Providentia

The Edison Curse (Part 2)

Continued from Part 1

When the U.S. Postal Service halted all mail delivery to the company on the grounds that selling the Vitalizer was fraudulent, the Thomas A. Edison Junior Chemical Company quickly went out of business.  The entire fiasco left Thomas Senior more exasperated with his eldest son than ever.  In an interview with New York American, Edison Senior was openly critical of his son's lack of ability and his failure to complete school.  Despite the allowance that his father provided (which was only modest), Thomas Junior had to struggle to support himself and his new wife following his remarriage.   His ongoing problems with alcoholism didn't help either and, given the harsh words that father and son had exchanged, they never really forgave each other.

By 1915, Thomas Junior seemed more erratic than ever.  Though living on a peach farm with his wife, Beatrice, he began pestering his father for spark plugs and other supplies for a new invention "which I hope might prove of mutual benefit to us both".   Since Thomas Senior was attempting to expand into the automobile industry with his ambitious new storage batteries for electric cars, his equally ambitious son decided to make his fortune as well.  He also attempted to ingratiate himself with Henry Ford, a family friend, and hinted that his new invention would revolutionize the automobile industry.   By 1919, Thomas Junior's wife began writing to family and friends (including Ford) describing her husband's worsening condition, with severe headaches and depression which left him incapacitated.   That didn't stop Thomas Junior from unveiling his new invention: the "Ecometer".    According to the proud inventor's description, his new innovation would increase fuel efficiency by 20 to 50 percent when attached to the carburetor of a typical car.    Developed after seven years of hard work, Thomas Junior offered his invention to Ford for installation in all of his vehicles.    This left Henry Ford in an awkward position (since he was afraid of antagonizing Thomas Senior) so he had his technicians subject the Ecometer to a full series of tests.    He even loaned Thomas Junior 1.2 million dollars to form the Ecometer Manufacturing Company.  Sadly, the  invention did not perform as promised and Ford had no choice but to reject it (although the urban legend lives on). 

The failure of the Ecometer devastated Thomas Junior, although he and his wife still attempted to interest other automobile companies.   Naturally, he sank even further into  depression and alcoholism and, by the time of Thomas Senior's  death in 1931, Thomas Junior was reduced to working in his father's laboratory as a mere assistant.   Thomas Junior's fortunes improved after a legal battle involving his various siblings.  When the contest over the will was finally settled,  Thomas Junior's younger brother, Charles, appointed him to a position on the board of directors for Edison's various companies.    At long last, Thomas Alva Edison Junior had a chance to prove himself.

But not for long...

On August 25, 1935, Thomas Alva Edison Junior died in a hotel room in Springfield, Massachusetts.  Although the cause 0f death was listed as "Coronary Thrombosism, Pulmonary Edema and Sudden Death" there were enough curious details to raise suspicions.  First of all, he had registered in the room under the assumed name of "J.J. Byrne" (some newspaper obituaries listed his name as "J.J. Griffin).  While known to be in poor health and suffered from high blood pressure for many years (the damage from his long-term alcohol abuse was likely a factor as well),  several later Edison biographers raised the possibility that it was actually suicide.   According to the most plausible story, Thomas Junior had been returning home from his brother's house in New Hampshire when he apparently became ill.   To avoid public attention, he stopped off in Springfield and registered at a hotel under an assumed name.  According to his two traveling companions, they called for a doctor to attend their friend but he died after two hours despite the doctor's best efforts.

Whatever the circumstances of his death, Thoms Alva Edison Junior seems to have been largely forgotten except as a footnote in his illustrious father's life story.  He and Beatrice never had children of their own  and his shares in the company passed to his brother.  Whatever hopes he had of proving himself worthy of his name died with him.  If nothing else,  his sad life can be viewed as a warning of the dangers involved in trying to live up to impossible expectations.

When Loved Ones Go Missing

Many people go missing during war or acts of terrorism. Do their families suffer an additional or different kind of mental health burden than families of people known to have been killed? A study published in a recent issue of European Psychologist addressed that very question.  Two groups of respondents, each comprising 56 women living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, were included in the study. These were women whose husbands were either confirmed as having been killed during the 1992–1995 war or who were, at the time of the study, officially still listed as missing as a result of the war. These two groups filled in questionnaires on war events, postwar stressors, and mental health status. The results showed that the group with unconfirmed losses had higher levels of traumatic grief (measured on a version of the UCLA Grief Inventory) as well as severe depression (measured on the General Health Questionnaire), even when traumatic events and stressors were controlled for. This study represents one of the first empirical confirmations that, at least in a war context, suffering the unconfirmed loss of a family member has specific negative mental health consequences compared to suffering a confirmed loss. In particular the high levels of severe depression including suicidal ideation in this group give cause for concern.

For the abstract.

"Cuckoo's Nest" Hospital Being Relaunched

The psychiatric hospital best known as the site for the filming of the 1975 movie "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" (and based on the Ken Keasey novel of the same name) will soon be reopened for patients..   First built in 1883 as the Oregon State Insane Asylum, the Oregon State Hospital is the principal psychiatric hospital in the state of Oregon.  Located in Salem, Oregon, the 627-bed facility was primarily intended to house  forensic psychiatric patients who had either been found unfit to stand trial  or transferred to the hospital from this prison system. The hospital has long has been the subject of controversy due to the history of abuses occuring at the hospital during its long tenure, the warehousing of the cremated remains of over 3600 psychiatric patients, and substandard care.  After separate  assessments in 1988 and 2005 declared the much of the hospital was unsafe and in need of demolition, most of the hospital was closed (including the adolescent treatment unit) although adult psychiatric treatment services continued to be offered.  

In 2008, the hospital  became the subject of a scathing  Department of Justice report condemning patient conditions and lack of proper treatment programming.  The report was especially critical of the dilapidated state of the hospital buildings (including peeling paint, asbestos, and leaking roofs) as well as hospital policies deemed to be abusive (such as use of isolation for dealing with problem patients)'s. Following publication of the report, the Oregon state legislature called for the hospital's demolition and replacement with a more modern facility.  Despite active opposition by the Salem mayor and city council who called for the hospital's closure, the revamped facility will remain at its present location.  Although many of the wards best known from the movie have since been closed, part of the older hospital structure is scheduled to be converted into a mental health museum which will contain many of the 19th century artifacts unearthed during the reconstruction.

In the hospital rededication ceremony on November 19, 2010, state officials announced that the planned opening of the first phase of the facility has been delayed due to conflicts over staffing.  The new hospital will eventually contain over 600 psychiatric hospital beds and will become fully operational by late next year.  While concerns have been raised about the continuing underfunding of community-based mental health programming, Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski and other officials at the ceremony stress that much more work needs to be done to ensure that the hospital remains "a place of healing, dignity and respect with patients actively directing their own treatment". 

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The Edison Curse (Part 1)

Thomas Alva Edison Junior could never get a break.

Born in 1876, he was the son and namesake of the world's foremost inventor and was fully expected to follow in his illustrious father's footsteps.  Given the nickname of "Dash" (his older sister Marion was "Dot" after the Morse Code signals), his early childhood was idyllic enough although their father left his children's upbringing almost exclusively to their mother, Mary.  Devastated by the death of Mary Edison when he was seven years old (likely due to a brain tumour), Thomas Junior and his sister had little to do with their emotionally distant father who was more at home in the laboratory than anywhere else.  He spent much of his remaining childhood at boarding school where, by all accounts, he was a poor student.   When Edison Senior remarried in 1886 and moved his family to Glenmont in New Jersey,  his second wife Mina attempted to form an emotional bond with her stepchildren but Thomas Junior became increasingly isolated from his father's second family.  The fact that his new stepmother was only a few years older than he was may have contributed to his feeling like an outsider.   After having spent his entire life in his father's shadow, the gap between father and son had become insurmountable.

Despite his father's urging, Thomas Junior dropped out of preparatory school at the age of seventeen without his diploma.  With the Edison name behind him, he was determined to become a great inventor himself.  While his father found a job for his errant son at his West Orange laboratory, Thomas Junior proved too restless and eventually ended up working at one of his father's mines in Ogden, New Jersey.  In a letter that he wrote to his stepmother in 1897, he said that, "I will probably never be able to please him as I'm afraid it's not in me.  But I shall never give up trying....I have many ideas of my own, which sometimes-yes I may say on all occasions I would like to ask him or tell him about but they never leave my mouth".  

After leaving his mine job, he drifted to New York where he became the focus of an overly enthusiastic news story titled, "Edison Jr., Wizard".  The article provided a list of the young Edison's accomplishments and suggested that he was "developing a formidable rivalry to his illustrious parent in his own line".  The reporter who wrote the story didn't appear to do any actual research and took all of Thomas Junior's claims about his inventions on faith alone.   The publicity landed Thomas Jr. a job at an exhibition at Madison Square Garden which mainly involved his talking to reporters about his ambitious plans while lending his name to the various electrical appliances being marketed (he sipped tea prepared on an electric range and ate biscuits prepared in an "electrically heated oven"). After the exhibition ended, Thomas quickly fell under the influence of numerous opportunity seekers who wanted to exploit him and his famous name. 

The Edison Junior Steel and Iron Process Company was formed with Thomas Junior as a principal stockholder (he was only 20 at the time).  Thomas Senior was outraged at how his name was being used and ordered his son to stop.  Thomas Junior wrote in reply that he would "go on just as I have been doing".  He also accused his father of holding him back and added that "If my name was Smith, I would be a rich man today".   Thomas Junior's secret wedding to actress Mary Touhey in 1899 scandalized his father even further.  Whatever happened on their honeymoon, the marriage collapsed shortly afterward (despite their divorce, Mary would continue to trade on the Edison name until her death in 1906).  It also became apparent that Thomas Junior was broke.  All of the companies that Thomas Junior started or became involved with quickly folded and he fled New York to avoid being arrested for his mountain of debts and  numerous bad cheques.  The would-be wizard had become a laughing stock. 

As Edison Senior himself would later complain, "My son's head is now so engorged, that I can do nothing at all with him, he is being used by morbid acerbic individuals for their own personal ends! I could never get him to go to school nor work in the Laboratory! He is therefore, absolutely illiterate scientifically or otherwise!"  Still, the precious Edison name made Thomas Junior a marketable commodity.  The Edison Chemical Company, which had already been sued by Thomas Senior for the use of the Edison name, recruited Thomas Junior to give them legitimacy.  After renaming itself the "Thomas A. Edison Junior Chemical Company",  Thomas Junior became vice-president and began adding his own inventions to the company's already dubious offerings.  His "Magno-electric vitalizer" was advertised as curing paralysis, rheumatism, locomotor ataxia and other "incurable complaints".   The company also sold "Wizard's Ink Tablets" and advertising played up the Edison name by describing their product line as coming from the "young brain of Thomas Edison, Junior" with each new product being billed as "the latest Edison discovery".

Thomas Senior was naturally furious and wrote to his errant son to halt any association with the company.  In 1902, Thomas Junior agreed "to give up all future rights to the name Edison for the purpose of obtaining money".   In return for a monthly allowance, Thomas Junior signed over all commercial rights to the Edison name which left Thomas Senior free to proceed against the various "Edison Junior" companies.   As he told one reporter in 1904, "I'll protect my name if it costs me every dollar in the world I possess".   His attorneys filed a lawsuit against the Thomas A. Edison Junior Chemical Company over the use of the Edison name (and the "Wizard" label).   In filing the lawsuit, Edison's lawyers argued that the company was misleading customers into believing that Thomas Edison Senior had invented the various quack products being sold under his name.  To bolster their case, Edison's lawyers also included an affidavit from Thomas Senior stating that his son was no inventor, had no occupation, and "was incapable of making any invention or discovery of merit".  Thomas Junior's reaction can only be guessed.

Continue to Part 2

 

Computerized Cognitive Rehabilitation in HIV-Positive Children

Because antiretroviral treatment (ART) fails to improve neurocognitive impairment in children with HIV, a team of researchers  completed a pilot study evaluating the feasibility and cognitive benefit of computerized cognitive rehabilitation therapy (CCRT) in Ugandan children with HIV. A study published in a recent issue of Neuropsychology examines the results of the study using a sample of sixty Ugandan children with HIV (23 on ART) who were randomly assigned to 10 sessions of Captain's Log CCRT training configured for attention and memory skills or no intervention. Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (2nd ed.) performance at baseline indicated pervasive neurocognitive impairment.  Cognitive ability was assessed before and after training using the Cogstate computerized neuropsychological test (Darby, Maruff, Collie, & McStephen, 2002). Viral load along with CD4 and CD8 absolute and activation levels also were measured posttest. Results showed that CCRT was well received with a 95% adherence rate to scheduled training sessions. CCRT intervention children showed greater improvement on a Cogstate card detection task of simple attention (p = .02), and speed of correct moves on a Groton Maze Learning Task (p < .001). These analyses were completed using an analysis of covariance model that adjusted Cogstate performance for the child's age, standardized weight for age, gender, socioeconomic status, school grade level, and baseline KABC–2 performance. ART treatment was not related to Cogstate performance or improvement as a result of CCRT. CD4 and CD8 activation levels were correlated with Cogstate improvement specifically for the CCRT group. The authors conclused that CCRT was feasible with the study population and improved maze learning and attention on a detection task. This supports previous findings by the researchers involving cerebral malaria survivors

For the abstract

Mental Illness Suspected in "Fairy Abduction"

On October 25, family members of a 22-year old Malaysian woman reported her disappearance to police and that the woman had sent them a text message stating that she was being held captive by orang bunian (fairies).  

This was not the first disappearance for Siti Balqis Mohd Noor of Kampon Gong Nanka, Malaysia.  She had previously reported multiple "strange experiences" in which she apparently vanished into thin air and was later found in unexpected places, including the roof of her house, a nearby cement mixer, and a cemetery ten kilometers from her home.   After all of these occurrences, Siti would report that she had no memory of what had happened.   She has stated that, "“I can’t seem to recollect what happened or how I ended up at those places. There were times I could see my family next to me, calling out my name.  I shout out to them or try to touch them, but I seem to be invisible to them. Once, I ended up in an abandoned house. My uncle was just next to me but he could not hear or feel me.”  She said the cemetery episodes were the scariest thus far.

When her family learned to recognize the pattern of her disappearances, they arranged to keep her under constant watch.  As her mother has stated, "all it takes is to look away for a split second, and she's gone".  Although the family engaged the serviees of a number of bomohs (shamans) to deal with the disappearances, Deputy Committe Chairman Datuk Din Adam has gone on record as speculating that Siti suffers from schizophrenia and likely needed a psychiatrist.

Police later traced the text message to a friend's house in the town of Jelebu, 600 kilometers away where she had travelled by bus on her own.    A police team has been sent to bring her home.

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Remembering Solferino

When Austria first issued its ultimatum againt the kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont on April 23, 1859 demanding the demobilization of their army, the Sardinian government asked the French emperor, Napoleon III for help (they had a secret alliance).    Since Napoleon III was already at odds with the Austrian emperor Joseph, coming to Sardinia's aid was a good political move and the Second War of Italian Independence (a.k.a. the Franco-Austrian War)  was on.   Marked by a horrendous involved a series of fierce battles fought by the armies of France and Sardinia against the Austrian empire, the eventual cost in lives is still hard to grasp today.

After the bloody battle of Magenta on June 4, 1859 with the French army beating back the Austrians, the Austrian army retreated eastward while the combined French and Sardinian armies mobilized in Brescia.  On the morning of June 23, the Austrian army, led by Emperor Franz Joseph himself, recrossed the river Mincio to solidify their position.  Given that the number of soldiers on both sides amounted to 300,000, what followed was the most massive land battle in decades.  It was also the last battle in which the actual heads of state took direct command of their troops (Napoleon III was there as well).  The Battle of Solferino on July 24, 1859 was largely unexpected and chaotic (neither side thought it would begin as soon as it did so no elaborate tactical strategies were possible).   Although centered around the village of Solferino, the line of battle stretched over fifteen kilometers.  In describing the fighting, one prominent eyewitness later wrote that, "the unending combat rages incessantly and in every place with fury.  Nothing stops, nothing interrupts the butchery.  They are killing one another by the hundreds... A rain of cannon balls is sending death to the distant reserves of Austria.  Their ranks are ceaselessly reforming....The French cavalry flings itself on the Austrian cavalry...The rage is so great that in some places after the exhaustion of the cartridges and the breaking of the muskets, they fight with fists and beat one another with stones". 

While the battle only lasted nine hours, the fighting resulted in enormous casualties.  All told, there were more than six thousand soldiers killed on both sides and over forty thousand wounded.  Despite attempts by the Austrian army to evacuate their injured, thousands of soldiers had to be abandoned as their troops withdrew.  Combat hospitals were set up in nearby farmhouses, churches, and public buildings to tend the wounded but they were often targeted during the fighting and many physicians and care workers were killed along with their patients.  Even after the fighting was over, the situation was desperate for the wounded due to the lack of water, food, and medicine.  There was a terrible shortage of French and Sardinian doctors and, despite recent experiences with the Crimean war, there was no organized medical corps to handle the influx of injured and dying soldiers. Those wounded soldiers who could still walk headed for the nearby village of Castiglione to seek what help they could.

Fortunately for the soldiers, there was some help available there.  Henri Dunant, a Swiss businessman with an interest in humanitarian causes had been in northern Italy to petition Napoleon III regarding a business opportunity and was hardly deterred by the ongoing war.  Arriving in Solferino, he became an eyewitness to the bloody battle and its horrifying aftermath.  Organizing the local villagers, he set up a field hospital in nearby Castiglione.  Under his guidance, the hospital was established to provide medical aid to soldiers on both sides of the conflict and Dunant also arranged for Austrian doctors to be released from French custody to help with the wounded.   In the moving memoir that he wrote afterward,  Dunant described the horrors that he witnessed in tending to the injured soldiers, "the lack of water becomes greater and greater.  The sun is burning, the ditches are dried up. The soldiers have only brackish and unwholesome water to appease their thirst."  He described how the bodies were collected and buried in a mass grave by soldiers and paid villagers.  He also adds that, "Unfortunately, it is possible that because of the unavoidable rapidity of this labor and because of the carelessness and inattention of the paid workmen, more than one living man is buried with the dead."  Austrian and French soldiers were buried separately and prisoners-of-war were taken to Brescia under guard.  Although some French soldiers tried to attack the enemy soldiers who had been
captured, Dunant managed to dissuade them.

The Battle of Solferino had a profound effect on everyone involved.  At Napoleon III's insistence, Emperor Franz Joseph agreed to an armistice and the removal of all remaining Austrian troops from Italian territory.  He also never led an army into battle again. Austria's withdrawal cleared the way for Italy's unification in 1860 and Solferino would likely be little more than a historical footnote today. 

Except for Henri Dunant, whose book, Un Souvenir de Solferino (Memory of Solferino) was published in 1862.  Describing the horror of the battle in graphic fashion. the book also contained recommendations for the future.  He called for the establishment of "relief societies for the purpose of having care given to wounded in wartime" based on "international principles".  He concluded the book by pointing out that future battles would become more lethal due to improvements in the various "weapons of destruction" that were used leading to far more casualties than battles of previous centuries. 

In the years following the publication of his book, Henri Dunant's lobbying efforts helped inspire the 1864 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War establishing the first international guidelines on the treatment of enemy soldiers.  Initially ratified by twelve nations (the United States ratified it in 1882), the treaty also called for organized medical aid to help wounded soldiers in the field (laterexpanded to include civilians and wounded soldiers at sea).  In 1863, Dunant and four other prominent Swiss activists established the groundwork of what would become the International Red Cross, the neutrality and independence of which was guaranteed under the first Geneva Convention. 

Although Henri Dunant's involvement with the Red Cross would end after a few years due to internal squabbling over his vision of how the organization should be run, his involvement in humanitarian causes would last for the rest of his life.  Often neglecting his own business with his various crusades, he lived much of the next few decades in relative obscurity and deeply in debt.  In 1901, Henri Dunant was awarded the first ever Nobel Peace Prize for his role in establishing the Red Cross and the Geneva Convention.   He died in 1910 and is buried in Zurich.  

Visitors to Solferino, Italy can still see the museum there commemorating the battle.  There is also an ossuary stacked high with the bones and skulls of the dead soldiers gathered in the years following the battle to provide them with a suitable memorial.  There is also a monument to the Red Cross at the Mount of Cypress with memorial plaques and pennants from many nations.  The nearby town of Castiglione also has a museum dedicated to the International Red Cross and the events that led to its formation.

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Are Traumatic Experiences Needed for PTSD?

A diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been conceptualized as being precipitated by a particularly traumatic stressor (e.g., combat exposure, rape, and violent assault). Recent research suggests that common stressful events (e.g., relational problems, divorce, and expected death of a loved one) may also be capable of eliciting posttraumatic symptomatology. A study published in Psychological Trauma replicated and extended these previous findings, examining three groups of event exposure: those who reported experiencing only traumatic events in the past year, those who reported experiencing only significant stressful life events in the last year, and those who experienced both types of events. Consistent with previous findings, researchers found that all three groups of event exposure, including those experiencing only stressful life events, experienced similar amounts of PTSD symptomatology across symptom clusters. These data add to the growing literature that suggests that the type of events that cause symptoms of PTSD may be broader than the current diagnostic criteria indicate, and as such calls for more rigorous research in this area to better understand the diagnostic implications of these findings.

For the abstract

"Weeping" Madonna Statue Removed from Windsor Home

After weeks of international attention that drew hundreds of religious pilgrims, a statue of the Virgin Mary that reportedly wept  tears of holy oil has been removed from a Windsor, Ontario home.  The statue owner, Fada Ibrahim, has told the press that "Mary herself asked to be moved" to her new home at a Maronite Catholic church in a Windsor suburb.    Disappointed pilgrims arrived at the family's Garvey Crescent home to find the statue gone from the front lawn enclosure where it had been kept for weeks.  A note attached to the front door of the house informed visitors that the statue had been removed and to stay off the property.

When word of the miraculous weeping first began to spread, the public attention led to a major disruption in the formerly quiet neighbourhood with tour buses bringing visitors from as far away as Woodstock and Mississaugi .  Complaints over traffic problems, crowding, and noise led to the city ordering the statue's remova over infractions of the municipal building codel.  The owner's claims also represented a major quandary for the local Catholic diocese which, on learning that Fada Ibrahim was an Orthodox Christian, was quick to pass on all responsiblity for investigating the miracle to her own parish.  Her own parish priest, Father John Ayoub of St. Ignatius of Antioch Church, has stated that he investigated the claim and found no evidence that anything miraculous was occurring.  While he stated that Ibrahim was still a member of the parish in good standing,  he added that "if you want to believe her, you're free to believe her". 

Reports of miraculous appearances of the Virgin Mary are the focus of tens of millions of Marian pilgrimages each year.   While most of these pilgrimages are to well-known sites such as Lourdes, Fatima, and Guadalupe which have been formally recognized by organized religions such as the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Coptic Churches,  rumours of unconfirmed sightings and miraculous occurrences continue to draw the faithful in countries around the world.    Often regarded as hallucinations or deliberate hoaxes by skeptics, word of mouth accounts remain a powerful lure for belieers.

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