BEYOND FIELDS, NETWORKS, AND FAME: LAWRENCE KRADER AS AN "OUTSIDER" INTELLECTUAL.

This paper investigates the intellectual biography of the American philosopher and anthropologist Lawrence Krader (1919-1998) as a contribution to the sociology of intellectuals and history of ideas. We trace Krader's career trajectory to his intellectual self-concept, his scholarly and political worldviews, and his financial independence. Krader entertained a self-concept of a lone pioneer that led him to reject the competition for attention as highlighted in the current literature, dominated as it is by an emphasis on field, habitus, the accumulation and reproduction of power, and symbolic capital. His self-concept and his happier financial circumstance kept him relatively aloof from key intellectual networks and narrow institutional constraints. Our paper seeks to combine the new sociology of ideas with its focus on institutions and networks with traditional Wissenssoziologie that emphasized the role of class, status, and worldviews to explain the rise and fall of theories and thinkers.

Uterine size in women with Turner syndrome after induction of puberty with estrogens and long-term growth hormone therapy: results of the German IGLU Follow-up Study 2001.

BACKGROUND: To evaluate the factors influencing uterine size in young adult women with Turner syndrome (TS) after long-term growth hormone (GH) treatment. METHODS: Cross-sectional study. Out of 188 women with TS from 96 German centres, whose longitudinal growth was documented within KIGS (Pfizer International Growth Database), data on uterine size were collected voluntarily at a standardized follow-up visit: 75 TS women (ages: 15.8-30.8 years) with complete data were included. Classification according to karyotype: 45,X (78.6%), 45,X/46,XX (5.4%), 45,X/46,iXq (8%), 45,X/46,XY (8%). Puberty was induced with estrogens in all women. At follow-up, 66 were on cyclic estrogens and progestins. RESULTS: 13/66 (19.6%) TS women who received estrogens had a reduced uterine length <5 cm. Calculating the data in standard deviation scores (SDS), only women with 45,X/46,XX karyotype had normal median uterine length and volume of 0.6 and 1.59 SDS respectively. An incomplete breast development (Tanner stage B 3) was found in women with 45,X karyotype (n = 11; 18.6%) and with 45,X/46,XY (n = 2). CONCLUSIONS: Only TS women with karyotype 45,X/46,XX had normal uterine sizes, whereas 26% of the TS women with karyotype 45,X had a uterine length <-2 SDS, and 18% a volume <-2 SDS.

Central reassessment of GH concentrations measured at local treatment centers in children with impaired growth: consequences for patient management.

OBJECTIVE: GH deficiency is diagnosed in children if serum GH fails to rise above a predefined cutoff value in response to at least two stimuli. Diagnostic decisions based on this testing are highly variable between centers and depend on the GH assays used. Considering the large spectrum of commercially available GH assays, we wanted to evaluate the agreement between assays, and to test whether assay-related variability of diagnostic decisions could be reduced by reassessment of peak GH concentrations in a reference center. DESIGN: We reanalysed 699 peak GH serum samples obtained after GH testing of 382 children and adolescents from 19 centers using three reference assays and compared these results with those obtained with the local assays. A subgroup of 132 patients tested with the combination of insulin hypoglycemia test and arginine test was evaluated for changes in the assignment to the diagnostic group of GH deficiency. RESULTS: The mean difference between methods ranged from 5.4 to 10.3 mU/l, slopes of the regression lines from 1.28 to 1.65. Significant non-linearity was detected in five of six assay comparisons, indicating that most assay results cannot be interconverted by the use of a factor. Overall agreement between reference and local assays was only moderate. Significant changes in diagnostic assignment occurred when different assays were used on the same patient (P<0.0001-P<0.0023). Based on GH remeasurement by one reference assay, 36 of 132 patients were categorized differently, with 35 patients changing into the GH-deficient group. Similar findings were obtained with the other reference assays. CONCLUSIONS: To decrease variability in GH testing related to assays and cutoff values, we recommend nationwide reassessment of GH peak sera in reference centers. Decisions to treat GH deficiency should incorporate the reference center results.

[Artistic sketch of an abnormality from 1683]. / Die Handzeichnung einer Fehlbildung aus dem Jahr 1682.

Early-modern drawings of malformations are much less known than the woodcuts and etchings of deformed children reproduced and discussed on leaflets or in monographs. The present article publishes for the first time a drawing from 1682 showing the front and rear view of a deformed boy born in Rossla (modern Sachsen-Anhalt). These illustrations and two surviving written testimonia reveal very different attitudes to the malformed child on the part of the various individuals involved. Although the information in the sources is not sufficiently precise to allow an unequivocal retrospective medical diagnosis of the malformations, two possible interpretations are presented.

[Health instead of gallantry: a paradigm shift in physician's beauty advice in the century of enlightenment]. / Gesundheit statt Galanterie. Der Paradigmenwechsel in ärztlichen Schönheitsratgebern im Jahrhundert der Aufklärung.

The views of femininity and the attempts to standardise it, developed in the 18th century in philosophy, education, literature, theology, anthropology and medicine, have led to intense research in the last years. Such research normally starts with the Enlightenment debates in the second half of the 18th century, but there are interesting sources which allow the tracing of a development over a longer period and which had a wider contemporary readership than any scholarly treatise. These are the popular beauty manuals, which in the German-speaking area started to appear more frequently from the late 17th century on, composed chiefly by physicians who thereby hoped to profit from the growing book and healthcare market. The present article considers the approaches of physicians to female beauty, with special reference to the discontinuities caused by the Enlightenment.

[The physician and cosmetics--distorted images reflected in German medical historiography]. / Der Arzt und die Kosmetik--Zerrbilder im Spiegel der deutschen Medizinhistoriographie.

Physicians have been experts in cosmetics for thousands of years. Especially since the early modern period they have produced medical advice literature that included the topic of cosmetics for a general readership. Medical historians have paid scant attention to this aspect of doctors' activities, and when they did, this happened partly in a rather prejudiced manner, resulting in long-lasting misjudgements. This is illustrated with special reference to the case of the Berlin doctor and medical historian Julius Leopold Pagel (1851-1912).