La Medicina Research Articles

Cadaverous Rhetorics and Affective Regulation at the Anatomical Museum

ABSTRACT This article explores cadaverous rhetorics with a focus on public displays of human remains at anatomical museums. The article has two primary components: First, it advances a theory of cadaverous rhetoric grounded in a blending of rhetorical, feminist, and psychological affect theory. The article argues that combining Casey Boyle’s transductive rhetoric with Sara Ahmed’s cultural politics of emotion and the psychology of extensive affective regulation offers a great deal of insight into the public display of human remains. Second, the article explores the cadaverous rhetorics at three museums: the Mütter Museum, Surgeon’s Hall, and the Museo de la Medicina. The article traces how the practices of acquisition, preparation, preservation, display and contextualization aim to blunt negative affective responses and to catalyze positive visitor experiences. The article closes with a rumination on the limited success of cadaverous rhetorics in the face of visitor tendencies anchored in attachments to justice-oriented frameworks.

Qualitative Identification of Secondary Metabolites and Determination of the Toxicity of Extracts Obtained from the Flower of Kalanchoe Pinnata

Kalanchoe pinnata, also known as air leaf or life leaf, is a plant used in traditional medicine in different world regions. In Mexico, it is included in the Atlas de la Medicina Tradicional Mexicana with a wide variety of applications, such as antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and antihistamine, among others. However, neither a secondary metabolite profile of the flower has been reported nor information on its possible toxicity. The latter is the purpose of this work. A phytochemical profile of extracts with solvents of different polarity (aqueous, methanol, ethanol, and ether) was carried out. In this profile, the structural compounds could be qualitatively determined by chemical reactions, and some changes in coloring or precipitation were observed. The acute toxicity test of the extracts was performed with an aquatic organism, Artemia sp, and a terrestrial organism Eisenia foetida, as well as the evaluation of the antioxidant capacity of the extracts in the organism of Eisenia foetida. The ABTS radical method and TROLOX were applied as synthetic antioxidants for the evaluation of the inhibition percentage. Most important secondary metabolites were qualitatively identified in the extracts of K. pinnata flowers. Mainly in the alcoholic extracts (methanol and ethanol) tannins, alkaloids, and flavonols were found. As mentioned above, they are reported to have toxicological effects. The toxicity and antioxidant activity tests confirm the preliminary results obtained in the identification of secondary metabolites. It is therefore concluded that the flower of Kalanchoe pinnata contains secondary metabolites that may be of great therapeutic interest.

Libros de texto para el éxito académico: el Programa Institucional de la Facultad de Medicina

This article describes the process for the publication of textbooks created expressly specifically for the degree of general practitioner of the Faculty of Medicine (FacMed) of the UNAM. This program was created in 2016 as an initiative of Dr. Fajardo Dolci, with the objective of promoting an editorial program for the elaboration of books of the academic programs of the FacMed. It includes the chronology of publications on: El razonamiento clínico en la era de la medicina digital, Informática biomédica II, La medicina en la historia, Competencias digitales básicas para el médico general, Informática biomédica I, Morfología humana, El aprendizaje de la farmacología a través de ejercicios (Clinical Reasoning in the era of Digital Medicine, Biomedical Informatics II, Medicine in History, Basic Digital Skills for the General Practitioner, Biomedical Informatics I, Human Morphology and Learning Pharmacology through Exercises). The situation of the delivery of copies and the fund for student scholarships is globally contained; the access, use and sale of the works of said program; as well as the projects that are in transit with an upcoming appearance. Keywords: Textbooks; electronic books; educational innovation; didactic resources; higher education

Over a Century of Occupational Medicine Research in Italy: La Medicina del Lavoro's Entire Digital Archive is Available Online.

Over a Century of Occupational Medicine Research in Italy: La Medicina del Lavoro's Entire Digital Archive is Available Online.

Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo by Jennifer Koshatka Seman

Reviewed by: Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo by Jennifer Koshatka Seman Spencer Dew Jennifer Koshatka Seman, Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021) "Un Problema Para La Medicina"—"A Problem for Medicine"—ran one headline about curandera Teresa Urrea in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The phrase offers a useful entry point to this book, which approaches the healing practices of Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo as medicine "from below," treating "ethnic Mexicans and Indigenous people faced with increasingly oppressive, exclusionary, and violent state power" (11). Reading the reception of these curanderos—by various factions of supporters as well as critics—Seman shows how borderlands healing practices troubled conceptions of medicine and modernity, race and national identity, even state power and capitalist logic (4). Seman reveals curanderismo to be a dynamic cultural practice and a transatlantic product as much as a New World indigenous one (with roots in Greek, Arabic, and European concepts, too), and situates shifting understandings of curanderismo within broader changes in thinking about "science" and "medicine" (from understandings of the body's electricity or magnetism to beliefs in the scientific nature of spiritualism to theories of "tropical medicine" used to justify colonialist exploitation). Neither medicine nor religion exists in isolation from state power and social structures that seek to categorize and contain, as Seman shows with impressive finesse and with a clear articulation of context that [End Page 131] allows non-experts and undergraduates to understand the historical importance of Porfirista intellectuals in exile or the Catarino Garza Rebellion. Indeed, what is most striking about the two figures Seman focuses on is how central they can be to many historical debates and trends—and how protean they are to their varied audiences. Urrea—depending on who one asked—was a curandera, an espiritista medium, a critic of Catholic leadership, and a "sad-eyed Mexican girl" whose "lovely, slender" hands were fetishized by the press (65). She was also Santa Teresa, the "Mexican Joan of Arc" who inspired an uprising of indigenous Yaqui, and, from the US side of the border, the author of revolutionary tracts against the Mexican government. As an example of the multiple and entangled roles assumed and imposed upon Urrea, the Mexican journal that published "Un Problema Para La Medicina" was a Spiritist journal, and the article's author, an American Spiritist and medical doctor, intended the headline as a celebratory note. He argued that Urrea, like various other historical faith healers, including Jesus, was here to alleviate human suffering; she presented a "problem" for institutionalized, professional medicine in that she healed not as a result of elite training and in exchange for pay, but, rather, via the work of spirits and the manipulation of "magnetic fluid" (36). Similarly, when, in 1901, the American Medical Association (AMA) charged Texas-based curandero Don Pedrito Jaramillo with fraud, this was an attempt to protect a kind of monopoly—over knowledge but also the right to practice—over what counted as medicine and how healing could be regulated by law. It was also an attack on a healthcare provider who depended on "an economy of reciprocity." Refusing to profit off his abilities, Jaramillo was perhaps an even greater threat to the model of medicine-as-industry represented by the AMA. The AMA's perpetuation of coloniality is less visibly striking than the massacre of indigenous Yaqui—Teresita rebels rallying under the name of Urrea—whose corpses were stacked for a photograph outside the Nogales customs house in August of 1896. Seman pairs this image, early in her book, with a similar souvenir photograph of corpses: bodies in a mass grave at Wounded Knee, 1891, laying out in gut-wrenching black-and-white the stakes of alternative cultural "scripts" for healing and showing colonialist violence at its most immediate (101). Similarly powerful is this book's concluding chapter, which insists that these healers "are more than mere cultural footnotes to history" by situating their legacies in the context of the contemporary borderlands politics, alongside the ongoing colonialist expansion and displacement of natives that is El Paso's...

Trypanocidal Activity of Traditional Antiparasitic Medicinal Plants from the Amazon

Pharmacognosy Research,2021,13,4,227-232.DOI:10.5530/pres.13.4.15Published:October 2021Type:Original ArticleAuthors:María-Helena Arias, Gustavo A. Vallejo, and Giovanny Garavito Author(s) affiliations:María-Helena Arias1, Gustavo A. Vallejo2, Giovanny Garavito1,* 1Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Bogotá, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Farmacia, Grupo de Investigación FaMeTra (Farmacología de la Medicina Tradicional y Popular); Carrera 30 45-03, Bogotá D.C. 111321, COLOMBIA. 2Laboratorio de Investigación en Parasitología Tropical, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad del Tolima, Ibagué, COLOMBIA. Abstract:Background: Neglected Infectious Diseases control is an urgent need in endemic areas, but it’s not a priority in the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry. Chagas disease (caused by Trypanosoma cruzi) is the parasitic disease of greatest impact in Latin America. Medicinal plants continue to be an affordable front-line option in endemic areas. Thus, we aimed to advance in the pharmacological evaluation of four medicinal plants traditionally used in the Amazon against parasitic infections. Materials and Methods: The plants were collected in the Amazon region of Colombia. The dry plant material was submitted to water percolation extraction. Extracts were tested in vitro against Trypanosoma cruzi (epimastigotes), and cytotoxicity was assessed against HepG2 and MRC5 cells. Finally, the general profile of metabolites present in the extracts was studied by thin-layer chromatography. Results: In vitro, against T. cruzi, extracts of Ambelania duckei and Curarea toxicofera shows concentration- dependent inhibition (IC50 of 221+/-29 and 50+/-5 μg/mL respectively), comparable with benznidazole (IC50: 0.7 μg/mL); while Abuta grandifolia and Aspidosperma excelsum exhibited IC50’s > 500 μg/mL. All extracts showed no cytotoxicity against HepG2 and MRC5 cells. Yields of extraction were between 3.2 and 9.5% and preliminary phytochemical profile showed flavonoids and steroids in all extracts. Conclusion: Promising plants, traditionally used to treat other protozoan infections, could be assessed against T. cruzi. C. toxicofera exhibits good activity against epimastigotes of T. cruzi, being a species that can reasonably be considered for bioassay-guided antitrypanosomal fractionation. Keywords:Chagas disease, cytotoxicity, Medicinal plants, Neglected Infectious Diseases, Trypanocidal agents, Trypanosoma cruziView:PDF (407.9 KB)

Novel genetic and molecular pathways in pulmonary arterial hypertension associated with connective tissue disease

Abstract Introduction PAH is a severe complication of CTD, with remarkable morbidity and mortality. SSc is most commonly associated with PAH, but it can be present in other CTD. Despite major advances in PAH therapy, survival in CTD-PAH remains poor. Furthermore, the molecular and genetic basis of PAH in CTD are not well established. Purpose This study aimed to screen for genetic defects in a cohort of patients with CTD-PAH. Methods Since November 2011, genetic testing is offered to all patients with idiopathic, hereditable and associated forms of PAH, and PVOD included in a national registry of PAH. A PAH-specific panel of 35 genes was designed. Results During enrolling, 79 patients were recruited: 59 SSc, 11 SLE and 9 other. 69 female, mean age 55,6±1,9 years, mean PVR 8,6±0,5 WU and mean DLCO 47,5±2%. Disease-associated variants were observed in 9 patients: 4 pathogenic/likely pathogenic in 4 different genes (TBX4, ABCC8, KCNA5 and GDF2/BMP9) and 5 VUS in 4 genes (ABCC8, NOTCH3, TOPBP1 and CTCFL). Clinical characteristics of patients with pathogenic/likely pathogenic variants and variant analyses are shown in Tables 1 and 2. Patient 1 is a Caucasian female with mixed CTD, diagnosed with PAH at 58 years of age. She has a frameshift pathogenic variant in TBX4. Pulmonary function test (PFT) ruled out interstitial lung disease (ILD), but a reduction in DLCO was observed (61% of predicted). Two patients carry variants in ABCC8. Patient 2 is a Caucasian female with SSc, diagnosed with PAH at 27 years of age. She carries a splicing variant in ABCC8, classified as likely pathogenic. Her mother was diagnosed with PAH associated with a repaired ASD at 61 years of age. In the genetic testing, no variants were observed in PAH genes. DLCO was 71% of predicted, without signs of ILD. Patient 3 is a Caucasian male, with clinical suspicion of PVOD associated with SSc and HIV infection. PAH was diagnosed at 57 years of age. He presented a missense variant in ABCC8, located in a gating regulatory region, and classified as VUS. Her sister was also diagnosed with PVOD associated with SSc at 48 years of age. No blood or tissue samples are available. In patient 3, DLCO was 22% of predicted value. CT scan showed the typical triad of PVOD. Patient 4 is a Latin American female with SLE, diagnosed with PAH at 25 years of age. She presented a pathogenic nonsense variant in GDF2/BMP9. Patient 5 is a Caucasian female with SSc, diagnosed with PAH at 70 years of age. She presented a pathogenic variant in KCNA5. Patients 6–9 have SSc-PAH and carry VUS in NOTCH1, CTCFL, CTCFL and TOPBP1, respectively. Conclusions We demonstrate the practical diagnostic utility of genetic testing with a panel in CTD-PAH. The discovery of rare variants in these patients forces us to take a comprehensive approach and accurate genetic counseling. Further research is still necessary to confirm these findings and help to provide a personalized medicine approach to these patients. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: Public grant(s) – National budget only. Main funding source(s): This project was founded by project “Bases Genético Moleculares de la Medicina de Precisiόn en la Hipertensiόn Arterial Pulmonar”. Funder: Instituto Carlos III. Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad.

LA MEDICINA NEL <em>CAFFÈ</em>

The magazine of Milan Enlightenment had an open attitude to the new knowledge spreading through Europe and was committed towards the dissemination of the so-called «useful studies». This implied that themes related to medicine were widely present among its articles, which recognized the central role of medicine in social life and presented it as both the inescapable premise of the ‘well-being’ of individuals and the population at large, and the aim of any good administration. Il Caffè decisively stands for ‘new’ medicine, the one that best takes into account the progress of studies, and that values the constant updating of its practitioners; medicine to be considered as science rather than experience. Thanks to all these elements, together with its inclusion in the complex system of scientific knowledge (inherently subject to constant verification), the lively formula of erudite entertainment opens, in more than one case, to concrete results, as in Pietro Verri’s article Sull’innesto del vaiuolo (On smallpox grafting); here, the author resolutely places the Caffè in favor of the still suspect practice of inoculation. Furthermore, even though it is Pietro Verri again who offers a wide-ranging nomenclature framework (with the article La medicina), undoubtedly most of the contributors are involved in dealing with these issues with an almost revolutionary narrative writing; certainly the model is English educational journalism, but with an incisiveness that also pays attention to the emerging sensiblerie, especially the «diseases of imagination» and those from which «more or less every man suffers without exactly distinguishing the cause».

La COVID-19, la autopsia y la medicina basada en la evidencia

Resumen La importancia del estudio autopsico es fundamental para conocer los mecanismos fisiopatologicos en el COVID19. Las consecuencias de la ausencia de estudios repercute no solo en el desconocimiento de un diagnostico correcto sino tambien en la dificultad de un tratamiento adecuado y consecuentemente en el pronostico. La autopsia y los posteriores estudios aplicando tecnicas de PCR y utilizacion del microscopio electronico ha permitido conocer que la afectacion en pacientes con COVID 19 es multisistemica y en casos graves existe una alteracion de la coagulacion consecuente del dano endotelial similar o superponible a una Microangiopatia Trombotica (MAT).

Literatura y medicina: Teoría y praxis (1800–1930) ed. by Jorge Avilés Diz y José Manuel Goñi Pérez

Reviewed by: Literatura y medicina: Teoría y praxis (1800–1930) ed. by Jorge Avilés Diz y José Manuel Goñi Pérez John Margenot Avilés Diz, Jorge, y José Manuel Goñi Pérez, editores. Literatura y medicina: Teoría y praxis (1800–1930). Vol. 1, Ediciones de la Torre, 2019. Pp. 302 pp. ISBN 978-8-47960-830-9. This engaging collection of ten interdisciplinary essays by specialists of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thinkers, writers, and artists provides a wealth of information on the ways in which scientific breakthroughs in the medical world—particularly those related to infectious diseases, mental illness and hygiene—shape the cultural production of the period. The editors argue in their introduction that artistic creation—theatre, novel, short story, essay, travel fiction and painting—serves as a forum to express fundamental concerns, fears and uncertainties related to continuous, and often controversial, discoveries in medicine. Avilés Diz and Goñi Pérez argue that the arts, particularly literature, function as the ideal medium to debate matters such as the conflict between past and present, tradition versus evolution and the historically uneasy relationship between science and religion. While various essays deal with easily recognized figures—Clarín, Galdós, and Larra—others focus on the work of lesser-known journalists, writers and doctors—Rosario de Acuña, Manuel de Tolosa Latour and Sabino Arana, to name a few—thus underscoring the editors’ contention that developments in medicine throughout the nineteenth century have a widespread impact on the arts. In the opening study, “‘¿Qué le duele?’ Representaciones de la medicina en la pintura del siglo XIX,” Esther Sánchez-Couto scrutinizes how medical developments—vaccinations, the creation of asylums, experimental laboratories and the introduction of autopsies—as well as the “professionalization” of the doctor, appear throughout the paintings of Goya, Sorolla, Borrás Abellá and Simonet Lombardo, among others. She shows how numerous scientific developments compel these artists to capture this new reality in original and concrete fashion. Monserrat Escartín Gual’s “La relación de Larra con la medicina y la enfermedad” adeptly explores the writer’s contact with the medical world as seen through terminology in his newspaper articles and his frequent bouts with depression. Most importantly, the fragmentation of Larra’s personality into Fígaro highlights attempts to alleviate his depression through the use of the word. As such, writing is not simply a profession but a therapeutic necessity for Larra. José Avilés Diz’s thoughtful essay, “¿Simila similibus curentur? Teatro y homeopatía en la España del siglo XIX,” explores the intense and often acrimonious nineteenth-century debate surrounding homeopathy and allopathy. He argues that theater serves as a forum for scientific discussion as well as an [End Page 120] indicator of social opinion on the value of homeopathy as a medical system especially when compared to traditional medicine. Works discussed include Juan Peral y Richart’s Una cura por homeopatía, Calixto Boldún’s Simila similibus curantur, o un clavo saca a otro clavo and Luis Martínez’s Homeopáticamente, among others. Solange Hibbs-Lissorgues focuses on hygiene in “‘La higiene es una religión humana . . . ’: regeneración, salud e higiene en España en el siglo XIX,” with emphasis on the work of Rosario de Acuña who tirelessly labored to eradicate irregularities in hygiene throughout the country, especially its rural areas. This activist and writer battled continuously against the religious fanaticism and superstition that impeded scientific development. From another perspective, José Manuel Goñi Pérez scrutinizes how doctors used travel fiction to convey medical ideas and to dissert on the state of medicine in Spain. In “Medicina, instrucción y regeneración: los relatos de viaje de Calatraveño y Valladares (1898) y Tolosa Latour (1908),” Goñi Pérez argues that the hybridism which characterizes the travel genre permits both writers to straddle the line between diversion and socio-scientific information. Margot Versteeg’s fine study, “No Place for Us: Stigmatization and Exclusion in ‘Duo de la tos’ by Leopoldo Alas (Clarín),” probes the author’s metaphorical critique of the nation-state’s inability to create an all...

Carlos Juan Finlay, William Gorgas, and Walter Reed and the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Controversy: Competing Historical Memories

Carlos Juan Finlay, William Gorgas, and Walter Reed and the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Controversy:Competing Historical Memories Ellen Griffith Spears (bio) and Rosa López-Oceguera (bio) several years ago, when we, as two historians, one american and one Cuban, began this inquiry into Cuban doctor Carlos Juan Finlay's collaboration with the U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission during the first U.S. military occupation of Cuba from 1898 to 1902, we assumed we had chosen a non-controversial topic centered on the friendship between Finlay and American doctor William Gorgas. Correspondence between Finlay and Gorgas, sanitation director for the U.S. Army in Havana during the yellow fever campaign, had surfaced in the W. S. Hoole Collection at the University of Alabama archives and suggested a collaboration worth highlighting as relations between the two countries appeared to be warming during the administration of President Barack Obama. However, more than [End Page 62] a century after the events in question, we found we had inadvertently wandered into one of the longer running and, at times, rancorous debates in the history of medicine. Revisiting the twists and turns in the ways in which the story of yellow fever has been told illuminates important questions in the history of medicine and environmental health, including the nineteenth-century revolution in the emerging fields of bacteriology and epidemiology. This story also sheds light on the politics of disease and colonization, the racialization of science, and the role of scientific collaboration under conditions of war. As conversations deepen between contemporary U.S. and Cuban scholars, revisiting the historiography of the yellow fever campaign explores how divergent historical memories of these events collide. The discovery of the etiology and treatment of yellow fever is memorialized very differently in Cuba than in the United States. While numerous accounts today credit Finlay as identifying the mosquito vector, medical authorities at the time rejected his findings and the historical record long downplayed Finlay's pathbreaking contributions to yellow fever etiology.1 According to historian John Lawrence Tone, Walter Reed's reports in the United States on yellow fever research failed to acknowledge fully Finlay's role. In Cuba, by contrast, Finlay is a national hero, with streets, monuments, and a prize in medicine named after him. Finlay's statue stands prominently in downtown Havana, directly across from the old Academy of Sciences building, now the Carlos Finlay Historical Museum of Science. Cuba celebrates a "Día de la Medicina Latinoamericana, en Honor al Sabio Carlos J. Finlay" and designates a major medical prize annually in his honor.2 ________ carlos j. finlay, or carlos "jota" finlay, as he is known in Cuba, (December 3, 1833–August 20, 1915) was of Scottish and French descent, a first-generation Cuban, educated in France and Philadelphia. In 1857, as a twenty-five-year-old recent medical school [End Page 63] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. A statue of Carlos Juan Finlay graces a park in downtown Havana, just across the street from the former Cuban Academy of Sciences building, now the Carlos Finlay Historical Museum of Science. All photographs taken by Ellen Griffith Spears. [End Page 64] graduate, he began researching yellow fever. In February 1881, at the International Sanitary Conference in Washington, D.C., when Finlay described his tentative hypothesis implicating the mosquito in the spread of yellow fever, his work was met with skepticism, even ridicule. However, twenty years later, Finlay's revolutionary theory and his experimental work pinpointing the insect vector provided the basis for his collaboration with U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission doctor Walter Reed and sanitation director William Gorgas in a public health campaign that effectively eradicated the disease in Havana. Dr. Finlay's correspondence with Dr. Gorgas resides in the Hoole Collection because the Gorgas family history is entwined with the history of the University of Alabama. Confederate chief of ordnance General Josiah Gorgas became president of the university for a brief period beginning in 1878. Amelia Gayle Gorgas, who was married to Josiah, directed the University of Alabama library for nearly twenty-five years and the university's main library bears her name. William Crawford Gorgas, their...

Ten papers for teachers of evidence-based medicine and health care: Sicily workshop 2019

A previous article sought to signpost papers that were considered helpful when starting on the journey of practicing evidence-based medicine (EBM).1 The lead author was invited to run a workshop...

Efecto de la medicina herbolaria en la calidad de vida: inventario de especies etnomedicinales y percepción del poblador de Laredo, Perú

Efecto de la medicina herbolaria en la calidad de vida: inventario de especies etnomedicinales y percepción del poblador de Laredo, Perú

Caracterización de las interrupciones que se producen en las consultas de los médicos de familia. Observatorio de la Medicina de Familia del Maresme

Caracterización de las interrupciones que se producen en las consultas de los médicos de familia. Observatorio de la Medicina de Familia del Maresme

News, Programs, Publications, and Awards

News, Programs, Publications, and Awards

¿Es atractiva la Medicina de Familia como profesión?

¿Es atractiva la Medicina de Familia como profesión?

Diccionario herbario de textos antiguos y premodernos by Thomas M. Capuano

Reviewed by: Diccionario herbario de textos antiguos y premodernos by Thomas M. Capuano Steven N. Dworkin Capuano, Thomas M., compiler. Diccionario herbario de textos antiguos y premodernos. New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 2017. 495 pp. ISBN: 978-1-56954-158-6 Thomas M. Capuano has devoted his career to the study of the texts and the lexicon of medieval and early modern Spanish agricultural, medical, and botanical treatises. The starting point for this activity is his dissertation at the State University of New York, entitled "Agricultural Terminology in Spanish Medieval and Renaissance Treatises" (1986). His research has culminated in 2017 with two major publications, the Diccionario herbario de textos antiguos y premodernos (the work under review), and an edition of the Latin text of Saladino Ferro d'Ascoli's Compendium aromatariorum (ca. 1450) with Alonso Rodríguez de Tudela's El compendio de los boticarios, a 1515 translation of d'Ascoli's work. This edition, published as Volume 71 of Romance Philology (Spring 2017), includes an English translation of the Spanish text prepared by Capuano and Chelsea Firra, and a Glossary that repeats some of the material found in the Diccionario herbario. The Diccionario seeks to record and define those terms referring directly or indirectly to flora found in selected medieval and early modern texts dealing with agriculture, nutrition, and medicine. It does not purport to offer a complete list of all plant names recorded in texts from this period. The main sources range from two texts from the second half of the thirteenth century, the Libro de las formas y de las imágenes (of which only the lengthy Table of Contents has survived) and the cynegetic treatise Libro de Moamín, to Andrés Laguna's translation (1566) of Dioscorides's Materia medicina. The remaining medieval sources are Tratado de agricultura de Ibn Wafid, Los nueve libros de Valerio Máximo, Menor daño de medicina, Suma de la flor de cirugía, Libro de recetas, Compendio de medicina, Libro de los olios, Libro de Palladio, Recetas, Tratado médico, Corbacho, Tratado de la peste, Tratado útil, Compendio de la humana salud, Lilio de medicina, Sumario de la medicina, and Regimiento contra la peste, as well as the 1499 edition of the Comedia de Calisto y Melibea, and several early sixteenth-century editions of the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea. To demonstrate the continued vitality of this lexical field, Capuano includes relevant examples from selected additional texts through the late eighteenth century (all identified in Apéndice I, pp. vi-viii). [End Page 126] The individual entries display a structure that will be familiar to readers who have consulted other dictionaries prepared by -or in collaboration with- the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, for example the Diccionario español de textos médicos antiguos (Herrera, 1996) or the Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X (Kasten and Nitti, 2002). The headword appears in modern Spanish spelling, followed by a definition in Spanish. In the case of names of plants, the definition is followed in parentheses by the appropriate Latin designation, following Linnaeus's binomial nomenclature. The entry next offers selected examples in context with the precise identification of the location in the text. In the case of words documented with a wide semantic range, the individual meanings are numbered and presented in separate paragraphs. I give here one example chosen at random: s.v. apretar, Capuano distinguishes five meanings, each of which he illustrates with appropriate quotations: 'apiñar estrechamente'; 'unir'; 'apiñarse estrechamente las uvas del racimo'; 'encogerse una planta o parte de ella, como por el frío o por el rigor del trasplante'; 'trepar una planta sobre otra ahogándola'. A separate section lists the forms in their medieval or early- modern orthographical garb as found in the texts and, when relevant, multi- word lexical units (unidades pluriverbales) involving the item in question. Capuano has not limited the dictionary entries to names of plants and herbs. He includes nouns, adjectives, and verbs that appear in the texts with meanings specifically related to the world of plants. The data on these specialized meanings may prove valuable in the preparation of future historical...

Science communication practices at the National Autonomous University of Mexico

The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) is one of the world's single largest employers of science communicators, with over 350,000 students and 40,000 staff. Its science communication activities include five museums (Universum, Museo de la Luz, the Geology Museum, Museo de la Medicina Mexicana and Musem of Geophysics), botanical gardens, as well as a wide range of cultural and outreach activities. It has several programmes for training professional science communicators. The science communication staff are spread across the campuses in Mexico City and four other cities, including writers, explainers, researchers, evaluators, who produce exhibitions, magazines, books, theatre, screenings and science cafés. This activity is diverse and sometimes operates to different agendas.

Empathy, burnout and... professional competence. Some reflections.

Disability is a problem that affects more and more children and adolescents. But in the course of our graduate and postgraduate education, we have received practically no training in this regard. A pediatrician is the primary care physician of every child and adolescent, and the above-mentioned lack of training becomes a hurdle in the care provided to children with disabilities. Our idea of diversity is clearly determined by our culture and the social and family environment where we grew up, and is highly influenced by our human and extracurricular development rather than by our medical training. Every course involved in professional training should include a subject on disability. As pediatricians, we should reflect on how we see children with disabilities.

Development and characterization of a microCT facility

his work reports the design, construction, characterization and application of a novel X-ray imaging beamline at Laboratorio de Investigacion e Instrumentacion en Fisica Aplicada a la Medicina e Imagenes por Rayos X - LIIFAMIRx ‑ University of Cordoba and Institute of Physics E. Gaviola - CONICET, Argentina. This development is the first phase in the construction of the integral facility for combining different imaging modalities, like absorption contrast images by primary and scattering contributions, high-resolution micro-tomography, elastic scattering and X-ray fluorescence scanning for chemical composition and surface characterizations. The progress and results here reported concern mainly to the micro-tomography beam-line. This technique is already operative and it was used for several academic researches, application studies and services. The obtained results for the characterization of organic and inorganic samples demonstrated the feasibility and reliability of the developed facility. Accordingly, this work reports specific characteristics about its design, construction, and operation supporting its employment in a wide range of especial applications that might not be accomplished by other available techniques. Moreover, some application studies, mainly focused on biological samples, are presented.