Small Book Research Articles

Breast Lesions and their Treatment in Avicenna's Medicine

Avicenna (Ibn Sina) is Abu Ali al-Hussein, titled “Sheikh the President”. Avicenna was born in 370 Al-Hijra, (980 AD) in the village of Afshana, near Bukhara in Turkistan, or what is now the Republic of Uzbekistan. At the age of 21, he left Bukhara to spend the rest of his life travelling among various Persian cities. When he died in 1037 AD, he was considered one of the geniuses of philosophy in Islam, and in medicine he was placed in the rank of Galen, where he was called the Galen of Islam. Avicenna wrote 276 books, all written in Arabic, except for a few small books he wrote in his Persian native language. Unfortunately, most of these works have been lost, and have not reached us. There are currently 68 books scattered among east-west libraries. Avicenna’s most important book of medicine was al-Qanunn book, which is written in Arabic, and was described by William Osler, as the most famous medical textbook ever written. Avicenna devoted a full article of the 12th art of the third book of al-Qanunn Book to talk about breast diseases; In this research, I followed a unified approach that included reviewing all the topics in which Avicenna talked about breast conditions and diseases, and then discussed these diseases according to the data of modern medicine. Breast Injuries considered among celebrated illnesses that assault particularly females. For occasion, breast cancer assaults one among seven ladies. The point of this paper is to shed light on the accomplishments of Avicenna within the field of breast maladies which were known at that time, and to compare them with those known presently, to recognize the presence of a few components (dietary, natural, hormonal…) that take portion presently in actuating a few kinds of breast malady. Avicenna talked about Galactorrhoea, which could be a smooth emission from the breasts. The term presently ordinarily alludes to drain discharge not due to breast-feeding. It is reciprocal and from numerous conduits. Moreover, he depicted what is called presently fibrocystic breasts, which are characterized by unevenness, and as a rule distress in one or both breasts. The condition is exceptionally common presently, and kind, meaning that fibrocystic breasts are not dangerous (cancerous). Avicenna said what is called presently Incendiary Breast Cancer, which is considered nowadays as particularly forceful sort of breast cancer that can happen in ladies of any age (and, in spite of the fact that amazingly once in a while, in men). It gets its title from the ruddy, swollen, kindled appearance of the breast, as was portrayed by Avicenna. Conclusion: Through this research we reviewed the various breast lesions, that Avicenna spoke of in his book al-Qanunn. Various chapters were reviewed, including all the breast lesions that were known at the time. These lesions have been interpreted according to our recent medical information. It is noteworthy that there is some convergence in Avicenna clinical description of some breast lesions with our current information, but Avicenna treatment methods for treating these conditions have largely differed from those currently in use.

Joseph and Lucy Smith's Tunbridge Farm: An Archaeology and Landscape Study

Joseph and Lucy Smith's Tunbridge Farm: An Archaeology and Landscape Study

Image Feature Extraction and Retrieval Optimization of Book Pages Based on Convolutional Neural Network

Focusing on the feature extraction process of convolutional neural network (CNN), this paper establishes a CNN-based retrieval method of book pages. Then, the pretraining and feature finetuning of the CNN were described separately. The performance of the proposed optimization method was demonstrated through experiments. Considering overall performance and transfer learning capacity, the eight-layer VGG-Fast was selected as the structural framework of our CNN. To train the CNN, it is necessary to gather millions of book page images, and complete the complex task of labeling all these images. Given the excellence of VGG in many transfer learning tasks, this paper chooses to pretrain the CNN with a task-independent dataset. After that, a small book page dataset was adopted to convert the knowledge domain of the CNN from image classification to image page retrieval. In this way, desirable retrieval effects were achieved, without wasting lots of time and energy in collecting and labeling a large book page dataset.

‘1 Question 10 Answers’

'1 Question 10 answers' is a didactic exercise, designed to investigate the notion of interpretation in communication design, and to reflect upon issues that arise in the creation of non-fiction narratives. In particular, this research analyses the relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee, as well as the poetic devices of collection, tabulation and repetition in storytelling. The exercises discussed in this project were applied in various educational contexts: initially from 2017-2019 on the Typography module of the BA in Design at the Universidade da Madeira (Madeira, Portugal), and subsequently in February 2021 during an intensive workshop with MA Communication students in the School of Design at the Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy). The exercise consisted of posing a question to ten people and collecting their narrative responses, before exploring how these might be interpreted as texts and translated into artefacts. The results produced by the students at the Universidade da Madeira were small books, while the students at Politecnico di Milano invented communication systems within several different types of media. This article discusses ‘the rules of the game’ applied during the exercises, describes the learning process, and analyses various works made by the students reflecting on delicate balance that exists between a work of interpretation and the processes of dialogue and active listening. The exercises discussed in this project were applied in various educational contexts: initially from 2017-2019 on the Typography module of the BA in Design at the Universidade da Madeira (Madeira, Portugal), and subsequently in February 2021 during an intensive workshop with MA Communication students in the School of Design at the Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy). The exercise consisted of posing a question to ten people and collecting their narrative responses, before exploring how these might be interpreted as texts and translated into artefacts. The results produced by the students at the Universidade da Madeira were small books, while the students at Politecnico di Milano invented communication systems within several different types of media. This article will discuss ‘the rules of the game’ that were applied during the exercise: it will describe the learning process, analyse various works made by the students and reflect upon the potentialities of the method in future contexts.

Feudalism, Venality, and Revolution: Provincial Assemblies in Late-Old Regime France. By Stephen Miller

Historians of the French Revolution analysing the political struggles of the two years immediately prior to 1789 have to draw heavily on scholarship that has grown hoary with age. Jean Égret’s classic The French Prerevolution, 1787–1788 (trans. by Wesley D. Camp (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977)), for example, first appeared in French in 1962 and was based on research going back to the 1940s. Although the Assemblée des notables of 1787 has recently been receiving deserved reassessment, notably by John Hardman and Vivian Gruder, insufficient attention has been paid to the hierarchy of assemblies instituted by Louis XVI in the provinces in 1787–78 (following a pilot project in 1778–79 in Berry and Haute-Guyenne) as a means of reorganizing how state taxes obtained consent and were distributed. Indeed, for a full account we still rely on Pierre Renouvin’s Les Assemblées provinciales de 1787: origines, développement, résultats, which recently celebrated its centenary (Paris: Picard, 1921). Some readers may be disappointed that Stephen Miller’s important new study on the assemblies largely endorses Renouvin and Égret’s view of the fundamental importance of the bodies; but it does so in ways that complicate and enrich existing accounts, cleverly open up new perspectives, and thereby challenge current orthodoxies. It is not, Miller points out, that these assemblies actually did much — and in fact their slim achievements were few and far between. Rather, the assemblies’ introduction at a moment when the central government was desperate to extract itself from impending bankruptcy shuffled the cards in significant ways that allowed new understandings and presented new horizons of collective action. At province level, the number of commoner deputies was doubled and voting by head (rather than order, or estate) envisaged. But by looking closely at the pyramid of assemblies (from municipality upwards) in three contrasting areas — Berry, the Lyonnais, and Poitou — Miller shows that, when push came to shove, the bulk of the nobility across the country demonstrated solid intransigence in the face of financial and social reforms that damaged their established privileges. This served as both a rude awakening and a political education to commoners seeking reform at all levels, from the peasantry upwards. It set out some of the battlelines for 1789, provided ammunition for those struggles, and removed many inhibitions on further action. Influenced by the neo-Tocquevillian account of the Ancien Régime made popular by François Furet, most current historians rather downplay the power of the Ancien Régime nobility which they see as ruthlessly reduced by the Bourbon state’s long-term centralizing thrust. Miller’s nobility proves to have been far from etiolated and indeed seemed well entrenched within a feudal system that was alive and well, and alert to threats. This a small book — it comes in at not much over two hundred pages — but it packs a big punch. Penetratingly and incisively, Miller obliges historians to think afresh about the causes and circumstances of 1789 and the practices and political stakes involved.

Algunos problemas y retos de la Iglesia castellana en los comienzos del siglo XV (1406–1420), by Santiago González Sánchez

At slightly over one hundred pages of text, this is a small book featuring generous print and comfortably sized margins, making for a visually pleasant reading experience. Alongside a minute conclusion and even briefer introduction, it consists of ten short chapters and a fairly comprehensive list of references. It contains no index, maps, charts or figures. True to Spanish scholarly tradition, footnotes are detailed and serve to add morsels of information, which rarely digress and tie in well with the main narrative. The reader is not told that the book is essentially a revised fragment of Santiago González Sánchez’s doctoral thesis on the subject of Castilian political life between 1406 and 1420, researched under the guidance of the distinguished medievalist Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada and presented in 2010 to the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. The book is the second of three instalments of the thesis to have been published as...

Music, Ritual and Death in a Windesheim Community in the Early Modern Low Countries

Abstract The manuscript B 78741 held in the Erfgoedbibliotheek Hendrik Conscience in Antwerp contains the liturgy for the last rites, death and burial of a religious sister. Copied in the late fifteenth century, this small paper book hides its origins well. However, its Dutch rubrics and Latin texts make clear that the book is for the use of a community of sisters, led by a prioress, with the assistance of a priest. The rituals have aspects in common with those from other communities – the Dominicans, in particular – but they also have some striking differences. In the following article, I compare the music, texts and rituals held in the manuscript with those from known traditions. I argue that the manuscript was made for a community of Augustinian canonesses from the Windesheim congregation, most likely Beata Maria de Galilea in Ghent.

Why Science and Faith Belong Together: Stories of Mutual Enrichment

Why Science and Faith Belong Together: Stories of Mutual Enrichment

Writing through the Body

Writing through the Body Eileen DiPofi (bio) A Review of The Small Book of Hip Checks: On Queer Gender, Race, and Writing by Erica Rand. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021. Pp. 152. $89.95 cloth, $23.95 paper. In her latest monograph, Erica Rand brings the intimate writing style and focus on the embodied experiences of race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability that characterized her previous book, Red Nails, Black Skates (2012), expanding her scope beyond the skating rink and in provocative new directions.1 The Small Book of Hip Checks argues for the hips as an overdetermined corporeal site where multiple histories, cultural norms, social processes, and identifications collide. Rand asserts that "as racialized and classed markers of gender and sexuality, hips bear weight and meaning, fate and contradiction" (1). With careful attention to the ways in which hips are socially constructed as texts, Rand resists essentializing discourses that assume the body always precedes its gendering. Opening outward from the hips, she explores the body as a nexus of expression and regulation. The Small Book of Hip Checks analyzes cultural sites at which individual bodies come into contact with the systemic forces of race, gender, sexuality, and nation, largely focusing on popular and material culture (including sports, films, memoirs, and sex toys) but also with attention to how practices of activism, public mourning, and individual resistance negotiate embodiment. In part a work of cultural analysis, and in part autotheory, Rand explores her own subjectivity within these structures of power. [End Page 225] However, what is most innovative about The Small Book of Hip Checks is Rand's attention to the embodied experience of writing itself. By structuring her book through short chapters that prioritize juxtaposition over flow, bringing seemingly disparate objects into conversation, Rand prizes an "embrace of redirection, revisitation, and interruption" (15) rather than a traditional linear argument. This approach demonstrates the unexpected insights to be gained through approaching writing as a queer practice. Queer and feminist thinkers have long sought to foster unexpected intimacies between texts, sparking insights that might be otherwise imperceptible within normative academic frameworks. For example, Carolyn Dinshaw posits a methodology of "touching" that puts different historical moments in contact to produce "connections between incommensurate entities."2 As Ann Cvetkovich observes, such a methodology enables erotic and affective intimacies to emerge between historical and contemporary bodies.3 In a similar vein, Gayatri Gopinath employs a tactic of "queer curation," which "stages 'collisions and encounters' between aesthetic practices that may seem discontinuous," revealing insights and inspiring affective responses that might otherwise go unnoticed.4 In The Small Book of Hip Checks, Rand resolutely marks her place in this tradition, placing texts in conversation that might normally be separated to see what insights their proximity might inspire. Importantly, Rand does not reduce the bodies she studies to objects, but rather places her own body in conversation within them, reflecting on how her own gender, sexuality, and race have signified through her hips, and how, as her body has changed, this signification has, too. As such, the book balances an analysis of the intersecting processes of gendering and racialization on differently classed and sexualized bodies alongside Rand's meta-analysis of her own body as writer and social subject. Rand grounds her study through three interpretations of hip check: as "point of inspection," as "flirtation device," and as "sports move" (2). Respectively, these three distillations encompass Rand's concerns with the policing of bodies, embodied forms of resistance, and queer approaches to writing, commingling throughout the text to produce intimacies between writer, readers, and objects of study. Rand's first interpretation of hip check, as "point of inspection," evidences her commitment to analyses of how bodies are disciplined along the lines of race, gender, size, and sexuality. Rand provides a plethora of short readings demonstrating how hips are sites of judgment regarding a body's conformity to normative ideals, with hips—and, by extension, other [End Page 226] body parts—deemed too wide, indicating feminine, racialized, and classed excess that demands regulation. Rand's case studies demonstrate her attention to how gender policing is amplified and differentially applied "for people read as gender-nonconforming and/or...

Conjuring Creative Citizenship Beyond Rights

Conjuring Creative Citizenship Beyond Rights Elizabeth Swanson (bio) A Review of Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights by Lyndsey Stonebridge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 176. $25 hardcover. Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) is one of several key texts through which Lyndsey Stonebridge crafts the elegant, satisfying chapters of her latest, Writing & Righting. Stonebridge's small book packs the same genre of punch for readers now as Sontag's did when it was published, just after the Abu Ghraib torture photos had been released, when Sontag's questions carried ethical urgency: What is the purpose of looking at images of atrocity? If the atrocity has already happened, and suffering cannot be alleviated because of the evidence the image provides, how does the act of looking do anything but consolidate the viewer's sense of safety by comparison? For Stonebridge, the question concerns literature, not photos or images, and its role in the project of human rights or, as she more eloquently puts it, its role in transforming human rights claims into "common sense." Her inquiry traces the trajectory of human rights as the twentieth century has given way to the twenty-first, while also exploring the development of human rights and literature as a critical method, largely in the decades since 9/11. In both cases, she is careful to alert readers to the gap between language and the real; the now; between what we claim and what we accept. The book deeply treats our current context, refreshingly facing the human rights horizons of racial struggle [End Page 217] and inequality, climate disaster, and mass subhumanization, and then poses the perennial question of "How we might get from imagining other people to agreeing to share resources and power with them?" (24). In other words, how do we translate the empathic feelings that arise from reading about human rights violations into actions that diminish not only suffering, but the causes of suffering, in deep structures of inequity and violence? How do we mobilize our privilege in material ways that positively impact others' lives and move the world to greater justice? How do we leap from feeling to action through identification with a character or plot? And perhaps most of all, how do we find courage and clarity to acknowledge our role in the suffering of others and then to act differently? While I cannot report that Stonebridge delivers that formula (because, well, it doesn't exist, does it?), she does achieve something nearly as complex in the time she devotes in each chapter to exposing the nearly surreal level of denial and untruth, not to mention sheer interpretive cynicism, at the core of our current political systems and their discourses. In her insistence that the gap between words and reality in the current political arena has totalitarian ancestors and aims. In her recognition that living in the space between stated values and actual practices is the truly maddening condition of all our lives. In her idea that we turn to writers whose first-person perspectives emerge from within what I, following Suzanne Césaire, can only call "the great camouflage" of racist patriarchal imperialism, and who have experienced its unthinkable harms, to restore a culture where human rights—or better, human dignity—is a matter of common sense. I will go so far as to say that the act of reading Stonebridge's book felt like a meta-experience of how to build commitment to the solidarity of creative, universal citizenship beyond the cynical arena of the neoliberal nation-state, and I am grateful for it. Over the course of six tightly woven chapters, Stonebridge explores the harrowing edge we are all obliged to ride between ours as a moment of reckoning and ours as a moment of transformation, all within the context of (impending) climate disaster. Her emphasis remains rightly, refreshingly on context as she questions whether "the words 'human rights' any longer carry enough moral, political, cultural, social, or even semantic weight to adequately convey what it is that so many are currently determinedly, urgently, and sometimes desperately working to protect across the globe just now" (8). This throughline includes...

Unlisted

Unlisted

Crime, Gender, Sexuality: Female Villains in Late Ottoman Crime Fiction

In 1914, a Turkish novella depicting a young woman pressing a dagger to the throat of a bearded old man on its cover, with the title Bloody Fairy (Kanlı Peri), appeared for sale on bookshelves in the capital of the Ottoman Empire (Fig. 1). This relatively small book of fifty-four pages, with its price as low as 50 paras, was available to almost anybody who wanted to purchase and read it. Bloody Fairy was the first of a popular series of ten murder mysteries, National Collection of Murders (Milli Cinayat Koleksiyonu), written by Süleyman Sudi and Vassaf Kadri. On the back cover of the first book, the publishers promised readers that the series would tell matchless mysterious and murderous stories that “will arouse curiosity and excitement” (merak-aver ve heyecan-amiz ) among readers. This cover image must have been rather curious since popular crime fiction usually featured male protagonists as their central characters. In those books women were almost always the target, not the ones attacking men or committing crimes. A crime story featuring a female character leading a gang, not falling victim to a male criminal or being his lover, was not a figure that readers would expect. The preface of this book—and indeed the whole series—depicts countless oddities, strange events, enigmatic murders, and other crimes that had taken place in Istanbul during the prior twenty years. Many of these events were carried out by women. The authors write that although there was nothing astonishing in crimes committed because of a woman, women committing crimes was something never seen or heard of. Thus, they surely hoped that this extraordinary crime series about two female criminals would be a commercial success. On the back cover of the first book, they announced that the series would be published as two parts, comprising ten books each, and would be offered for sale as individual titles every Thursday. Unfortunately, their grand plans were never fulfilled; only the first ten books were published. Although the series is far from complete and we will never know about the authors’ plans to unfurl further crimes and mysteries, something wondrous eventually happened: these two authors, who were never among the canon of Ottoman Turkish literature, were discovered in the 2000s. In addition to National Collection of Murders, several of their other works have been transcribed and published. Süleyman Sudi and Vassaf Kadri, who yearned for popularity in the early 20th century, indeed became popular, albeit a century late.

Leschke, Erich. Die Wechselwirkungen der Blutdrilsen. 71 Seiten. Verlag Curt Kabitzsch. Leipzig. 1933

In a concise, but exhaustive form, Erich Leschke sets out in his small book all known endocrine diseases, which, as the title of the book shows, are, in essence, a violation of the normal mutual correlation of the endocrine glands. In the author's opinion, in any endocrine disease one should consider a pluriglandular disease. In certain cases, the endocrine disease is plurigular from the very beginning; in others, it turns into plurigondular during the course of the disease.

Oscar del Barco editor: la construcción de una política de la teoría en Ediciones Caldén

In this paper, we look at how theory and publishing practices were intertwined in Argentina between 1967 and 1976. We do so by analyzing “El hombre y su mundo” [“The Man and His World"], a collection of books directed by Oscar del Barco for Ediciones Caldén (Argentina) during that period. We hold that del Barco´s multifaceted work as editor, translator, compiler, and essayist, created a politics of theory, focusing on two interrelated aspects: 1) a poetics of publishing, with translations of works by political theorists, structuralist and poststructuralist thinkers coming together in a unique collection mediated by del Barco’s critical texts, and 2) a "smuggling" publishing practice –as texts were selected, translated and shaped into small books from foreign magazines with no copyright permission. We see a performative force in such interrelation of theory and publishing strategies, as “El hombre y su mundo” made available books through practices and materialities that acted upon what those very books were calling for.

Comparison of the effectiveness of teaching “breast cancer in a simple language” via a user-friendly booklet or through WhatsApp on the learning rate and emotional status in healthy women: a randomized pre-test/post-test experimental design

ABSTRACT The prognosis of breast cancer, depends significantly on its stage. However, early diagnosis happens infrequently due to delayed seeking of medical attention; and women’s knowledge about the disease is important for timely diagnosis. We conducted this study to examine whether education offered via a traditional booklet or WhatsApp yielded superior results in increasing women’s breast cancer knowledge. For this, an educational content organized in an easy language was delivered by two different methods to women attending our clinic: Video messages were sent to Group A by WhatsApp, and Group B received an easy-to-use attractive small book. Prticipants filled in a pre-test before, and a post-test three months after the intervention. Totally, 164 women completed the study; 86 in Group A, and 78 in Group B. The mean age was 42 (18–61) years. The two groups matched by age and level of education, and pre-test knowledge scores were statistically similar (p-value >0.05). The learning rate (p = 0.040) and the satisfaction rate (p = 0.014) were significantly higher in Group A, and the emotional improvement was also more prominent (but not statistically significant) in this group. There was no significant association between the studying rate and the rate of learning. This study showed that a short easy teaching program about breast cancer delivered via WhatsApp caused a higher rate of learning than the traditional paperback mode. Considering that WhatsApp is a very popular mobile application, this is a very useful finding in the topic of women’s health.

Greek and Latin epigram on medicine and health

A small book published under this title with a circulation of 1000 copies. remarkable in many ways. It contains poetic works of ancient authors on medical topics.

Dupuis de Fresnel. Appendicitis, perivisceritis and colitis. Translated. from the French Dr. P. M. Alperin, edited by prof. H. N. Burdenko. Library "Medical Practice", State Medical Publishing House. 1929, the price is 90 kopecks

The translation from French of this small book is to be welcomed, as it is devoted to the sore point of the present moment the diagnosis of chronic appendicitis and the analysis of the reasons why some patients continue to complain of pain in the right iliac cavity. Various para-appendicular diseases and their differential diagnosis are analyzed in detail. The position (inclined, head down), in which palpation and fluoroscopy are performed, are the basic methods of researching patients. Only that pain that reaches its maximum in the region of the appendix and does not spread high along the ascending intestine is of diagnostic value, and especially the presence of a painful cord rolling under the fingers.

Microlearning and its contribution to the ability to concentrate in high school students

This study addressed microlearning strategies in the area of ​​mathematics and their impact on concentration. The objective was to analyze microlearning and its contribution to the ability to concentrate in high school students. The research was of a mixed qualitative-quantitative approach; descriptive and correlational type analyzing the variables and their relationship; the population and the sample consisted of 33 high school teachers and two experts on the subject; the methods used were analytical and deductive to respond to the objectives of the work. The instruments used were interviews and surveys. The results obtained indicate that most teachers know and identify this type of strategy, among which the most used are short explanatory videos and readings of small books. It was concluded that they favor concentration by creating meaningful learning, this being an effective and flexible option.

Visual Aspects of Scribal Culture in Ashkenaz: Shaping the Small Book of Commandments (SEMAK), written by Ingrid Kaufman

Visual Aspects of Scribal Culture in Ashkenaz: Shaping the Small Book of Commandments (SEMAK), written by Ingrid Kaufman

D-r Fr. Nigmann. Artificial paralysis of the diaphragm and its importance for therapy. Per. from German Dr. Lyzlov. Honey. Ed. "Doctor", Berlin, 1926

A small book Nigmann a, published by the Vrach publishing house, contains a concise but fairly complete presentation of the current state of the issue of phrenicotomy.