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Post by Joanna on Mar 16, 2015 20:27:50 GMT -5
Seven Things You Probably Didn't Know about St. Patrick’s DayEveryone enjoys wearing their green duds on March 17 and being Irish for a day. We’ve all heard the day celebrates the life of a saint who had something to do with snakes in Ireland and now we have parades and drink green beer. But what do we really know about St. Patrick’s Day? Everyone may claim to be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, but you can sound like the real deal by learning a few facts about the saint, the day and the traditions. Your knowledge might even impress someone so much he rewards you with a mug of green beer.
St. Patrick Wasn’t Irish and His Name Wasn’t ‘Patrick.’ The man we know as St. Patrick was born Maewyn Succat in Britain and he wasn’t religious. He was kidnaped and sold into slavery by Irish marauders at age 16 and formed his religious beliefs while enslaved. After escaping and returning to Britain, he became ordained as a priest and returned to Ireland to convert the Irish Celtic pagans to Christianity.
St. Patrick’s Day Was Not Always a Big Party. Originally, March 17, the recorded day of St. Patrick’s death, was celebrated as a Catholic feast and quiet religious observance. The first largely public celebration of St. Patrick’s Day took place in Boston in 1737 and it did not become a national holiday in Ireland until 1903. In fact, until the 1970s, pubs in Ireland were required by law to close on March 17.
St. Patrick’s Day Parades Started in the America. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade took place in New York in 1762, when Irish soldiers serving in the British military during the Revolutionary War marched through the city in celebration of the religious feast day and their Irish roots. The first parade in Ireland was held in Dublin in 1931.
Shamrocks Are for Sunday School. Shamrocks and clovers have long been associated with St. Patrick because legend has it that he used a shamrock to describe the Christian concept of God as the Holy Trinity to the Druid King of Ireland. He chose the plant because the Celts considered the clover sacred because its leaves form a triad. The legend of the clover indicates each leaf has meaning. The first leaf is hope, the second faith, the third love and, if the clover happens to have four leaves, the fourth leaf is luck, hence, the lucky four-leaf clover.
St. Patrick Wore Blue, Not Green. In modern celebrations of St. Patrick’s Day, revelers wear green, eat and drink green foods and turn everything they possibly can green by using green dye. This tradition is said to commemorate St. Patrick’s use of the shamrock in his religious teaching, but it didn’t really become a part of his feast celebration until the 19th century. In reality, St. Patrick wore blue.
There Were Never Any Snakes in Ireland. The legend of St. Patrick claims he drove all the snakes out of Ireland, which to this day, is a snake-free zone. The only problem with this legend is that biologists now believe there were never any snakes there in the first place. Based on its geographical location and the temperature of the ocean surrounding it, snakes had no way of migrating to the island. Most likely, the legend of the snakes is a metaphor for St. Patrick’s driving paganism out of Ireland by converting so many of the Celts to Christianity.
There Are More Irish in America than in Ireland. According to the US Census, there are more Irish people in America than there are in Ireland. As of 2003, in excess of 34 million Americans claimed Irish ancestry. The population of Ireland is just over four million.
Source: Kathy Landin, The FW, and ItMustBeIrish.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 15, 2015 1:22:59 GMT -5
1986 Disappearance of Kimberly MoreauEvery day, Richard Moreau and his family of Jay, Maine, live with the pain of losing 17-year-old Kimberly Moreau (above), who disappeared in 1986 and has never been found. “My only interest is bringing Kim home,” he said in a recent interview. “I’ll do anything I can. I want to see her put to rest at the cemetery.”
Ever since that fateful Saturday night, May 10, 1986, the Moreaus have worked tirelessly searching for answers to what happened to Kim. It was a night that remains frozen in time and Moreau and his daughter, Karen Dalot, vividly recalled their memories of Kim in an emotional interview at Dalot’s home. Kim was a cheerleader and participated in gymnastics at Jay High School where she was a junior at the time she disappeared. According to Dalot, her sister liked going to the beach and outdoor activities. “Kim wanted to be a model,” she said. She was an entry in the Miss Maine beauty pageant at the time of her disappearance.
On the night his daughter disappeared, Moreau, who was chairman of the 120 Club, was working with his wife at the VFW in Jay on Jewell Street not far from the family’s home. “We had a big supper and dance,” he remembered. “We came home at 1:30, 20 minutes of 2. We looked in [Kim’s bedroom]. No Kim.” They became concerned, because Kim “was never one to be out like that at that time,” Moreau said. “We went over to the [Jay] Police Station, and they said, ‘You can’t report her missing until 48 hours have gone.’”
That night, according to reports, Kim went into town with her friend, Rhonda Breton, who was a senior at Jay High School. There, they encountered two 25-year-old acquaintances in a white Pontiac Trans Am, Brian Enman and Darren Joudry. Around 11 p.m,. after Darren left to go to work, the car pulled up in front of Kim’s home on Jewell Street and she ran inside and told Karen she was going out for a ride and would be back in an hour. She didn’t take a purse or other belongings with her.
There were rumors that Kim attended a big party where they was a lot of drinking. “We’ve heard stories every which way,” Moreau continued. “I can’t find anybody that absolutely says she was there. The one that could have told us – and she’s dead – is her girlfriend, Rhonda Breton.”
Moreau believes Kim died accidentally, that the people she was with didn’t set out to kill her. Moreau thinks his daughter died not live long after leaving home for the final time. “I would stake my life that within four hours of the time she left home, she was dead,” he added.
The Moreaus asked their other daughters, Karen and Diane, if they knew anything about Kim’s whereabouts. When she had been missing 48 hours, they returned to the police station. Although the paperwork went to Farmington to be processed, somehow, it got lost, Moreau recalled, and wasn’t listed in the database until August 1986. The police wasn’t cooperative, according to Dalot. “The Jay police stopped articles from being in the newspaper. They stopped us from hanging up posters,” she claimed. “No matter what, you can solve it, but I want her body, I want her to have a final resting place,” Dalot added. Kim has a headstone beside her mother, Patricia, who died of breast cancer in 1988. “My mother never gave up,” Dalot added.
She and her father haven’t given up either. Both say they are not only advocating for Kim, but for all the families in Maine who have had a loved one go missing. “Ask questions and advocate. That’s why the cold case squad is so important,” Dalot insisted. “Every family deserves closure. Kudos to the many men and women who’ve helped. She’s not home yet. Don’t stop looking.”
“We’re living with the pain of this thing every day,” Moreau added. “We’ve got people out there who could end it. I’d like the people with this information to live in our shoes for not even a full day, but half a day. There’s definitely some people who know where she is now. Just pick up a phone and call us. Use a pay phone. Give me specific directions to get to her body.”
Breakup. Kimberly Moreau and Mike Staples (who also lived in Jay) were high school sweethearts. Mike gave Kim his class ring, engraved “Mike Staples” and “Mike ’87” and the two planned to attend the junior prom together on Saturday, May 11, 1986.
Jay is a western Maine town with a population of less than 5,000. Many residents of this predominantly blue collar community work at one of the two paper mills, International Paper’s Androscoggin Mill and the Wasau Paper Mill. Jay’s website boasts that while the town’s roots are entwined with the industrial revolution, the feel of the town is rural and small-town, making it an ideal place to live, work and raise a family. There are exceptions to the idyllic experience, of course – and Kimberly’s disappearance is among them. Jay’s official murder rate is zero and its missing persons list consists of one name: Kimberly Moreau.
The day before the prom, Mike and Kim argued and Kim canceled their prom date. The following night, Kim spent time with various friends. Instead of dressing up and spending Saturday evening dancing with Mike as planned, she donned blue jeans, a white short-sleeved blouse and white high-top sneakers and headed into town with Rhonda Breton, who later told police Kim was still upset over her fight with Mike and asked to be dropped off a half-mile from her house at 3:45 a.m., saying she’d walk the rest of the way home. Brian claimed he dropped her off at Jewell Street and this was the last time he saw her. Her father says this is not believable because it was cold that night and Kimberly was afraid of the dark. Whatever happened, the teenager was never seen or heard from again.
Delayed investigation. Police initially considered Kimberly a runaway. She wasn’t classified as a missing person until four months later when police launched an all-out investigation. Eventually, officers searched party locations where Enman and Joudry were believed to hang out. They searched abandoned wells and quarries, rivers and woods and followed leads. One popular hangout, Meadowview, was searched multiple times to no avail. Dalot said Kim didn’t typically hang out at Meadowview, but the two men she was with that night did frequent the place. It took 18 years before investigators searched the Pontiac Trans Am which, by that time, had cycled through three owners.
Although her body has never been found, Kimberly is now officially presumed dead – a victim of foul play. After seven years without a sighting or communication, the girl was declared dead in 1993. With the official investigation suffering from a “too little, too late” malaise, Dick Moreau has conducted his own inquiries, guided by friends with investigative experience. He has interviewed more than 100 people in his determination to find out what happened to his daughter, the Sun Journal reported in 2004. He also is responsible for more than 50,000 posters concerning Kim’s disappearance. Over the years, the determined father has turned up leads, but no answers.
Familiar refrains. Who holds the answer to Kimberly Moreau’s disappearance? And does anyone have a tidbit of information that could set her family free from their 29-year torture of not knowing?
In an interview marking the 25th anniversary of Kimberly’s disappearance in 2011, police mentioned Brian Enman and Darren Joudry when asking anyone with information to come forward, anonymously if necessary, to give the Moreau family some peace. Both men still live in the area. “You know who you are and you know that we have a good idea of who you are,” Maine State Police Lt. Brian McDonough said regarding the person who can provide information concerning what happened to Kim.
Maine State Police Detective Jeffrey Love expressed a similar sentiment a year later while speaking with WABI TV. “We know who she was with, we’ve talked to those people, and we feel as though they do have some more information that would help us,” he said.
Investigator’s inability to pierce group silence is a common thread among some of Maine’s more notorious unsolved missing persons and homicide cases. In 1995, a baby named Aisha Dixon was beaten to death in her home where there were three adults. “All three of those adults are still suspects,” Bangor police Sgt. Ward Gagner said a year later. Twenty years later, Bangor police Sgt. Tim Cotton told the Bangor Daily News: “It’s a case where somebody needs to talk to us. It’s very frustrating … to have a grasp of what you believe happened. You can’t always confirm.”
The police posture is much the same in the case of 20-month-old Ayla Reynolds, reported missing from Waterville by her father, Justin DiPietro, on December 16, 2011. Maine State Police repeatedly said the three individuals – DiPietro, his sister Elisha, and his new black girlfriend Courtney Roberts – in the home with Ayla know more than they’ve told police and have not been truthful, but despite the baby’s blood being discovered at various locations in the house, there have been no arrests and few outward signs of progress in the investigation as it begins its fourth year.
Search for answers. Because so much time has elapsed, potential sources of information about Kim Moreau have been lost. Rhonda Breton graduated the year Kimberly disappeared and moved to California two years later. She died in a hit-and-run incident in 2009, so any unreported knowledge she may have had went to the grave with her.
Besides Enman and Joudry – the last known to have seen Kim – police have set their sights on others who might have information concerning Kim’s fate. Calvin Tidswell owned an arcade next to the high school back in 1986. He knew many of the local teens from the arcade and according to Dalot, was friends with Mike Staples. In a 2004 Sun Journal article, Moreau family friend Barry Romano described Tidswell as “a control freak,” who controlled the teens he befriended, and said Kimberly and her friends may have visited him between the time of her argument with Staples and her disappearance. Tidswell has an extensive criminal record, having spent 12 years in the penitentiary on drug charges. He also has been convicted of involuntary manslaughter and unlawful possession of firearms. Kimberly’s father was so convinced Tidswell had information concerning his daughter that he set up an interview with him in 2004. However, before the interview took place, Tidswell, then on parole after serving a12-year sentence, was jailed for violating his probation by selling cocaine. On the day in 2004 when Tidswell was arrested for the probation violation in an undercover sting, he was quoted in a Sun Journal feature on ex-cons saying, “I’d rather starve than hustle drugs again.” The newspaper later acknowledged it had been snowed.
Another potential suspect is serial killer Lewis Lent. Police have said Lent, who was convicted of murder in nearby Massachusetts, is not high on their suspect list, but hasn’t been crossed off the list either. When Lent confessed to killing Sara Anne Wood of New York and James Bernardo of Pittsfield, Mass., he told investigators he attacked an unidentified child in Maine. He did not specify whether the child was from Maine, nor did he indicate the attack was fatal. The only child to go missing in Maine during the relevant time period was Kimberly Moreau. Lent was investigated for possible involvement in murders from New England to Florida, the Boston Globe noted. He blamed demons that allegedly possessed his alter ego for the killings he admitted.
If you have any information that might shed light on the events of May 11, 1986 that culminated in Kimberly’s disappearance, please contact the Maine State Police at 207-743-8282.Sources: Barry Matulaitis, The Lewiston Sun Journal, March 13, 2015, and United for Ayla, February 21, 2015.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 15, 2015 0:12:31 GMT -5
Maine Inn Could Be Yours for an Essay
If owning a lakeside bed and breakfast is your dream, here's your chance. For just $125 and a 200-word essay, the Center Lovell Inn in Maine could be all yours. Innkeeper Janice Sage is running an essay contest to select the new owner. It's kind of a tradition. In 1993, Sage became the owner of the inn by winning a similar contest.
Sage isn't giving up the bed and breakfast for nothing. The property and building are valued at $905,000 and she expects to collect at least that much from the entry fees. In fact, Sage will return all the money if she doesn't receive at least 7,500 entries. This number of entry fees would give her about $938,000. She also pledges to give the winner $20,000 to get started.
The Center Lovell Inn has seven guestrooms, two dining rooms and a screened wrap-around porch. It was built in 1805 and overlooks the White Mountains and is less than two hours from Boston and a little more than an hour from Portland, Maine.
The subject of the essays must be why the contestant wants to own the inn. And keep it short – less than 200 words. Entries have to be postmarked before May 7, 2015, and the winner will be chosen before May 21.
Sage will select the top 20 essays and pass them to two judges who will pick the winner. According to the rules, the judges will have no vested interest in the business.
An entry form is available at: wincenterlovellinn.com/contest-rules-entry/
Sources: CNN and Associated Press, March 13, 2015.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 13, 2015 21:10:37 GMT -5
Murder or Suicide for Spite?A macabre, decades-old secret hangs over the New England farming town of Newbury, Vermont, on the banks of the Connecticut River. Now, a retired judge claims he has solved the mystery.
Prosperous, but unpopular, dairy farmer Orville Gibson (above) disappeared in the wee hours of New Year’s Eve morning in 1957. Three months later, his body was pulled from the river. The case remains officially unsolved, but for decades, it has been widely accepted that a small mob of drunken townsfolk, incensed by rumors that Gibson had beaten his elderly hired man, kidnaped him, tied him up and threw him into the trunk of a car where he suffocated. When they discovered he was dead, they tossed his body into the river. The crime was deemed a “lynching” by editorial writers throughout the country and the story became so popular it was featured in Life magazine. “You can go anywhere, quite a ways off and if you say you’re from Newbury, they’ll bring it up,” observed Eleanor Placey, 72, who was related to Gibson by marriage.
Two men were tried for the murder, but both were acquitted. So what really happened?
Judge Stephen Martin, a young lawyer just beginning his career in 1960, assisted in the representation of Frank Carpenter, one of the accused men. Now he has published a book in which he argues Orville Gibson committed suicide – with some ingenuity and difficulty – in a largely successful attempt to get revenge on his neighbors by pinning the blame on them. In Orville’s Revenge: The Anatomy of a Suicide, Martin claims Gibson, broken by the criminal charge he was facing in the beating of his hired man and the enmity he had created among his neighbors, staged evidence at his farm, walked across the bridge to New Hampshire, walked out onto a pier, tied himself up and rolled himself into the water. “He was very proud, quick to hold a grudge and his whole life was crashing down upon him,” Martin explained in an interview. He has taken his conclusions to the Vermont attorney general’s office, whose investigators plan to take another look. They could reclassify the case, which would remove it from the list of Vermont’s unsolved homicides.
But not everybody buys Martin’s theory. “I don’t know why a supposedly intelligent man like Judge Martin would say that,” said Doris McClintock, 75, Gibson’s niece, who still believes some of her neighbors know what happened to her uncle. McClintock and the Placey family offer point-by-point rebuttals of why they believe Martin’s book is inaccurate, alleging he gets basic facts wrong, while ignoring others that do not fit his thesis. They speak of threats they believe were intended to keep people quiet, including one in which a note was stuck with a knife to a tree outside the home of a potential witness.
CBS affiliate WCAX reported that Larry Washburn and Bill Graham, both state troopers in 1957, questioned dozens of Newbury residents, but no one admitted knowing anything. “A lot of secrecy. No one was talking,” Washburn related.
Martin’s theory isn’t entirely new, but the book lays it out in detail. The idea that Gibson could have tied himself up was brought up during the second trial, but investigators didn’t accept it. Gibson, who was 47 at the time of his death, came to Newbury with his family as a child. He purchased the farm out of foreclosure several years before his death and over the years, built it up to be one of the richest properties in the fertile land along the river.
But he never fit in. He and his wife weren’t part of the partying crowd. He drew resentment for being the early bird at the courthouse to purchase his property, beating more established townspeople who had wanted it. And then came the last straw – the story about the beating of his hired man. Gibson was charged with a crime, though some argue the man’s injuries were exaggerated by the town’s rumor mill. On the day Gibson disappeared, he had planned to contact a lawyer.
David Placey (Eleanor Placey’s husband), now 71, responded to a call from Gibson’s wife the day of the disappearance. Mrs. Gibson reported her husband hadn’t returned from the morning milking and when Placey investigated, he checked the barn (pictured above as it appears today) and discovered what appeared to depressions in a bag of grain where he believed two men had sat, as well as drag marks and a crushed milking pail. “It was pretty plain that something happened there; there was not a question in your mind,” Placey said recently.
Police dragged the river, but found nothing. Then at the end of March, troopers discovered Gibson’s body approximately miles downstream in Bradford. He was wearing his farm clothes, his ankles were bound and his hands were tied behind his knees. The corpse was in remarkable condition, likely because the cold water had preserved the body. The death certificate lists “suffocation (means unknown)” as the cause of death.
It wasn’t until the fall of 1958 that a physician revealed to investigators that he had driven by Gibson’s barn the morning the farmer disappeared and saw a car and two men that he recognized. The men were Robert “Ozzie” Welch and Frank Carpenter and they were tried separately for Gibson’s murder. Welch was released after the judge deemed the evidence against him insufficient, and a jury found Carpenter not guilty.
Martin, who became a judge in 1970 and retired in 1998, argues investigators never considered any possibilities other than a vigilante killing. He is seeking the support of the Vidocq Society, a private organization of sleuths who specialize in solving old crimes. Society member Peter Stephenson reported he believes Martin’s explanation. If vigilantes had killed Gibson, his body would have been beaten to a pulp. And by killing himself, Gibson was able to take control of a life that was spiraling downward, he said. “If you look at Orville’s behavior pre-crime, you’ll find that a lot of people had tried to take control of his life,” Stephenson insisted.
Unfortunately, most of the original players are now dead. Gibson’s wife died in 1973, Welch died two months after his trial and Carpenter died in 1972.
Despite the ugly memories, Gibson’s niece believes it is good that people are talking about her uncle again. “We would just like to know the answers,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any purpose to trying to arrest anyone. It’s way past time for that.”Sources: CBS News, March 9, 2015; and Unsolved in Vermont.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 13, 2015 20:19:25 GMT -5
Fans Petition 'Death' to Return Discworld AuthorTerry Pratchett, the fantasy writer famous for his Discworld books, died Thursday at age 66, eight years after an Alzheimer’s Disease diagnosis.
“Death” is a recurring character in Sir Terry's stories – always speaking in CAPITAL LETTERS – and appeared on Sir Terry's Twitter account at 3:06 p.m., saying, "AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER."
A minute later, this tweet appeared: "Terry took Death's arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night." The final tweet said simply: "The End."
Fans swiftly set up a petition calling imploring Death to return the beloved writer. The petition on Change.org – called "Reinstate Terry Pratchett" – has already received thousands of signatures. The description reads: "Because Terry Pratchett said this: 'There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.'"
Far from being a scary figure, Sir Terry presented Death as a witty guy with an unpopular job.
Backing the petition, fan Iain Sutherland wrote: "Terry Pratchett turned Death from a figure of hate into a much loved and sometimes welcomed character. No-one else cared about you Death. You owe him!"
"Look, I know he's just doing his job and all but at least he could check the hourglass just to be sure? I know, I know, THEY ALL SAY THAT, but it's worth a shot," wrote Christopher Daniels.
Mother Gail Molloy signed the petition – sharing her son's reaction to Sir Terry's passing. "I just imagine that Terry met Death and Death turned to Terry and said: 'I'M A REALLY BIG FAN OF YOUR WORK.'"
The author's 41st and final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, was completed last summer and it is set to be published later this year.
The author, who sold more than 85 million books around the world, died with his cat sleeping on his bed, surrounded by his family.Source: BBC NewsBeat, March 13, 2015.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 9, 2015 23:43:33 GMT -5
Oregon Witness Reports Sphere Dropped from Hovering UFOALBANY, Ore. – A witness at reported watching a large, hovering orange object that dropped a sphere before moving away at a high rate of speed, according to testimony in Case 63735 of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database. The witness had just opened a back door around 8:15 p.m., March 4, 2015, when he saw the object. “I noticed a very large orange object with a dark red, fibrillating light on the bottom descending approximately less than one mile away at 140 degrees southeast,” the witness said. “The object stopped and hovered for about two to three minutes.”
The witness reached for his binoculars and noticed a second, smaller object moving out of the larger object. “I saw a round sphere with dark red lights going crazy at the bottom of the sphere. It looked like it dropped (shot) out of sides near the bottom.”
Then the object began to move. “The object started to ascend slowly and then took off at a very high rate of speed directly south. It looked like it traveled miles in just a couple of seconds. It was just after dark. No noise.”
Albany is the county seat of Linn County and the 11th largest city in the state of Oregon with a population of 51,583. Oregon is currently a UFO Alert Level 5 – with 0.77 sightings per million population based on MUFON February 2015 statistics. Oregon received a total of three UFO reports in February.
The UFO Alert Rating System is based on five levels – 1 through 5 – where states with 4.01 or higher reports per million residents are rated an Alert 1; 3.01 – 4.0 reports are an Alert 2; 2.51 – 3.0 are an Alert 3; 2.01 – 2.5 are an Alert 4; and those states with 2.0 or lower are rated an Alert 5. Source: Roger Marsh, Open Minds, March 9, 2015.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 9, 2015 23:29:28 GMT -5
'Gods' Help Societies Grow and FlourishPeople are nicer to each other when they think someone is watching, many psychology studies have shown – especially if they believe that someone has the power to punish them for transgressions even after they’re dead. That’s why some scientists think belief in the high gods of moralizing religions, such as Islam and Christianity, helped people cooperate with each other and encouraged societies to grow. An innovative study of 96 societies in the Pacific now suggests that a culture might not need to believe in omniscient, moral gods in order to reap the benefits of religion in the form of political complexity. All they need is the threat of supernatural punishment, even if the deities in question don’t care about morality and act on personal whims, the new work concludes.
People brought up in Western cultures find the idea of moralizing high gods – so-called big gods such as the Abrahamic god of Judaism, Christianity and Islam – “really intuitive and think that they are a common feature of religion, whereas really they’re not,” says Joseph Watts, a doctoral student in cultural evolution at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Gods in small-scale societies are “a lot more like humans,” he says. Think of the ancient Greek gods with their romantic entanglements, material concerns and arbitrary biases, for example.
According to one leading theory of the evolution of religion, small-scale societies don’t have big gods because there’s no community benefit to having deities concerned with moral behavior. In those cultures, there’s no anonymity. Your neighbors, friends and family are always watching and judging and the danger of a damaged reputation is enough to keep you on the straight and narrow. As societies get larger, there are more opportunities to break bad – steal from complete strangers, for example – and fewer and fewer direct social consequences for doing so. But if everyone took advantage of those newfound opportunities to break the rules, big societies would collapse before they even got started.
That’s where the big gods come in. Gods that are omniscient, concerned with people’s moral behavior, and capable of punishing transgressions in life or after death put believers on their best behavior and make it easier for large groups of strangers to live and work cooperatively. Thus, the thinking goes, a shared belief in moralizing high gods can help a society grow larger and more complex by encouraging cooperation and other pro-social behavior.
Of course, it’s difficult to prove for sure how religions evolved without going back in time and seeing the process in action. But the big gods idea does make at least one testable prediction: that moralizing religions should appear before complex societies. To test which came first, a team of scientists led by Watts analyzed data about religion and political complexity from Austronesia, a group of related cultures indigenous to islands throughout Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. They collected the earliest known ethnographic data about 96 cultures, ranging from islands in the Philippines and Indonesia to Easter Island. They designated each culture as either low complexity (no political leadership or simple chiefdoms) or high complexity (anything from complex chiefdoms to full-blown states), and then examined their religious beliefs. Moralizing high gods were defined as beings that created the cosmos, were active in human affairs and invested in morality. Supernatural punishment was a bit more flexible: any being or process that monitored and punished behavior deemed selfish in the community. The researchers also borrowed statistical techniques from genetic evolution to reconstruct family trees of Austronesian cultures, which gave them an idea of when the various religious and political traits likely arose in different societies.
Full-blown moralizing high gods were rare in Austronesia; out of the 96 cultures studied, Watts’s team identified only six with big gods, and the family trees suggested that these beliefs were more likely to arise after societies became politically complex – contradicting the idea that moralizing high gods are necessary for this kind of social development, Watts says. Belief in some sort of supernatural punishment – perhaps by ancestor spirits or nature deities – was more widespread. Thirty-seven cultures believed that deities could punish selfish behavior, such as forgoing a sacrifice or disobeying a taboo, the team reports online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Even though these punishing deities’ concerns were not necessarily moral, the statistics suggested that belief in them was more likely to predate political complexity in a culture, suggesting that it is the threat of supernatural punishment – not necessarily faith in moralizing gods – that helps societies grow larger. “I think there has been too much emphasis in the field of evolutionary religious studies on these kinds of moralizing high gods,” Watts says. In order to understand how religion functioned in the past, “we really need to look at different kinds of supernatural agents and different kinds of religious features.”
When it comes to this idea, Watts has a somewhat surprising supporter: Ara Norenzayan, a psychologist who studies the evolution of religion at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, in Canada. He’s the one who proposed the link between moralizing religions and political complexity in his 2013 book Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict, and since then his name has become practically synonymous with the theory. But, Norenzayan notes, “there’s a lot more to religion than moralizing gods.” All-powerful supernatural creators like the Abrahamic god are “at the extreme end of the spectrum” when it comes to beliefs that promote large-scale cooperation and social complexity. Certain rituals and beliefs like karma can also encourage pro-social behavior “without necessarily invoking big gods.”
Especially in small societies like the ones in Austronesia, “what you’d expect is actually a gradual ramping up in moral concern and supernatural surveillance among the smaller gods, which is what their data seem to suggest,” agrees Edward Slingerland, a historian at UBC who works with Norenzayan on the evolution of religion. The article “is a huge improvement” over past work on the evolution of religion “in terms of how they’re dealing scientifically with the cultural material,” Slingerland says. “It seems like they’ve done a really sophisticated and thorough job in trying to render this qualitative data into something quantitative.”Source: Lizzie Wade, Science, March 4, 2015.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 8, 2015 1:12:50 GMT -5
Like Madeline, I watched the wrong video, although I cannot imagine how it happened. I have since watched the series and it is an accurate representation of the demographic makeup of the state of Maine and I have no problems with it. For those who might not know, the population of Maine consists of 94.4% white, 1.3% Hispanic, 1.1% black, 0.6% American Indian, 1.0% Asian and 1.4% mixture of 2 or more races. There were no minorities in either the elementary and high school I attended and while there were a miniscule number of scholarship students of other races at Bowdoin, I did not know any of them personally and seldom saw them.
My original post: I was born in Maine and have never lived anywhere else. In the Boothbay Harbor region where I live, less than 1% of the population is black, so I was also disappointed when "Ragged Isles" introduced all these blacks for the sake of political correctness. True, it was no "Dark Shadows," however, I did watch it, but the blacks ruined it for me because it tossed realism out the window. The same thing happened in the 2002 remake of "Carrie," in which a black girl was cast in the role of Susan Snell. If people want political correctness, they shouldn't set their movies, shows, or whatever, in Maine!
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Post by Joanna on Mar 8, 2015 0:16:01 GMT -5
Recognizing Munchausen by ProxyWHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – Feeding tubes are usually recommended by pediatricians, for very premature babies and children with serious illnesses or disabilities – when they can't properly absorb nutrients or have difficulty swallowing. To this day, it's not clear how Lacey Spears (above), 27, convinced an Alabama surgeon to insert a gastric feeding tube into her son's stomach before he was a year old, after doctors at another hospital refused, saying it wasn't needed. What is now clear is this: Spears used the plastic tube as a murder weapon.
"The motive is bizarre, the motive is scary, but it exists," prosecutor Patricia Murphy said in closing arguments at Spears' murder trial. "She apparently craved the attention of her family, her friends, her co-workers and most particularly the medical profession." Without calling it by name, Murphy was describing Munchausen syndrome by proxy – a form of child abuse in which a parent, usually a mother, sickens a child on purpose for sympathy or attention. The syndrome was never formally introduced during the trial, but cast a shadow over the case from the beginning.
Convicted Monday of second-degree murder in the death of 5-year-old Garnett, Spears poisoned her son with salt. The case's "smoking gun" turned out to be a feeding bag Spears asked a friend to take from her Chestnut Ridge apartment when Garnett was declared brain dead from sodium poisoning January 22, 2014. He died the following day. Garnett's doctors testified they could find no medical explanation for the sodium spikes that killed him. Residue in the feeding bag contained the equivalent of 69 McDonald's salt packets, prosecutors said.
In and out of hospitals since he was born, Garnett's short, tragic life was marked by frequent moves and more frequent illnesses – vaguely explained problems treated by doctors who usually made decisions based on Spears' version of her son's medical history, without the benefit of his actual medical records.
According to Garnett's New York state child fatality report, medical authorities in Spears' native Alabama, where her son was born, were concerned for her "emotional stability" and "presumed she suffered from Postpartum Depression and Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy."
As Garnett turned 5, authorities have suggested Spears may have worried that he would tell others that she did things to make him sick. If a parent with Munchausen syndrome by proxy is questioned by a suspicious nurse or doctor, experts say, the risk of medical abuse for the child increases. "That's the most dangerous time for the child," said Louisa J. Lasher, a Georgia child welfare expert who wrote the book, Munchausen by Proxy: Identification, Intervention and Case Management, on the subject and has served as an expert witness at many Munchausen trials. "Once someone starts asking questions, the mother is in the position where she wants to prove what she is saying is true. She wants to show that the child is having the problems she is describing." If their versions of a child's medical history and symptoms are challenged, as was the case with Spears, a parent with this disorder may switch doctors or hospitals, move, or step up the abuse.
In hindsight, experts say, Spears displayed classic signs of Munchausen – lying compulsively, exaggerating Garnett's illnesses on social media, offering vague explanations of his symptoms, inaccurate depictions of his medical history and moving frequently. The feeding tube Garnett had most of his life and the parade of doctors and hospitals at which his mother sought treatment for her son, also point to the syndrome. "They only use their child as an object, a tool to satisfy their own needs," Lasher said.
Much of the saga began as it ended – with questions about the feeding tube. "That's an avenue for medical chaos," said Marc D. Feldman, M.D., an Alabama psychiatrist who has written extensively about Munchhausen syndrome. "A feeding tube is a real red flag." The tube was inserted in 2009 at Birmingham Children's Hospital in Alabama after doctors at Decatur General Hospital refused to do so. Albert Chong, M.D., conducted the 15-minute procedure – one of 800 to 1,000 he estimated he did that year. "I don't remember him or the mom at all," Chong said, adding that he never sought Garnett's medical records.
A series of doctors in Alabama, Florida and New York questioned the need for the tube, including Ivan Darenkov, M.D., a pediatric gastroenterologist, who in 2013, treated Garnett in Middletown. Darenkov said the medical history Spears provided was scant. He pressed her about the tube and for Garnett's medical records, which she never provided. "I couldn't get the information," he said. "I never got the records about his first surgery, when the G-tube was put in. ... I did my own investigation and found no medical reason for his eating problems." Had he known the history, Darenkov said, "my approach to this patient would have been radically different."
Feldman said he was not surprised that Spears was not forthcoming with the records. "It's another red flag if the mother offers lots of different explanations for the absence of permission to access records," he said. "You have to wonder if she's concealing something." Spears' inconsistent stories and frequent hospital trips were enough to raise suspicions among medical professionals in Alabama, where a nurse called the state child protection agency, but a case was never opened. Spears then moved to Florida, where in 2011, state investigators described Garnett as an "intermediate risk" for neglect. "Mom smacks the child so he will cry and she can hug on him," one Florida report indicates. The case was closed and the report did not follow Spears north when she and Garnett moved to Chestnut Ridge.
While Garnett suffered, Spears cultivated a loyal, supportive group of social media followers by faithfully chronicling her son's many maladies. In photo-filled Facebook, Twitter and blog posts, Spears portrayed herself as a doting supermom who kept her chin up through an astonishing 23 trips to the hospital by Garnett's first birthday. She garnered more sympathy posting about "Blake," her "soul mate" and Garnett's supposed father, whom she described as a police officer who was killed in a car crash. Notably, there were no photos of him. Friends said they'd never seen Blake. Garnett's real father, garage-door installer Chris Hill, lives in Alabama.
Feldman, the psychiatrist, described Spears' social media activity as "Munchausen by Internet." He said doctors who suspect the syndrome commonly check their patients' Facebook or Twitter accounts, searching for exaggerated or misrepresented descriptions of a child's illness. "All that's involved is clicking into a support group and they find they can get a tremendous amount of sympathy and nurturing," Feldman said. "It's a conduit to an enormous audience."
Rewarded with prayers and encouragement from her followers, Spears continued her social media activity throughout Garnett's life. His "soul is already with the angels," she wrote when her son was declared brain dead. And on his final day, a final post: "Garnett the great journeyed onward today at 10:20 a.m.," wrote the mother who killed him.
"It has always been about Lacey," Murphy told the jury in her closing argument. "This case has never been about Garnett. It's all about Lacey. Mother of the year." The prosecution will seek the maximum prison term – 25 years to life – when Spears is sentenced on April 8.
This story was reported by Lee Higgins, Peter D. Kramer, Jane Lerner and Hoa Nguyen. It was written by Richard Liebson.
Munchausen. Munchausen syndrome is a type of factitious disorder in a person with a deep need for attention, i.e., is a serious psychiatric illness. People with the syndrome generally suffer from borderline personality disorder, a psychiatric condition marked by problems regulating emotions and thoughts, impulsive and reckless behavior and unstable relationships.
In Munchausen syndrome, a person exaggerates or fakes illnesses or gets ill or injured on purpose. In Munchausen by proxy, a caregiver exaggerates or fakes illnesses or deliberately sickens or injures an individual in his/her care. The disorder has been recognized since the 1950s and is named for Baron Hieronymus von Munchhausen, an 18th-century German military officer known for exaggerating the stories of his experiences.
Signs of Munchausen by proxy include:
• A child who often is hospitalized with unusual and unexplained symptoms that seem to go away when the caregiver is not present.
• Symptoms that don't match the child's test results.
• Symptoms that worsen at home but improve while the child is under medical care.
• Drugs or chemicals in the child's blood or urine.
• Siblings who died under strange circumstances.
• A caregiver who is overattentive to the child and overly willing to comply with health care workers.
• A caregiver who is a nurse or who works in the health care field.Source: Lee Higgins, Peter D. Kramer, Jane Lerner, Hoa Nguyen, Richard Liebson and Marc D. Feldman, M.D., The Journal News, White Plains, N.Y., March 7, 2015.The following is taken from "Garnett's Journey," Lacey Spears' blog:
Mommy Where Is My Daddy? Like any other morning in our home I stood at the kitchen sink somewhere between 1am & 3am washing dishes. It was something that had to be done so the time meant nothing. I peered through the kitchen window to see my son peacefully sitting in his "rock chair" watching cartoons! Yes thats right 1 in the morning & he is awake. He decides when we start our day, I peacefully accepted that there will be a day when he sleeps but for now we enjoy our EARLY mornings! Thinking about what needed to be done that day & how to make our errans, doctor visits, whatever it may be as fun & peaceful for Garnett I was lost in though only be drown back to reality when a little hand pulled on my shorts and said "Mommy where is MY DADDY?" Now I had spent sometime ponding how I would answer this question. And this wasnt the 1st time he had ask but I knew until I felt safe aswering him he would continue to ask. Do I give details, do I tell him the truth or do I "butter it up" for him. As a parent we want to protect our child from anything that could harm or hurt them so aswering this simple question was a challange but I had finally found a way to explain to Garnett just "where" his daddy was. I placed the dish I was washing in the sink, dried my hands, bent down to his level so he would know I was fully connected to him. I looked my son in the face and said "your daddy is in you. He is in your ears, eyes, nose, arms, legs, heart & soul. Your daddy is half of you & mommy is the other half." I thought to myself "ok I answered him" Garnett just peered at me for a moment & with a sweet, blissful voice replied "AWESOME" and ran off!!! Awesome I thought, how could someone at such a young age find that awesome, nevertheless he thought it was awesome & for today he is pleased & at peace with my answer. I know the day will come when Garnett ask again where is daddy is but for today he thinks its awesome that his daddy is in his "ears, eyes, mouth, nose, arrm" No matter where Garnett's father is he will always be in him & he will always be apart of him!!!
See also: whatliesbeyond.boards.net/thread/3390/mother-craving-attention-uses-salt
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Post by Joanna on Mar 5, 2015 1:32:37 GMT -5
Disappearance of The People's Court DefendantMichelle Parker (above left) has been missing since November 2011, but police and her family have not given up on their search for the Orlando woman. Parker disappeared on the day that her episode of The People’s Court (filmed during the summer of 2011) aired on television. On the episode, Parker faced off with her ex-fiancé, Dale Smith II (right), who had sued her over a lost engagement ring, which Smith claimed she threw from a hotel balcony during a heated, alcohol-fueled argument. "He gets pretty malicious and vindictive. He's a mean person, especially when he's drinking," Parker told Judge Marilyn Milian during the proceedings. Nevertheless, Parker lost the case and was ordered to pay Smith $2,500 – half the value of the ring. Smith is a person of interest in Parker’s disappearance, but has not been charged. Smith claims he is innocent and is currently raising the twins Parker gave birth to out of wedlock.
Two months after Parker’s disappearance, police released video footage showing her as she sits at a drive-through window at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Fern Park just three hours before she dropped off her 3-year-old twins at Smith’s home.
Michelle Parker was born January 20, 1978, and was 33 when she went missing. She is described as 5'6"-tall, approximately 140 pounds, and has brown hair and eyes. In addition to the twins fathered by Smith, Parker is also the mother of a 14-year-old son from a prior relationship; the boy lives in another state with his father.
Last week, police decided to revisit Michelle Parker’s disappearance as part of a training exercise. One hundred officers searched an area that had been searched not long after the woman’s disappearance. Her cell phone last pinged in the area about two weeks after she went missing. The location is also near the former home of her ex-fiancé, according to Fox Orlando. Police searched an area of Belle Isle near Orlando International Airport. Michelle’s mother, Yvonne Stewart, did not initially reveal what police were looking as they searched the area for three hours Friday, but a report from the Mail Online revealed law enforcement officers were looking for a missing decal that might have been taken from Parker’s Hummer on the day she disappeared. The black SUV was found at an apartment complex near the Mall at Millenia.
The search did not turn up any new evidence, and this was difficult for the missing woman’s family. Mrs. Stewart, and Michelle’s father, Brad Parker, were both present during the search. Michelle’s mother said: “I don’t like it. It makes me angry that we have to go through this all the time because it’s really painful and hard ... It’s agony not knowing what happened to your child. They thought they should go back and take a look at these woods.”
Brad Parker also spoke out concerning his daughter’s disappearance and he has not given up hope that she will be found alive. He asked anyone having information about her disappearance to come forward when he spoke to the media. “They’re trying to find [out] what happened to Michelle and the FBI is on it, too. So, it’s just a matter of time when we’re going to find out what happened to Michelle. If you know something say something. Somebody knows something. Just like they said, it was just not one person. There were three or four people involved in Michelle’s disappearance.” Parker also revealed that police plan to search the wetland area again when it goes dry. Sources: The Inquisitr, March 3, 2015; WKMG, and ABC News.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 3, 2015 23:32:41 GMT -5
US/UK Admit Vet Suffers from UFO Radiation ExposureA US Air Force veteran believes a UFO incident he experienced while on duty in 1980 is the root of his current health problems. However, initially the government denied he was on active duty at the time. With the help of a lawyer and US Senator John McCain’s office, his records have been corrected and he has received his full medical disability. He and his lawyer now claim their victory represents the “U.S. government’s de facto acknowledgment of the existence of UFOs.”
John Burroughs (above) was serving as an Air Force police officer at Royal Air Force Base (RAF) Bentwaters, near the Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, England, in December 1980 when the UFO incident took place. The base, along with its sister base, RAF Woodbridge, were on lease to the United States.
Late on the night of the fateful incident, lights were seen in the forest and Burroughs and several other security personnel were sent out to investigate. They saw a bright light that grew brighter as they approached. It then flew off into the night sky. The next night, the lights were seen again. Skeptical of the whole affair and eager to figure out what he assumed was a prosaic answer to the sightings, Deputy Base Commander Charles Halt took a group of men out again. This group included Burroughs and this time the entire group saw lights flying around the forest. Some of these orbs of light beamed rays of light on the ground near the men’s feet and on nearby munitions storage. The event became a huge story in the UK and is debated to this day.
Burroughs, who, along with an airman named James Penniston, got closest to the object, feels his health issues stem from his proximity to the UFO. He has since found a document that was created by UK Defense Intelligence that also speculates this could be the case. A section of the report that covers UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) – another term for UFO – radiation, speculates: ”The well-reported Rendlesham Forest/Bentwaters event is an example where it might be postulated that several observers were probably exposed to UAP radiation for longer than normal UAP sighting periods.” Burroughs has since suffered congestive heart failure, which he says he has been told by scientists can be caused by radiation exposure.
While living in Arizona, Burroughs sought to get his medical records from the Air Force to help his doctor diagnose his problems. However, he was told he was not in the service at that time. Burroughs sought the help of a lawyer familiar with Veterans Affairs (VA) cases and Senator John McCain’s office. McCain’s office was able to get his military records corrected, but, according to Burroughs and his lawyer Pat Frascogna, McCain’s office was not confident he would ever get his medical records.
In an Open Minds UFO Radio interview with Frascogna, he said it was not unusual that someone who worked on classified projects in the military would have records withheld. He said in these cases the military typically settles and grants disability. However, these are individuals who knowingly worked on classified projects. Burroughs was not working on classified projects, however, the government is not required to explain why military records have been classified or by whom.
At the recent 2015 International UFO Congress, Burroughs and Frascogna announced that, as Frascogna predicted, Burroughs was granted full medical disability. However, they say his medical records remain classified. To Burroughs and Frascogna, the granting of the benefits signifies an admission by the VA and Department of Defense (DOD) that his health issues stem from his years in the service. Furthermore, they believe it is an admission his illnesses result from his close proximity to a UFO.
In a press release titled “U.S. Government’s De Facto Acknowledgement of the Existence of UFOs,” Burroughs writes: "In January of 2015, after years of exhaustive efforts the VA settled, in full, with me. I needed someone to champion my cause, someone not afraid to put themselves at risk to help me. I was lucky. I found two to champion my cause, my attorney Pat Frascogna, and Senator John McCain and his staff. Through their efforts, I received lifesaving heart surgery to replace a badly shredded anterior mitral valve caused by the UAP radiation, and a settlement from the DOD and VA admitting I was injured in the line of duty in December of 1980."
Although this story has a happy ending, Burroughs and Frascogna say they aren’t finished looking into what really happened in the Rendlesham Forest in 1980 and what the UK and US governments know about it.
Burroughs has submitted several Freedom of Information Act Requests in the UK and US. He has already been able to get the UK to admit there are more UFO files to release, even though it was previously claimed that all had been relased. He also says he is confident he will receive additional files from the US government that have not been available to the public before.
The Rendlesham Forest incident is often referred to as UK’s Roswell and like its American counterpart, is the gift that keeps on giving with alleged new discoveries coming to light on a regular basis.
For his work in getting the UK government to admit there were additional UFO files to be released and the discovery of the UK Defense Intelligence document speculating the witnesses to the Rendlesham Forest Incident had been exposed to UAP (UFO) radiation, Burroughs was awarded the UFO Researcher of the Year award at the 2015 International UFO Congress.Source: Alejandro Rojas, OpenMinds, March 3, 2015.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 3, 2015 23:06:59 GMT -5
Lacey Spears and son Garnett Mother Uses Salt to Kill 5-Year-Old SonIn the fall of 2009, a young mother with a very sick child logged onto Twitter and began to vent her anguish. Lacey Spears’s son, whom she called “Garnett the Great” and “my little prince,” was sick again. “Hoping Garnett does have to be put in the hospital,” she wrote one November day. Then two days later, she wrote: “My sweet angel is in the hospital for the 23rd time.”
During the five years he lived, Garnett Spears would end up in the hospital many more times. His sicknesses were many: severe ear infections, high fevers, seizures, digestive problems. But the causes of his many illnesses remained unclear until his final days when doctors noticed a lethal amount of sodium choking his system. A doctor took Spears aside at the hospital. Those levels, the doctor reportedly said, were “metabolically impossible. ... Something isn’t right.”
Despite suspicions, the young woman at first seemed beyond duplicity. All one had to do was check her social media pages and blog to find how much she loved her son. The sites were festooned with messages that conveyed a dogged, resilient woman who somehow remained positive despite her son’s travails. Spears gushed emotion like a geyser: “Work with my Little Prince!!! Couldn’t be a better day!!! ... Its [sic] about my sweet baby boy & me … If anything else is meant to be it will be!!! ... My son is my everything!!! I love him so much.”
The confounding tale of her son’s strange demise came to a chilling resolution inside a Westchester County, N.Y., courtroom Monday when a jury convicted Spears of poisoning her child to death with heavy concentrations of sodium, which she administered through his stomach tube. The defense and prosecution presented irreconcilable portraits of the 28-year-old woman of Scottsville, Kentucky. To her defenders, Spears was a dutiful mother caring for a very ill boy. To prosecutors, her motives were callous and calculated. She intended to make Garnett sick and her actions were “nothing short of torture.”
“The motive is bizarre, the motive is scary, but it exists,” Patricia Murphy, assistant district attorney, said during her closing argument, according to the New York Times. “She apparently craved the attention of her family, her friends, her co-workers and, most particularly, the medical profession.”
The seemingly incongruous portraits of Lacey Spears make sense, experts suggest, when filtered through the prism of a rare psychological syndrome called Munchausen-by-proxy, a disorder in which a caretaker or guardian purposely does harm to a child to attract sympathy and attention. “These mothers tend to be psychopathic,” Marc Feldman of the University of Alabama told CBS New York. “They don’t experience guilt and they lack empathy.” But even this assessment, defense attorney Stephen Riebling said, doesn’t completely jibe with Spears’s actions. When her child was in the throes of his final sickness, hospital video captured one scene in which she put socks on her son’s feet when no one was around to see. “If she’s planning on killing him, why does she care whether his feet are cold?” he asked. The answer could be that she never intended to kill him. She just wanted to make him sick.
Is this possible? “The purpose is not to kill the child but to keep her sick, so that the mother can be in a relationship with the doctor, who would recognize her devotion, knowledge and sacrifice,” psychiatrist Herbert Schreier of Children’s Hospital Oakland once told Psychology Today, speaking generally rather than about any particular case.
Spears’s lawyer did not use the syndrome as a defense in the trial and the subject did not come up in testimony, except during expert commentary in the media reports concerning her case. The child fatality report after the death reflected concern for Lacey Spears’s “emotional stability and it was presumed she suffered from Postpartum Depression and Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy,” Hudson Valley’s Journal-News reported.
The syndrome has a long and contested history marked by adaptations to new technologies. Originally conceived as Munchausen syndrome, which describes someone who fabricates illnesses to curry sympathy with the medical community, a new branch of the disorder was introduced in a 1977 paper in the British medical journal the Lancet. Calling it the “hinterland of child abuse,” the article described patients who “by falsification, caused their children innumerable harmful hospital procedures.” The syndrome came under criticism when the author of that study, a well-known British pediatrician named Roy Meadow, offered a wildly inaccurate statistical analysis during the trial of a woman suspected of having the disorder. His debunked assessment contributed to a lengthy prison sentence from which she later walked free and caused some to dispute his work. It just seemed too outlandish. Why on Earth would a woman purposely sicken her child?
But anecdotes kept coming. In 1999, a Florida woman was convicted of aggravated child abuse after she intentionally sickened her child and made her go through 40 pointless surgeries, reviving the specter of Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
For those afflicted by the syndrome, Feldman said, social media offers an almost irresistible avenue for sympathy. He called this additional vein of the illness “Munchausen by Proxy by Internet.” In the journal Child Abuse and Neglect, he described one woman he named “Ms. A,” who joined an online community for pregnant women with a tale of woe. She claimed to have five children – two sets of twins and a niece she cared for after her sister’s death. One of them, she told the group, was sick with gastroesophageal reflux and celiac disease. “Online friends offered sympathy and support,” but the whole thing was a ruse. “Ms. A” was actually a childless 21-year-old woman who “appeared to covet sympathy engendered by her deceptions.”
Similarly, Spears’s active online life turned out to be fantasy. On her blog, “Garnett’s Journey,” she invented Garnett’s deceased father, Blake, and spoke of doctor’s visits her behavior may have caused. But she could overcome the challenges, she promised, with the support of friends. “Healing takes courage,” she wrote, “and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it.”Sources: Terrence McCoy, The Washington Post, March 3, 2015, Shawn Cohen and Peter D. Kramer, Lower Hudson, June 18, 2014; and The Hudson Valley Journal-News.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 3, 2015 1:53:51 GMT -5
Adam and Samira Frasch Did the Doctor Murder His Exotic Wife?TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – As soon as he entered the screened-pool area at the Golden Eagle manse the morning of Saturday, February 22, 2014, Gerald Gardner knew something was wrong. First, the maintenance man saw Samira Fraschs little white dog running around the enclosure where it didn’t belong. The bichon frise normally stayed in the bathroom connected to the house, but the door was ajar. Then he saw the gem-studded black sandals in the water, one caught under a hose on the first step, another in the shallow end. And there she was – Dr. Adam Frasch’s exotic third wife, Samira, lying on her back submerged at the bottom of the deep end of the pool, motionless and naked, save for an open leopard-print robe still tied around her waist. Gardner ran to the front of the house at 8374 Inverness Drive and called 911 on his cell phone. “She’s dead,” the 41-year-old told dispatchers. “She’s completely gone.” Leon County deputy Richard Womble arrived shortly after the 11:02 a.m. call. As he led the deputy to the pool, Gardner said: “He killed her, he did it.”
A year later, Frasch – once a jet-setting Thomasville (Georgia) podiatrist with a passion for gambling, fast cars and women – sits in a cell at the Leon County Jail awaiting trial on a charge of killing his 38-year-old wife of five years, a Madagascar native with a thick French accent, ostentatious taste and murky past. While Frasch, 47, was long considered the prime suspect – the couple’s volatile relationship was well-known to friends and well-documented in court filings – it took prosecutors almost nine months to bring the case before a grand jury and he was indicted for first-degree murder in November 2014.
Investigative reports, recently shared with Frasch’s defense team by the state attorney’s office and obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat under Florida’s open records law, provide insight into the tawdry case of infidelity and excess. The documents, which include dozens of witness interviews, the autopsy report and investigators’ findings, reveal previously undisclosed details concerning events surrounding the death of Samira, who was in the process of divorcing her husband. Ultimately, the reports indicate prosecutors may argue the discovery of a sex video of Frasch and one of his girlfriends led to a final fight between husband and wife. Frasch’s lead defense attorney, Clyde Taylor, says the prosecution’s case is based on circumstantial evidence and the pretrial investigation reports are notable for the information they lack.
The autopsy report indicates Samira died as the result of drowning and blunt head trauma – she had a large bruise on the right side of her forehead and a skull fracture – but it doesn’t pinpoint her exact time of death. Notes from one of the firefighters who pulled her from the 58-degree water said her fingertips didn’t appear to have been submerged for long. Based on her appearance, first responders decided to begin CPR, which continued for 45 minutes to no avail.
Frasch, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, does not deny spending the previous night with Samira. The investigation reveals he left the house more than two hours before her body was found. He was seen departing in the same clothing he wore the previous day and a neighbor on a walk reported seeing a woman who resembled Samira outside the house after Frasch was gone. “Lawyers say all the time that their client is not guilty,” said Taylor, who expects to go to trial this year, although a date has not been set. “[But] I’ve been practicing criminal defense law for over 35 years and truly am looking forward to Dr. Frasch’s day in court.”
Like the case itself, Frasch’s year-long odyssey in the criminal justice system has had unexpected twists and turns. While not formally accused of killing his wife until three months ago, Frasch spent almost all of 2014 behind bars on child custody charges after he took the couple’s 2-year-old and 10-month-old daughters to Panama City Beach the morning of his wife’s death. When he was arrested by Bay County deputies around 4 p.m. that day at a home he owns there, the girls were strapped into their car seats and Frasch – who said he took them at his wife’s request so she could rest – was packing his Black Yukon. He said he had just learned from a friend about his wife’s death and was headed back to Tallahassee. Prosecutors say he was preparing to flee.
After his arrest, Frasch was released for a few weeks as part of a pretrial agreement. He was jailed a second time when federal authorities investigating him for Medicare fraud discovered guns in his medical office in violation of the agreement.
The slow-moving custody case was further delayed in July when Frasch was deemed mentally incompetent to assist in his defense because of an apparent untreated bipolar disorder. After months of medication in jail, he was allowed to proceed. Prosecutors attempted to have him charged with second-degree murder to keep him in custody, but a judge found the evidence insufficient. The custody charges were resolved, and on October 30, he was released from jail.
That day, Frasch wrote an open letter to the “People of Tallahassee.” In the rambling missive, he condemned his treatment by prosecutors, complained about jail conditions, lamented the loss of his wife and criticized the narrow focus of her death investigation. “I did not murder the mother of my two babies,” he wrote.
After hearing from prosecutors and Frasch during a closed-door gathering a week later, grand jurors deemed otherwise. Frasch has been in jail ever since. The children have been living with his family in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Frasches’ relationship was fraught with discord from the start. Adam Frasch was married to his second wife, Tracey Ellinor, when he met Samira in the summer of 2006 during Fashion Week in Paris. She purported to be a high-fashion model. Her obituary, penned by Frasch, calls her a “retired super model,” but there is scant evidence the 5-foot-7 woman scaled the heights of the European fashion world.
The two carried on a long-distance relationship for three years while Frasch battled Ellinor in a nasty divorce. Contemptuous of lawyers and convinced of his superior intelligence, he represented himself during the proceedings. Frasch’s performance was so disastrous, the judge, in a written order, questioned “his grasp on reality.”
Adam and Samira married in 2009 in Las Vegas. She got her affairs overseas in order and moved to Tallahassee in the spring of 2010. She soon learned her new husband had fathered a child by another woman in her absence. Devastated, Samira claimed she suffered a miscarriage, court documents revealed. She threatened to divorce Frasch and he leveled against her the first of several domestic-violence allegations he would continue to make throughout their marriage, though she said he was the one who meted out the abuse. That back-and-forth pattern characterized, what one of his friends called, their “love-hate relationship.”
The two reconciled before the 2011 birth of their first daughter, whom Samira spent much of her time grooming to be a child celebrity. The couple had another daughter, but the happy times didn’t last. In August 2013, they had a series of big blowouts in which he said she attacked him, hit him in the head with a statue and tried to run him off the road. She was arrested, but the charges were dropped. A month later, she filed for divorce, citing his abuse, excessive gambling and adultery. The move sent Frasch into a tailspin. He begged her in long strings of alternately loving and cruel text messages to change her mind. She didn’t. In December, two months before her death, a judge granted her sole temporary possession of the Golden Eagle home and custody of their two daughters.
Samira began telling friends and neighbors she feared for her life. She parked her white Hummer on the front lawn – to the chagrin of residents in her upscale gated north Tallahassee subdivision – so she could make a dash with the girls for the front door. Samira told her two hairdressers, her assistant and even the Golden Eagle Homeowner’s Association managers that her husband had threatened to kill her. Six months earlier, Frasch said the same thing about her.
Master bedroom in Frasch home After 40 years of practice, Buddy Whitlock, Samira’s divorce attorney, started carrying a gun because he, too, feared Frasch. “I think he is capable of doing anything,” Whitlock said at the time. “You could tell he was an intelligent guy, but kind of a loose cannon.”
Frasch told investigators and others the couple had been trying to work things out. But two weeks before Samira’s death, the Frasches five-year fire-and-ice saga intensified, the investigation showed. On February 7, while driving back from Thomasville, Samira claimed Frasch ran her off the road. Her assistant, following with the children in another car, confirmed her story, but a friend riding with Frasch told investigators Samira was the instigator.
Two days later, she had 14 of Frasch’s vehicles, including a silver Corvette, black Cadillac Escalade and white Mercedes, towed from the driveway of the Golden Eagle house. She was panic-stricken that Frasch would show up before the job was done, said a neighbor who spoke with her. “They’ve got to go faster than this,” Samira told the woman. “They’re just taking too long to get these cars out of here.”
The same day (February 9, 2014), Frasch began paying for an exotic dancer named Erica Tidwell, one of his three known girlfriends at the time, to stay at a Tallahassee hotel on Village Green Way. She left a voicemail for Frasch, intercepted by Samira, asking for money to pay expenses. Sometime that week, hotel staff said, Samira came looking for Tidwell.
On Valentine’s Day, Frasch began paying for Tidwell’s room and went with a friend to retrieve a rental car he’d gotten for her to drive while the Range Rover he bought her was in the shop. Tidwell told investigators she had her brother in Fort Walton Beach come get her.
Two days later, the Frasches were in Miami on a family trip. They returned to Tallahassee mid-week and the relative calm appeared to hold until Friday, February 21. This is when investigators were able to determine Samira used her phone to search Tidwell’s name on the internet and began texting the woman’s husband, informing him of the affair. The phone was found approximately six months later, tucked into a diaper bag Frasch took with him to Panama City Beach the day Samira died.
Frasch gave different accounts of what happened during the final hours he spent with his wife. In all his versions, the last day started out fine with the couple searching in vain for someone to groom the dog, then dropping off Samira’s car for an oil change, before taking the children to lunch at Jonah’s in Thomasville. Then things started falling apart. In one interview with an LCSO deputy, Frasch said Samira became angry about a missing purse and other belongings. They drove to his office, to another house he owns in Tallahassee – where she found a bag of lingerie, which she said was for someone else – and, finally, to the Panama City House late that afternoon to look for her items. Samira, he said, was still mad after they picked up her car and returned to Golden Eagle with the girls about 11 p.m. He said she told him he wouldn’t be staying there that night, but she “calmed down a bit” and he helped put the girls to bed. Samira, he said, drank two bottles of champagne – a trigger for her violent rages, according to him – but was “not too bad.”
Though Frasch was rarely ever alone with the girls – Samira kept them close, especially after he briefly took them early in their divorce – he told investigators she asked him to take them the next day to give her a break. They had sex in the living room, he said, and went to bed at 2 a.m. Two hours later, however, she was awake. She was drinking more, he claimed, and had looked at his phone and confronted him about a recent relationship he said was over. The next morning, Frasch said he got up, fed the dog, gathered the girls and loaded his car. He removed leaves from the pool with the skimmer, noticed a strung-out hose and left while Samira was still asleep.
But as he was driving and after he arrived in Panama City, Frasch told several people he and Samira fought over the video of him and an ex-girlfriend having sex. He told his neighbor at the beach the girlfriend sold the tape to Samira for $4,000, according to investigative reports. Investigators have been unable to locate the recording.
On the way out of town, Frasch called Martha Moore, the woman he had been seeing when he and Samira were first married. The two no longer had a romantic relationship, but he was involved with their 3-year-old daughter. He told her he was going to come by her house and check on her car, but she, too, was on the road to see family in south Florida. Frasch told Moore he had his and Samira’s children with him and was planning to take them to South Beach in Miami. He said Samira had been drinking a lot and he was trying to give her a break. Moore said Frasch sounded very calm – so uncharacteristically calm, in fact, that she mentioned to her mother he seemed to be “having a really good day.”
Frasch claims he has no idea what happened to Samira. He said he didn’t learn of her death until a friend called minutes before he was arrested. The friend said he broke down and he heard one of the girls in the background ask, “Why are you crying, daddy?”
Frasch has suggested that after the night of drinking, she could have tripped on the loose hose while chasing the dog around the pool. Samira didn’t know how to swim and was afraid of the water. From the outset, Frasch said Gardner, the maintenance man, may have been involved. Samira, he said, fawned over the man, trying to make him jealous.
Toxicology reports, however, show Samira had no alcohol in her system. Tests conducted on her fleece leopard-print robe tested positive for DNA from another person, but it did not match Gardner, nor his 14-year-old son, who was with him when they discovered the body. DNA comparisons also have cleared Tidwell and another of Frasch’s paramours. His friends who disliked Samira have also been ruled out – as has Frasch himself.
Most people who knew the couple said they never actually saw them become physically violent. Some of his closest friends said the 6-foot-3, 240-pound man would never harm her, let alone kill her. But Daphne Frasch, a nurse and the eldest of his six children by four different women, told investigators her father had a bad temper. Under the right circumstances, in a manic state, she thought him capable of hurting Samira.
A witness who contacted investigators revealed Frasch asked him to get rid of all the golf clubs from the garage of the Golden Eagle home. Frasch reportedly said he thought they were still there because law enforcement officials hadn’t mentioned them. He instructed the man not to sell or give the clubs away but to toss them in a lake or river. “Just make them disappear,” Frasch said, according to the witness.
Minutes after he was arrested on the custody charges, Frasch provided a disjointed first statement to law enforcement. In it, he ricocheted from point to point, mentioning Gardner, his cars being towed, his legal battles with Samira and problems he had with his previous wife. He went on about Samira’s being an unstable, violent drunk, then, after deputies confirmed the news, he castigated himself for not teaching her to swim. Frasch, who had a scratch under his eye which he said came from one of his children, buried his face in his hands for several minutes and appeared to be crying, Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special agent Kristen Cortes noted in her report. “But when he pulled his hands from his face,” she wrote, “he had no tears for all the crying he was doing.”
At the end of that first interview, Bay County Sgt. Chad King asked Frasch directly if he had anything to do with what happened. He said no, but offered: “If it was foul play, I want to know what happened.” Twice during the interview, he said, “I loved her to death.”Source: Jennifer Portman, The Tallahassee Democrat, March 1, 2015.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 1, 2015 19:27:31 GMT -5
Child Recalls Past Life as Woman Who Died in FireCLEVELAND, Ohio – Do you believe in past lives? An Ohio family says they didn’t until their young son began making some startling claims. At just 2-years-old, Luke Ruehlman (above) was unusually concerned about safety. His mother says he was always worried about things like crossing the street or whether something was too hot to touch. Then, there was that other fixation. Her son named everything “Pam,” from his toys to his drawings. The family thought it strange, especially because they didn’t know anyone by that name. They chalked it up to just being one of Luke’s quirks – until his comments became increasingly peculiar. According to Mrs. Ruehlman, Luke would refer to when he was a girl and had black hair, “or he’d say, ‘I used have earrings like that when I was a girl.'”
Finally, the stay-at-home mom had enough. She demanded to know who “Pam” was. Luke’s answer changed their lives forever. “That’s when he turned to me and said, ‘Well, I was,” Ruehlman recalls. Luke reportedly continued, “Well, I used to be, but I died and I went up to heaven and I saw God, and eventually God pushed me back down and when I woke up, I was a baby and you named me Luke.”
Ruehlman asked her son how he died and where. He told her it was Chicago and he had been killed in a fire, falling from a tall building. An Internet search led Ruehlman to the Paxton Hotel in Chicago. In 1993, a fire there killed 19 people, including a woman named Pamela Robinson (inset). “Pam had jumped out of a window to her death,” Ruehlman says.
Robinson, an African-American woman in her 30s, had reportedly been staying at the hotel while she looked for work. Mrs. Ruehlman again went to her son for answers. “I said, Lukey, what color is Pam? and he looked at me like, duh, and said black. At that point, I was really weirded out.”
Searching for answers, the Ruehlmans agreed to work on a Lifetime Movie Network documentary showed called Ghost Inside My Child. Luke, then 5-years-old, was shown numerous pictures and asked if any looked familiar. Among the photos was a single picture of Pamela Robinson. Luke pointed to it.
The Ruehlmans eventually got in touch with some of Robinson’s surviving relatives. While they did not want to speak with the media, they did exchange some memories with the family.
Mrs. Ruehlman says they learned of other connections between Luke and Pamela, including a love of keyboards and Stevie Wonder music. However, once these connections were made, Luke stopped talking about Pam. “It was like he got it out. He was finished and had nothing more to say about it,” his mother claims.
Still, the Ruehlmans continue to tell Luke’s story. Whether others believe in past lives or not, Erika Ruehlman believes their experience is worth sharing, saying, “It’s a positive one. It is one of unification. It is one of love.”
Source: Melissa Riopka, WHNT News, February 24, 2015.
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Post by Joanna on Mar 1, 2015 19:07:21 GMT -5
19th Century Clyster Paraphernalia Bizarre Medical 'Cures' of the PastThe history of medicine is filled with stories of strange tonics, outlandish remedies and curious “cures” and following are 15 of the grossest and most bizarre:
Dead Mouse Paste. Who would put a dead mouse in their mouth? Ancient Egyptians did in the hope that doing so would ease toothache pain. In some cases, mashed mouse was blended with other ingredients and the resulting poultice was applied to the painful spot. Egyptians weren't the only ones big on mouse cures. In Elizabethan England, one remedy for warts was to cut a mouse in half and apply it to the offending spot. (The Elizabethans also ate mice – fried or baked in pies.) Mice were also used to treat whooping cough, measles, smallpox and bed-wetting.
Sheep Liver Diagnosis. With no blood tests or X-rays, how did ancient healers diagnose illness? In Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), practitioners made their diagnoses not by inspecting the patient, but by examining the livers of sacrificed sheep. At the time, the liver was thought to be the source of human blood and hence, the source of life itself. Clay models of sheep livers have been found dating as far back as 2050 BC.
Hemiglossectomy. What’s the best treatment for stuttering? Doctors in the 18th and 19th centuries often cut off half the stutter’s tongue. Hemiglossectomy is still done today, but as a treatment for oral cancer. And now, of course, it’s done under general anesthesia, which wasn't the case back in the day. And pain was the only problem, the treatment didn’t work,and some patients bled to death.
Crocodile Dung. Think condoms are a drag? In ancient Egypt, the contraceptive of choice was crocodile dung. Dried dung was inserted into the vagina, the idea being that it would soften as it reached body temperature to form an impenetrable barrier. Other contraceptive “pessaries” used back in the day included tree sap, lemon halves, cotton, wool, sea sponges and elephant dung.
Clysters. Clysters – the archaic word for enemas – are thought to have been used since ancient times. They were particularly fashionable from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Wealthy people used them to treat constipation (which enemas can help) as well as a variety of other complaints, for which they are useless. A typical clyster might contain warm water mixed with salt, baking soda or soap. Some doctors added coffee, bran, herbs, honey or chamomile to the mix. In high society, enemas became enormously popular among aristocratic hypochondriacs, who would take several scented enemas a day. During his time on the throne, Louis XIV of France is said to have had more than 2,000 enemas.
Powder of Sympathy. Seventeenth century medicine can seem a bit crazy to modern people, but perhaps nothing seems wackier than Sir Kenelm Digby's “Powder of Sympathy.” The powder was intended as a treatment for a very specific injury: rapier wounds. It was made of earthworms, pigs brains, iron oxide (rust) and bits of mummified corpses ground into a powder. The powder was applied not to the wound itself but to the offending weapon. Digby believed the strange concoction would somehow encourage the wound itself to heal via a process called “sympathetic magic.”
Arsenic. Today, arsenic may be a well-known poison, but for centuries it was used as a medicine – and still is to some degree. In traditional Chinese medicine, arsenic is known as Pi Shuang. Arsenic was also a key ingredient in many patent medicines, including Fowler's Solution, a purported cure for malaria and syphilis in use from the late 18th century until the 1950s. Another arsenic-containing patent medicine, Donovan’s Solution, was used to treat arthritis and diabetes. Victorian women also used arsenic as a cosmetic.
Moldy Bread. Moldy bread has been used to disinfect cuts as far back as ancient Egypt. But what may sound crazy makes some sense. As Louis Pasteur famously discovered, certain fungi are known to block the growth of disease-causing bacteria. Think penicillin.
Snake Oil. Snake oil hasn't always been a euphemism for quack medical treatments. For centuries, oil from the Chinese water snake was an actual treatment used in traditional Chinese medicine to relieve joint pain. In fact, it’s still used today. Snake oil seems to have been brought to America by Chinese laborers who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad. This was backbreaking work and the laborers are believed to have rubbed the oil on their aching joints. We know today that snakes are a rich source of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) an omega-3 fatty acid that has anti-inflammatory properties.
Urine Diagnosis. In Medieval Europe, doctors often diagnosed their patients on the basis of uroscopy. Sounds scientific, but it really amounted to nothing more than having a look at the patient’s urine. In fact, holding a flask of urine against the light was as much a symbol of medicine in Medieval times as a white coat and stethoscope are today. Some patients delivered a sample in person, while others simply sent the doc a sample. Doctors would observe the urine's smell, consistency – and even its taste.
Vin Mariani. In 1863, Italian chemist Angelo Mariani came up with a healing tonic containing red wine treated with coca leaves. Vin Mariani, as the brew was known, was a hit – perhaps not surprising, as coca leaves contain cocaine. Ads claimed the drink was endorsed by 8,000 doctors and was ideal for “overworked men, delicate women and sickly children.” It was enjoyed by Thomas Edison, Queen Victoria, the Czar of Russia, Pope Saint Pius X and Pope Leo XIII, who even appeared in an ad for the tonic and awarded it a gold medal. Vin Mariani sold briskly in the United States, where it helped inspire a certain John S. Pemberton to come up with a similar product called Coca-Cola.
Crystal Meth. Adolf Hitler was a hypochondriac and his doctor regularly injected him with vitamins – sometimes laced with methamphetamine (aka crystal meth). As one observer remarked, the injections helped keep Hitler “fresh, alert, active and immediately ready for the day ... cheerful, talkative, physically active and tending to stay awake long hours into the night.” Albert Speer considered the Furher's crystal meth addiction one reason for his rigid tactics in the later stages of World War II when he would refuse to allow troops to retreat even under the most dire circumstances.
Paraffin Wax. Today, doctors use Botox and collagen to rejuvenate faces. Back in the 19th century, some doctors used injections of paraffin to smooth out wrinkles. Paraffin was also injected into women's breasts in an early attempt at breast augmentation. But the practice fell out of favor – and for good reason. It caused formation of hard, painful lumps known as paraffinomas.
Gonads. In the early 1900s, John Brinkley became one of the richest doctors in America, despite having no medical qualifications. He claimed he could cure impotence, infertility and other sexual problems by surgically implanting goat testicles into a man’s scrotum. The surgery had no scientific merit, was extremely dangerous and many patients died.
Farts in a Jar. In the Middle Ages, some doctors believed “like cures like.” So when confronted by the Black Death – thought at the time to be caused by deadly vapors – they were convinced the key to fighting the disease was to use a bit of “therapeutic stink.” Some doctors and other “authorities” urged people to keep goats in the house. Others recommended flatulence stored in jars. Each time the deadly pestilence appeared in the neighborhood, people were to open the jars and take a whiff. Sounds funny now, but the plague was no joke. Between 1348 and 1350, it killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe's population, but, alas, the stinky jars did not help.Sources: Why You Should Store Your Farts in a Jar by David Haviland; and "Weird Cures of the Past," Strange History.
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