Having worked as a specialty doctor in palliative care for the past 6 years and now returning to general practice, I have become increasingly uncertain as to the future role of in-patient hospices. Perhaps the time has come for a realistic look at where exactly they fit in to the bigger picture of end-of-life care. Of particular concern is whether their existence inhibits the development of oth...

Around 1632, while stationed in Shanxi Province (China), the Italian Jesuit Alfonso Vagnone published a pedagogical treatise entitled On Education of Children (Tongyou jiaoyu) on which he had worked for several years. The book achieves carefully crafted synthesis between Confucian educational principles, European Humanism, and pedagogy. This is achieved through various rhetorical devices, one t...