Green Latern and Doughboy

One of my favorite DC comics characters was the Green Latern. Perhaps because he reminded me of Marvel's Doctor Strange, since both characters shared mystical powers and magickal objects.

But I never thought of the connection between Green Lantern and the fat white doughboy that giggles when you poke him in the stomache.

How the mighty have fallen seems apt here.

Martin Nodell, the creator of Green Lantern, the comic book superhero who uses his magical ring to help him fight crime, has died. He was 91.

The first Green Lantern appearance came in July 1940, an eight-page story in a comic book also featuring other characters. The character then got his own series, and Nodell drew it until 1947 under the name Mart Dellon.

After its cancellation in 1949, the series was reborn in 1959 with a revised story line, and it has been revived several times.

Meanwhile, Nodell left the comics field for an advertising career. In the 1960s, he was on a design team that helped develop the Pillsbury Doughboy.

See

Chuck Jones Explains It all

One Down Thousands to Go

Comics

Obituary

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Primate Torture Ok

Once again academics expose themselves as apologists for torturing our relatives; primates. Report backs use of monkeys in research

"There is a scientific case for careful, meticulously regulated non-human primate research, at least for the foreseeable future, provided it is the only way of solving important scientific or medical questions," says inquiry chairman David Weatherall of the University of Oxford.

Hmm wonder what would happen if we replaced non-human primate with human in this statement.

"There is a scientific case for careful, meticulously regulated human research, at least for the foreseeable future, provided it is the only way of solving important scientific or medical questions,"

Yep seems justifiable to me to continue to experiment on humans, after all there are more of us than there are dwindling species of endangered primates. However despite the reports glossing over the issue of torture, its not like they are only experimenting on just a few of our cousins.

Who are imprisoned in cages for the rest of their short lives.

Captive rhesus macaques are not naturally aggressive, but poor husbandry and handling practices can trigger their aggression toward conspecifics and toward the human handler. The myth of the aggressive monkey probably is based on often not taking into account basic ethological principles when managing rhesus macaques in the research laboratory setting.

Macaca mulatta is the most common nonhuman primate species found in biomedical research facilities in the United States. Of the 57,000 or so primates (United States Department of Agriculture, 2000), approximately 33,000 (58%) animals are rhesus macaques (National Center for Research Resources, 2002) of whom an estimated 16,500 (50%) are living in cages.

After all how many humans would not voluteer for this experiment. What You can learn from drunk monkeys

And it is going to be 'meticulously regulated' research so it should be non leathal and perfectly safe. Not.

Of course most of us would not volunteer to really be put in this monkeys place no matter how meticulous the regulations......

Monkeys Tortured with Shocks Humans Found Unbearable

In the 50's and 60's, much work on "pain centers" and "pleasure centers" in the brain was carried out at Yale by José Delgado, a picaresque neuropsychologist who would like to see "human society 'psychocivilized' through brain stimulation and other influencing techniques." (Lausch, E.,1972, p. 121). Some of his experiments involved electroshocking monkeys in brain areas known to produce intense pain. (Delgado, J.,1966).

An idea of the pain suffered by these monkeys may be obtained by comparison with experiments in which the same brain areas were stimulated in man by B. Nashold and other neurosurgeons. The surgeons implanted electrodes in patients in the course of operations and recorded the sensations reported by the latter during electrical stimulation. In the area of the central gray matter at the level of the superior colliculus in the midbrain, stimulation produced bodily sensations of pain, burning, vibration and cold. In addition, a patient would experience feelings which were "described as 'fearful,' 'frightful,' or 'terrible,' and he would become apprehensive and not allow further stimulations." (Nashold, B., 1969).

Delgado implanted an electrode in the same place (the central gray area near the superior colliculus) in the brain of a rhesus monkey named "Harry." First, with the monkey in restraint, 1.2 milliampere shocks were given. Harry tried to grab anything in reach, bit the chair after every shock, then, released into a small cage, bit the swing as the shocks continued, attacked other monkeys, and finally climbed the wall and clung there.

Although humans, once they had experienced it, could not stand a second stimulation in this brain area, Harry was subjected to 40 minutes of intermittent shocks and 2 minutes of continuous shocks. Other monkeys shocked in the same area responded with screams, grimaces and "signs of aggressiveness directed against the investigator." Through multiple electrodes implanted in their brains, Delgado tested various areas known to cause offensive-defensive reaction when stimulated, and over a period of two days he subjected the monkeys to more than 120 stimulations at each cerebral point, after which they were killed and autopsied.

Although he proposes a hypothesis that brain mechanisms for perception of pain and aggressive behavior have different anatomical and physiological systems, he admits that the evoked aggression was often secondary to electrical excitation of the pain pathways, and that the monkeys demonstrated this by their screams ("high-pitched vocalizations"), dilated pupils, snarling expressions and efforts to escape.

Delgado's experiments were then used on humans to change behaviour, including their use on depressed women and homosexuals. It was used to torture political prisoners under the care of the CIA and their client states in Latin America. Of course under 'meticulous regulations'.



See

Primates

Monkeys

Great Apes

Organutan


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Another Anarchist Blog

Nice to find another Western Canadian anarchist/ libertarian socialist blogger. Shagya Blog.

Anyone up for creating a Canadian Libertarian/Anarchist blog aggregator?




See

Anarchism

Anarchist

Libertarian

Libertarian Socialism

Libertarian Communism

Mutualism


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Our Allies In Afghanistan Oppress Women

Karzai turned his back on the hopes and expectations of our people and failed to fulfill his commitments. He betrayed the people's trust by relying on warlords. By compromising with infamous fundamentalist warlords, and appointing them to high governmental posts Karzai has failed to bring any radical positive change. Now we have a parliament full of warlords. The most disgusting faces include Jehadi criminal leaders, former Taliban commanders and some former puppets of the USSR. Those who ought to be prosecuted before anyone else for their crimes against our nation are going to legislate to the Afghan people! The rule of private armies of the warlords in different parts of the country and infighting between different groups of them has resulted in the loss of innocent lives.

Afghanistan the Bloodiest Field for Slaughtering Human Rights
RAWA communiqué on Universal Human Rights Day, Dec.10, 2006

Since the Northern Alliance criminals were installed into power, RAWA has been saying that it is impossible to bring peace, human rights, and stability with a gang of criminals in power. Today even the western media points out the jehadi warlords as a main problem in destabilizing Afghanistan which proves RAWA's analyzes. However, the fundamentalist Karzai's government, in order to cover up its own irresponsibility, corruption, and weaknesses, terms Pakistan's interference and support to the Taliban as the only main issue in Afghanistan and pretend that if this interference is stopped Afghanistan will become a heaven on the earth! Karzai's government raise hue and cry on Pakistani statement about the need of "coalition government" but everyone knows that a coalition government with all criminals such as Taliban, Jehadi, Gullbudin's and other is already in place.

Northern Alliance criminals, backed by the US have their own local and barbaric governments. Just the increasing amount of women who commit suicides by burning themselves can be the best example of a human rights violation in Afghanistan. According to UNICEF, 65% of 50000 widows in Kabul think that committing suicide is the only option they have. Northern Alliance crooks raped an 11 year old girl, Sanuber, and traded her with a dog. In Badakhshan a young woman was gang-raped by 13 Jehadies in front of her children, and one of the rapists urinated in the mouth of her children who were continuously crying. In Paghman, a suburb of Kabul, a criminal leader Rasol Sayyaf, who was the mentor and godfather of Khalid Shikh Mohammad, the mastermind of 9/11 attacks, plunders our peoples' territory and tortures his oppositions at his private prison. Despite many protest rallies of unfortunate people of Paghman in front of the Parliament House, no one hear their painful voice and the so-called police forces headed by infamous criminal warlords like Zahir Aghbar and Amanullah Guzar attack the protester and kill 2 of them. These are all just some examples of thousands crimes that are being carried out by fundamentalists of the Northern Alliance evil men who have high positions in executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the US-imposed government and some unprincipled intellectuals are dancing to their tune.

Establishment of state-run institutions such as the Independent Human Rights Commission and Ministry for Women Affairs are just a show-off to throw dust in the eye of our people and world community and to conceal the human rights catastrophe. Although these symbolic institutes spend a lot of money, they have never addressed the core issues regarding human rights in Afghanistan, which is the atrocities carried out by the Northern Alliance criminals. For instance, a woman named Zofanoon Natiq, the head of Women Affaires Ministry branch in Badakhshan Province in an interview with Pajhwak News Agency entirely refused the gang-rape saying "no such incident had been occurred in Badakhshan" while the Police chief in the same province contradicted her and said a warlord from the fundamentalist Jamiat-e-Islami party, named Mujtaba committed the crime. Another woman, Fahima Kakar, the head of Women department in Kunduz, didn't want to displeasure warlords by only saying, "I think it is not proper to behead a lady, in my view and in Islam it is not good to kill someone" regarding the crime in which a woman was beheaded and killed while her hands were tightened on her back. All of the women in official posts are selected among such showpiece women who compromise with the fundamentalists and keep silence against their crimes.

See:

Womens Oppression Continues In Afghanistan

Schools In Afghanistan

Sir Robert Bond Idiot

Afghan Woman Speaks Out

The War For Women's Rights

Democracy In Afghanistan

Where Are The Women?

Afghanistan

Women

Feminism





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Canadian Workers Poorer Today Than Yesterday

I said this the other day, somethings never change.....In Canada, the richest got richer and the poorest stayed poor.

Statistics Canada reports that between 1999 and 2005, the median net worth of families in the top fifth of the wealth distribution increased by 19 per cent, the study said, while the net worth of their counterparts in the bottom fifth remained virtually unchanged.

At the other end of the spectrum, the median net worth of the families in the bottom fifth stagnated between 1984 and 2005.

The value of their assets never exceeded the value of their debts during that period.

.... while the median wealth of families rose 26 per cent between 1984 and 2005, it fell among families where the major income earner was between 25 and 34. In 2005, these families had median wealth holdings of $13,400, much lower than $27,000 in 1984

The period of 1984-2005 saw an unprecidented attack on the trade union movement, cuts in jobs, reductions in wages, attacks on public sector workers and increasing expansion of the low paid service sector as manufacturing jobs were outsourced overseas.

The rich got rich under Keynesianism, the rich got rich under neo-liberalism. The working class on the other hand while having their lot in life improved under Keynesianism have either stagnated or have become poorer under neo-liberalism/neo-conservative economic and political policies.

And NO tax cut is going to change that.

Unless it is the elimination of all taxes for working people who earn $100,000 or less anually. And the New Canadian Government ain't gonna do that.

See

Productivity

Taxes

Wealth

Plutocrats Rule

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Shameless

This is my reply to Netjin's blog attack; Eugene Plawiuk, the shame of the Canadian blogosphere

Netjin took issue with my criticisms of Dion, Elizabeth May , The Green Party and my critique of Catholic economic and political ideologies like corporatism and distributism.

Quite correctly he and others have pointed out that Elizabeth May is an Anglican. However last time I checked Anglicanism is simply another form of Catholicism, albeit based on the English Crown. My point about May wasn't whether or not she was Catholic but that she was influenced by Catholic theories of economic justice. Anyways here is my reply.

My my where to begin. Well lets begin with the wonderful book Bilingualism Today French Tomorrow, which as you correctly pointed out is the basis of the Western Canadian Seperatist Ideology.

It was published and circulated in the late seventies amongst the right wing rabble in Southern Alberta, home of the COR, WCC and Reform parties, as well as the old stomping grounds of Social Credit.

When I went to the University of Lethbridge and was on the student newspaper I exposed the right wing Birchite movement amongst the folks there that was quite active. This was several years before the Keegstra affair.

The anti-Cantolic bias of the right has existed in Alberta since the 1930's when the KKK was strong in the province. While attacking Jews and Blacks, though there were few of the latter around to focus on, the KKK focused its attacks on French Canadians and Catholicism.

Since these right wing movements in the West past and present are forms of militant Anglo Saxon Protestant Nationalism this should come as no surprize.

So am I biased because I point out that Mormonism and the right wing Dutch Reformed Church are strong in this region, hence their anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-gay, bias? I think not.

Nor should it come as any surprize that at the same time in Quebec the Right Wing Fascist movement of Arcand was anti-semitic anti-immigrant anti-English and Pro French, Pro Catholic and Pro Quebec Nationalism.

If Liz is an Anglican fine, however in the news article I linked to she credited Moses Coady as the source of her ecocnomic ideology, and then I went on to point out that Coady promoted Distributism a Catholic alternative to Socialism and Capitalism, the original Third Way.

Third Way politics of the Catholic social movements have always been both opposed to and a response to socialist workers movements. Thus they have been usually the basis for fascism. The Blair/Clinton Third Way was simply liberalized statism, on the other hand the Real Third Way movement is the Neo-Nazi's, who have embraced Green and Anti-Globalization politics.

So they can be progressive and they can be conservative, depending on whose promoting the ideology. This is also the problem that Liberation Theology faced, and its inherent contradiction, but that is a tale for another time.

In case you did not get it, and apparently you didn't I oppose all nationalism, and especially hypocrtical nationalism or the panderings to nationalism.

As in the case of the phoney bilingualism debate.

As for Quebec nationalism it is Catholic in origin, it is fascist in practice as we witness in the Quebec of Arcand and Duplessis, it is not the idelogy of liberalism, which is reflected in the great Canadian liberal Joseph Papineau, whom I have blogged about many times.

When it became left wing, it was the FLQ, while spouting left wing rhetoric its practice of misplaced urban guerrilla warfare placed it in the fascist camp.

I have criticized Trudeau for his inversion of classical anarchist theories of federalism and yet I have also praised his liberalism and even his libertarianism.

Political movements like the Green Party and the Social Credit party, are populist, pandering to a broad base, thus subject to no clear political philosophy, containing within themselves left wings and right. It is this contradition I try and point out.

I remember years ago meeting a left wing Social Creditor, who loved reading Lenin. Because Lenin exposed the financial cabal that ran capitalism. Which cabal, well the Rothchilds of course. Yoiks.

I guess I am a contrarian, and one that is shameless about it.

I will call a spade a spade even if everyone insists its a shovel.

The debate continues in the comments at Netjin.


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From LouisianaTo Tehran

White Wascist David Duke, former Louisiana Republican Senator, former KKK Grand Wiz and now Pro Palestinian Anti Zionist (sic) was in Tehran for the IslamoFascist Anti-Holocaust Convention.

David Irving would have been but he was still in jail in Austria. So inquirying minds want to know, will David Duke be allowed back in the US of A? And friends like these the Palestianians do NOT need.

This is even funnier...Reuters: David Duke Is An “American Academic”



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BM Bitch Slaps PM

Mr. Green Says Clean Up Your Act

The government's Clean Air Act must be beefed up if the Tories hope to win over crucial middle class voters, former prime minister Brian Mulroney says. In an interview with CBC News, Mulroney, who was recently awarded the title of the greenest prime minister in history, described the act as the beginning of a plan and said to capture the imagination of voters, it needs more work before the next election.

It needs work is an understatement, but with the help of the NDP a real Green Plan might emerge from the all parlimentary committee in February. Of course not if you have idiots like this saying Global Warming is no problem.

See

Environment

Ambrose


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Company In Hell

Its an interesting coincidence (there is no such thing as a coincidence) that Augusto Pincohet and Milton Friedman passed away less than a month apart. Considering their destruction of the Chilean economy, for the sake of he Chicago schools neo-liberalism I wonder if they will meet in Dantes fourth circle of hell, Avarice.


See

Chile

Left Wing Pragmatism

Latin America



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Happy Birthday Mozart

Mozart's year-long 250th birthday party is ending on a high note with the musical scores of his complete works available from Monday for the first time free on the Internet.

The International Mozart Foundation in Salzburg, Austria has put a scholarly edition of the bound volumes of Mozart's more than 600 works on a Web site.

Mozart was a Freemason. And a composer of 'popular' music for the masses.

No it ain't hip hop, but it ain't stuffy aristocratic syncophany like Antonio Salieri produced.


See

Freemasonry

Music

Freemasons


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Alcoholism Is Colonialism

Many of our urban poor in Western Canada are displaced aboriginal peoples driven to drink thanks to poverty and the wretched history of White Folks poisioning them with firewater.

One recipe used at "Fort Whoop-Up", for example, called for: (a) 26 ounces of whisky, (b) one pound of chewing tobacco, (c) one bottle of ginger (size not given, assumed to be about eight ounces), (d) a handful of red pepper, (e) a quart of molasses and believe it or not (f) a dash of red ink. Mixtures such as this became increasingly popular among the Indians, who became so addicted that they would trade all of their possessions for a cup or bottle."

Without political and economic autonomy, discriminated against for jobs, housing, etc. they are forced to drown their trail of tears in alcohol or worse. What was stolen from them over 100 years ago remains stolen, and all they are left with is the poison of colonialism.

Today the same problem exists for the San People of the Kalahari desert. The direct result of British Colonialism and its treatment of indigenous peoples in Africa and Canada, and other Commonwealth colonies.

And forget blood diamonds, all diamond production, even that now occuring in Canada's North, is on aboriginal lands. And the indigenous peoples are displaced for the profits of the big Diamond bosses. All diamonds are blood diamonds in one form or another.

Potent beer cold comfort for Bushmen

Kaudwane, Botswana - It's early afternoon in this Bushmen settlement in the Kalahari desert and everyone is drunk.

Removed from their ancestral land by the government, Botswana's Bushmen, also known as San, are unable to hunt or gather wild berries and have little else to do but drink potent fermented barley beer.

"I suffer here. I want to go home, where I know where to find plants to eat and eland to hunt," said 61-year-old Letshwao Nagayame at this bleak resettlement camp about 200km north of Botswana's capital, the smell of alcohol wafting as he speaks.

"Here all we do is drink - this beer, it will finish us."

Botswana's High Court will on Wednesday decide if Nagayame and some 1 000 other Bushmen - one of the world's last surviving hunter-gatherers - can return to the land where their ancestors speared wild game and foraged for wild plants for 20 000 years.

In one of Africa's most high-profile land disputes, the Bushmen say the government illegally forced them off protected hunting grounds in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR) in the late 1990s and early 2000s to make way for diamond mining.

Botswana, a sparsely populated country next to South Africa and the world's biggest diamond producer by value, has been lauded as an African success story.

But its democratic credentials have come under scrutiny in recent years amid charges it has mistreated the Bushmen and stifled critics.

The southern African country's British colonial rulers set aside the vast reserve in central Botswana - one of the continent's biggest - as a sanctuary for the Bushmen in 1961.

Survival says De Beers, whose joint venture with the government mines the bulk of diamonds in Botswana, is eyeing the reserve for precious gems but the world's biggest diamond miner says it has no such plans.

Survival insists it does not oppose mining, but that the Bushmen must control their land.

The government has resettled about 2 000 Bushmen since the late 1990s and says all but about 24 had voluntarily left the reserve. About half of southern Africa's 100 000 surviving Bushmen live in Botswana.

See:

DeBeers versus the Bushmen

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Pour Me One

Beer from 1869 that can be guzzled

London, Dec. 10: It was brewed in the year that the Suez Canal opened, Charles Dickens embarked on one of his last literary tours and the Cutty Sark was launched in Scotland. But the recently-discovered cache of 1869 ale should have been undrinkable, given the conventional brewing wisdom that even the best beers are supposed to last no more than a couple of decades. Beer experts, however, say the 137-year-old brew tastes “absolutely amazing”. The Victorian beer was part of a cache of 250 vintage bottles found in the vaults of Worthington’s White Shield brewery in Burton-on-Trent. The bottles will not be sold and have yet to be valued. According to Steve Wellington, Worthingon White Shield’s head brewer, said: “It was always rumoured that there were some vintage beers on site but no one had bothered to taste them because it was assumed they would not be drinkable. “Uncovering such an interesting collection is fantastic, the most exciting discovery ever made in British brewing. I assumed they would taste awful. But they had the most astonishing, complex flavours.” The bottles were sealed with corks and wax and stored in even, cool temperatures, in the dark and placed on their side to stop the corks drying out.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

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Day Light

Not since the infamous Jet Ski photo op has Stockwell Day faced such a backlash of well deserved laughter and criticism for his blog comments on Global Warming that I posted here.

Critics slam Day's tongue-in-cheek climate quip
Canada.com - 17 hours ago
OTTAWA - A senior federal Conservative cabinet minister is being compared to the fictional, stone-aged Flintstone family, after publishing a newspaper article that jokingly questions whether climate change is happening.
MP steamed by Day's blog joke 'begging for Big Al's Glacial Melt' Ottawa Citizen (subscription)
This Day gets coldGlobe and Mail

See

Environment

Stockwell Day


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Hysteria

People who suffer from what was once called "hysteria" show altered patterns of brain activity connected to their symptoms, researchers reported Monday.

Though hysteria is now known by the kinder name "conversion disorder," its unusual features haven't changed. Sufferers have neurological symptoms, ranging from numbness in a limb to paralysis, memory loss and seizures, that cannot be traced to any known medical problem.

Conversion disorder is so named because it's thought that people "convert" a psychological distress into a physical symptom -- though it's not under their conscious control. Freud himself coined the term.

Now the new study, published in the journal Neurology, offers brain evidence that "validates" the general Freudian view of the disorder, said study co-author Dr. Anthony Feinstein of the University of Toronto in Canada.

Using brain imaging called functional MRI, he and his colleagues found that three women with conversion disorder showed an unusual pattern of brain activity related to their symptoms.

All of the women had sensory conversion disorder, which involves a loss of sensation in a limb. Each had numbness in one hand or foot that could not be traced to any physical problem.

Hysteria was dismissed in the 19th and early part of the 20th Century as a mental problem of women. Note in this article it begins speaking of 'people', but in the end all of the patients studied were 'women'.

Until Freud diagnosed it as a neurological disorder, doctors considered it a 'womans problem' , that is they dismissed it as illogical and a fantasy. The result was being women, and having a womans problem, (hysteria does not exist among men) the best way to treat it was to remove the source of the problem.

What makes women different from men, well the uterus. So they invented an incredibly nasty form of surgical torture called hysterectomy. Which they still use today, and again for dealing with what male doctors assume are womens mental illusions and delusions; menopause.

Hysterical History

"Ancient Greeks and Egyptians believed female hysteria (uppityness) was caused by a disgruntled meandering uterus, or hysteria. Hysterectomies were performed to rid hysterical women of their nomadic reproductive organs."
-- from Hysteria, "suffering uterus"

Hysteria has an ancient and notorious history. It was first diagnosed in ancient Greece. The term hysteria is a word whose root origins (hystero) entered our language from the Greek word for womb. Since Hippocrates' day women were believed to suffer from "womb furie" or "uterine displacement". The medical texts explained that the standard treatment was the manipulation of the genitals to orgasm, resulting in contractions and release of fluid from the vagina.

"The ancient Greeks accounted for the instability and mobility of physical symptoms and of attacks of emotional disturbance in women, when these were otherwise unaccountable, by a theory that the womb somehow became transplanted to different positions. This "wandering of the uterus" theory gave the name hysteria (Greek hystera, "uterus") to disease phenomena characterized by highly emotional behavior. During the Middle Ages hysteria was attributed to demonic possession and to witchcraft, which led to persecution."1

"There had always been in Western medicine since the time of Hypocrites a belief in this disease called 'hysteria', which means womb disease, that was caused by the uterus complaining about neglect. Plato tells us that the uterus is an animal within an animal and that it gets out of control and you have to appease it supposedly. The way that you did this was that you would massage the vulva which was thought to be a part of the uterus - anatomy knowledge was a little thin in these days - and you would produce a crisis of the disease, like the birthing of a fever, it was called the 'hysterical paroxysm', and there would be contractions and lubrication and then the woman would feel better for a while."
-- Rachel Maines: from an interview with Phillip Adams on Radio National's with Rachel Maines, author of The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction

Hysteria became somewhat of a paradox, believed to be caused by a lack of sexual intercourse and/or sexual gratification. This view was fostered throughout Western history by the medical establishment whose misconceptions had been passed down by the beliefs of the Church, that is, that female sexuality was "the source of all evil".

"The curse of menstruation, first inflicted upon Eve as a result of her fall from grace, came to be seen as another badge of infamy, born conspicuously by all womankind."
-- Carole Rawcliffe, Medicine & Society In Later Medieval England

The ideology of the patriarchal canon has traditionally believed women to be more susceptible to madness as a result of their sexuality. During the Victoria era women were not considered "sexual" beings. Female sexuality was thought shameful, was feared and highly misunderstood. Historically, women "suffered from a lack of sexual satisfaction" , according to Dr. Maines, because they were only supposed to be satisfied by missionary-style coitus alone. It has been proven today, through studies on sexuality that two-thirds of women do not reach orgasm by sexual intercourse alone. Yet, religious decrees and the prevailing socio-cultural taboos discouraged masturbation or "self-exploration/abuse". Masturbation was widely thought to be a sin causing afflictions just as bad or worse than "hysteria". Women had no way to find relief. Bed rest and laudanum were prescribed and foul douches, bath regimes and bland diets were recommended. All sources of mental excitement was to be avoided.

Dr John Studd - Hysterectomy

This condition is mentioned in the fourth century BC by Hippocrates but became a medical epidemic in the nineteenth century. Victorian physicians were aware of menstrual madness, hysteria, chlorosis, ovarian mania, as well as the commonplace neurasthenia. In the 1870's Maudsley[2] , the most distinguished psychiatrist of the time, wrote " . . . The monthly activity of the ovaries which marks the advent of puberty in women has a notable effect upon the mind and body; wherefore it may become an important cause of mental and physical derangement . . ." This was somehow recognised, rightly or wrongly, to be due to the ovaries and bilateral oophorecotomy - Battey's operation[3] - was performed in tens of thousands of women in North America and Britain. Longo[4] , in his brilliant essay on the decline of Battey's operation, posed the question whether it worked. Of course they had no knowledge of osteoporosis and the devastation of long-term oestrogen deficiency, therefore, on balance the operation was not helpful long-term but probably did, as was claimed, cure the "menstrual/ovarian madness". The essential logic of this operation was to remove cyclical ovarian function but happily this can now effectively be achieved by simpler medical therapy. Only in 1931 was the phrase 'premenstrual tension' introduced by Frank [5], who described 15 women with the typical symptoms of PMS as we know it. Greene and Dalton extended the definition to 'premenstrual syndrome' in 1953[6] , recognising the wider range of symptoms.

Hysterectomy Hysteria: Or…How to Hang On to Your Uterus

magine you were unlucky enough to be a menopausal woman in the mid- to late-1800s, perhaps with irregular painful periods, hot flashes and symptoms of depression. You most certainly would have been diagnosed with “hysteria,” a catchall diagnosis with a misconception at its foundation: that the uterus (Latin hystera) was the origin of women’s physical maladies and psychological “neuroses.”

The cure, then, for this distress was hysterectomy — surgical removal of the uterus, cervix and ovaries. Perfected in the 1870s, hysterectomy was eagerly adopted by doctors as a quick fix for a variety of women’s problems.

If you think that modern doctors in the late 20th century would surely have jettisoned these old-fashioned misogynist ideas, you’re wrong. At a 1971 meeting of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the prevailing attitude toward the uterus was summed up by Ralph W. White, M.D.: “It’s a useless, bleeding, symptom-producing, potential cancer-bearing organ.”

But things are better now in the 21st century, right? Think again. Hysterectomy is still the second most commonly performed surgery in the United States (after cesarean section). The most frequent recipients are women just approaching menopause, ages 40 to 44.

In 1988, the American Medical Association got curious, did a study and found that about 50 percent of the 700,000 annual U.S. hysterectomies were unnecessary. Perhaps more accurate than the AMA’s conclusion, the experience of the Hysterectomy Education and Resource Services organization reveals a much more chilling reality: Of the 110,000 women HERS has counseled and referred to board-certified gynecologists for second opinions, 98 percent of them discovered they didn’t need a hysterectomy after all! The lesson? Get a second opinion, and educate yourself about tests, such as laparoscopy and ultrasound, that can determine whether you really need a hysterectomy.

A hysterectomy is the second most common surgery among women in the United States. (The most common is cesarean section delivery.) Each year, more than 600,000 are done. One in three women in the United States has had a hysterectomy by age 60.

You're about to undergo one of the most common – and thus one of the best understood – of all inpatient procedures. Each year, in fact, about 60,000 Canadian women have a hysterectomy. Operative techniques and aftercare treatments have been perfected over the course of a century, while more recent advances in antibiotics and anesthetics have all helped, tooT he opinion of doctors may differ from practice to practice, and from country to country. Interestingly, in the U.S. about one third of all women undergo hysterectomy before they reach 65; in Sweden and in England, however, that figures drops to only 17%.

Hysterectomy hysteria - avoiding unnecessary surgery

Not so long ago, Mary (whose name has been changed), a 43-year-old librarian, agreed to have surgery to remove the fibroids in her uterus. Her doctor said be would remove the fibroids but leave her uterus and ovaries intact unless he found something "dramatic," such as cancer, which he believed she might have.

"Congratulations," the doctor told Mary just after she awoke from the anesthesia. "You don't have cancer." But what she also didn't have were her ovaries and uterus, which were removed, she says angrily, against her will.

The surgery, a hysterectomy, has left her with pain and medical expenses totaling more than $60,000. "I feel as if I've been living in the hospital," says Mary, who is now suing her doctor for malpractice. "And despite all that's happened to me, nothing serious has been done to this doctor. He's still practicing."

While Mary's situation is extreme and smacks of the involuntary sterilization inflicted on poor women of color in the South as late as the 1960's, experts estimate that every year hundreds of thousands of women undergo hysterectomies unnecessarily. According to a Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois survey of nearly 6,000 hysterectomies, one third of the operations examined were performed unnecessarily. And the July edition of Consumer Reports claims that 27 percent of all hysterectomies are unnecessary.

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