Analgesia
Analgesics are among the oldest drugs described, albeit not necessarily for medicinaluse. Forexample,theSumeriansisolatedopioids(probablyfortheir euphoric effects) in the third millennium b. c. and the use of willow bark (salicin) for fever was ?rst reported in the eighteenth century. Both types of drugs are still in use, but today they are supplemented by a wide array of substances ranging from antidepressants to ion channel blockers. Not all of theseareprescribedbyphysicians. Manycompoundsaresoldoverthecounter and thus available to the public for self-medication. As a result, analgesics are also the most misused class of drugs and are the culprit for a multitude of healthproblemsdueto untoward sideeffects. Thisvolumeattemptstosummarizethecurrentstateofknowledgeonme- anisms underlying the various effects of these drugs, their side effect pro?les, and their indications and contraindications in clinical use.
Journeys to a Graveyard : Perceptions of Europe in Classical Russian Travel Writing
Journeys to a Graveyard examines the descriptions provided by eight Russian writers of journeys made to western European countries between 1697 and 1880. The descriptions reveal the mentality and preoccupations of the Russian social and intellectual elites during this period. The travellers' perceptions of western European countries are treated here as an ambivalent response to a civilization with which Russia was belatedly coming into close contact as a result of the imperial ambition of the Russian state and the westernization of the Russian elites. The travellers perceived the most advanced European countries as superior to Russia in terms of material achievement and the maturity and refinement of their cultures, but they also promoted a view of Russia as in other respects superior to the western nations. Heavily influenced from the late eighteenth century by Romanticism and by the rise of nationalism in the west, they tended to depict European civilization as moribund. By this means they managed to define their own emergent nation in a contrastive way as having youth and promising futurity.
A Rosicrucian Utopia in Eighteenth-Century Russia : The Masonic Circle of N.I. Novikov
The author undertakes an investigation into the history of Russian Freemasonry that has not been attempted previously. Her premise is that the Russian Enlightenment shows peculiar features, which prevent the application of the interpretative framework commonly used for the history of western thought. The author deals with the development of early Russian masonry, the formation of the Novikov circle in Moscow, the ‘programme’ of Rosicrucianism and the character of its Russian variant and, finally, the clash between the Rosicrucians and the State. The author concludes that the defenders of the Ancien Régime were not wrong. In fact the democratic behaviour, the critical attitude, the practice of participation, the freedom of thought, the tolerance for the diversity, the search for a direct communication with the divinity.


