Afrikaans link, but I was disappointed not to see more contributions from Black scholars. (I think they comprised three of the eighteen contributors.)

An analysis of the mobility hub concept in the Netherlands: Historical lessons for its implementation

The mobility hub concept has become increasingly popular within international research and policies, including in The Netherlands. However, judging by the (still) limited share of multimodality in the Netherlands, similar historical concepts seemed insufficient to prompting a fundamental shift from individual car use to multimodal transport. To enable planners to be better positioned to implement the mobility hub concept, we compared its value with that of related concepts that were previously implemented. Specifically, we examined historical Dutch policy documents and conducted expert and frontrunner interviews to evaluate the mobility hub as a policy concept. We first traced the evolution of the mobility hub, focusing on node and place-based concepts that have been implemented since the second half of the 20th century. We found that related concepts, such as Park and Ride (P + R) or transit-oriented development (TOD), have typically focused on improving transfers between collective and feeder transport, while interactions with land use have gained increased attention. We derived policy lessons from the implementation of these historical policy concepts. Our findings suggest that strategically chosen locations, integrated mobility systems, flanking policies, multi-level policy coherence and public–private cooperation are important considerations when implementing mobility hubs. Moreover, shared mobility, mobility as a service, vehicle electrification, and demand-responsive transit could advance the implementation of TOD, P + R, neighbourhood and rural hubs. In conclusion, the design of different types of mobility hubs should ideally be based on underlying policy objectives and adapted according to context.

When information structure exploits syntax: The relation between the loss of VO and scrambling in Dutch

This paper addresses the relation between two types of word order variation in two stages of Dutch: OV/VO variation in historical Dutch and scrambling in present-day Dutch. Information structural considerations influence both types of word order variation, and we demonstrate by means of a comprehensive corpus study that they have a comparable pattern: given objects tend to appear earlier in the sentence than new objects. We infer from this that the two types of word order variation are diachronically related. Our findings support an analysis of scrambling as object movement from a uniformly head-initial base via the specifier of VP to the specifier ofvP. We argue that historical Dutch allows spell out of the object in its postverbal base position, but that this possibility was eventually lost. Consequently, the boundary between the given and new domains shifts from the verb to the adverbial.

150 years of written Dutch

Abstract In this article, we present a new corpus spanning 163 years of written Dutch. This Dutch Corpus of Contemporary and late Modern Periodicals (Dutch C-CLAMP) comprises 47,738 part-of-speech tagged articles published in Dutch periodicals from 1837 until 1999, totaling approximately 200 million tokens in size. We explain the measures we took to overcome the shortcomings of existing corpora of historical Dutch covering the same period. We provide a detailed description of how the corpus has been compiled and enriched. Several aspects are covered: text-markup, preprocessing of the data, including foreign language recognition and spelling normalization, and the enrichment of both textual data as well as metadata of the authors of the corpus files. We also carry out two case studies to illustrate the reliability of the corpus.

Comparisons of historical Dutch commons inform about the long-term dynamics of social-ecological systems.

Human societies and natural ecosystems are under threat by growing populations, overexploitation of natural resources and climate change. This calls for more sustainable utilization of resources based on past experiences and insights from many different disciplines. Interdisciplinary approaches to studies of historical commons have potential to identify drivers of change and keys to success in the past, and offer advice about the management and use of shared resources in contemporary and future systems. We address these issues by applying an ecological perspective to historical data on social-ecological systems. We perform comparisons and time series analyses for nine successful Dutch commons for which high-resolution data on the regulatory activities and use of shared resources is available for on average 380 years (range 236 to 568) during the period 1300 to 1972. Within commons, institutional developments were oscillating, with periods of intense regulatory activity being separated by periods of low activity, and with the dynamics of regulations being largely independent across commons. Ecological theory posits that species that occupy similar niches should show correlated responses to environmental challenges; however, commons using more similar resources did not have more parallel or similar institutional developments. One notable exception was that sanctioning was more frequent in commons that directed more regulatory activities towards non-renewable subsoil resources, whereas there was no association between sanctioning and the use of renewable resources. This might indicate that commoners were aware of potential resource depletion and attempted to influence freeriding by actively trying to solve the underlying social dilemmas. Sanctioning regulations were more frequent during the first than during the second part of a common’s life, indicating that while sanctioning might have been important for the establishment of commons it was not key to the long-term persistence of historical commons.

Restricted Translation of Historical Dutch Text

This article proposes an experimental approach to the diachronic translation of document sources written in historical variants of the Dutch language. It argues that, in order to make textual sources more accessible to read for modern audiences, it is possible to alter grammatical aspects of the text while preserving the lexical aspects of the historical language variant. Because of this restricted translation, this approach is less time consuming compared to a total translation. The article also describes a method for producing such texts, illustrated with examples taken from the sixteenth-century correspondence of William of Orange.

From the Roof Tops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space. Exhibitions in Pennsylvania and New York

This article considers drawings and paintings made by the American artists Edmund Tarbell and John Sloan in relation to the art of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Claims about, interpretations of, and enthusiasm for ‘Dutch Pictures’ were prominent features of the transatlantic artworld in the years around 1900. Art critics, including George Moore, Charles Caffin, James Gibbons Huneker and Frank Jewett Mather, discussed the relationship between historical Dutch painting and contemporary art, while American collectors and museums purchased and displayed large numbers of paintings by Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer and their contemporaries. The article connects specific seventeenth-century Dutch ideas and objects to such paintings as Tarbell's New England Interior (1906) and Sloan's Scrubwomen, Astor Library (1910–11) and thinks more broadly about modern art's relationship to nationalism and to the past.

Early modern reader management: begin+infinitive as a discourse marker in P. C. Hooft’s Dutch prose

AbstractThis article combines linguistic, rhetorical and material perspectives on early modern reader management in order to investigate how the Dutch historian P. C. Hooft (1581–1647) guided his readers through a new genre: humanist history written in the vernacular. Central to this paper is the linguistic construction begin+infinitive, which is known to have text‐structuring functions in several historical varieties. Study of this construction in historical Dutch, however, is currently lacking. Although the Roman historian Tacitus, Hooft’s classical writing model, largely avoided the begin+infinitive construction, Hooft used it in his translations of Tacitus’s prose and in his own magnum opus, the Nederlandsche Historien (Dutch Histories, first edition 1642). More specifically, Hooft employed the construction as part of his humanist tempo‐changing style, using begin’s durative semantics in combination with rhetorical devices to slow the narrative pace and to alert the reader to an upcoming main event. Such main events were highlighted not only by linguistic and rhetorical guidance but also by material devices, i.e. printed marginalia.

Bodies of the plant and Animal Kingdom: An illustrated manuscript on materia medica in the Netherlands (ca. 1800)

Ethnopharmacological relevanceAround 1800, Amsterdam was a global trade hub for materia medica of Dutch, European and exotic origin. Contemporary knowledge on medicinal plants in academic circles has been well documented in local pharmacopoeia, illustrated herbals and catalogues of botanic gardens. Until the end of the ancient regime, physicians, surgeons and apothecaries were trained how to use plants in their specific guild or Collegium Medicum. Little is known, however, on how the plant collectors and merchants that provided the pharmaceutical substances to apothecaries learnt to recognise the variety of medicinal products. Aim of the studyTo analyse the content, origin, purpose and scientific importance of an anonymous, undated, hand-written Dutch manuscript on materia medica, entitled Corpora ex Regno Vegetabili/Animali (Bodies of the Plant/Animal kingdom) kept by the Artis Library of the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Materials and methodsWe digitised the entire manuscript and dated the paper by means of its watermark. We identified the plant and animal species using the historic Dutch and Latin names, the illustrations and historic literature. We compared the plant properties and uses to contemporary literature to check whether the information in the manuscript was original or copied from another source. ResultsThe paper was produced between 1759 and 1816 in Zaandam, the Netherlands. The manuscript contains 19 substances of animal origin, one mineral and 273 plants and plant-derived products, which belong to ca. 260 species. While most plants are native or cultivated in the Netherlands, 111 plant entries (105 spp.) represent exotic products, imported from as far as Madagascar and Australia. A total of 134 illustrations were cut out from a 1549 Dutch edition of the New Herbal by Leonhard Fuchs (1543), but only 69% correspond to the correct species. The manuscript contains detailed descriptions on growth locations, field characteristics, flowering season, provenance and quality of the medicinal products, including methods to detect forgery. The author mostly described humoral properties of the plants rather than listing medicinal recipes. We did not find evidence that he copied his texts from other sources, but the Dutch and Latin names correspond largely with the Amsterdam pharmacopoeia from 1795. ConclusionsThe author's extensive knowledge on trade names, quality and origin of materia medica and his refrain from using literature suggests he could have been a merchant, an intermediary between herb cultivators, overseas traders and apothecaries. This manuscript offers a unique insight in the global trade in medicinal products and the circulation of knowledge in non-academic circles around 1800.

Dutch interior: Dutch interior architecture as research topic and source of inspiration in the period 1870–1920

The article provides insight into the phenomenon of the ‘traditional Dutch room’ as an icon of the Dutch interior from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and its role as a research topic and source of inspiration for Dutch architects. Research into the neo-Renaissance in the Netherlands has tended to focus on Dutch architecture with the result that neo-Renaissance interiors, and examples of the historical interior in particular, have been largely overlooked. Nor has there been any general article linking the two together. This article provides the initial impetus for answering the question of why Dutch architects became interested in the history of Dutch interior architecture. Which Dutch designers were prominent in this area of study and design? Which examples were admired and why? What connection was there between study and design among the various architects? From around 1875, the major nineteenth-century architecture journals and illustrated works reveal a rise in the number of pictures of Dutch historical interiors and interior elements, especially from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and of designs based on them. The articles, too, testify to a growing interest in the history of Dutch buildings and artefacts and a desire to incorporate Dutch motifs into contemporary design. Although pre-1875 publications contain examples of Dutch buildings, examples of interior elements, such as a ‘chimneypiece’, a ‘tochtpui’ (draught-excluding swing door) or a ‘curio cabinet’ are rare, witness the collection of architectural designs published by theMaatschappij tot Bevordering der Bouwkunst (MIJBB, forerunner of the Royal Institute of Dutch Architects) in the period 1844-1878. It is clear that in the final quarter of the nineteenth century there was a growing desire to investigate and document the interior aspect of the discipline of the Dutch architect and ‘decorator’ and, in some instances, to use it as the basis for contemporary design. A number of examples of oak panelling were documented by architects quite early on, including in Afbeeldingen van Oude Bestaande Gebouwen (1854–1907), an illustrated work published by the MIJBB. One of the earliest examples is the panelling in the former ‘weeskamer’ (orphans’ estates chamber) in the Leiden town hall, that was measured and described by the architect J.H. Leliman in 1871. Unlike architects such as Karel Sluyterman, who had the same chamber photographed for his illustrated work Oude Binnenhuizen in Nederland (1908), Leliman did not treat the seventeenth-century interior as a direct model for contemporary design. However, while others continued to design ‘traditional Dutch rooms’, Sluyterman, after a sojourn in Paris, quickly moved on to French art nouveau, although the historical Dutch interior continued to play a role in his lessons at Delft Polytechnic, where he taught decorative art and the art of ornament from 1895 onwards. The article contributes to the history of ideas of Dutch architecture from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Karel, Reynaert – en de anderen?

Abstract Karel, Reynaert – and the others? The broadness of the concept ‘literature’ in secondary education Current scholarship on historical Dutch literature – as reflected by the Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur (GNL) – is characterized by its broad definition of ‘literature’. This article examines whether the ambition to look beyond the literary canon impacted on historical literature education in secondary schools. On the basis of a survey among former pupils of 72 secondary schools in the Netherlands and an analysis of the download data of the website scholieren.com, we reveal that secondary schools generally prescribe a small set of canonical books. We also conduct a case study on Tekst in Context – a series of historical texts for pupils – which includes the analysis of its content and sales figures, and interviews with secondary school teachers. We demonstrate that Tekst in Context on the one hand supports a dynamic approach to the literary canon (since it includes some unknown texts and reflects on the changeability of esthetic judgements), but most of all enhanced the canonical status of texts (as most Tekst in Context issues focus on canonical texts, and these issues are by far the most popular ones). So the dynamic canon approach, as supported by the GNL, hardly impacted on current secondary education.

Hygro-mechanical response of oak wood cabinet door panels under relative humidity fluctuations

Indoor climate fluctuations are regarded as one of the major risks for the emergence of damage in historical works of art. For a safe preservation of their art objects museums try to minimize this risk, which is typically done by imposing strict limitations on the indoor temperature and humidity conditions. The high energy demand resulting from this approach, however, undermines the aim of preeminent museums to execute a sustainable preservation strategy of their collections. A rational improvement of this aspect asks for detailed information on the history of museum objects, complemented by a thorough comprehension of the failure and deformation behaviour of museum objects under indoor climate fluctuations. Accordingly, in this paper the hygro-mechanical response of mock-ups of historical Dutch cabinet door panels made of oak wood is examined under several relative humidity variations. In specific, the mock-ups were subjected to (i) an instantaneous decrease of 40% relative humidity, (ii) eight successive, instantaneous drops of 5% relative humidity, and (iii) a varying relative humidity profile ranging between 35 and 71%. The shrinkage characteristics of mock-ups are translated to their damage susceptibility using an analytical hygro-mechanical bi-layer model. This model shows that restrained hygral shrinkage may originate from: (i) a difference in moisture content across the thickness direction of the panel, or (ii) a directional difference in the coefficient of hygroscopic expansions of structural components forming a coherent connection. The first type of shrinkage occurs in the outer regions of the panel thickness, while the second type of shrinkage takes place at the cleated ends. Further, by accounting for the age-dependency of the fracture strength of oak wood, a clear distinction can be made between the damage susceptibility of new door panels and historical door panels present in museum cabinets. The six main conclusions of the experimental study—conveniently summarized at the end of this paper—provide a scientific basis for the understanding of shrinkage cracks and dimensional changes observed on decorated oak wooden panels in historical Dutch cabinets, and thus may assist in advising museums on future sustainable preservation strategies and rational guidelines for indoor climate specifications.

Fracture behaviour of historic and new oak wood

Recent museum studies have indicated the appearance of cracks and dimensional changes on decorated oak panels in historical Dutch cabinets and panel paintings. A thorough analysis of these damage mechanisms is needed to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the causes of damage and to advise museums on future sustainable preservation strategies and rational guidelines for indoor climate specifications. For this purpose, a combined experimental-numerical characterization of the fracture behaviour of oak wood of various ages is presented in this communication. Three-point bending tests were performed on historical samples dated 1300 and 1668 A.D. and on new samples. The measured failure responses and fracture paths are compared against numerical results computed with a finite element model. The discrete fracture behaviour is accurately simulated by using a robust interface damage model in combination with a dissipation-based path-following technique. The results indicate that the samples dated 1300 A.D. show a quasi-brittle fracture response, while the samples dated 1668 A.D. and the new samples show a rather brittle failure response. Further, the local tensile strength of the oak wood decreases with age in an approximately linear fashion, thus indicating a so-called ageing effect. Numerical simulations show that, due to small imperfections at the notch tip of the specimen, the maximal load carrying capacity under three-point bending may decrease by maximally 7 %. A comparison between a calibration of the experimental results by isotropic and orthotropic elastic models shows that the peak load is 10–13% higher for the orthotropic elastic model. Finally, no significant dependence of the fracture toughness on the age of the oak wood and on the orientation of the fracture plane has been found. The strength and toughness values measured can be used as input for advanced numerical simulations on climate-induced damage in decorated oak wooden panels and panel paintings.

Kleiner Niederländischer Sprachatlas (KNSA)

Abstract The present contribution aims to present the Kleiner Niederländischer Sprachatlas unter Einschluss des Westfriesischen (KNSA, ‘Concise Linguistic Atlas of Dutch including West Frisian’). With the Belgian and Dutch Wenker sentences as its source of data, the KNSA represents a westward expansion of its model and predecessor atlas, the Kleiner Deutscher Sprachatlas (KDSA, ‘Concise Linguistic Atlas of German’), which charted historical data from Georg Wenker’s survey of the former German Empire at the end of the 19th century. Less well known is the collection of Wenker sentences that was carried out in the Dutch language area beginning during the First World War, then in the 1920s, and in the 1930s. The KNSA systematically charts these historical Dutch and West Frisian data, and allows for their comparison to the German Wenker data. Although initiated in the 1990s, the project could only be completed in 2017. The KNSA was published on the internet research platform Regionalsprache.de (REDE). This contribution will first present the atlas’ data basis, then explain the relationship of the KNSA to the KDSA, and discuss the former’s publication. Finally, a brief case study analysis of h-dropping in Dutch dialects will conclude the contribution to demonstrate one possibility for further research with the atlas.

Influence of demand patterns on the optimal orientation of photovoltaic systems

Photovoltaic (PV) systems are usually orientated to maximize annual energy yield. This may not optimize other system indicators, specifically: direct consumption of self-generated PV power, reduced feed-in power and annual revenue. Also, these indicators are influenced by the energy demand of a building in relation to the PV system size. Therefore, we evaluate how demand patterns influence the optimal PV orientation for self-consumption, feed-in power and revenue. Historical Dutch demand patterns of 48 residential and 42 commercial buildings were used. We combined Dutch and German electricity prices from day-ahead markets with different ratios of electricity sales to purchase prices. Differences between demand patterns caused large variations in optimal PV orientations. On average, PV self-consumption is maximized for residential systems with an azimuth of 212° and a tilt of 26°. Commercial PV systems have an average of 188° azimuth and 17° tilt. Self-consumption can be increased 5.4% for residential systems and 2.7% for commercial systems, by optimizing orientation for self-consumption rather than for energy production. Curtailment losses are significant reduced by decreasing the module tilt angles. Optimizing for revenue can increase annual revenue of PV systems with 5.4% for certain demand patterns and pricing scenarios. The ratio of sales to purchase electricity price has a larger influence on the economically optimal orientation for residential systems than for commercial systems. Differences between Dutch and German market prices have minor effects on PV orientation. Analysed demand patterns significantly affect optimal PV orientation. Therefore, we recommend that optimal PV orientation should not only be based on maximizing energy production, but also on expected demand patterns and market prices.

Genetic-genealogy approach reveals low rate of extrapair paternity in historical Dutch populations.

Evolutionary theory has shown that seeking out extrapair paternity (EPP) can be a viable reproductive strategy for both sexes in pair-bonded species, also in humans. As yet, estimates of the contemporary or historical EPP rate in human population are still rare. In the present study, we estimated the historical EPP rate in the Dutch population over the last 400 years and compared the rate with those obtained for other human populations to determine the evolutionary, cultural, and socio-demographic factors that influence human cuckoldry behavior. We estimated the historical EPP rate for the Dutch population via the "genealogical pair method", in which the EPP rate is derived from Y-chromosome mismatches between pairs of individuals that, based on genealogical evidence, share a common paternal ancestor. Based on the analysis of 68 representative genealogical pairs, separated by a total of 1013 fertilization events, we estimated that the historical EPP rate for the Dutch population over the last 400 years was 0.96% per generation (95% confidence interval 0.46%-1.76%). The Dutch EPP rate fits perfectly within the range reported for other contemporary and historical populations in Western Europe and was highly congruent with that estimated for neighboring Flanders, despite the socio-economic and religious differences between both populations. The estimated low EPP rate challenges the "dual mating strategy hypothesis" that states that women could obtain fitness benefits by securing investment from one man while cuckolding him to obtain good genes from an affair partner.

Developmental instability and its relationship to mental health in two historic Dutch populations

This study aimed to assess the magnitude and patterns of fluctuating asymmetry as an indicator of developmental instability between two urban archeological Dutch populations. The sample comprised of 209 adult individuals representing the general population of Alkmaar, the Netherlands, dating to the 18th to early 19th century (Grote Kerk, n=134), and a psychiatric hospital sample of the 19th to early 20th century (Meerenberg, n=75). Fluctuating asymmetry was assessed from left and right measurements recorded from various traits on the cranium, mandible, and dentition. Three non-specific skeletal indicators of stress were documented to aid in the interpretation of the differences in asymmetry. No significant difference in developmental instability, as reflected by fluctuating asymmetry, was apparent between the two populations. However, individuals who presented with skeletal lesions indicative of stress were significantly more asymmetric than individuals who did not present with any of the lesions. The observed frequencies of the pathological changes and socio-economic history suggest that the two populations experienced similar levels of stress, even though the source and duration of the stress might have been different. The possibility that the mentally institutionalized are not as developmentally unstable as suggested by previous research should be considered.