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The final years of Fanny Cornforth

Family historians know the sensation of discovery when some longstanding ‘brick wall’ in their search for an elusive ancestor is breached. Crowds at the recent ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ exhibition at Birmingham explored the new resources available to assist their researches, and millions worldwide subscribe to online genealogical sites, hosting ever-growing volumes of digitized historical records, in the hope of tracking down their family roots.

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DSM-5: two years since publication

It is now two years since the publication of DSM-5. As one might expect when a widely used manual is revised, some mental health clinicians were worried they would have to learn diagnosis from scratch.

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Remembering Anzac Day: how Australia grieved in the early years

‘Anzac’ (soon transmuting from acronym to word) came to sum up the Australian desire to reflect on what the war had meant. What was the first Anzac Day? At least four explanations exist of the origins of the idea of Anzac, the most enduring legacy of Australia’s Great War.

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Looking back at Typhoid Mary 100 years later

Typhoid Mary Mallon is one of the best known personalities in the popular history of medicine, the cook who was a healthy carrier of typhoid fever, who spread illness, death, and tragedy among the families she served with her cooking, and whose case alerted public health administrations across the world to this mechanism of disease transmission.

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Clinical placement in Nepal: an interview with Ruth Jones

In May last year, Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine, in partnership with Projects Abroad, offered one lucky medical student the chance to practice their clinical skills abroad in an international placement. The winner was Ruth Jones from the University of Nottingham, who impressed the judging panel with her sincerity, dedication, and willingness to become the best doctor she can be.

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The inspiration of Alice in Wonderland: 150 years on

This Christmas, London’s Royal Opera House played host to Christopher Wheeldon’s critically acclaimed Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, performed by the Royal Ballet and with a score by Joby Talbot. Indeed, Lewis Carroll’s seminal work Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) has long inspired classical compositions, in forms as diverse as ballet, opera, chamber music, song, as well as, of course, film scores.

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Congress should amend and enact the Marketplace Fairness Act

The “lame duck” session of the 113th Congress managed to avoid a shutdown of the federal government, but did not accomplish much else. Among the unfinished business left for the new, 114th Congress assembling this month is the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA). The MFA would permit states to require out-of-state Internet and mail order sellers […]

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Santa Claus breaks the law every year

Each year when the nights start growing longer, everyone’s favourite rotund old man emerges from his wintry hideaway in the fastness of the North Pole and dashes around the globe in a red and white blur, delivering presents and generally spreading goodwill to the people of the world.

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Scotland is a different place now

One of the ironies of the Scottish independence referendum is that Scotland is widely recognised to be a changed place despite the majority voting in favour of the union. It became clear during the course of 2014 that something significant was happening.

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Windows on the past: how places get their names

Standing underneath the monstrous Soviet statue of “Motherland Calls” looking out over the mighty Volga River, I could understand why the city should have been renamed, rather unimaginatively, Volgograd “City on the Volga”. Between 1925 and 1961 it had been called Stalingrad, and was site of one of the most ferocious battles in the Second World War.

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Does workplace stress play a role in retirement drinking?

Alcohol misuse among the retired population is a phenomenon that has been long recognized by scholars and practitioners. The retirement process is complex, and researchers posit that the pre-retirement workplace can either protect against—or contribute to—alcohol misuse among retirees.

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Give thanks for Chelmsford, the birthplace of the USA

Autumn is here again – in England, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, in the US also the season of Thanksgiving. On the fourth Thursday in November, schoolchildren across the country will stage pageants, some playing black-suited Puritans, others Native Americans bedecked with feathers. By tradition, Barack Obama will ‘pardon’ a turkey, but 46 million others will be eaten in a feast complete with corncobs and pumpkin pie. The holiday has a long history: Lincoln fixed the date (amended by Roosevelt in 1941).

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1989 revolutions, 25 years on

This season marks the silver anniversary of the wildfire revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe in the summer and autumn of 1989. The upheavals led to the liberation of Eastern Europe from Soviet control, the Reunification of Germany and the demise of the Soviet Union itself two years later. Its dizzying speed and domino effect caught everyone by surprise, be it the confused communist elites, veteran Kremlinologists and even the participants themselves.

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