bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Does Becky kill Jos?
Authors: Rowson Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Students of literature are routinely told that Thackeray is an ‘omniscient’ novelist; indeed, that with Fielding he is probably the perfect specimen of the type. He himself tells us, repeatedly and with apparently complacency in Vanity Fair, that ‘the novelist knows everything’. But this omniscience has its holes. The reader is teased by what this allegedly all-knowing narrator would seem not to know, will not acquaint himself with, or declines to impart. Omniscient he may be; omnidictive he is not.
Most provoking of the text’s silences is that concerning Jos’s death. He dies in mysterious circumstances on the continent, sometime in the early 1830s, while in the dangerous company of Becky Crawley. From his first encounter with her, some twenty years before, Jos has been in danger from this fatal woman. In 1813 she almost netted him; but George Osborne, unwilling to have a governess marry into the family (‘low enough already, without her’, p. 71) frightened the fat man off.
Is Melmotte Jewish?
Authors: Rowson Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In his monumental survey of anti-Semitism in the works of Thackeray, Israel at Vanity Fair (1992), S. S. Prawer refers in passing to Melmotte, the financier villain of Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, as a ‘Jewish crook’ (p. 418). This is a common assumption among critics and readers of Trollope and can be found in print in any number of places. It is, very probably, a misapprehension –– although it is not easy to come to a final resolution on the matter.
The novelist apparently connives at our uncertainty about Melmotte’s origins by not being as straightforward as he normally is on such matters. There is, for instance, no ambiguity about the race or religion of Samuel Cohenlupe, ‘Member of Parliament for Staines, a gentleman of the Jewish persuasion’ (i. 84), the amiable Ezekiel Brehgert, or the less amiable Mr Goldsheiner. Of Madame Melmotte, it is clearly explained not just that she is a Jewess, but that she is a particular variety of nonEnglish Jewess –– doubly alien: ‘She was fat and fair, –– unlike in colour to our traditional Jewesses; but she had the Jewish nose and the Jewish contraction of the eyes’ (i. 31). Georgiana Longestaffe’s accepting the proposal of Brehgert provokes an anathema worthy of a medieval Pope from her despairing, patrician, incurably xenophobic mother: ‘It’s worse than your wife’s sister.
Why does this novel disturb us?
Authors: Rowson Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Early critical reaction to The Picture of Dorian Gray ‘was almost unanimously hysterical’, Isobel Murray’s introduction to the World’s Classics edition tells us. Why? The story would seem to be excessively moralistic –– a parable, no less (what shall it profit a man if he keep his good looks and lose his soul?). The homosexual hints are deeply buried beneath Dorian’s conventional heterosexual villainies (the seduction of Sibyl Vane, the debauching of society wives, the ruining of young girls, the inhaling of opium). There were enough sops to the straight, lateVictorian world to have kept even Mr Pecksniff happy, one would have thought.
Whose side is Hawk-eye on?
Authors: Rowson Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The first half of The Last of the Mohicans is taken up with the perilous journey through the Indian-infested wilderness which lies between Fort Edward and Fort William Henry in the war-torn summer of 1757. There is much mystery attaching to this section of Cooper’s tale. Why does Colonel Munro want his daughters to join him at the very moment that the poorly defended fort under his command is about to be attacked by an overwhelming force of French soldiers and their savage Huron allies? Does he want his daughters to be scalped, or worse? Why does he release one of his senior aides, Major Duncan Heyward, to bring his daughters to him instead of a junior officer? It is the more mysterious since Heyward, as it emerges, does not know the route and gets hopelessly lost. Why does Heyward employ as scout the treacherous Magua, whom he knows to have a burning grudge against Colonel Munro? If ever a trip through the woods was destined for disaster, this is it.
Can Jane Eyre be happy?
Authors: Rowson Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Margaret Smith’s introduction to the World’s Classics Jane Eyre summarizes the formative influence of Charlotte Brontë’s reading in the Bible, Bunyan, Shakespeare, Scott, and Wordsworth. Smith expertly identifies the Byronic and Miltonic elements which fuse into the mighty conception of Edward Fairfax Rochester. There is, however, a principal source for Jane Eyre which Smith does not mention –– a ‘fairy story’ which, one assumes, was read by or to the Brontë children in their nursery years.
The story of Bluebeard (‘Barbe Bleue’) was given its authoritative literary form in Charles Perrault’s Histoire du temps passé (1697). Perrault’s fables were much reprinted and adapted by the Victorians into children’s picture books, burlesque, and pantomime. By the 1840s the story of the bad man who locked his superfluous wives in his attic would have been among the best-known of fables. In the twentieth century the Bluebeard story, with its savagely misogynistic overtones, has fallen into disfavour.
What happens to Mrs Woodcourt?
Authors: Rowson Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
During the libel trial which entertained the nation in July 1996, cricketer Ian Botham was asked under cross-examination if it was true that he had said after a tour of Pakistan, ‘it is the kind of place where you would send your mother-in-law for a week’s holiday –– all expenses paid’. No, the great sporting hero replied, he would never say such a thing. What he had said was that Pakistan was the kind of place you would send your mother-in-law for two weeks –– all expenses paid. When the laughter died down, Botham was pressed by the cross-examining counsel on whether this was not a racist slur –– a kind of verbal Paki-bashing. No, Botham replied, it was a slur against mothers-in-law.
How good a swimmer is Magwitch?
Authors: Rowson Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Great Expectations has the most vivid of all Dickensian openings, designed to burst explosively on the first page of All the Year Round, where it was initially serialized. Pip mournfully regards the graves of his parents and five little brothers, ‘who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle’. The narrative halts for a paragraph to depict the dreary marsh landscape on a late winter afternoon. It is all too much for the 7-year-old orphan, who begins to cry:
It is not until much later in the novel (II.3), and sixteen years later in Pip’s life, that we learn the details of how Abel Magwitch, Pip’s ‘fearful man’, escaped from the hulks and came to be hiding behind the gravestone (of Pip’s father, as illustrators have felicitously assumed).
What is Elfride’s rope made of?
Authors: Rowson Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
One of the zanier stories in the American press in 1993 told of an inmate in a high-security prison who had escaped using a rope made out of the dental floss which his custodians had thoughtfully provided over the years. It is the kind of article that sticks in the mind (was it used floss? one wonders). There is a similar episode, similarly memorable, in Thomas Hardy’s early novel A Pair of Blue Eyes. The blue-eyed heroine, Elfride Swancourt, is the daughter of the rector of Endelstow (i.e. St Juliot), whose deserted parish is on the ‘sea-swept’ Wessex (Devonshire and Cornwall) coast. The nearest town is Castle Boterel (i.e. Boscastle).
Why is Moll’s younger brother older than she is?
Authors: Rowson Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
As Ian Watt notes in The Rise of the Novel, the attentive reader will find an ‘inordinate number of cracks’ in the plot of Moll Flanders. Some, in fact, are less cracks than gaping fissures. There are, Watt goes on to observe, two possible lines on the inconsistencies in Moll’s account of her life. We can read her narrative ‘ironically’. In this mode of reading ‘errors’ are assumed to have been cunningly planted by Defoe to be picked up by the wideawake reader. Defoe designed such glaring anomalies as Moll’s remembering to the farthing the value of gold watches she stole twenty years ago, but forgetting the names (and even, apparently, the number) of her children. These are to be taken ‘ironically’ as signs of her incorrigible callousness. Similarly ironic are such jarring pieties as her reflection, after stealing a little girl’s gold necklace, that by her theft she had ‘given the parents a just reproof for their negligence, in leaving the poor lamb to come home by itself, and it would teach them to take more care next time’ (p. 194). Like the sadistic Victorian flogger telling his victim that ‘this hurts me more than it hurts you’, Moll is –– if we follow this line of explanation –– a double-dyed hypocrite.
Apple-blossom in June–– again
Authors: Rowson Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In Is Heathcliff a Murderer? I defended what is thought to be Jane Austen’s most egregious ‘error’ in her fiction, arguing that it was no error at all if one read it aright. The company go for a picnic to the grounds of Donwell Abbey. It is ‘the middle of June’, ‘almost Midsummer’, as we are precisely informed (the actual day can be calculated as the 22nd of the month). Strawberries are in prospect:‘the best fruit in England –– every body’s favourite’. They are in plentiful supply, we understand. It has been a good crop –– and on time. During a quiet moment on the expedition, standing on a hill, Emma gazes at the Surrey landscape spread out before her. It is ‘a sweet view –– sweet to the eye and the mind. English verdure, English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive.’
How does Ruth end up in Wales?
Authors: Rowson Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Frances Twinn, a graduate student working on the fiction of Elizabeth Gaskell, points to a troubling inconsistency at the heart of Ruth. The narrative opens with a depiction of the poor-but-genteel heroine apprenticed to a harsh milliner, Mrs Mason, in ‘an assize town in one of the eastern counties’. It is ‘many years ago’ (p. 3). We should picture, it seems, a sleepy county town like Ipswich or Norwich in the 1830s. The heroine, Ruth Hilton, is an orphan. Her mother had been the daughter of a Norfolk curate –– a ‘delicate, fine lady’ (p. 36); her father had been a farmer –– a good-hearted but tragically unlucky man. The delicate Mrs Hilton died early of physical exhaustion, unable to cope with the physical demands of being a farmer’s wife. He followed soon after of a broken heart and bankruptcy. Ruth, alone in the world, falls into the unfeeling custody of a ‘hard-headed’ guardian, who disposes of the waif to Mrs Mason so as to be rid of her, at the small expense of her indenture fee.
Name Games
Authors: Rowson Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
An Oxford World’s Classics reader, John Cameron, writes to ask if I have noticed that between pages 123 and 147 of Oliver Twist
Other suspicious readers and some critics have wondered whether Dickens is making an off-colour joke with ‘Master Bates’. There is no doubt that Dickens often uses embedded word-association in the names of his characters. Murdstone and Merdle, for instance, combine the overtones of the French merde (‘shit’) and ‘murder’. Murdstone is a stony-hearted murderer; Merdle deals with ‘filthy’ lucre. ‘Uriah Heep’ brings with it, every time the name and its owner crop up in David Copperfield, a subliminal vision of a heap of ordure (‘uria’ is defined in the dictionary as ‘urine’ and ‘urea’, even less attractively, as ‘the solid component of mammalian urine’).
Diagnosis
Authors: Ebrahim Shah 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Strokes are caused by arteriovascular events: thrombosis; haemor-rhage; and emboli. However, not all patients who present with signs and symptoms of hemiplegia have had a stroke. The nomenclature used to describe patients can lead to problems, in particular calling all patients with signs suggestive of a stroke a ‘CVA’ or cerebrovascular accident. By using CVA the implication is that a stroke has occurred and no further pathological processes need to be ruled out. The term CVA can also cause confusion because it may refer to the side of the lesion or the side of the signs.
Recovery
Authors: Ebrahim Shah 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Giving a prognosis for recovery is of obvious importance to patients and relatives. Prognostic information is also needed for deciding who should continue to have rehabilitation and should help in planning services and policy. Highlighting the problems of patients who make a poor recovery should make us look for new solutions and treatments. Indicators of recovery may also be used as a yardstick to audit the work done during rehabilitation.
What is a function?
Authors: Cruickshank Steven 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
We use the idea of a function throughout this book, but what do we mean by a ‘function’? We will treat a function as a rule that transforms one set of real numbers to another set of real numbers. The function is a process; we feed in a value at one end and the function rule generates an output value at the other end. We may need to be rather particular about defining the range of values that we may input into the function; for instance, the function x) = 1/(x) is undefined at x = 0, and we must restrict the input range when defining the function to exclude x = 0, since it is impossible to divide by zero.
Pattern functions and transformations
Authors: Cruickshank Steven 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
We shall look at the properties of a number of important classes of function which are useful in modelling. In each case we shall emphasize that there is a ‘basic pattern’ function, which we may transform to other related functions by means of simple manoueuvres. These transformations will be demonstrated in general here graphically. This approach is intended to give a feel for how the mathematical solution to problems is found, rather than to give the ability actually to manipulate the functions.
The teacher and self-directed learners
Authors: Bouhuijs Peter A J 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Teaching in medicine has always been an important aspect of the physician’s professional job. The Hippocratic Oath, which is still considered as a valid description of the tasks of physicians, stipulates that the physician will teach his professional knowledge and skills to future generations of physicians. In many languages physicians are called ‘doctor’ which means teacher. For a long time, medical education consisted of apprenticeships during which a junior learned the trade by working with a senior physician for some time. Although the teaching in medicine at medieval and renaissance universities also contained some formal teaching, students would usually stay with one or a few professors who would teach all relevant (and irrelevant) aspects of medicine. The Renaissance ideal of the learned man, who was supposed to be knowledgeable about most aspects oflife dominated the teaching of medicine for a long time. The practical use of what was learned in universities was limited, and in many countries only limited funds were given to universities to pay for stipends and buildings. In the nineteenth century, the rapid evolution of the sciences caused major changes in university teaching. New disciplines emerged and it was no longer possible to teach everything that was known. Von Humboldt in Germany introduced the idea of a formal medical curriculum which would be based on sciences. This model was advocated later by Flexner in his reform of US medical education. Gradually this model was introduced in most countries around the world (Jolly 1994). Disciplinary teaching and specialization replaced a holistic model of expertise. It is clear that these changes affected the role of medical teachers deeply. Today, medical schools are composed of twenty or more departments, which are themselves sometimes divided in various sections, each of which covers a different aspect of medicine. The great teachers of the past have been replaced by experts in specialized areas of the medical sciences.
Local anaesthetic techniques
Authors: Park Gilbert , Fulton Barbara , Senthuran Siva 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Some useful nerve blocks are described in this chapter. Not all of the techniques are suitable for readers of this book to perform but they are described to encourage understanding amongst those who may not be familiar with the methods, but who may have to care for patients before or after nerve blocks. Other blocks described may well be suitable for house officers to perform. This book complements more specialized instruction manuals and is not a substitute for adequate instruction in the practical points. It is expected that before performing these nerve blocks, doctors will be proficient in resuscitation skills and that immediate access to resuscitation equipment, drugs, and assistance is available.
Epidural and intrathecal opioids
Authors: Park Gilbert , Fulton Barbara , Senthuran Siva 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Experiments in animals have shown the effect of small doses of opioid drugs on nociceptive transmission at the spinal cord level. Transmission of impulses from noxious stimuli upwards to the brain was inhibited. When chronic spinal catheterization was performed in animals intrathecal administration of opioids produced significant and long-lasting increases in nociceptive thresholds using thermal, electrical, and mechanical pain stimuli. Spinal effects of opioid drugs result from alterations in pain transmission at the level of the first- and second-order neurones in the dorsal grey matter. Receptors for the opioid drugs are located in the substantia gelatinosa in the vicinity of the primary afferent terminals. Activation of opioid receptors results in hyperpolarization of the cell preventing excitation and its ability to conduct pain invoking signals.
Psychological morbidity: its recognition and management
Authors: Faulkner Ann , Maguire Peter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The diagnosis and treatment of cancer is associated with a substantial social and psychological morbidity (Derogatis et al. 1983; Greer 1985). Unfortunately, this morbidity often remains unrecognized and unresolved (Maguire 1992). Patients and their relatives are reluctant to disclose any problems, while health professionals are loath to enquire actively about them. This chapter will review the nature and extent of this morbidity and discuss the reasons why it remains undetected and unresolved.
‘Distancing’ by health professionals
Authors: Faulkner Ann , Maguire Peter 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Caring for patients and their families when there is a diagnosis such as cancer, and/or a poor prognosis, is not easy. The work is often emotionally charged, and the health professional may have to answer awkward and challenging questions, for example ‘Am I dying?’, ‘Can’t they find a cure?’; deal with difficult situations, for instance collusion; and risk becoming involved in painful issues and decisions. These situations will be discussed in Chapter 7.
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Sexual deviance and the law
Authors: Freeman Michael 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Sexual mores vary from culture to culture, and there is an approximate correspondence between the law and the pattern of accepted behaviour. A survey of the world’s legislation on sexual deviance and methods of treating it would thus present a variegated picture. The United States of America, according to Slovenko (1965), has more laws on the subject than all of the European countries combined.
Managing the peer review process
Authors: Grol Richard , Lawrence Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
The importance of adequate supervision of peer review has been pointed out earlier (Chapter 6). This supervision may be either recruited externally or taken on by one of the group members. This may take various forms: The supervisor will generally function as chair rather than as an active participant and will need to maintain some distance and keep the group process going, when necessary. This chapter includes some instructions for supervisors of peer review. It is recommended that training of peer group leaders is provided, as is currently done in countries like The Netherlands, Ireland, and Germany.
Instruments for review of general consultation skills
Authors: Grol Richard , Lawrence Martin 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
To perform adequately in patient care general practitioners need a method of problem-solving which is adapted to the specific features of their particular general practice. This style of problem-solving is noticeable particularly in the management of the contacts with patients. The handling of consultations is a central aspect of general practice which may be viewed from two perspectives. In the first place performance in specific cases with specific complaints and disorders may be evaluated: what should a GP ask, examine, prescribe when confronted with a patient with a sore throat (see Chapter 16)? Secondly it is necessary to evaluate the regular patterns of behaviour in contacts with patients, irrespective of the specific complaint or disorder.
Talking with Patients
Authors: Myerscough Philip R , Ford Michael J , Currie C T , Doyle D , Hewitt A N M , Laing I A , Speirs A L , Wrate R M 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
This book introduces the reader to the basic skills necessary for good communication between doctors (and other health professionals) and patients. The practical importance of such skills is outlined, making the doctor much more effective in all fields of medicine. This is not a book for the specialist reader, but aimed at all those who need to talk with patients.
Conducting an interview
Authors: Myerscough Philip R , Ford Michael J , Currie C T , Doyle D , Hewitt A N M , Laing I A , Speirs A L , Wrate R M 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Before considering the conduct of an interview in detail, it is useful to look at the elements involved in interpersonal communication. They include both verbal and non-verbal ‘messages’, which may be classified into four varieties.
(1) verbal: the choice of spoken words;
(2) intonational: the pitch, tone, or cadence of speech, the modulation of the voice; the whisper of confidentiality; the rising crescendo of anger or concern; the warm tones of interest and friendliness; the flat tones of despair;
(3) paralinguistic: non-verbal sound or utterances, e.g. the noncommittal nasal ‘hm-hm’; the sharp inspiration of surprise—‘phew’; the expiratory puff signifying disgust;
(4) kinesic: communication through movements, facial expressions, posture or gesture—’body language’. (A clear, popular account of this aspect of communication may be found in Desmond Morris’s Manwatching [24].)
Talking about babies
Authors: Laing I A 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
There is a common misapprehension that neonatology is diminished as a specialty because infants cannot articulate, and therefore there is little need for good communication. On the contrary, the neonatologist is meeting the needs of a family, often at the most stressful time of young parents’ lives. High expectations of a normal pregnancy and delivery, with a resultant delightful infant, are shattered when at (say) 24 weeks gestation a creature hardly recognizable as human emerges and is cocooned for weeks or months within the confines of a transparent plastic box in a strange intensive care unit. At no time can it be more important for a physician to impart information clearly, pitching the dialogue at a level appropriate for a single unsupported mother, a mutually supportive couple, or the entire family involved. This chapter first touches briefly on talking to infants themselves.