Automation is “the application of machines to tasks once performed by human beings, or increasingly, to tasks that would otherwise be impossible”, Encyclopaedia Britannica [1]. The term automation itself was coined in the 1940s at the Ford Motor Company. The idea of automating processes and systems started many years earlier than this as part of the agricultural and industrial revolutions of th...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0001-2092(12)00723-5 © AORN, Inc, 2012 M edical tourism (ie, traveling to another country for nonurgent medical care) is not a new custom. In the 18th and 19th centuries, people traveled to spas to “take the waters” as a means of improving their health and, in remote colonies and less developed countries, people have always traveled to reach clinics or physicians.1,2 ...

Although the legitimacy of using the eye as an essential instrument in photometric experiments had been questioned by critics, the practitioners of visual photometry in the 18th and 19th centuries were convinced that the eye was reliable and capable of making accurate judgments in comparing brightness. They demonstrated their belief through their efforts in searching for the optimal conditions ...

The epidemiological concept of confounding has had a convoluted history. It was first expressed as an issue of group non-comparability, later as an uncontrolled fallacy, then as a controllable fallacy named confounding, and, more recently, as an issue of group non-comparability in the distribution of potential outcome types. This latest development synthesised the apparent disconnect between ph...

The science of vaccinology was created in the late 18th and 19th centuries by "giants" of the time including Jenner, Pasteur, Koch, von Behring, Ehrlich and Lister. Relatively little technologic advance was made in the period leading to World War II except for yellow fever and influenza vaccines. Support for war efforts fueled developments which led to the modern era of vaccines of 1950 onwards...

The anatomical collection of the Anatomical Museum of Leiden University Medical Center (historically referred to as Museum Anatomicum Academiae Lugduno-Batavae) houses and maintains more than 13,000 unique anatomical, pathological and zoological specimens, and include the oldest teratological specimens of The Netherlands. Throughout four centuries hundreds of teratological specimens were acquir...

The name of the classical medicinal plant, mountain arnica (Arnica montana), was well known among Estonians at the end of the 19th century, although mountain arnica itself does not grow in Estonia. The folklore collection of the Estonian Folklore Archives indicates that the name was used to denote locally growing plants. The impulse for such renaming of local plants obviously came from popular ...