How to use this Page

Rosanne Hawke writes hard-hitting yet compassionate novels about young people in difficult, often dire, situations. Her most recent novel for young adults is The Truth About Peacock Blue (Allen & Unwin), about a young girl accused of blasphemy. It’s an inordinately powerful and topical story, which is also well balanced. Thanks for speaking with Boomerang […]

By Arpan Banerjee

Recently I had the good fortune to see an excellent production of Bertolt Brecht’s play The Life of Galileo at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Brecht has a tenuous connection with the medical profession; he registered in 1917 to attend a medical course in Munich and found himself drafted into the army, serving in a military VD clinic for a short while before the end of the war. Brecht’s main interest, however, was drama (in 1918 he wrote his first play Baal) and it was in this field that he made his lasting contribution.

Galileo Galilei

Galileo was persecuted by the Church and the established authorities for his scientific research. His major crime was using his telescope to confirm the Copernican model of the Sun being at the centre of the solar system with the earth revolving around it. This challenged the cultural consensus and the leaders of the day were not prepared to listen to scientific evidence which challenged old dogmas. Galileo was interrogated in the Vatican, tortured, and forced to retract his theories.

The medical profession has also seen more than its fair share of persecution. I will illustrate with two examples in the relatively new speciality of radiology. The people concerned were not radiologists as such but were conducting pioneering research in imaging. Wilhelm Rötgen, the German physicist who first discovered x-rays in 1895, did himself meet relatively few obstacles regarding the dissemination of his thoughts and findings. But Werner Forssmann, a physician from the small town of Eberswalde in Germany, was not so lucky. In 1929, it is claimed, Forsmann performed the procedure of catheterisation of the heart upon himself and incurred the wrath of his boss as a result. He was sacked and had to switch from a career in cardiology to urology.

Forssmann was to have the last laugh a quarter century later when he shared the 1956 Nobel Prize for his contribution to cardiac catheterisation. This is now a commonplace procedure worldwide.

Werner Forssmann

The next case concerns the plight of Moses Swick, an American urology intern who went to Germany in 1928 to work with Professor Lichtenberg in Berlin. Swick performed scientific studies of a new intravenous contrast agent which would enable visualisation of the renal tract. He and Professor Lichtenberg fell out about who should be given the accolade for the discovery; Lichtenberg stole the limelight and was invited to talk about intravenous urography at the American Urological Association Scientific meeting. For 35 years Swick worked as an urologist in New York until in 1966 it was realised that he had been the victim of injustice and his role in the discovery was belatedly recognised.

These stories are examples where justice prevailed in the end. There are several others which did not and still do not realise fair outcomes.

Arpan K Banerjee qualified in medicine from St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School in London, UK and trained in Radiology at Westminster Hospital and Guys and St Thomas’s Hospital. In 2012 he was appointed Chairman of the British Society for the History of Radiology of which he is a founder member and council member. In 2011 he was appointed to the scientific programme committee of the Royal College Of Radiologists, London. He is the author/co-author of six books including the recent The History of Radiology. Read his previous blog posts.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only psychology articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Image credits: (1) Galileo, public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Wilhelm Röntgen, by NFejza, CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (3) Werner Forssmann nobel, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Persecution in medicine appeared first on OUPblog.

        

Related Stories

• Dementia on the beach
• The American Noah: neolithic superhero
• Is Amanda Knox extraditable from the United States to Italy?

 

By Richard A. Bailey

“In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are under-written, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc.

Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the eleventh of November in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620.”

When the Mayflower—packed with 102 English men, women, and children—set out from Plymouth, England, on 6 September 1610, little did these Pilgrims know that sixty-five days later they would find themselves not only some 3,000 miles from their planned point of disembarkation but also pressed to pen the above words as the governing document for their fledgling settlement, Plimouth Plantation. Signed by 41 of the 50 adult males, the “Mayflower Compact” represented the type of covenant this particular strain of puritans believed could change the world.

While they hoped to achieve success in the future, these signers were especially concerned with survival in the present. The lives of these Pilgrims for the two decades or so prior to the launching of the Mayflower had been characterized by Separatism. Their decision to separate from the Church of England as a way to protest and to purify what they saw as its shortcomings had led to the necessity of illegally emigrating from the country of England and seeking refuge in the Netherlands. A further separation was needed as these English families realized that the Netherlands offered neither the cultural nor economic opportunities they really desired. But returning to England was out of the question. Thus, in order to discover the religious freedom they desired, these Pilgrims needed to remove yet again, which became possible because of an agreement made with an English joint-stock company willing to pair “saints” and “strangers” in a colony in the American hemisphere.

Despite the fact that they were the ones who had recently arrived in North America, the Pilgrims taxed the abilities of both the land and its native peoples to sustain the newly arrived English. Such taxation became most visible at moments of violent conflict between colonists and Native Americans, as in 1623 when Pilgrims massacred a group of Indians living at Wessagussett. Following the attack, John Robinson, a Pilgrim pastor still in the Netherlands, wrote a letter to William Bradford, Plimouth’s governor, expressing his fears with the following words: “It is also a thing more glorious, in men’s eyes, than pleasing in God’s or convenient to Christians, to be a terrour to poor barbarous people. And indeed I am afraid lest, by these occasions, others should be drawn to affect a kind of ruffling course in the world.” As his letter makes clear, Robinson clearly hoped the colonists would offer the indigenous peoples of New England the prospect of redemption–spiritually and culturally–rather than the edge of a sword. The Wessagussett affair, however, illustrated such redemption had not been realized. From at least that moment on, relationships between English colonists and the indigenous peoples of North America more often than not followed ruffling courses.

While an established state church isn’t a main threat nearly 400 years later, some of the Pilgrims’ concerns still haunt many Americans. Like those English colonists preparing to set foot on North American soil, we remain afraid of those we perceive as different than us–culturally, racially, ethnically, and the like. But the tables are turned. We are now the ones striving to protect ourselves from a stream of illegal and “undocumented” immigrants attempting to pursue their dreams in a new land. Our primary method of protection? Separatism. Like the Pilgrims we often remain unwilling to welcome those we define as different. We’ll look to them for assistance when necessary, rely on their labor when convenient, take advantage of their needs when possible, but we won’t welcome them as neighbors and equals in any real sense nor do we seek to provide reconciliation and redemption to people eager to embrace the potential future they see among us.

Ruffled courses persist as the United States wrestles with how it ought to treat those men, women, and children who, like the Pilgrims of the seventeenth century, are looking for newfound opportunities. As we remember the voyage of the seventeenth-century immigrants who departed England on 6 September 1610 and recall their many successful efforts to establish a lasting settlement in a distant land, we do well to celebrate not only their need to separate but also their dedication to “covenant and combine [them]selves together into a civil body politic.” The world has enough ruffling courses and perhaps needs the purifying reform modeled by the Pilgrims and the potential redemption those like John Robinson hoped for as they agreed to work together for the common good. In short, one would hope that a people whose history was migration from another land would be more welcoming than we often are, especially in our dealings with the immigrants and the impending immigration reform of our own day.

Richard A. Bailey is Associate Professor of History at Canisius College. He is the author of Race and Redemption in Puritan New England. His current research focuses on western Massachusetts as an intersection of empires in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, fly fishing in colonial America, and the concept of friendship in the life and writings of Wendell Berry. You can find Richard on Twitter @richardabailey

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only American history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

Image credit: The Mayflower Compact, 1620. Artist unknown, from Library of Congress. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Undocumented immigrants in 17th century America appeared first on OUPblog.

        

Related Stories

• The Reign of Terror
• Contemporary victims of creative suffering
• Women’s Equality Day

 

Peter Longerich is Professor of Modern German History at Royal Holloway University of London and founder of the College’s Holocaust Research Centre.  His book, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, shows the steps taken by the Nazis that would ultimately lead to the Final Solution.  He argues that anti-Semitism was not a mere by-product of Nazi political mobilization or an attempt to deflect the attention of the masses.  Rather, from 1933 onwards, anti-Jewish policy was a central tenet of the Nazi movement’s attempts to implement, disseminate, and secure National Socialist rule.  In the excerpt below Longerich analyzes the state of Jewish citizens of Germany right before the start of the war.

Once the third anti-Semitic wave had reached its peak, the National Socialist policy of total segregation of the German Jews had now been realized by extensive measures in all spheres of life. The Jews, excluded from economic life, led a wretched existence in complete social isolation: they lived on savings deposited in blocked accounts, from which sums for their immediate needs could be withdrawn only with permission from the Gestapo, Jewish welfare aid, or the minimal wages from Jewish work deployment. Jews could only be economically active for others Jews, for example as Rechtskonsulenten (legal advisers)…

According to the results of the May 1939 census, there were still 213,930 ‘faith Jews’ (i.e. members of synagogues) living in the Old Reich Territory. The concentration of Jews in cities had intensified. There was a disproportionately high level of old people among the Jews living in Germany: 53.6 percent were over 50, 21.6 per cent over 65…As a result of emigration there was a considerable surplus of women (57.5 percent). Only 15.6 percent of the Jews counted in May were in work, almost 71 percent of all Jews over 14 came under the category of the ‘unemployed self-employed’. There were also 19,716 people who did not belong to the Jewish religious community (more than half were Protestants), but who were graded as ‘racial Jews’, as well as 52,005 ‘half-breeds grade I’ and 32,669 ‘half-breeds grade II’.

At the instigation of the NS state the compulsory ’self-administration’ of the Jewish minority had been rendered uniform: the religious associations became branches of the Reich Association…which also took over the whole of Jewish care, health, and schooling, as well as all still existing Jewish organizations. The Reich Association…thus became the organization that controlled the isolated Jewish sector. Apart from this, the only remaining autonomous Jewish organization was the Jewish Cultural Association.

If the Reich Deputation of the Jews in Germany, now dissolved, had been a holding organization of independent Jewish organizations and communities, in the new, hierarchical organization autonomy was as good as excluded…On the social level their task now no longer consisted of supporting needy Jews alongside state care; falling back entirely on their own resources, they now also had to undertake the care of the Jews who were completely excluded from the state social system. In this way the regime had not only discharged responsibility and expenses; it has also ensured that the Jewish minority was almost completely isolated from the rest of the population and it had at its disposal a compulsory organization that it made responsible for the execution of official orders.

This set-up, using a Jewish organization to control an isolated Jewish sector and making it responsible for the implementation of the regime’s anti-Jewish policies, marked the birth of a new and perfidious form of organization of Judenpolitik: the<

Regular OUPblog readers will know that we have a series of posts around our Very Short Introductions series, where authors answer a few questions on their topic. Today I’m doing something a little different. Steven Beller is the author of Antisemitism: A Very Short Introduction. I asked him what he saw as the main reasons for there being such a high level of antisemitism throughout world history, and why he thought so much irrational hatred was leveled at the Jewish faith. His answer was so in depth and interesting that I thought it deserved a post all of its own. Check back next week for the rest of his fascinating Q&A.

It is true, as I state at the beginning of my book, that antisemitism can be and has been defined as an almost “eternal hatred” of Jews that has stretched from Antiquity to the present. But that is not the definition I operate with in my VSI, because in the end I do not think it is all that helpful in getting to grips with the central problem of antisemitism in the modern era, as a political and ideological movement, starting in the second half of the nineteenth century. I define antisemitism as that modern political and ideological movement, and one of my main points in the book is that it is wrong to think that the previous history of anti-Jewish prejudice and persecution in European history made the emergence of antisemitism as a movement inevitable. It is another major point of my book to dispute the notion that the emergence of antisemitism as a potent political and ideological force before 1914 meant that there was anything inevitable (until it happened that is) about the triumph of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s and the ensuing Holocaust.

I do not even think that it is all that accurate to assume that antisemitism has been present “throughout history”. Even when we define antisemitism in the “eternal” variety, as any form of anti-Jewish hatred, whether religiously, politically, socially, ideologically or economically based, there are vast swathes of time and recorded space in which it was not present, or at least of little consequence. Chinese and Indian history, and pre-Columbian history and Sub-Saharan African history, accounting for most of human historical experience, knew little or no animus against Jews before the modern era, mainly because Jews were an unknown or insignificant group. Anti-Jewish hatred was really a phenomenon of Middle Eastern and European history, and only spread to the rest of the world with the triumph of Eurocentric modern civilization. Even within Europe, and in what I see as the bastion of modern antisemitism, Central Europe (German-speaking and otherwise), there were periods when anti-Jewish hatred could be dismissed as an insignificant atavism; even in its era of major success around 1900 in Central Europe, there were many areas and centres, such as German Prague, Budapest and Breslau (Wroclaw) where the message of antisemitism was rejected or simply ignored.

It is true that anti-Jewish hatred has a very long history, going back (one assumes) to the Egyptians and the Romans, but I think some of this sense of “eternal hatred” is a consequence of a Judaeocentric view of the world, and I do not think that, until the emergence of Christianity, there was anything all that unique about anti-Jewish hatred. Jews were just one of the peoples in the Mediterranean world that needed to be dealt with by others, and I do not think the Romans, for instance, hated the Jews more than they had hated, let us say, the Carthaginians. With Pauline Christianity came a special animus against Jews resulting from the fact of Christianity’s Jewish roots; there is a similar special character about the pre-modern Muslim, religiously-based animosity to Jews, because, ironically, of the shared religious heritage. In European history it was the Christian need to be proved the true faith that led to anti-Jewish hatred being so ingrained into European culture and thought. Even so, this animosity was not the same as antisemitism, and in many eras, such as the late eighteenth century, was very much on the wane. It took further developments in modern European history to enable such underlying, religiously-based prejudices to be transformed into modern antisemitism. Antisemitism is thus a subject of modern history and not simply the study of an atavistic survival.

To talk of “irrational hatred” suggests that there is such a thing as “rational hatred”, and it is another point of my book to at least suggest that there are indeed many more “reasons” for anti-Jewish animosity and hence for antisemitism than many students of the subject are prepared to admit. This does not mean that such hatred is morally right, or acceptable, but it does open up the possibility that it is not irrational. Hence, Christian animosity towards Jews is based on a non-rational belief in the divinity of Christ that Jews can never share—is Christian animosity towards Jews because of this refusal to accept the “truth” (in Christian terms) irrational, therefore? I am not sure it is. But it should not be too surprising that Christian societies have tended to be anti-Jewish as a result of this fundamental theological conflict, and it is this religiously based difference which is at the heart of European society’s animosity towards Jews. At the same time, the Freudian/Nietzschean claim that it was precisely the fact that Christianity imposed “Jewish” moral, anti-hedonistic, repressive values on pagan European societies also has much going for it: Jews end up being blamed for both rejection and origination of the imposed faith. This might explain why the Jewish religion, seen as the original monotheism, has been such a focus of animosity within Christian societies. At the same time, I would like to stress that this particular strength of hatred of the Jews compared to “other faiths” was not historically a constant. Jews might have been restricted and persecuted in medieval Christendom, but they were allowed to exist within it as Jews, unlike any other heretical Christian group, or indeed Muslims or other faiths. In North America there are examples, such as Peter Stuyvesant’s New Amsterdam, where Jews were a tolerated minority, but other groups, such as Quakers, were not. So we need to be careful not to assume that Jews have always and everywhere been the most hated faith.

I am also intrigued by the use of the term “faith”. There is, I would agree, a foundation of religious conflict to both Christian and Muslim animosity towards Jews. Yet faith is only a part of it, and there is also a very strong group or ethnic component to this animosity, especially after the emergence of nationalism, and this has very little to do with Jews as a community of faith, and everything to do with them being perceived as a group of others. When it comes to this ethnic animosity, then Jews have also been historically the premier example of the consequences of “irrational hatred”, as in the Holocaust; on the other hand, the animosity directed and the horrors perpetrated against all kinds of other minority ethnic or religious groups, such as the Armenians in Turkey, the Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Igbo in Nigeria, or African-Americans in the United States (or even once upon a time Catholics in the United kingdom) should remind us that Jews are far from being alone in being the object of such hatred and persecution.

ShareThis

Welcome back to another round of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows chapter analysis.
Regular readers should note that there's been a slight change of policy.... from here on the chapter descriptions contain spoilers for the entire book, not just the chapters they refer to.

Spoiler

space

if

you

haven't

finished

reading

Harry

Potter

Seven.

Chapter Eleven: The Bribe

Picture: Lupin looks almost skeletal in this picture. Is it the candlelight? Also, if you look really closely, you can see a tiny picture of Harry in the newspaper under Lupin’s hand.

Chapter title: Very intriguing. It had me wondering throughout the whole chapter what on earth the bribe was going to be about.

Most memorable:

-Lupin appearing just when Harry, Ron and Hermione were so desperate to see a friendly face.

-The surprise of Harry being implicated in Dumbledore’s death.

-That Rufus Scrimgeour protected Harry even while he was being tortured. I give him a lot of credit for that.

-Ron’s fierce allegiance to Hermione.

-That Harry and Hermione address their former teacher as Remus. They are starting to sound like adults.

-Lupin’s misery, and his seeming lack of love for Tonks.

-Harry’s argument with Lupin. I was pretty shocked that Harry would say these kinds of things to one of his mentors, but I also agreed with him and was glad he took a stand. It was a more productive kind of righteous anger than Harry’s angst in Book 5.

-Umbridge has the locket? I got chills just reading that.

Funny:

-Ron turning the lights on and off without really paying attention. I know I would do this if I had a Deluminator… I wouldn’t be able to stop fidgeting with it.

Worth pointing out:

-The Deatheaters aren’t staking out the house because they think Harry is inside… they’re appearing because Harry and Hermione keep saying Voldemort’s name.

Question:

-Just how big is Lupin’s cloak? It seems that he keeps a lot under there… four bottles of butterbeer, a newspaper, etc. Sounds a bit like Hermione’s beaded bag.

Favorite quote:

Mundungus tries to defend his actions the night that the Order of the Phoenix moved Harry to the Burrow.

Mundungus: “I panicked, okay? I never wanted to come along, no offense, mate, but I never volunteered to die for you, an’ that was bleedin’ You-Know-Who come flying at me, anyone woulda got outta there, I said al along I didn’t wanna do it-“

“For your information, none of the rest of us Disapparated,” said Hermione.

“Well, you’re a bunch of bleedin’ ‘eroes then, aren’t you?”

(Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Scholastic hardcover, pg. 220.)