John Stuart Mill's Odd Childhood

Undoubtedly, John Stuart Mill the English philosopher was a genius who made significant contributions to social and economic theory. It was, however, his father, James Mill's intention to create a genius.

James Mill was a Scottish historian, philosopher, political theorist and economist, who had a definite education plan in mind for his son. And so, John Stuart Mill was homeschooled and taught to read at the age of two.

By the age of three, John Stuart Mill was learning Greek and by the age of eight, he was quite familiar with Xenophon's Anabasis, the writings of Herodotus, Lucian, Diogenes Laërtius, Isocrates and Plato. He also read widely and studied history, arithmetic, physics and astronomy.

Mill's father was not a warm or loving man as he regarded emotions as being akin to madness. He was also somewhat of a tyrant, as well as being self-controlled and stoic. But whilst he was greatly possessive of his son, he also berated him for his stupidity, causing John Stuart Mill, the man widely regarded as a genius, to have a life-long inferiority complex.

John Stuart Mill

Not being permitted to mix with other boys of his own age, John Stuart Mill mixed with his father's friends. Friends like Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher, another political radical. He was also denied holidays, as his father believed that such an indulgence would lead to idleness.

So John Stuart Mill spent his childhood deep in rigorous studies under the severe eye of his father, in an atmosphere of fear and repression. Though, Mill admired his father in many ways for his civic spirit, his intellect and his moral values.

As to Mill's mother, she seems to have figured little in his emotional and intellectual development; though it seems that Mill would have liked to have had a warm-hearted, sensitive and affectionate mother, she too was subjugated by her husband to be so.

This emotionally deprived childhood and the ambivalent feelings aroused in John Stuart Mill, led to a mental breakdown at the age of 20, when he descended into depression. Mill, also, had become disillusioned with some of his father's ideas and he wanted to be more independent. He described himself as a ship without a sail.

After about a year of gloom, Mill was able to enjoy "in sunshine and sky, in books, in conversation, in public affairs". And soon, he would meet Harriet Taylor, who would bring Mill lots of happiness, even though they had to wait 21 years to be married. But that is another story.  


Books To Read

Is It Just Me?, by Miranda Hart - for the clumsy and awkward.....like me.

The Guinea Pigs of Lithium

How lithium came to be used as a treatment for bipolar disorder is quite an interesting story, which began at a Mental Hospital in Melbourne, Australia.

Dr John Cade (1912 –1980) was an Australian psychiatrist who served in the Armed Forces during World War II. Cade, however, became a prisoner of war at Changi Prison from 1942-1945.

Little was known about the causes of bipolar disorder back in the 1940s, but Cade had the idea that patients suffering from this condition may have had a metabolic disorder, which could be ascertained by the levels of urea in their urine. He believed that mania would cause an excess of uric acid in the urine and depression, he believed, would result in a deficit of uric acid.

So Cade began to conduct experiments which involved injecting urine from mentally ill patients into the abdomen of guinea pigs; only to find that the guinea pigs injected with the urine of the mentally ill patients died much faster than those that were injected with a healthy sample of urine. 

Acting on his hypothesis, that uric acid was present in the urine samples, provided by his mentally ill patients, Cade tried to increase the water solubility of uric acid and so he added lithium urate. 

After Cade added the lithium to the guinea pig injections, he found that the animals became very docile and quiet and they did not run about in their usual manic manner.  

Before testing lithium on his patients, Cade first tested the substance on himself for a few weeks and then, he began to give lithium to one of his patients, a man who was alienated from his family and who had been living in the asylum for 30 years, called Bill. 

With the lithium, Bill began to improve and his speech and self-care became better. After a while, Bill was able to return to his job. 

Unfortunately, Bill stopped taking lithium and his mental health deteriorated and he had to return to the asylum. 

Not knowing about the toxicity of lithium at high dosages, Cade gave Bill increased amounts of lithium, in an attempt to restore Bill's sanity. In 1950, Bill died from lithium toxicity. 

Over time, more research was conducted on lithium as a treatment for bipolar disorder to establish safe and effective dosages.

There are various ways proposed that may explain how lithium may work as a mood stabiliser, such as inhibition of protein kinase C and glycogen synthase kinase 3 and inositol-depletion.


Books To Read

The Marriage Plot, by American writer Jeffrey Eugenides. The story concerns three college friends from Brown University—Madeleine Hanna, Leonard Bankhead, and Mitchell Grammaticus—beginning in their senior year, 1982, and follows them during their first year post-graduation.

Your Plastic Clothes and Inter-generational Theft and Destruction

Synthetic clothing made from nylon, polyester, acrylic, polypropylene and lycra, are made from petroleum and petroleum is a finite resource, as it takes so long to form. In fact, 70% of the world's oil deposits were formed in the Mesozoic age 252 to 66 million years ago.

When our deposits of petroleum are exhausted, they cannot be restored.

A lot of the fashion for sale today in the big shopping malls are made of synthetic fibres. These cheap, "plastic" clothes are not only awful to wear, as they make you sweat and itch, but they also look bloody awful after they are washed, and so, are often thrown out after only being worn a few times.

While clothing made from natural fibres are more easily biodegradable, synthetic fibres, generally, will outlive you. And as they sit in landfills, they shed microplastic particles into the environment. But even before you get rid of your synthetic clothes, they are releasing more than 700,000 microscopic plastic fibres in each washing load. These microplastics poison the food chain, building up in the digestive tract of animals, reducing their ability to get energy from their food, and in some cases, changing animal behaviour.

While many right-wing newspapers continue to claim that the Earth has more oil than it needs, this is not strictly true. The official industry view is that global reserves will last 53 years at current rates of consumption. But as oil reserves get ever harder to access, some countries, like the US and China, who are desperate to be self-reliant and sustain cheap sources of oil, have resorted to "fracking"; this is where high-pressure water, chemicals and sand are blasted deep into rock to release oil and gas reserves.

Fracking can contaminate underground water supplies, cause minor earthquakes and release toxic wastewater into the surrounding environment. Canada also produces around 1.9 million barrels of oil a day from tar sands, which Al Gore, the climate activist has described as "the dirtiest source of liquid fuel you can imagine".

But this sense of entitlement that many of us have, when we buy and quickly discard cheap, plastic clothing, has more than huge environmental costs. We are also, essentially, stealing from our children and following generations, who will have to deal with the results of this outrageous material consumption, as they, at the same time, are denied a share in the bounty, as resources are fast depleting.

In past generations, most people were thrifty and frugal, buying clothing of quality, which would last. Virtues that we should resurrect in this era of narcissistic, "I deserve it", consumption; because, the world's human population is still growing and more people are wanting to buy more and more clothes. The earth's resources and its environment have limits, but the squandering and degradation continues as I type this page.

Books To Read

The Stone Gods, by Jeanette Winterson. This novel opens on the planet Orbus, a world very like Earth, running out of resources.

The Right Yoghurt Helps Social Anxiety and Depression

The microbiome consists of those populations of bacteria that live in our gut. And scientists have been studying the environment of the human microbiome, to see how it affects our health.

Interestingly, stress-related disorders significantly change our gut bacterial populations and this can affect our immunity, neural function, and behaviour, because of the importance of gut-to-brain signalling, via the vagus nerve. 

A particular strain of bacteria called Lactobacillus rhamnosus appears to modulate GABA receptor expression, and modulate the development of anxiety and depression.

Chronic severe stress is associated with inflammation and the susceptibility to gastrointestinal dysfunction. Also, there appears to be strong evidence for a relationship between gastrointestinal symptoms and psychiatric disorders.

Gut dysbiosis can promote anxiety and cognitive dysfunction like behaviours, which are correlated with increased activation within the brain, including the amygdala, which is the brain's fear centre. Adding Lactobacillus rhamnosus to the diet, however, has reduced anxiety and depression-like behaviours.

As an added bonus, probiotics can also have positive effects on blood sugar and weight loss, because the formation of short-chain fatty acids (acetate, propionate and butyrate) by the gut microbiota, have positive effects on hepatic lipid and glucose homoeostasis.

Just remember to avoid the sugar-laden varieties of yoghurt when you are making your selection.




References
 

Fermented Milk Containing Lactobacillus casei Strain Shirota Preserves the Diversity of the Gut Microbiota and Relieves Abdominal Dysfunction in Healthy Medical Students Exposed to Academic Stress Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 2016 82 (12) 3649-3658

Gut Microbiota and Brain Function: An Evolving Field in Neuroscience Int J Neuropsychopharmacol 2016 19 (5) pyv114

Gut microbiota, obesity and diabetes Postgrad. Med. J. 2016 92 (1087) 286-300

Systematic review of evidence to support the theory of psychobiotics Nutr Rev 2015 73 (10) 675-693

Bested, A. C., Logan, A. C., & Selhub, E. M. (2013). Intestinal microbiota, probiotics and mental health: from Metchnikoff to modern advances: part III – convergence toward clinical trials. Gut Pathogens, 5, 4. http://doi.org/10.1186/1757-4749-5-4 

 

Luo J, Wang T, Liang S, Hu X, Li W, Jin F (2014) Ingestion of Lactobacillus strain reduces anxiety and improves ... of Lactobacillus strain regulates emotional behavior and central GABA receptor expression in a mouse via the vagus nerve. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 

Morrison, D. J., & Preston, T. (2016). Formation of short chain fatty acids by the gut microbiota and their impact on human metabolism. Gut Microbes, 7(3), 189–200. http://doi.org/10.1080/19490976.2015.1134082 

 

The Snail Cure

In eighteenth-century Norfolk, England, a common cough cure involved brewing a broth of boiled snails or "dodmans" as they called them. Snails were regarded as handy little critters as their slime was considered to be an important folk-medicine treatment for "straightening children's deformed limbs."

Snails have also been used to treat warts; all you had to do was get the snail to "walk" over the wart. Snail slime has also been used as a treatment for thrush (er, what?) and a snail soaked in vinegar and rolled in flour was reckoned a good treatment for rheumatism.

Before the advent of evidence-based medicine, it was believed that if you sprained your wrist, you could cure this malady by tying a red cloth soaked in urine around the damaged wrist. However, treatment was slightly more difficult to achieve in the Scottish Highlands, as a thread made from the sinew of a "rutting stag", was required!

Urine was a useful remedy in times of war, as having someone wee on your wound was an efficient way to clean it, as urine is generally sterile. The Roman's went one step further and made mouthwash and toothpaste out of their urine. But that's a wee bit daft. No?

Crossing the ocean to North America, a common treatment for a sore throat involved tying a strip of bacon, or other meat around your throat, which could later serve for lunch. However, if you wanted to get rid of an ugly wart, you would need to acquire some "stolen meat", to rub on the wart.  Though, if you couldn't manage to steal some meat, then you could try another remedy, which required rubbing the wart with the morning spit of a dog.

In Germany, during the Middle Ages, if you were suffering from a tooth-ache, you couldn't just go to a dentist, as this job didn't exist yet. You could, however, look for a donkey and kiss it to get some relief. Or, you could try another remedy for tooth-ache, which involved drinking a solution of powered human skull. Well, that is what people believed.

North American folk medicine also had weird remedies for baby teething problems, as the bone from the head of a hog, or a mole's foot, was recommended as a cure.

The Irish, not to be left out, boiled sheep-poo in milk to treat whooping-cough, which is creative, to say the least. But then, the resourceful Ancient Egyptians, applied bat blood to the eyes of the blind, as they reasonably noted that bats had great eye sight. But, like many pre-scientific people, the Egyptians also thought that illness was caused by devils or the evil-eye of your neighbour.


Books To Read


Celtic Legends: Heroes and Warriors, Myths and Monsters, by Michael Kerrigan.