The Reign of Pain
Pain is always something to be overcome. There are many contexts for this. For the Amazonian Indians it may represent a passage to manhood. For a patient in hospital, it may be part of the pathway to recovery. Overcoming pain may even be recreational. Chili peppers are spicy but in excess may be really painful. The eating of such peppers can take on a competitive edge. Who can eat the hottest one? In the case of the Bullet Ant, we may wonder where exactly the pain comes from? The jaws of the ant, though fearsome to look at, are surely not sufficient to produce such an excruciating and lingering experience. Indeed, the jaws are not the point. It is the stinger at the other end of the ant that is the key. This contraption is capable of injecting the venom of the ant into its victim. But here again we might wonder exactly how large a volume of its venom a single ant might inject? Surely this is a tiny amount? How could so small a quantity be responsible for such a devastating result? More…
COMPositions Guest Post - Tulsa Johnson
Female Hysteria and Healthcare: How Does the History of Female Hysteria Affect Women’s Healthcare Today? When I was in high school, I read a short story by Charlotte Perkins Stetson called “The Yellow Wallpaper”. In reading this story I felt camaraderie with the main character’s experiences. More…
The Role of Women in the History of the Animal Rights Movement
"Once you get to the 16th century, there was Montaigne who wrote eloquently about the reasons why we should respect the intelligence and feelings of animals. Then in the 17th century there was Margaret Cavendish, the first women to write about these topics, followed by others in the 18th century. Suddenly, in the 19th century, there were a huge number of women involved in the animal rights movement; actually, I think it was mostly women! Why was this?" More…
Robert Boyle and His Dogs
“Why, we can hardly call it a complaint, Miss Ruthyn. I look upon it he has been poisoned-he has had, you understand me, an overdose of opium; you know he takes opium habitually; he takes it in laudanum, he takes it in water, and most dangerous of all, he takes it solid, in lozenges. More…
Launching C-COMP
How do we know if something is alive? Probably the thing that would first strike us would be the presence or absence of some kind of coordinated movement. More…