bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
William Pitt, Lord Bute, and the Peace Negotiations with France, May-September 1761
Authors: Schweizer Karl W. 
Published: November 2007

The failure of the Anglo-French peace negotiations of 1761—the so-called Stanley-Bussey talks—is usually ascribed to two principal causes: British intransigence over the Canadian fisheries and, closely related, the inadequacy of William Pitt's diplomacy; the fact that he lacked both the technique and personality for successful negotiation. British historians in particular, have tended to assess the course and failure of the negotiations with exclusive reference to the policies of the elder Pitt, another example of the mastery that Pitt supposedly wielded over government and administration at this time. The picture they present is that of a domineering figure, subduing cabinet opposition to his extreme demands with the same harsh tactics he employed against defeated France. In the words of Kate Hotblack (taking a view which is still current), “Until his resignation in October, Pitt dominated the peace negotiations as he had dominated the war.”The purpose of this article is to question this interpretation by showing that Pitt, leading political figure though he was, did not singly control the cabinet and its decisions, but worked more in collaboration with his coministers, most notably his fellow secretary Lord Bute, who played a much greater role in decision-making than has hitherto been recognized. Indeed, if any single factor proved decisive for the deliberations with France, it was their alliance—long in materializing, uneasy in practice, and brief in duration. While Bute sided with Pitt, the latter managed to prevail against his opponents in Council and Britain's policy remained firm; when early in August of 1761, Bute shifted support to the moderates, those favoring last minute concessions on the fishery, Pitt swiftly lost ground and resigned shortly after.
Social Darwinism: The Two Sources
Authors: Ruse Michael 
Published: November 2007

“Social Darwinism” means almost as many things as there are people who have written on it; but this paper takes it to be a generic term for theories of human social development and maintenance which are in some way inspired by biological evolutionary theories—this “inspiration” could take the form of seeing human sociality as a straight extension of the animal (and perhaps plant) domain, or it could involve some sort of analogy. In discussion of the roots of social Darwinism two names invariably appear—that of Charles Darwin himself, obviously, and that of Herbert Spencer. Here, however is the end of agreement. Who was the more important and influential, divides scholars right down the middle; as also do the questions of who really came first and whether their doctrines were essentially the same.Because there is so much disagreement, no one has yet adequately argued to precisely the right conclusion. To anticipate, this paper argues that both Darwin and Spencer represent fundamental advances (or, less normatively, shifts beyond) their common major source, Thomas Robert Malthus; and that although there was overlap (and undoubted mutual borrowing) their positions were fundamentally dissimilar. Consequently, a search for the roots of Social Darwinism yields two sources, Darwin and Spencer respectively, and that what came from these sources was different. This essay begins with a brief discussion of Malthus's views, paying special attention to his relevance to social Darwinian lines of thought, considers the views of Spencer and Darwin on human social structures, and concludes by comparing the two thinkers, noting their similarities, but arguing that these are far outweighed by their differences.
Masturbation and Insanity: Henry Maudsley and the Ideology of Sexual Repression
Authors: Gilbert Arthur N. 
Published: November 2007

Throughout the nineteenth century, auto-eroticism was viewed as a great evil, a threat to the individual and to society. At one time or another, nearly every disease which nineteenth-century doctors could not cure was blamed on self-abuse. Summing up the relationship between masturbation and illness, French doctor Eugene Beckland wrote in 1842, “Many physicians of high authority have maintained that two-thirds of the diseases to which the human race is liable have had their origins in certain solitary practices ….” As to the impact of masturbation on society, Dr. Révéillé Parisé observed in 1828,
In my opinion, neither plague, nor war, nor small pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicous habit of onanism. It is the destroying element of civilized societies, which is constantly in action and gradually undermines the health of a nation.Since 1953, when René Spitz published his important article on the subject, a number of scholars have tried to explain the intense concern with masturbation in the nineteenth century. Spitz argued that the heightened interest in self-abuse reflected the shift to Protestant culture with its emphasis on individual responsibility for sin. More recently, John and Robin Haller used similar arguments to explain it. Other writers such as E. H. Hare and Edward Shorter have argued that one reason why fear of masturbation increased was that people began indulging in the solitary vice to a greater extent than ever before. Men and women were masturbating more—and if they read medical journals on the subject—enjoying it less. Hare speculated that this was because of fear of venereal disease caused by intercourse, a great concern in the nineteenth century. Masturbation was safer. Shorter, who saw masturbation as part of a general increase in sexual appetite, asserted that it was “unlikely that masturbation … was practiced on a wide scale before the premarital sexual revolution.” It is not likely that historians will uncover reliable data on incidence of self-abuse to prove or disprove this hypothesis.
Dating Civil War Pamphlets, 1641–1644
Authors: Greenberg Stephen J. 
Published: November 2007

The English Civil War and Interregnum produced an astounding number of political tracts, pamphlets, and broadsides that have long fascinated historians and bibliographers. The lack of any effective control over pamphlet content after the elimination of the Court of Star Chamber in the summer of 1641, coupled with the use of printed propaganda by both the king and Parliament, combined to create a body of free-speaking literature that is unmatched in scope and daring. Extensive microfilming and cataloguing projects have made the pamphlets widely accessible to study, but have failed to answer basic questions about the nature of the pamphlets themselves. Fbr example, how soon after an event could a pamphlet be available? How many pamphlets were actually being printed (and when) as opposed to what was being entered in the registers of the Stationers' Company of London? In other words, what could a concerned citizen find for sale at the bookstalls on a given morning?It is probably impossible to answer these questions for more than a fraction of the pamphlets. Yet, by examining what records do remain, it is possible to gain at least a sense of what the pamphleteers were capable of in serving a public avid for news.
Parliament and the Governance of Elizabethan England: A Review
Authors: Jones Norman L. 
Published: November 2007

For thirty years J. E. Neale’s portrait of the Elizabethan parliaments was the stuff of textbooks. Highly political and bedeviled by puritanical protobolsheviks, the Virgin Queen’s parliaments were painted as the nursery in which the modern parliamentary system, characterized by an organized Opposition, was born. In the last decade, however, Neale’s interpretations have been challenged and overturned, making obsolete most of the histories of Elizabethan England available to students. The purpose of this article is to assess the new research on Elizabethan Parliaments, to summarize what we now know about the role Parliament played in governing England, and to suggest what remains to be done.In order to make sense of the newly emerging history of Elizabeth’s parliaments it is important to recap the working assumptions that dominated the first great era of Elizabethan parliamentary history, the Neale/Notestein age. Much of the recent work on Parliament has been in reaction to these mens’ work.
“Communion of the Saints”: Spiritual Reciprocity and the Godly Community in Early Modern England
Authors: Willen Diane 
Published: November 2007

Lady Joan Barrington, a puritan matriarch esteemed among the godly as a “lady elect,” experienced a profound spiritual crisis in 1628. She felt anxiety and melancholy over the prospects for her own salvation after the death of her husband Francis. Among those attempting to provide her comfort and counsel was the puritan divine Ezekiel Rogers, her former chaplain. Holding a Barrington living in Yorkshire, Rogers wrote regularly to his benefactress and friend in Essex. In years past he had sought the benefit of her counsel and prayers. Now, in February 1630, he advised Lady Barrington to consult not only her minister but also “the society of God's saints.” He warned against her tendency to keep to herself: among her neighbors were “such as coulde helpe…by telling what God had done for their soules.” This refrain—the importance of mutual help and edification among the godly—Rogers repeated in subsequent correspondence. In January 1632, he suggested various methods to reach understanding and assurance, including the telling postscript: “I much advise you to seeke helpe by the communion of the saintes.”Ezekiel Rogers was recommending a practice common among the godly. Laity often turned to one another for mutual support, spiritual advice, and constructive criticism in order to cope with the great burdens imposed by the obligation of godliness and the desire for assurance. Owen Watkins identifies such “mutual exhortation” as one of the features of the puritan way of life.
Sensational Stories, Endangered Bodies: Women’s Work and the New Journalism in England in the 1890s
Authors: Malone Carolyn 
Published: November 2007

The cry of labor has seized the world’s ear. The Press, the Legislature, and the world at large is listening to the voice of labor…. When this journal first resolved to secure a hearing for all working-class questions, there was scarcely a column of a leading London newspaper which was then open. Now, following our lead, every great daily paper has its labor section…. Nor is it only the press which is watchful. It is the readers of the Press….This self-promoting editorial in the Star in 1891 made a critical point: labor issues were becoming a standard feature in daily newspapers. Sweating, loopholes in factory legislation, and the famous Dock and Match Girls’ strikes were among the subjects found in the pages of papers such as the Star. This trend in reporting was part of the “New Journalism” that developed in England between the 1880s and 1914. In an attempt to cater to the tastes of mass audiences, there was a shift in emphasis from parliamentary and political news to sports, gossip, crime, and sex. Papers, for instance, reported on the brutal Jack the Ripper murders in the East End of London. New journalists and editors, like W. T. Stead and Thomas P. O’Connor, also produced interviews, exposes, and political editorials in order to influence public opinion and promote what Stead called “government by journalism.” Stead produced what has been called the most successful piece of scandal journalism of the nineteenth century, “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,” which depicted young girls for sale to older men. Passage of the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, which raised the age of consent for sex to sixteen, was one of its political consequences.
Labour's Rise and the Liberal Demise: A Quantitative Perspective on the Great Debate, 1906–1918
Authors: Fair John D. 
Published: November 2007

It all started with George Dangerfield's classic description of the circumstances surrounding the demise of Liberal England prior to World War I. He summarily recognized “that the abandonment of respectable punctilios and worn conventions, which was such a feature of society after the war, had already begun before the war.” Though drawn largely within a social context, it was obvious that Dangerfield's portrayal, especially after the precipitate decline of the Liberal Party in the interwar period, was fraught with political implications. An incubation period of almost a generation followed, but by the early 1960s The Strange Death of Liberal England, by virtue of its brilliant style and sweeping interpretation, had gained international recognition and set the tone for historiography of the Edwardian era. In his 1985 assessment of Dangerfield's impact, Peter Stansky concludes that his “interpretation will not die; no matter how often it may be knocked on the head, it has shaped the way the period is viewed….There can be few works that are so vital after fifty years, as likely to survive for another fifty or as enjoyable to read.” At the outset of the new millennium, Strange Death has lost little of its incandescence.An important aspect of the book's magnetic appeal is the groundwork it provided for the great debate over the rise of the Labour Party and the decline of the Liberals. Did these phenomena occur suddenly as a result of the First World War or were they already well in place in the pre-war years, especially from 1910 to 1914? The foremost challenge to Dangerfield's thesis, thereby instigating the controversy, came from Trevor Wilson's 1966 study, The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914–1935, which ascribes Liberal misfortunes largely to a crisis of leadership during the war.
Plowshares and Swords: Clerical Involvement in Acts of Violence and Peacemaking in Late Medieval England,c.1400–1536
Authors: Thiery Daniel E. 
Published: November 2007

“My men should use their swords and bucklers…but if John Stanshaw is in one alehouse then I will be in another.”To historians of medieval and Reformation England, these lines should not be all that surprising. Throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the heyday of livery and maintenance, ritualized effrontery was in vogue among the affluent and they often employed large retinues of armed servants as signs of potency and prestige. However, it may surprise some to learn that the above statement was uttered by a priest, Geoffrey Elys, vicar of Thatcham (Berks.), around the beginning of the sixteenth century. Though the medieval Church tirelessly struggled to convince its flock of the wickedness of interpersonal aggression, its own servants were not immune to bouts of conflict and strife. As R. N. Swanson cautions in his study of parish priests, the clergy “can be considered as a group; but they were also individuals who created their own careers and had their own personal relations with their parishioners.” Indeed, the conduct of clerics in their parish communities, especially their violent conduct, can be quite baffling if one only evaluates it by the criteria of ecclesiastical proscription and fails to recognize that such proscription was just one thick strand of an intricate web of relations and expectations. In his examination of thirteenth-century parish priesthood, J. Goering has traced the transition of pastors from merely members of the village to semi-detached individuals who were compelled to abide by both village customs and the values of a more unified and doctrinally authoritative Church.
Liberal Anti-Fascism in the 1930s: The Case of Sir Ernest Barker
Authors: Olechnowicz Andrzej 
Published: November 2007

One of the few achievements the communist left in Britain can still plausibly claim is its anti-fascism in the 1930s and beyond. This has recently been most dogmatically reasserted in a series of publications by David Renton, who calls for a distinction to be made between “anti-fascists” and “non-fascists.” The former are characterized by their “correct” understanding of fascism and reliance on organized, active resistance, often in the streets; whereas the latter contributed very little to fascism's defeat. Such a loaded definition of anti-fascism ensures that only the Communist Party and their acolytes fit the bill. But within the historiography even more “neutral”—and seemingly encompassing—definitions have tended, in practice, to look largely to left-wing organizations.This article will question these perspectives and argue for the significance of a “liberal” anti-fascism, which brought together many Liberal, Conservative and Labour politicians and intellectuals in cross-party pressure groups. What characterized the anti-fascism of these men and women was not resistance to theactionsof the BUF, which most regarded as thuggish but insignificant, but resistance to theideologicalchallenge to English parliamentary democracy represented by continental “totalitarian” movements. The article will begin by considering the compromised nature of the British Communist Party's anti-fascist record and why “liberal” historians have, on the whole, tended to underestimate the extent of liberal anti-fascism. It will then suggest that a truly less exclusionary and partisan approach to anti-fascism should readily include the likes of the liberal Sir Ernest Barker and many in his political and social circle. It will also argue that, even accepting Renton's own, restrictive definition, Barker would still qualify as an anti-fascist, rather than a non-fascist, for he combined a coherent analysis of single-party, totalitarian states with a commitment to organized action through bodies such as the New Estates Community Committee and the Association for Education in Citizenship to remove the pre-conditions of antidemocratic beliefs.
Atrophy of Foot Muscles in Diabetic Patients Can Be Detected With Ultrasonography
Authors: Severinsen Kaare , Obel Annette , Jakobsen Johannes , Andersen Henning 
Published: November 2007

OBJECTIVE—To establish a bedside test with ultrasonography for evaluation of foot muscle atrophy in diabetic patients.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—Thickness and cross-sectional area (CSA) of the extensor digitorum brevis muscle (EDB) and of the muscles of the first interstitium (MILs) were determined in 26 diabetic patients and in 26 matched control subjects using ultrasonography. To estimate the validity, findings were related to the total volume of all foot muscles determined at magnetic resonance imaging (MRI-FMvol). Furthermore, the relations of ultrasonographic estimates to nerve conduction, sensory perception thresholds, and clinical condition were established.
RESULTS—In diabetic patients, the ultrasonographic thickness of EDB (U-EDBt) was (means ± SD) 6.4 ± 2.1 vs. 9.0 ± 1.0 mm in control subjects (P &lt; 0.001), the thickness of MIL (U-MILt) was 29.6 ± 8.3 vs. 40.2 ± 3.6 mm in control subjects (P &lt; 0.001), and the CSA of EDB (U-EDBCSA) was 116 ± 65 vs. 214 ± 38 mm2 in control subjects (P &lt; 0.001). The MRI-FMvol was directly related to U-EDBt (r = 0.77), U-MILt (r = 0.71), and U-EDBCSA (r = 0.74). U-EDBt and U-MILt were thinner in neuropathic than in nonneuropathic diabetic patients (5.8 ± 2.1 vs. 7.5 ± 1.7 mm [P &lt; 0.05] and 28.3 ± 8.8 vs. 35.6 ± 4.3 mm [P &lt; 0.03], respectively).
CONCLUSIONS—Atrophy of intrinsic foot muscles determined at ultrasonography is directly related to foot muscle volume determined by MRI and to various measures of diabetic neuropathy. Ultrasonography seems to be useful for detection of foot muscle atrophy in diabetes.
Health Plan Switching and Health Care Utilization
Authors: Lovchikova Marina , Feher Andrew , Lian Langou 
Published: March 2024

ImportanceWhile the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) helped make health insurance premiums more affordable with premium tax credits, ACA marketplace enrollees continue to face barriers to care.ObjectiveTo investigate the effect of informational emails on plan switching and health care utilization.Design, Setting, and ParticipantsThis randomized clinical trial was conducted during the 2021 special enrollment period in California’s Affordable Care Act marketplace among households that reported receiving unemployment insurance and were enrolled in non–silver-tier plans. The trial targeted 42 470 households that became temporarily eligible for cost-sharing reduction (CSR) silver plans that covered 94% of medical costs (CSR silver 94 plans) as a result of the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act.InterventionHouseholds were randomized to either a no-email control group or to a treatment group receiving 2 informational emails encouraging households to switch to CSR plans.Main Outcomes and MeasuresThe primary outcome was the switch rate to a CSR silver plan by July 31, 2021. Secondary outcomes include various measures of health care utilization in the second half of 2021 (July 1, 2021, to December 31, 2021). Health care utilization was measured by rates of practitioner visits, emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and prescription fills.ResultsOf the 42 470 households (head of household mean [SD], age, 41.4 [13.3] years; 51.7% male), 10 650 (25.1%) were in the control group and 31 820 (74.9%) were in the treatment group. The emails led to a statistically significant 3.1–percentage point (95% CI, 2.6-3.6 percentage points) increase in CSR silver 94 enrollment (a 74.8% relative increase) by July 31, 2021, and a 1.3–percentage point (95% CI, 0.2-2.4 percentage points) increase (a 2.3% relative increase) in practitioner visits by December 31, 2021. The emails had no detectable effect on prescription fills, emergency department visits, or hospitalizations.Conclusions and RelevanceThe results of this randomized clinical trial provide experimental evidence that, with access to more affordable health care, individuals are more likely to visit practitioners.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05891418