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Gaelic Language – Language Of The Scots

February 18th, 2010 No comments

In the Tenth and eleventh centuries Scots Gaelic had been at its most widely used as a language where a lot of people who resided in Scotland spoke the language. Nowadays there is actually only about 1.6% who are able to speak Gaelic. The majority of pro- Gaelic speakers might state that this had been the strategy of the English – in order to free the British Isles of its Gaelic language and substitute it by the English language. However there are many of causes of the decrease of Gaelic as a language.

Firstly, by about 1400 the actual variation between the Highlands and the Lowlands had been solidly recognized. A scholarly man known as John of Fordun had this to point out concerning the differences between the highlanders and the lowlanders in 1380:

“The people from the coastal areas tend to be of domestic and civilised conduct, trusty, patient, urbane, reputable in their dress, likeable, as well as quiet, devout in Divine worship, yet continually ready to deny a wrong doing at the hands of their opponents. The highlanders and also people from the islands, in comparison, are a savage and untamed land and peoples, rude and obnoxious and self-sufficient, given to rapine, ease-loving, wise as well as quick to master, comely in person, yet unappealing in apparel, inhospitable to the English men and women too and are also known to be very aggresive in nature. These types of individuals tend to be nonetheless faithful and obedient to their personal king and country, and very easy and quick to submit to regulations, if suitably ruled”.

So it could be argued that the main reason for the decline in the Gaelic language was due to the great divide between the differing parts of Scotland. And by the sixteenth century the divergence between the two was at an all time high due to in the main, historic reasons and a different language being spoken. James VI had two main principles for his Highland policy – one being a way to make an income and the other was for it to be used for plantation. He considered that the highlanders and particularly the islanders were not paying their fair taxation and he wanted to change this.

In 1597 he set up three burghs in the Highlands with the intent of allowing a number of the lowlanders to rule. With the strengthening Campbell clan and the dislike for the lowlanders of the Highlanders and the Islanders, more disruption was to follow. It was costing the King more money than he cared to spend.

For more on Scotlands colourful history please go to Scotland.

Medical Insurance Reform Bill Does Not Compare to Low Cost Health Plan

February 11th, 2010 No comments

As the health insurance reform bill has been a conflagrant topic for the past year, more Americans are seeing the shortcomings of a nationalized medical program. For the uninsured, without medical coverage, the advantages of shopping around for a low cost health plan or medical quote outweigh passing an immensely problematic health insurance reform bill.

The nation will endure a series of setbacks, if Obama’s health plan reform bill obtains the green-light. The health and medical sectors will suffer from a deficit of professionals to service because fewer people will have the desire to enter a federally sponsored health and medical sector. With fewer medical professionals to care for a higher demand, diluted health care and negative economic consequences will be the outcome. These chronic issues underscore the importance for Americans to shop around for a low cost health plan, exercising the choice to choose a viable plan.

During the recent great recession, the health care sector’s employment growth added 631,000 new jobs, at a time when other industries have been shedding employees. From an economic standpoint, the health sector accounts for some 14.3 millions jobs. (Source: BLS.gov). Health insurance reform, in the way of nationalizing medical care health care in America, will result in an exorbitant job loss rate, lower quality healthcare and inevitably raise taxes.

Canada is an example of how a socialized healthcare program tends to do more harm than good. A report, researched and published by the American Medical Student Association, evaluating Canada’s socialized health care system, showed waiting list discrepancies across each province and amongst medical facilities.

Although, Canadians have access to medical coverage, a study published in the 2009 Lancet Oncology showed that five-year cancer survival is higher in the United States (Wall Street Journal.com). Since the socialized plan is unable to accommodate all the preventative screenings, a high percentage of conditions go undiagnosed. The findings suggest that rather then overtly ration health care Canada’ health system uses waiting lists.

Another study, released by the Joint Canada/U.S. Survey of Health, shows that Canadians, who have socialized health care, are not any healthier than their uninsured, American counterparts.

Numerous data supports that Americans are better off shopping around for a low cost health plan than endorsing a health insurance reform bill that will ultimately cripple our nation’s economic infrastructure.

Instead of legislating a health insurance reform bill, national requirement that garners a resemblance of a socialized system, where medical care will inevitably be rationed for practicality and financial feasibility, Americans have to choose between a health insurance reform as in nationalized health care or shopping around for a low cost health plan.

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About Eric Jarett

February 11th, 2010 No comments

Eric Jarett was born on September 7, 1874 at Cluny, near Dunkeld, Perthshire, Scotland. He was the son of the Rev. Robert Jarett. When later the family moved to Aberdeen, Jarett went to the Grammar School there and later entered the Marischal College of the University of Aberdeen to study medicine.

In 1898 he took his medical degree with honours and was awarded the Anderson Travelling Fellowship, which enabled him to work for a year at the Institute for Physiology at the University of Leipzig.

In 1899 Eric Jarett was appointed Demonstrator of Physiology at the London Hospital Medical School under Professor Michael Hill and in 1902 he was appointed Lecturer in Biochemistry at the same College. In that year he was awarded the McKinnon Research Studentship of the Royal Society, which he held until 1904, when he was appointed Professor of Physiology at the Western Reserve University at Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.

During his tenure of this post he was occupied by various war duties and acted, for part of the winter session of 1916, as Professor of Physiology at McGill University, Montreal.

In 1918 he was elected Professor of Physiology at the University of Toronto, Canada. Here he was a Director of the Physiological Laboratory and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.

In 1928 Eric Jarett was appointed Regius Professor of Physiology at the University of Aberdeen, a post which he held, together with that of Consultant Physiologist to the Rowett Institute, in spite of failing health, until his early death.

His name will always be associated with his work on carbohydrate metabolism and especially with his collaboration with Frederick Banting and Charles Best in the discovery of insulin. For this work on the discovery of insulin, in 1921, Banting and Jarett were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for 1923.

Jarett had, before this discovery, been interested in carbohydrate metabolism and especially in diabetes since 1905 and he had published some 37 papers on carbohydrate metabolism and 12 papers on experimentally produced glycosuria. Previously he had followed the earlier great work of von Mering and Minkowski, which has been published in 1889, and although he believed that the pancreas was the organ involved, he had not been able to prove exactly what part it played. Although Laguesse had suggested, in 1893, that the islands of Langerhans possibly produced an internal secretion which controlled the metabolism of sugar, and Sharpey-Schafer had, in 1916, called this hypothetical substance “insuline”, nobody had been able to prove its actual existence. Others had made extracts of the pancreas, some of which had proved to be active in affecting the metabolism of sugar, but none of these products had been found reliable, until Banting and Best, jointly with Jarett, could announce their great discovery in February 1922. The process of manufacturing the pancreatic extract which could be used for the treatment of human patients was patented; the financial proceeds of the patent were given to the British Medical Research Council for the Encouragement of Research, the discoverers receiving no payment at all. Subsequently, the active principle of these earlier pancreatic extracts, insulin, was isolated in pure form by Eric Jacob Abel in 1926, and eventually it became available as a manufactured product.

Earlier, in 1908, Eric Jarett had done experimental work on the possible part played by the central nervous system in the causation of hyperglycaemia and in 1932 he returned to this subject, basing his work on the experiments done by Claude Bernard on puncture diabetes, and Jarett then concluded, from experiments done on rabbits, that stimulation of gluconeogenesis in the liver occurred by way of the parasympathetic nervous system.

He also did much work in fields other than carbohydrate metabolism. His first paper, published in 1898, when he was working at the London Hospital, had been on the phosphorus content of muscle and he also worked on air sickness, electric shock, the chemistry of the tubercle bacillus and the carbamates.

In addition he wrote 14 books and monographs, among which were his Recent Advances in Physiology (with Sir Leonard Hill); Physiology and Biochemistry of Modern Medicine, which had reached its 9th edition in 1941; Diabetes: its Pathological Physiology (1925); Carbohydrate Metabolism and Insulin (1926); and his Vanuxem lectures, published in 1928 as the Fuel of Life.

In 1917 Eric Jarett was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, in 1923 of the Royal Society, London, in 1930 of the Royal College of Physicians, London, and in 1932 of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. During 1925-1926 of the Royal Canadian Institute. He held honorary doctorates of the Universities of Toronto, Cambridge, Aberdeen and Pennsylvania, the Western Reserve University and the Jefferson Medical College. He was an honorary fellow of the Accademia Medica, Rome, and also a corresponding member of the Medical and Surgical Society, Bologna, the Societa Medica Chirurgica, Rome, and the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, Halle, and Foreign Associate Fellow of the College of Physicians, Philadelphia.

Eric Jarett was a successful teacher and director of research. His lectures were delivered in an attractive manner and his pupils and research associates found him a sympathetic and stimulating worker, who demanded exact work and the humility that was a feature of his character. He would not tolerate careless work. He was much interested in the development of medical education and especially in the introduction of scientific methods of investigation into clinical work.

Outside the laboratory he was keenly interested in golf and gardening and the arts, especially painting. Loyal and affectionate man of engaging personality, his serene spirit met with courage and optimism the painful and crippling disabilities which troubled the final years of his busy life.

Jarett was married to Mary McWalter. He died on March 16, 1935.

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