Persistent interaction patterns across social media platforms and over time.

Growing concern surrounds the impact of social media platforms on public discourse1-4 and their influence on social dynamics5-9, especially in the context of toxicity10-12. Here, to better understand these phenomena, we use a comparative approach to isolate human behavioural patterns across multiple social media platforms. In particular, we analyse conversations in different online communities, focusing on identifying consistent patterns of toxic content. Drawing from an extensive dataset that spans eight platforms over 34 years-from Usenet to contemporary social media-our findings show consistent conversation patterns and user behaviour, irrespective of the platform, topic or time. Notably, although long conversations consistently exhibit higher toxicity, toxic language does not invariably discourage people from participating in a conversation, and toxicity does not necessarily escalate as discussions evolve. Our analysis suggests that debates and contrasting sentiments among users significantly contribute to more intense and hostile discussions. Moreover, the persistence of these patterns across three decades, despite changes in platforms and societal norms, underscores the pivotal role of human behaviour in shaping online discourse.

Learning the Chymical Compromise: Paracelsian and Galenic Medicine in Marburg Disputations on Chymiatria.

The chair of chymiatria created at the University of Marburg was among the earliest academic initiatives aiming to integrate chymistry into the medical curriculum. If its practical applications in pharmacy and its relationship with patronage have been examined by historians, the theoretical part of the chymiatria programme still remains to be explored. In the form of student disputations and dissertations held or presided over by Heinrich Petraeus, a professor of medicine at Marburg and Johannes Hartmann's son-in-law, "chymiatric" essays expounded various medical issues. Centred on pathology, therapy, and physiology, these theoretical explanations proposed a "hermetic-dogmatic" interpretation merging the views of Paracelsus and Galen. This article examines these disputations and their stance concerning the living body, sickness, and treatment, and how they shaped the status of chymistry as an art and a science on the verge of institutionalisation.

"I would sooner die than give up": Huxley and Darwin's deep disagreement.

Thomas Henry Huxley and Charles Darwin discovered in 1857 that they had a fundamental disagreement about biological classification. Darwin believed that the natural system should express genealogy while Huxley insisted that classification must stand on its own basis, independent of evolution. Darwin used human races as a model for his view. This private and long-forgotten dispute exposes important divisions within Victorian biology. Huxley, trained in physiology and anatomy, was a professional biologist while Darwin was a gentleman naturalist. Huxley agreed with John Stuart Mill's rejection of William Whewell's sympathy for Linnaeus. The naturalists William Sharp Macleay, Hugh Strickland, and George Waterhouse worked to distinguish two kinds of relationship, affinity and analogy. Darwin believed that his theory could explain the difference. Richard Owen introduced the distinction between homology and analogy to anatomists, but the word homology did not enter Darwin's vocabulary until 1848, when he used the morphological concept of archetype in his work on Cirripedia. Huxley dropped the word archetype when Richard Owen linked it to Plato's ideal forms, replacing it with common plan. When Darwin wrote in the Origin of Species that the word plan gives no explanation, he may have had Huxley in mind. Darwin's preposterous story in the Origin about a bear giving birth to a kangaroo, which he dropped in the second edition, was in fact aimed at Huxley.

['A case of decapitation'; calamity investigation in 1822]. / 'Het geval van onthoofting'.

A case of childbirth with a fatal outcome described in the book 'The King's Court Physician: the Adventurous Life of Franz Joseph Harbaur, 1776-1822' (De lijfarts van de koning. Het avontuurlijkeleven van Franz Joseph Harbaur, 1776-1822) puts the work of the Dutch Health and Youth Care Inspectorate into an historical context by pointing out the similarities between a calamity investigation held in 1822 and the situation today. Conflicts between medical disciplinary law and criminal law, boundary disputes between various professions (in this particular case midwives and gynaecologists) and questions of openness and transparency turn out to be nothing new. By doing case studies on how to deal with calamities, it is possible to gain insight into medical failures of the past and how they were managed. It is also possible to get a better picture of the expectations that medicine had to meet in the past, and how, and under what circumstances, these have changed. This information is of value in making choices in today's healthcare system.

Freud and Albert Moll: how kindred spirits became bitter foes.

This article explores the antagonism between Sigmund Freud and the German neurologist and sexologist Albert Moll. When Moll, in 1908, published a book about the sexuality of children, Freud, without any grounds, accused him of plagiarism. In fact, Moll had reason to suspect Freud of plagiarism since there are many parallels between Freud's Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie and Moll's Untersuchungen über die Libido sexualis. Freud had read this book carefully, but hardly paid tribute to Moll's innovative thinking about sexuality. A comparison between the two works casts doubt on Freud's claim that his work was a revolutionary breakthrough. Freud's course of action raises questions about his integrity. The article also critically addresses earlier evaluations of the clash.

The electroshock triangle: disputes about the ECT apparatus prototype and its display in the 1960s.

In the early 1960s, a climate of public condemnation of electroconvulsive therapy was emerging in the USA and Europe. In spite of this, the electroshock apparatus prototype, introduced in Rome in 1938, was becoming hotly contended. This article explores the disputes around the display of the electroshock apparatus prototype in the summer of 1964 and sheds new light on the triangle of personalities that shaped its future: Karl and William Menninger, two key figures of American psychiatry in Topeka; their competitor, Adalberto Pazzini, the founder of the Sapienza Museum of the History of Medicine in Rome; and, between them, Lucio Bini, one of the original inventors of ECT, who died unexpectedly that summer.

History of the opposition between psychogenesis and organogenesis in classic psychiatry: Part 1.

The question of causation in psychiatry is one of the oldest and most difficult in this field. This paper is the first of two published in this journal. First, it traces the development of psychogenic and organogenic views of mental disorders from Pinel until the early twentieth century. This includes the debate as to how a disturbance of function might create a lesion even without a visible pathological trace. The second part of the paper discusses in detail the controversy between functional and organic causes of mental disease. These concepts evolved taking into account psychological factors and also the response of the uninjured parts of the nervous system to trauma of various kinds.

You shall bury him: burial, suicide and the development of Catholic law and theology.

Whether physician-assisted dying should be legalised is a major debate in medical ethics and much has been written on it from both secular and religious perspectives. Less, however, has been written on one of the potential consequences of legalised physician-assisted death: whether those who undergo this procedure will be given funerals by religious groups who oppose the practice. This article investigates the Catholic Church's attitude to the burial of suicides, and how Catholic canon law has approached the question of ecclesiastic funerals for suicides throughout its history. From the sixth through the late 20th century, the Church technically did not bury anyone who willfully committed suicide. Broad shifts in the cultural attitude towards suicide, due in large part to new understandings of mental illness as disease, had a powerful effect on Catholic thought and practice in modernity, and the Church eventually dropped the ban on funerals for suicides from its law code altogether in the 1980s. The legalisation of physician-assisted death, however, raises again the possibility of a prohibition on funerals. The Church was able to drop its restrictions on funerals since suicide was seen as an act beyond the control of the deceased and thus worthy of mercy and compassion. In cases of physician-assisted dying, the patient must have consciously and willingly agreed to the procedure, undermining this understanding of suicide. The history of canon law on suicide funerals reveals the complexity of the Catholic attitude towards suicide and provides an important context to the current debate around physician-assisted death, and conflicts between medicine and religion more broadly.

[The battle in Madrid over poliomyelitis vaccines (1963): science, ideology and power in the first mass immunization campaign in Spain]. / La batalla de Madrid por las vacunas antipoliomielitis (1963): ciencia, ideología y poder en la primera campaña de inmunización masiva en España.

Between 1958 and 1963, Spain witnessed the highest ever incidence of poliomyelitis (2000 cases and 200 deaths per year). Although Salk's inactivated vaccine had arrived in Spain in 1957, the government took no decisive action to administer it to the entire population at risk. Neither was Sabin's attenuated vaccine administered, available in Europe from 1960. While other countries adopted one or the other, in Spain rivalry arose over the two vaccines, with mixed results. The Salk vaccine was administered to a small percentage of the population at risk through the Compulsory Sickness Insurance scheme (Spanish initials: SOE), while at the same time a research team at the National School of Health led by Florencio Pérez Gallardo (1917-2006) carried out a model epidemiological study that demonstrated the superiority of the Sabin vaccine. In 1963, the SOE launched a national campaign with the Salk vaccine promoted by the paediatrician Juan Bosch Marín (1902-1995), a representative of the most conservative structure of the Franco regime. The dispute over which vaccine was best reached its peak in early 1963 at various scientific conferences in Madrid. Bosch Marín's group argued in favour of his campaign and the Salk vaccine, while Pérez Gallardo did the same for the oral vaccine, achieving a substantial impact by inviting Sabin himself to speak. By the end of the year, following a pilot study, the first mass oral vaccination campaign against polio was introduced in Spain.

[May 68 as seen by the elderly]. / Mai 68, vu par les aînés.

May 68 remains etched in everybody's mind. Fifty years on, many memories remain vivid and those who lived through this turbulent period. Yesterday's adults, today's senior citizens, share their testimonies.

Unexpected healers: Chinese medicine in the age of global migration (Lima and California, 1850-1930). / Sanadores inesperados: medicina china en la era de migración global (Lima y California, 1850-1930).

The massive waves of Chinese migrants arriving in California and Lima in the second half of the nineteenth century played a crucial role in expanding Chinese medicine in both settings. From the late 1860s on, herbalists expanded their healing system beyond their ethnic community, transforming Chinese medicine into one of the healing practices most widely adopted by the local population. This article uses a comparative approach to examine the diverging trajectories of Chinese healers in Peru and the USA, as well as the social and political factors that determined how this foreign medical knowledge adapted to its new environments.