Drawing on both ethnographic and literary sources, this paper indicates that initiations into the mantra of Bālā are essential rites passage for various Tantric communities. We focus two previously unstudied texts: Bālāviṃśati stotra (“Twenty Verses Goddess”), a popular eulogy sung festive occasions in Keralan temples, Bālādīkṣāpaddhati (“A Treatise Initiation Mantra”), short treatise explainin...

William Battie, resident physician and driving force behind the foundation of St Luke’s asylum, published what was probably the first English medical monograph devoted to madness in 1758. A proponent of Enlightenment pedagogy, Battie advocated an optimistic view of the treatability of insanity, by management – rather than the ineffective and brutal purges, vomits and blood-letting then regularl...

the logical treatise al-muhja has been attributed to avicenna in some bibliographies of logical treatises. since a proper understanding of the development of avicennian logic rests on the identification and consideration of the entire corpus of his logical works, the task of the present study is to investigate the validity of ascription of this treatise to avicenna. in carrying out an analysis ...

Hume appeals to different kinds of certainties and necessities in the Treatise. He contrasts the certainty that arises from intuition and demonstrative reasoning with the certainty that arises from causal reasoning. He denies that the causal maxim is absolutely or metaphysically necessary, but he nonetheless takes the causal maxim and ‘proofs’ to be necessary. The focus of this paper is the cer...

the Diseases of Women. By Alexander J. C. Skene, M.D. Ihird .bdition. Pp. xvin., ggi. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1898. It is six years since the publication of the last edition of this work, and during that period great advances have been made, which have been duly incorporated in the present issue. The treatment of uterine fibroids has been fully brought up to date, but a more clear st...

Lind is revered as the first doctor to conduct systematic clinical trials of potential cures for scurvy-trials in which oranges and lemons came out as decisive winners. The following paper argues that our modern understanding of scurvy and vitamin C has hindered our understanding of Lind's own conception of his work and of the place within it of his clinical trials. Lind conceived of scurvy not...