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As the United States rushed toward industrial and technological modernization in the late nineteenth century, people worried that the workplace had become too competitive, the economy too turbulent, domestic chores too taxing, while new machines had created a fast-paced environment that sickened the nation. Physicians testified that, without a doubt, modern civilization was causing a host of ills-everything from irritability to insomnia, lethargy to weight loss, anxiety to lack of ambition, and indigestion to impotence. They called this conditionneurasthenia. Neurasthenic Nationinvestigates how the concept of neurasthenia helped doctors and patients, men and women, and advertisers and consumers negotiate changes commonly associated with \"modernity.\" Combining a survey of medical and popular literature on neurasthenia with original research into rare archives of personal letters, patient records, and corporate files, David Schuster charts the emergence of a \"neurasthenic nation\"-a place where people saw their personal health as inextricably tied to the pitfalls and possibilities of a changing world.

Chinese Buddhists in the Eastern Han initially employed the term libai to denote a supreme ritual performed by believers and disciples when meeting the Buddha. Deeply rooted in an Indian ritual greeting tradition, libai consisted of the action of touching the ground with the forehead. Buddhist vinayas regulated the performance of libai for senior or sick saṃgha members. In accordance with the ritual rationale of pūjā, libai was frequently used, along with other ritualized actions, for worshiping Buddhist statues and sūtras. The Daoists appropriated libai as a ritual technique in complicated ways. Several pre-5th century texts appeared to apply the term to describe a solemn greeting ritual for high-ranked deities. Since the 5th century, Numinous Treasure and Celestial Master Daoists have provided divergent understandings and usages of libai in their rituals. Specifically, Lu Xiujing considered libai to be a major part of the retreat that functioned to cultivate the body. The end of the 6th century witnessed the continuation of employing libai in the rituals worshiping the Daoist Three Treasures. Its diversity and significance were acknowledged by the early Tang Daoist monastic codes. The lawful performance of libai, interpreted by Zhang Wanfu, associated the body with the mind, and manifested the utmost sincerity.

BackgroundPlasmodium falciparum malaria accounts for >1 million deaths annually, mostly among young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Identifying those individuals who are likely to die is crucial. Several factors have been independently associated with death. Because malaria is a systemic disease, a quantitative score combining such risk factors may be superior MethodsWe used both forward and backward stepwise logistic regression to select the best predictors of death, as evaluated for 23,890 African children with severe P. falciparum malaria. The study was conducted from December 2000 through May 2005 in 6 hospital-based research units (in Banjul in the Gambia, Blantyre in Malawi, Kilifi in Kenya, Kumasi in Ghana, and Lambaréné and Libreville in Gabon) in a network established to study severe malaria in African children (ie, the SMAC Network) ResultsThe Lambaréné Organ Dysfunction Score (LODS) combines 3 variables: coma, prostration, and deep breathing. A LODS >0 (odd ratio, 9.6; 95% confidence interval, 8.0–11.4) has 85% sensitivity to predict death, and a LODS <3 is highly (98%) specific for survival ConclusionsThe LODS is a simple clinical predictor of fatal malaria in African children. This score provides accurate and rapid identification of children needing either referral or increased attention

In this article, I explore the prostration accumulation portion of the Preliminary Practices of a specific group of Tibetan Buddhist women in Bongwa Mayma, a rural area of Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province. I focus specifically on the nuns and lay women who utilize this set of teachings and practices. The Preliminary Practices not only initiate practitioners into a specific tradition (that of the Drikung Kagyu and more specifically the Amitabha practices of this lineage), but also more fundamentally into Vajrayāna Buddhism as it is practiced in contemporary Tibet. Although monks and male lay practitioners in this region also tend to perform the same Preliminary Practices, I focus specifically on women because of their unique relationship with bodily labor. I begin this article with a discussion of the domestic and economic labor practices of contemporary Tibetan women in rural Yushu, followed by an analysis of Preliminary Practices as understood through the Preliminary Practice text and oral commentaries utilized by all interviewees and interviews (collected from 2016–2020) with female practitioners about their motivations, experiences, and realizations during the Refuge and prostration accumulation portion of their Preliminary Practices. Women themselves view bodily labor as a productive and inevitable aspect of life. On the one hand, women state openly that their domestic duties impede upon their ability to achieve religious realization. On the other, they frequently extol the virtues of hard work, perseverance, patience, and fortitude that their lives of labor helped them to cultivate. Prostration is meant to embody the act of going for Refuge, of submitting oneself to the teachings of the Buddha, to the path of the dharma, and to the community of religious practitioners with whom they will study and grow. Prostrations are meant to embody the extreme difficulty of Refuge, to remove obscurations, to crush the ego, and to confirm a dedication to endure the hardships on the path to realization. Buddhist women, despite their ambiguous relationship with physical labor, see the physical pain of this process as a transformative experience that allows them a glimpse of the spaciousness of mind and freedom from attachment-filled desire promised in the teachings they receive.

Individually caged male Cobb broilers (24), 44 d of age, were used to evaluate effects of heat stress (1 d of data collection) and dietary electrolyte balance (DEB; Na + K - Cl, mEq/kg from 1 d of age). During summer rearing, mortality was variable, but DEB 240 improved growth, feed conversion ratio, water intake, and water:feed ratio vs. DEB 0. The temperature sequence for heat stress was 24 to 32°C in 30 min, 32 to 36°C in 30 min, 36 to 37°C in 15 min, and 37 to 41°C in 45 min. Maximum temperature was held for 15, 60, 90, or 360 min for data collection (relative humidity averaged 42 ± 7%). Results from the same room before and after heat stress were analyzed by DEB (1-factor ANOVA) and before vs. after heat stress compared across DEB (2-sample t-test). Heat stress decreased blood Na, K, and pCO2, and lymphocytes but increased heterophils. Blood HCO3 rose, Cl declined, and hematocrit gave a concave pattern (lowest at DEB 120) as DEB increased. After heat stress, DEB 0 decreased blood Na and K, and DEB 0 and 120 levels decreased blood HCO3. After heat stress blood pCO2 and hemoglobin decreased with DEB 240, but it had highest pCO2, a key factor. The DEB 120 gave longest times to panting and prostration with DEB 0 and 240 results lower but similar statistically. In heat stress, DEB 360 was excessive, DEB 120 and 240 were favorable, and DEB 0 was intermediate based on hematology, panting, and prostration responses.

This case of an impending abdominal aortic aneurysm rupture emphasizes impaired consciousness with low back pain. Family doctors must be attentive to a patient's physical findings and medical history, even if vital signs are normal at the initial visit. This case of an impending abdominal aortic aneurysm rupture emphasizes impaired consciousness with low back pain. Family doctors must be attentive to a patient's physical findings and medical history, even if vital signs are normal at the initial visit.

This essay compares the perspectives of Franz Rosenzweig and Joseph B. Soloveitchik on the sacred events generated by the halakah on the Yamim Nora'im (high holidays). It treats the halakah as a medium that begets “events” in the structure of human experience, rather than as the product of legal reasoning or historical circumstances. Both Rosenzweig and Soloveitchik bear witness to an experience of circular time—wherein the community senses a simultaneity of present, past, and future—and anticipates the return of the events they have experienced even as they pass away. Soloveitchik's phenomenology of sacred time, however, allows not only for a sense of simultaneity by way of circularity—as with Rosenzweig. For him, simultaneity can also be attained through an experience of reversibility, as with the penitent who actually changes her past in the present, and her present in light of hew newly envisioned future.

This study investigated the proposition of relaxation offered by performing the Muslim prayers by measuring the alpha brain activity in the frontal (F3–F4), central (C3–C4), parietal (P3–P4), and occipital (O1–O2) electrode placements using the International 10–20 System. Nine Muslim subjects were asked to perform the four required cycles of movements of Dhuha prayer, and the EEG were subsequently recorded with open eyes under three conditions, namely, resting, performing four cycles of prayer while reciting the specific verses and supplications, and performing four cycles of acted salat condition (prayer movements without any recitations). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests revealed that there were no significant difference in the mean alpha relative power (RP α ) between the alpha amplitude in the Dhuha prayer and the acted conditions in all eight electrode positions. However, the mean RP α showed higher alpha amplitude during the prostration position of the Dhuha prayer and acted condition at the parietal and occipital regions in comparison to the resting condition. Findings were similar to other studies documenting increased alpha amplitude in parietal and occipital regions during meditation and mental concentration. The incidence of increased alpha amplitude suggested parasympathetic activation, thus indicating a state of relaxation. Subsequent studies are needed to delineate the role of mental concentration, and eye focus, on alpha wave amplitude while performing worshipping acts.

This article explores the significance of the posture of full prostration by the Maskil that appears uniquely in association with him in the Hodayot. Using theoretical frameworks from ritual studies and embodied cognition, as well as traditional philological work, I argue that the Maskil's prostration summons the cultural memory of Moses as chief intercessor. This embodied technique serves not only to form the self of the leader in relation to the Yahad, but shapes the community that worships with him in the gathered assembly.

Berlin Electropolisties the German discourse on nervousness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to Berlin's transformation into a capital of the second industrial revolution. Focusing on three key groups-railway personnel, soldiers, and telephone operators-Andreas Killen traces the emergence in the 1880s and then later decline of the belief that modernity caused nervous illness. During this period, Killen explains, Berlin became arguably the most advanced metropolis in Europe. A host of changes, many associated with breakthroughs in technologies of transportation, communication, and leisure, combined to radically alter the shape and tempo of everyday life in Berlin. The resulting consciousness of accelerated social change and the shocks and afflictions that accompanied it found their consummate expression in the discourse about nervousness. Wonderfully researched and clearly written, this book offers a wealth of new insights into the nature of the modern metropolis, the psychological aftermath of World War I, and the operations of the German welfare state. Killen also explores cultural attitudes toward electricity, the evolution of psychiatric thought and practice, and the status of women workers in Germany's rapidly industrializing economy. Ultimately, he argues that the backlash against the welfare state that occurred during the late Weimar Republic brought about the final decoupling of modernity and nervous illness.