Category: S

One of the foremost educational psychologists of his generation. He served the London County Council for many years as their official psychiatrist, and he occupied the chair of psychology at University College, London, from 1932 until 1950. Burt was responsible for testing and interpreting the results of mental tests for thousands of schoolchildren in the…

An Irish monk who attempted to find Paradise by sailing west. He founded a community at Clontarf in western Ireland, served as its abbot, and worked as a missionary in Scotland and Wales. Some of his other exploits are recorded in a medieval tale, the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot),…

The first person to make a significant scientific examination of dowsing. A professor of physics in the Royal College of Science, Dublin, Barrett published his theories in The Divining Rod (1926). He suggested that clairvoyance by the dowser stimulated an involuntary muscular reaction that caused the dowsing rod to turn. Barrett was involved in psychic…

One of the greatest of the Victorian eccentrics and polymaths. He was a devout clergyman, a far-flung traveler, a collector of folk songs, an architect, an artist, an archaeologist, and a renowned novelist and poet. He is best remembered for his famous hymn “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” but he also wrote more than 100 books, including…

Muckraking journalist remembered for his attacks upon nostrums. Adams attended Hamilton College and, following his graduation in 1891, began his journalistic career with the New York Sun. His writing caught the attention of S. S. McClure, who hired him away from the Sun to his own magazine. At McClure’s he was introduced to the crusading…

A sham device or procedure is one type of placebo. When the treatment under study is a procedure or device (not a drug or other substance), a sham procedure or device may be designed that resembles the active treatment but does not have any active treatment qualities.    

The building of a chemical compound by the union of various chemical components, sometimes to mimic the actions of a natural drug (‘nature identical’), or to produce a compound which cannot be found in nature. But so called nature identical drugs always contain ‘shadow’ chemicals (an inevitable consequence of laboratory synthesis) which are not found…

A wound, such as contusion, that is unaccompanied by a break in the skin.  

A colloquial term for the evaluation of a patient, esp. a neonate, with a fever, for laboratory evidence of severe infection. Common tests for febrile neonates include a complete blood count; blood cultures, cerebrospinal fluid, urine, and stool samples; and chest x-ray. Most neonates with a fever are given immediate treatment with broad-spectrum antibiotics pending…

An individual who engages in sexual activities in exchange for payment.