The Ancyent Marinere reflecting Fears of Disease in the Age of Sail

This article investigates the horrific aspects of diseases and epidemics, dangers that were present on sea voyages during the Age of Sail, and analyses how they are reflected in Ghost Ship tales, especially in the “Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” (1798) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). This ballad incorporates almost all calamities that could befall seafarers and examines such dangers as diseases as well as their causes. The focus of this study is to investigate in what way diseases on ships were feared during the Age of Sail and how those fears were reflected in ghost ship narratives.

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Impfen: Ja oder Nein? Eine historische Betrachtung der Impfdebatte des 19. Jahrhunderts im deutschsprachigen Raum im Vergleich zur Gegenwart Psychiatries in the 20th Century

Die Frage „Impfen: Ja oder Nein?“ spaltet die Gesellschaft in zwei gegensätzliche Lager, die, wie es scheint, kaum miteinander zu versöhnen sind: jenes der Impfgegner/-innen und jenes der Impfbefürworter/-innen. Wenig bekannt ist der Umstand, dass diese Diskussion des Für und Wider von Schutzimpfungen keine neue ist, sondern seit der Entwicklung und Institutionalisierung der Kuhpockenimpfung durch Edward Jenner existiert. Der vorliegende Beitrag zeichnet einige Argumentationsstränge in dieser gesamtgesellschaftlichen Kontroverse seit deren Beginn bis in die Gegenwart nach.

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Art as a Type of Therapy – Lives and Works of Artists in German, Swiss and Austrian Psychiatries in the 20th Century

After avant-garde artists had widened the use of traditional materials, styles and groups of creators to support the upgrading of psychotic artworks, psychiatric clinics became places of art production in the 20th century. As creative designing was institutionally embedded within these facilities from the 1950s onwards, questions about its functions within these contexts arose. This paper examines the lives and works of three non-professional artists living in German, Swiss and Austrian clinics by analysing six of their paintings and drawings. It asks about the reasons that led to the emergence of creative drives within them, about the needs they hereby satisfied and about the functions art had in their lives. In order to integrate their works within interdisciplinary research, the article draws on Erving Goffman’s theory of total institutions to examine whether the case studies used art to express autonomy and self-determination within their socially, locally and economically restricted environment.

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