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Within modern medicine, a pressing concern looms; the care and well-being of our aging population. As the number of elderly individuals seeking medical attention continues to rise, healthcare professionals, particularly internists and family medicine specialists, find themselves faced with unique challenges in the diagnosis and management of geriatric patients. The specialized field of geriatrics demands a comprehensive understanding of the intricacies involved in providing top-tier care to the elderly. Without this expertise, there is a risk of suboptimal healthcare outcomes, diminished quality of life, and increased mortality rates. Difficulties and Challenges in Geriatric Health Managemen...
Ayahuasca often yields transformative experiences that merge such familiar categories as the sacred and the secular, transcendence and immanence, subject and object, and the human and the nonhuman. However, such experiences are interpreted differently by Western and indigenous discourses. Using the work of French philosopher Bruno Latour, André van der Braak asks fundamental ontological questions in order to reimagine ayahuasca as liquid divinity, shifting the focus from ayahuasca experiences to ayahuasca-based ritual practices that aim to cultivate relationships with more-than-human powers, described by Latour as "beings of transformation and religion." Ayahuasca as Liquid Divinity: An Ont...
An environmental history and political ecology of palm oil in colonial Brazil, the African diaspora, and the Atlantic World.
After a coup in 1964 that ousted Brazil’s leftist President João Goulart from power, a brutal military dictatorship took the reins of the state. As a result, elements of the persecuted Brazilian Communist Party split from a more peaceful, orthodox line and declared their intent to wage an insurgent war against the government, plunging the country into a conflagration of violence marked by cycles of urban bombings, political assassinations, institutional torture, kidnappings, and summary executions. Concrete Inferno relays this period in Brazil in a lucid narrative history, exploring what drove the military coup of 1964, the subsequent rise of the Armed Left, and the successes and failures of the insurgency and how it concluded. Stretching from the rumblings of discontent during João Goulart’s ascendancy in 1961 to the strange conclusion of the dictatorship in 1985, the book draws on new primary sources and a wealth of English- and Portuguese-language resources to provide a complete and evenhanded portrait of the conflict.
After more than 450 years of European intrusions into South America's rainforest, small groups of people across Europe now gather discreetly to participate in Amazonian ceremonies their local governments consider a criminal act. As devotees of a new Brazil-based religion called Santo Daime, they claim that they contact God by way of ayahuasca, a potent psychoactive beverage first developed by native communities in pre-Columbian Amazonia. This bitter, brown liquid is a synergy of plants containing DMT, a mind-altering chemical classified as an illicit "hallucinogen" in most countries. By contrast, Santo Daime members (daimistas) revere ayahuasca as a sacrament, combining it with rituals and t...