19 Aralık 2016 Pazartesi
10 Ekim 2016 Pazartesi
My ‘insane’ Uncle Ed tried to kill Queen Victoria – he was treated with kindness | Penny Pepper
A young Queen Victoria rides out of the palace with her dashing husband. It’s June, and she is happy as the open carriage moves down Constitution Hill. Waiting on a grassy verge is a young man. Scarcely that – he’s a boy, just 18, with dark eyes and a baby face, short of stature and wearing a high top hat, as was fashionable in 1840. As the Queen draws closer he raises two pistols, determined to fire on the pregnant Victoria.
The young man is Edward Oxford, and he’s about to fulfil his dream of becoming notorious. Edward: my great, great, great uncle, who I fondly call Uncle Ed.
As ITV’s Victoria came to the season finale, I was relieved his story played out relatively true to what is known. Edward is described as “one of Cumberland’s creature’s”, part of the supposed Hanoverian plot against Victoria. But it is quickly revealed he is as a “half-witted pot boy from south of the river”, and that “the would-be assassin is completely insane”. Victoria wanted to hang him high, naturally.
Since unearthing this skeleton in my family closet, I feel a deep protectiveness – and relief that Edward’s attempted regicide came at a time when “lunatics” and the “criminally insane” were beginning to be treated more humanely.
Indicted for treason, he stood trial at the Old Bailey on 6 July 1840. If found guilty, he would hang, and his defence rested heavily on the ideas of being “innocent by reason of insanity”. The Old Bailey records of the trial are as full of intrigue and early Victorian melodrama as one could wish for, including the reading out of his notebooks, which exposed Uncle Ed’s pseudo-military fantasy society, Young England.
Reading through the statements and the endless legal ramblings, I find nuggets that allow me to unravel a sense of young Uncle Ed’s wayward personality. I follow a repeating echo, as I realise the case for his defence depends on making sure that he is insane. The records swiftly become a sensational feast of detail, especially where Edward’s father and grandfather are concerned. Both were known alcoholics. His grandad, John Oxford, described in one press report as a “black sailor of obscure origin”, died in Greenwich Naval hospital. At various times he believed he was the pope and other times St Peter.
Edward’s father, George Oxford, is described as a “mulatto” and “the Tawny Beau” in press coverage. A keen indulger in laudanum, he was given to odd and violent outbursts, most often inflicted on his long-suffering wife, Edward’s mother, Hannah. There was also the time he brought the horse into the parlour for dinner …
It’s hard to know now if Edward shared this family “madness”, assuming you share the still-controversial belief in inherited mental ill-health. Endless witnesses reported his strange behaviour and mood swings. But Edward’s family and friends would have known that any exaggeration could only strengthen his claim to innocence.
Uncle Ed was found “innocent by reason of insanity”, suffering “a lesion of the will”. He was sentenced to be detained indefinitely at Bethlem Royal hospital – better known as Bedlam – in its latest home in Southwark. This was a time when pressure was growing for the proper care for the mentally ill, with supporters committed to the genuine idea of asylum and a removal of those individuals from prisons and the workhouse. This began with the County Asylums Act 1808.
Those with mental health issues are demonised, despised and disbelieved. They are too expensive for the welfare state
Edward flourished in this environment, and responded to regimes aiming for genuine care of the patient – “patient” at last replacing the earlier terms “lunatic”, “imbecile” and plain “inmate” – through the Lunacy Act of 1845. Edward’s frustrated intellect grasped all opportunities – he became a model patient, learning several languages fluently, finding skills as a painter, and becoming an unbeatable chess player. He thrived in that environment, when – as Mike Jay, co-curator of the Wellcome exhibition, Bedlam: The Asylum and Beyond – says in his recent Guardian piece: “The asylum became an emblem of social progress: a therapeutic community in which patients were to be treated with kindness.”
It’s tragic that there is very little sense of true asylum, of sanctuary, within today’s mental healthcare system. In the 20th century, care in the community made much of individuals’ rights to be looked after in their own homes (which, conveniently in the Thatcher era, was likely to be cheaper). Yet many within the mental health system – myself included – feel that the baby might have been thrown out with the bathwater. These days, those with mental health issues are demonised, despised and disbelieved. They are too expensive for the welfare state.
John O’Donoghue, author of the award-winning memoir Sectioned, is a veteran patient of the remnants of those old hospitals. As he says: “The closure of the old Victorian asylums has yielded mixed results … Yes, they could be places of neglect and abuse, patients left to rot … but they also afforded sanctuary, the kind of open-ended humane treatment modern practice seems to have great difficulty in providing.”
Since my own teenage years I’ve experienced ongoing mental distress, uneasily wearing many labels given and changed. Clinical depression. Anxiety disorder. Manic depression. Emotionally unstable disorder. When I read the details of Uncle Ed in all the literature, I wonder what his label would be now. Would it help him any more than “lesion of the will”? That he was troubled, unhappy and in emotional pain is clear, and yes, I sat tight-lipped ready in his defence as this final episode of Victoria unfolded. But this is a royal soap opera. Edward is the pot boy working-class “lunatic”.
One day I’ll tell his story. Bring him fully to life, track our shared heritage from the mysterious black sailor and take him wholly back into the family embrace – and celebrate his happy ending in Australia.
My ‘insane’ Uncle Ed tried to kill Queen Victoria – he was treated with kindness | Penny Pepper
5 Ekim 2016 Çarşamba
Turmeric-Carrot-Black Pepper Soup Fights, Alzheimer’s, Inflammation & Cancer
Turmeric contains active compounds with powerful medicinal properties and these compounds are called curcuminoids, the most important of which is Curcumin. One study found that when even 2g of curcumin was ingested, its serum levels were very low. However, when 20mg piperine compound found in black pepper was added to curcumin the bioavailability increased by 2000%. Curcumin provides high levels of antioxidant protection – 13 times higher than Blueberries.
It offer numerous health benefits since they are powerful antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial agents.
Turmeric May Help Combat Alzheimer’s Disease and Inflammatory Conditions
Curcumin is capable of crossing your blood-brain barrier, which is one factor that has led researchers to investigate its potential as a neuroprotective agent for neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
Another common condition that can benefit from curcumin’s anti-inflammatory activity is osteoarthritis. Research16 published in 2011 found that patients who added 200 mg of curcumin a day to their treatment plan had reduced pain and increased mobility.
Curcumin is non-toxic, and does not adversely affect healthy cells, suggesting it selectively targets cancer cells.
Turmeric-Carrot-Black Pepper Soup Recipe
Moroccan Carrot Soup
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons turmeric
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1 cup chopped organic yellow onion
1 pound large organic carrots, cut in ½- inch dice (about 2 ⅔ cups)
2 1/2 cups low-sodium organic chicken stock or vegetable stock
2 minced garlic cloves (or more to taste)
Salt and fresh cracked black pepper (to taste)
1/2 cup sour cream, crème fraishe, or plain yogurt, optional for garnish
Preparation:
Melt butter in a large sauce pan over medium-high heat and add onion; saute for 2 minutes.
Mix in carrots and broth. Bring to boil.
Reduce heat, cover and simmer until carrots are very tender, about 20 minutes.
Stir cumin seeds in a small skillet over medium-high heat until fragrant, about 4 – 5 minutes.
Finely grind in a spice mill and remove soup from heat. Puree in batches in a blender until smooth.
Return to sauce pan. Whisk in honey, lemon juice and allspice.
Season with salt and pepper. Ladle soup into bowl.
Sprinkle with toasted cumin, or mix cumin and sour cream in a small bowl and dollop on top.
Serve.
Sources:
– http://www.foodista.com/blog/2012/03/29/must-try-spicy-moroccan-carrot-soup
– http://www.drweil.com/health-wellness/balanced-living/turmeric-tea-benefits/
– https://draxe.com/turmeric-benefits/
– http://www.healthy-holistic-living.com/turmeric-carrot-black-pepper-soup-fights-inflammation-cancer.html?t=HHL
Also Read:
Turmeric-Carrot-Black Pepper Soup Fights, Alzheimer’s, Inflammation & Cancer
16 Temmuz 2014 Çarşamba
Disabled men and women require assist to live, not die | Penny Pepper
I tried to commit suicide when I was 19. How tragic, you might say, so younger and so unhappy. But if I tell you I’ve had a continual illness since early childhood that is recognized for excruciating soreness, for triggering immobility and secondary – at times daily life-threatening – problems, does that change your view of my suicide try?
I was unhappy and badly essential mental wellness help to treat depression. Sad to say that the standard response was to link my illness and disability automatically to my depression – and my “understandable” suicide attempt. There is a hyperlink, but not the one perceived by mainstream imagined, medical or otherwise. I was caught in an isolated dead-finish existence inside of the family property, and as I wrote in the Guardian recently my mom was my only carer.
It felt like there was no opportunity of escape from a pointless existence frustration dragged my depression into a downward spiral and I attempted suicide. I was in despair with barriers, with limits on private freedom, and lack of independence – problems that can be alleviated by suitable social care and the adaptation of physical boundaries.
Pain was, and is, a continual. But for the rest of my life I want to experience, to really feel and to produce as a lot as I can. I believe I am as worthwhile, with all my flaws and contradictions, as any other regular human becoming. Nevertheless the bill to legalise assisted dying – to be debated in the Lords on Friday – puts us on a unsafe street of devaluing disabled people. It frightens several it frightens me.
Probably I’m overreacting. Right after all, a lot is manufactured of the reality that Lord Falconer’s bill is only concerned with relieving the suffering of the terminally ill, individuals with much less than 6 months to live – making it possible for physicians to assist in the individual’s death: an act of compassion to carry a comfortable death. Yet the media is already muddling the situation. In 10 many years not a single particular person fronting the campaign for assisted suicide has been terminally sick with six months to live – but they have all been disabled.
We all want a comfortable death, don’t we? The velvet pillow moment, loved ones current at our bedside as we slip away peacefully. Nevertheless absolutely it cannot be that the only comfy death is a medically assisted suicide? I say assisted suicide, due to the fact that is what it is: a medic supporting an person to take their very own lifestyle.
Since the Death with Dignity Act in 1997 in Oregon, doctors have been capable to legally assist individuals with suicide. But it is fascinating to note the final results of a poll on the act: the primary causes for people making use of medical professional-supported assisted suicide pan out as loss of autonomy (93%) reducing potential to participate in pursuits that made daily life pleasant (88.7%) and reduction of dignity (73.two%). Ache and struggling are minimal on the responses.
Numerous disabled individuals – with daily life-limiting conditions or otherwise – are terrified of dropping their social care and turning out to be “burdens” as soon as a lot more. Cuts to social care are drastic and the independent residing fund, which allows severely disabled individuals (such as me) to live in the neighborhood is closing in 2016. The underlining of our worthlessness as a drain on the taxpayer seems omnipresent the link is plain.
How would the enactment of the Falconer bill operate if brought to our harassed NHS? The possibility for abuse threatens to be monstrous. I’ve been in the overall health and social care method for most of my life. As much as there are good and marvellous men and women, there are repellent ones: much less than best households, carers with hidden agendas. The involvement of physicians to support you to kill your self would make the policing of the act untenable. The leap of health care involvement crosses a line that several of us say is unacceptable and hazardous.
The bill also states that help to die will be given when it is witnessed “that the individual … has a clear and settled intention to finish their very own life which has been reached voluntarily, on an informed basis and with out coercion or duress”. With out coercion and duress. Can the two medical doctors as decreed in the bill – typically strangers we see only once for ten minutes if we’re fortunate – actually make this kind of a judgment, unravelling household dynamics that could hide subtle intimidation?
Suicide is legal, and so it ought to be. No one particular has been prosecuted for going to Dignitas – and although it remains unlawful to assist suicide, legal tips permit discretion to safeguard loved ones involved in offering help. These concepts enable for a safety net, and assisted suicide cases are looked at on a case-by-case basis.
We can’t deliver difficult-pressed NHS doctors into this equation, where the matter will never ever be examined independently. Considerably of the United kingdom healthcare occupation does not help this kind of involvement. The British Medical Association is against it, along with the Royal Society of Standard Practitioners, who say this kind of involvement would “be detrimental to the medical professional-patient relationship”.
As an activist I want to rage, rage towards the dying of the light, with every beat of my heart. I want support to dwell now I want respectable social care, left alone by government and not topic to cuts and I want palliative care from physicians carrying out what the greatest of them do to the highest degree – helping me to reside properly.
• The Samaritans’ 24-hour helpline is 08457 909090
Disabled men and women require assist to live, not die | Penny Pepper