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Death and dying vs. COVID-19
Published in Maria Łuszczyńska, Marvin Formosa, Ageing and COVID-19, 2021
Among the authors who have contributed to the hermeneutics of death, predominant hermeneutic thinker Hans-Georg Gadamer should be mentioned. While reflecting on the experience of death, he looked at the accomplishments of technology and pharmacology made for the benefit of not only palliative care but also for supporting human life (or rather the functions of life) beyond its “natural” measure, with slight horror. Thus, death is not only isolated from the public sphere, but it is also “alienated”. Gadamer claims that “modern chemistry, equipped with anaesthetics, expropriates the person suffering. (…) At the same time, it also excludes those who have experienced, either by passive or active participation, this event” (Gadamer 2011: 80–81). Therefore, it follows that both death and dying are worth (consciously) experiencing and are an integral and key element of human, and therefore – intelligent existence in the world.
Homeopathy: principles, practice and controversies
Published in Geraldine Lee-Treweek, Tom Heller, Hilary MacQueen, Julie Stone, Sue Spurr, Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Structures and Safeguards, 2020
Phil Nicholls, Geraldine Lee-Treweek, Tom Heller
Homeopathy continues to court controversy for similar reasons to those in Hahnemann’s time. Its opponents claim that homeopathy simply cannot work. As a set of ideas about the world and how it works, homeopathy challenges basic scientific principles. For instance, according to orthodox science, its remedies are inert because, after the multiple dilutions, modern chemistry cannot detect any of the original substance or medicine left. For orthodox medicine, which relies on the idea of increasing doses of medicines to treat more severe cases of disease, the idea of using less remedy, and minuscule amounts at that, does not make sense. For many critics the answer to why people continue to use homeopathy and seem to get well rests on the nature of the homeopathic consultation, the relationship between the practitioner and user of homeopathy, or the user’s belief in the treatment. In short, it is argued, reassurance from the practitioner and confidence in a good outcome by the user may lead to the user feeling and getting better — the result of the placebo effect, which is discussed in Chapter 6.
B
Published in Anton Sebastian, A Dictionary of the History of Medicine, 2018
Boyle, Robert (1626–1691) Father of modern chemistry. He was the seventh son of the Lord High Chancellor of Ireland, from Lismore. He improved Guericke’s air pump in 1659, and used it for studying the properties of air. This led to the discovery of the fundamental law of gases related to pressure and volume in 1662. His other contributions include: the relationship between boiling point and atmospheric pressure; preparation of acetone from lead acetate and lime; the concept of elements; demonstration of the necessity of air for life; discovery of the expansive power of freezing water; and production of methyl alcohol from wood. While he was in Oxford he founded the Invisible College with Christopher Wren (1632–1723), Thomas Willis (1621–1675) and Seth Ward (1617–1689) in 1655. It promoted the science of experimentation and observation, and later became the Royal Society with a charter from King Charles in 1668. See gas laws.
Ligand efficiency indices for effective drug discovery: a unifying vector formulation
Published in Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery, 2021
No future views about the optimization of drug discovery can be complete without mentioning the critical role of theoretical calculation of binding affinities between the target and the ligand; hundreds if not thousands of pages have been published about this. To put things in perspective, I would like to finish quoting the views of no other than Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern Chemistry, in relation to the possibility of computing those critical values between any chemical entities.Perhaps, one day, the precision of data will be brought to the point where a geometrician can calculate in his cabinet the phenomena of any chemical combination in the same manner that he calculates the movement of celestial bodies. The views that M. de Laplace has on this subject and the experiments that we have projected according to his ideas to express in numbers the force of affinities of different bodies, already permit us to regard this hope as not absolutely a chimera. [31] (Cited by Kim [32])
Toxicological profile of lipid-based nanostructures: are they considered as completely safe nanocarriers?
Published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology, 2020
Asaad Azarnezhad, Hadi Samadian, Mehdi Jaymand, Mahsa Sobhani, Amirhossein Ahmadi
It is generally acknowledged that nanoparticles (NPs) and nanomaterials could be effectively utilized in numerous fields including food technology, modern chemistry, various industries, biomedicine, and cosmetics. Several unique properties of organic and inorganic NPs such as small size, solubility, shape, aggregation, surface structure, and solvency have provided us with an ability to apply various changes in their essential characteristics, for example, diffusivity, targeting, stability, solubility, half-life in the circulatory system and controlled drug release. Because of such exceptional highlights, NPs have the preferred standpoint over conventional therapeutic and diagnostic agents (Murthy 2007; Samadian et al. 2017; Khoshnevisan et al. 2018; Ehterami et al. 2019). Nano-research is centered on numerous life-sciences consisting of applications in environmental, health, and safety sciences (Abdelhalim and Jarrar 2012; Abbasian et al. 2019).
A short review on chemical properties, stability and nano-technological advances for curcumin delivery
Published in Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery, 2020
Self-assembly is an interesting subject in modern chemistry mainly because of the ongoing work toward the production of novel molecular self-assembled species within the nanotechnology paradigm [76]. For example, self-assembled nanoparticles are found in wires, rings and supper lattices. Self-assembled cadmium, selenide and ferritin nanoparticles of diblock copolymers are also found in thin films displaying spatially ordered and organic–bioparticle hybrid materials [77]. In addition, a study by Boal et al. showed the ability to design self-assembled gold nanoparticles with thermally controlled size and morphology [78], while Wong et al. formulated hollow silica and gold microspheres using lysine and cysteine polymer blocks [79]. Moreover, Rechard et al. generated self-assembled hexabenzocoronene nanotubes [80]. Similarly, self-assembly methodologies were applied for constructing hydrogels at nano- and micro-scales [81].