An English Physician

Beware of False Prophets

2012-01-23T10:11:00.002Z

I do not accept that there are any books or bodies of doctrine which include the revealed words of God. None that I read include demonstrable, verifiable evidence of supernatural authorship. None include anything unknown by writers of their time and place. None, for example, teach that the earth is a planet orbiting a star, that Jupiter has moons, that an America lies over the ocean, even that the earth has ice-caps.

None, in short, reveals understanding of the realities of humanity's place on earth or in the cosmos.

All had human authors: these are books of human opinion, human speculation, human fantasy, human frailty. Their ethics and moralities derive from the dogmas prevailing in the societies in which their authors lived.

Indeed I would go further. To attribute divine authorship to a book is a subtle form of idolatry.

But probably a majority of mankind believe their own religion's book is God's word, having divine authority. Claims for a similar divine status of other books are rejected.

If you believe that a text has a supernatural author, then you must admit the author may be Satan, not God.

Priests, mullahs, rabbis - all agree that Satan is sly, deceiving, the whisperer, adept at persuading to evil. The gullible may be deceived into the greatest blasphemy - and do evil in the name of God. Examples abound.

Christianity must acknowledge guilt in such matters, but can argue with justice that all persuasions to evil are an aberration, incompatible with the recorded teachings of Jesus.

Islam has no such excuse. The Qur’an explicitly commands murder, cruel and sadistic punishments - even crucifixion, and phobic discrimination - against women, jews, unbelievers.

There is a remarkable passage in the New Testament: Matthew 7:15-20. Beware of false prophets; by their fruits you shall know them.

A book which persuades to satanic actions cannot have divine inspiration.

It is foolish and dangerous to commit your life and mind and identity to the dominion of doctrines which claim authority from supernatural revelation. Beware those so committed; beware their denial of facts inconsistent with their precepts, their ruthless hostility to all sceptical or contradictory arguments, and their vicious intolerance of even trivial deviations from their dogmas.

Especially, beware all whose incomes and careers depend on institutionalised doctrine.

Above all, do not let them indoctrinate children: the first freedom is to grow up with an independent mind.

COKA: The Conjecture of Kosmic Autopoiesis

2011-10-30T17:57:00.005Z

I offer no apology for this edited repeat posting. Rightly or wrongly, these ideas continue to fascinate me, and I find the emerging understanding profoundly satisfying.

Given enough hydrogen, enough space, and enough time; first life, and then eventually conscious intelligence, will develop by natural, intrinsic mechanisms.

That statement is my Conjecture of Kosmic Autopoiesis. Let it be written on my tombstone.

This is an attempt to write down ideas which interest and excite me. It is a brief, preliminary, incomplete and inadequate outline. Obviously any conjecture demands precise exposition, careful elaboration, critical evaluation, and discussion. A lengthy task, but a start must be made.

At present I can argue as follows in support of the conjecture.

1. It is evident that the complexity of our planet earth has increased since its origin, maybe 4.5 billion years ago. A biosphere has evolved from an initial assembly of elements and simple compounds. At least one member of the biosphere is now conscious, with the facility of intelligent information processing.

It has taken more time than the human mind can easily imagine, but there is no doubt that it has happened.

2. There is no evidence that earth's evolution requires an external designer or controller: all processes on the earth are intrinsic and spontaneous. Therefore the potential of self-assembly - autopoiesis - must be included in our studies of the properties of matter.

The mechanisms of autopoiesis are poorly understood. Our knowledge is best for the biosphere, but insights into pre-biotic evolution are beginning.

Autopoiesis is the theory of natural self-assembly, a conjecture, inferred from probabilities. Our special human interest is Gaia Autopoietika, the autopoietic Earth.

3. Gravity is the great creative force, causing the aggregation of materials and energy release necessary for autopoiesis. It is gravity which drives the sun and the other stars; it is gravity which creates planets from stardust; it is gravity which sustains environments in which life can evolve.

But it is gravity which now restricts the advancement of Homo beyond its home planet.

4. Why stop with earth? There is no sign that physics and chemistry might vary across the kosmos. Our sun is one of many millions of similar stars in our galaxy alone, and there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the kosmos we observe. The probability that earth is the only planet suitable for life is vanishingly small. What we perceive here may be a very small sample, but there is no reason to believe it is atypical or unique.

There is a high probability that life is abundant in the kosmos: conscious, intelligent life must be out there, and may well be common. We can but hope that eventually a means of communication across vast distances will be found; perhaps then we shall find a kosmos full of voices.

5. The increase in complexity from kosmic primordia to stars and planets extends autopoiesis back almost to the singularity which we believe was in the beginning.

6. In broadest outline, autopoiesis proceeds:

from hydrogen gas to generations of stars, and synthesis of all other elements;
from simple stars to complex star-systems, with planets of elements and compounds;
from simple to complex planetary chemistry;
from complex molecules to simple life;
from simple to complex life, increasingly homeostatic [independent of the environment];
in homeostasis increasingly complex neural structures, permitting functions of increasing sophistication; finally consciousness and intelligence.

7. This conjecture - an Autopoietic Kosmos - Kosmos Autopoietikos - may be the grandest of unifying theories. Much detail may still be mysterious, but the theory offers understanding of the emergence from chaotic matter and energy of order, life and mind. The consequent vision is majestic, but without comfort. It is mechanical, wasteful, cruel and unjust in its working; frequently creating diversions leading to extinction; yet somehow, marvellously and unexpectedly, the long-term trend is always to increase complexity.

Darwinian evolution is the prime mechanism of complexity increase, at the biological level at least.

That which succeeds, succeeds; that which fails is eliminated without mercy.

8. All life is subject to a ruthless and unrelenting struggle for survival and reproductive success. With the exception of photosynthetic and chemosynthetic organisms, all life feeds on other life, with no respect for status in the tree of life. Syphilis destroyed Schubert; tuberculosis bacilli killed Darwin’s 10 years old daughter.

Life’s evolution on earth survived mass extinctions, usually inflicted by asteroid impact and volcanism; blind physics damaging biology. Remarkably such events may accelerate autopoiesis, perhaps by clearing space for the next advance.

After the Permian mass extinction came the radiation of the reptilia and dinosauria; in turn they gave way to birds and mammals after the late Cretaceous extinction event.

9. Autopoiesis - to what end? A question we cannot answer. That the kosmos has meaning and purpose must be assumed, for now. That is the only item of faith I can accept in my kataphusin philosophy. It is the first axiom for any evidence-based theology.

Some may argue that autopoiesis is evidence for the existence of a creating, controlling and sustaining entity, towards which all is evolving, and in which all eventually will reach fulfilment, be made plain, and justified. This conjecture has no demonstrable base in the knowledge of reality which now we possess, nor can it be proven by argument - or disproven.

But the denial of such arguments implies that material, mechanism and chance are the total and final causes of all the marvels we perceive, and that the kosmos we inhabit has no deep meaning or ultimate significance. The more I experience and understand, the more absurd those conclusions seem.

Could it be that all we are is just a tiny increment in the autopoiesis of a future kosmic organism, endowed with knowledge, understanding and capabilities beyond our comprehension?

We can but hope.

Dis-Ill-EU-sion

2011-07-02T10:39:00.003+01:00

This morning I found a letter I wrote to my [New Labour] MP in 2008. It tells the evolution of my opinions on the Common Market / European union. Since writing my opinions have hardened further: disappointment and frustration led to anger, and now outrage.

So here it is repeated. I think the public demand for a referendum will be an important issue at the next election, and that a referendum must eventually be held. The "democratic deficit" in the EU erodes its authority and stability, as do its attempts to preserve the euro by illegal means.

Thank you for your letter arguing New Labour's case against a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. It does not address the central issue.

You were elected on a manifesto which made a clear, simple, unqualified commitment to a referendum on this treaty. You would argue the benefits of increased British commitment to Europe. You appeared confident you could win the argument and the referendum.

In the event this commitment will not be honoured: a serious betrayal of trust. New Labour's contract with its electorate is broken.
So the further arguments you develop are worthless. Each point you make is open to challenge. In refusing a referendum you tacitly declare no confidence in your own case.

In practice we all know and accept that manifesto promises are mostly electoral propaganda, as reliable as Lenin's pie-crust. But this commitment is different: the issue affects the future of democracy in Britain.

In the beginning I strongly advocated Britain's membership of the Common Market, but experience has convinced me this was a serious mistake. On European questions our politicians have a record of evasion, economy with the truth, and, on occasion, dishonesty. I have been taught Euroscepticism, indeed Eurocynicism. I call it dis-Ill-EU-sion.

I am now convinced Heath lied about some of the terms agreed for Britain's entry. I remember pro-Europeans stressing that we were joining a Common Market, not a European Union. On this basis many of us voted “yes” in the referendum of 1975. We have had ample time to reflect how badly we were mistaken. I joined the derision of Mrs. Thatcher, when in 1990 she declared her doubts about a single currency, a European central bank, and admission of Eastern European countries. She foresaw wealth and jobs flooding east through Europe, and a tidal bore of migrants coming west.
I owe her an apology.

For the EU is indeed ill. It is corrupt; it has not returned audited accounts in a decade. It fails to create a fair environment for competition, even such basics as harmonized fuel taxation. It is authoritarian and hubristic. The Euro-bureaucracy will increase its power by right means if it can, if not, by any means. It is hugely expensive for Britain.
New Labour consents to this. Indeed it goes further than most, advocating EU membership for Turkey and the states of the North African littoral, seemingly oblivious to the political, cultural, economic and demographic consequences.

We should refuse the Lisbon treaty. We should seek to repatriate powers to our own democracy. Norway should be our model for engagement with Europe, not France or Germany. We can renegotiate our European commitment from a position of strength: Europe is the main beneficiary of British EU membership.

Reality can be denied, but will eventually break through. A thorough, critical review of our experience of EU membership is needed. A referendum would provide the opportunity for such a review and a debate on the best response to the facts revealed.

Two Predator Poems

2011-03-16T07:24:00.002Z

Leo

The lion's life is grim and hard,

With pride and cubs to keep;

Each day he paces round on guard,

All night he dare not sleep.

One day he'll face a fresh young male,

When he is spent and hurt,

He'll fight for cubs and pride, and fail,

Fall bloodied in the dirt.

[And all because the ladies love a winner]

Orca

The killer whale, with dorsal sword,

Is Orca gladiator;

Pied pack-wolf from the ocean broad,

The cruelest sea predator.

Young whales and seals they tear and bleed,

And feast, their bellies filling;

But then hunt on, in sport, to feed

Satanic lusts for killing.

[Did He, who made the lamb, make thee?]

Fashions in Naming.

2011-01-21T16:34:00.003Z

A local newspaper records the recent death of a lady of 91. It lists the names of her family over four generations.

She was Maisie Ruth, her husband was Leslie; her brother is Ronald.

Her daughter Beryl married Barrie; her son Malcolm married Lilwen.

All good traditional British names, but then:

her grandchildren are Gary, Tracey and Jason;

and her great-grandchildren are Connor, Taylor, Blu, Tyler, Kaya and Zeph.

Maybe there is an Australian flavour about those bizarre fourth generation names?

Times change, and I must change with them, I suppose, but I can't understand why parents would so ignore their childrens' cultural legacy.

Like tattoos, such names are a passing fashion. They will disappear in the next generation.

A Document to Remember and Respect

2011-01-15T12:19:00.006Z

I understand that tomorrow, January 16th., is to be Religious Freedom Day in the United States, by presidential decree.

It is to mark the anniversary of the Statute of Religious Freedom, passed by the government of the state of Virginia in 1786. Thomas Jefferson wrote the document, and was justifiably proud of his achievement.

It is a most important contribution to human civilisation, institutional religious authority proving so often the cause of social stagnation, legalised barbarism, and conflict.

It is a document I would commend to all young people, for study and reflection. Here is the text: I have marked in bold the passage I consider fundamental.

>> Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free;

that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do;

that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time;

that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical;

that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;

that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry;

that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow-citizens he has a natural right;

that it tends only to corrupt the principles of that religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it;

that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way;

that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own;

that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order;

and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to Herself, that She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of Her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:

Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

And though we well know that this assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act to be irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act shall be an infringement of natural right.

Unexpectedly, a similar doctrine appears in the Qur'an, 2:256 -

>> Let there be no compulsion in religion: truth stands out clear from error.

Unfortunately this is contradicted, both in the Qur'an and in the Hadith, by commands to fight and kill unbelievers and jews, and to punish apostasy by death.

Hardy on New Year's Eve

2010-12-31T21:02:00.003Z

Here is Hardy, in quizzical mood, disguising bleak perceptions of our human world as whimsy.

"I have finished another year," said God,
"In grey, green, white, and brown;
I have strewn the leaf upon the sod,
Sealed up the worm within the clod,
And let the last sun down."

"And what's the good of it?" I said.
"What reasons made you call
From formless void this earth we tread,
When nine-and-ninety can be read
Why nought should be at all?

"Yea, Sire; why shaped you us, 'who in
This tabernacle groan' -
If ever a joy be found herein,
Such joy no man had wished to win
If he had never known!"

Then he: "My labours - logicless -
You may explain, not I:
Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess
That I evolved a Consciousness
To ask for reasons why.

"Strange that ephemeral creatures who
By my own ordering are,
Should see the shortness of my view,
Use ethic tests I never knew,
Or made provision for!"

He sank to raptness as of yore,
And opening New Year's Day
Wove it by rote as theretofore,
And went on working evermore
In his unweeting way.

Unweeting appears to be correct - I take it to be a poetic version of unwitting, needed in this form for reasons of stress and meter.

Is Human Activity Warming Our World?

2010-12-29T10:46:00.004Z

Is human activity increasing the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere? Does an increased carbon dioxide content trap heat in the atmosphere?

A powerful prevailing opinion answers 'yes' to both these questions, and demands huge expenditure to reduce our carbon dioxide production, stressing urgency if global climate catastrophe is to be avoided.

This is the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming - AGW.

In Britain, Europe, Canada and (increasingly) America politicians are convinced by the prevailing opinion, so AGW is the issue dominating political, economic and social policies.

Contrary opinions are heard, but so far have failed to raise significant doubt in the minds of our rulers. Indeed doubters are often dismissed as ignorant, cranks, or worse, and dubbed 'deniers'.

A sound theory is established by analysis of data, and critics rebutted similarly. Attacks on the probity or sanity of critics must always arouse suspicion that their criticism cannot be answered by argument based on evidence.

So what evidence is there to support the theory of AGW?

There is useful summary of the various data sets available here. [The slider above the diagrams permits the time span to be adjusted.] The following facts are difficult to challenge.

1. Global temperatures increased steadily from 1960 to 2000. After 2000 temperatures stabilised.

Between 1880 and 1940 temperatures were reduced, with a minimum around 1912.

The total temperature increase between 1910 and 2000 was approximately 0.7 degrees. The increase during those 90 years was not regular: between 1940 and 1970 the net change was about zero.

2. Atmospheric carbon dioxide increased from 320 to 390 parts per million during the 50 year period 1959 to 2009. The upward trend shows some acceleration during this time.

The increase is about 30%, but is only 70 parts per million in the atmosphere. The contribution to atmospheric heat content is negligible, especially set beside the contribution of water, also a 'greenhouse gas', and much more abundant in the atmosphere.

I am sure that a statistical analysis would show an excellent correlation between global temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, but correlation is no proof of causation - and the naive belief that it is can cause serious errors. Thus in the twentieth century I would expect good correlation between global temperature and the number of muslims in Europe, and a good inverse correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and the number of whales in the oceans, but it would be absurd to suggest such correlations prove cause and effect.

The observed correlation of temperature and carbon dioxide is consistent with at least 4 hypotheses, as follows.

1. Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide increases global temperatures.

This hypothesis is basic to any attribution of global warming to human activity.

2. Increasing global temperatures increase atmospheric carbon dioxide.

This is the inverse of 1.

Warming oceans release carbon dioxide. Studies of polar ice cores give some support to this hypothesis. Over thousands of years warm periods show higher atmospheric carbon dioxide values than cool periods. There is also a hint that temperature changes lead carbon dioxide changes.

3. Global temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide are not linked directly, but each is affected by some third factor.

4. The correlation is a coincidence.

This seems unlikely.

The data do not permit a decision between these alternatives. Clever computer manipulations may add detail, but there is insufficient information to allow a firm conclusion.

Similarly computer modelling is prone to errors, including programmers' bias, ignorance of the relative importance of the many factors affecting climate, lack of data, and the critical impact of unpredictable items.

Correct predictions improve confidence in computer models. Prediction performance so far is, well, unimpressive.

Our climate has never been constant. Climate change is a fact of our environment. Human activity may now be sufficient to influence climate, but this remains a hypothesis. Doubt and scepticism are rational responses at our present level of knowledge and understanding.

I strongly support policies and engineering to reduce human pollution of the atmosphere, not least because such measures will demand more sanity in our economics. But I am not convinced that the AGW theory is correct. Certainly the case for huge expenditures and dramatic forced changes in human society cannot be justified on present evidence.

Our climate is driven by the sun. Solar energy output is not constant. Solar radiation and magnetic fields vary with the sunspot cycle. Solar maxima became exceptionally large during the second half of the twentieth century, in the period when data showed global warming.

We know from past data that periods of absent solar maxima are associated with global cooling. The current solar cycle, number 24, is currently running at least 2 years late, and solar activity continues to be well below the predicted values.

The number of days free of sunspots was much greater during the recent solar minimum than it was in the previous one.

We may be entering a period of reduced solar activity, after the intense activity in the past century. We may be at the beginning of a 'Maunder Gap' - another period free of sunspots. If that proves to be the case the problem will be global cooling, certainly sufficient to affect human life, maybe seriously.

But on this too, there is insufficient evidence to be sure. But I note that weather forecasting which includes solar data has proved more successful than the conventional techniques of our Meteorological Office.

Hardy on Christmas Eve

2010-12-24T15:47:00.003Z

This is a favourite poem by Thomas Hardy, published the 24th. December 1915.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

"Now they are all on their knees,"

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen.

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few believe

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve

"Come; see the oxen kneel,

In the lonely barton by yonder combe

Our childhood used to know,"

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

My best wishes to all at Christmas, and may we all be granted health, peace and prosperity in 2011.

In particular may the abomination of war and the barbarism of terrorism be banished for ever from this good earth.

For Golden Girls

2010-12-19T10:56:00.005Z

I have a new vocation: poet laureate to my grand-daughters.
So far only the two older girls have been honoured with limericks from Grandpa. No doubt the younger two will be warned what may come their way.

These are for Lizzie, 9 in January, reluctant to learn to read at first, now a voracious reader - a true bookworm. Just as her father was at that age.

"They said reading is hard, but it's easy",
Said a blue-eyed blonde bookworm called Lizzie;
"These books that I'm reading
Are all that I'm needing,
So don't interrupt me, I'm busy".

"I'm eight now" said Lizzie "that means
My long legs need serge bleu de Nimes;
Leave frilly pink dresses
For fairy princesses:
Tantara, kids, it's Lizzie blue-jeans".

And, in The Emperor chinese restaurant.

"I'm crackers for crackers" said Liza,
Prawn crackers, my top appetizer.
At an Emperor lunch
I crunch and I munch,
If the waitress brings more I'll surprise her."

For her younger sister, Catherine, who declared she was The Spotty Princess, so all around should wear spotty clothes.

Catherine Emma said "Grandpa, confess!
Your green tie has no spots like my dress.
You choose with more care
The clothes that you wear
When you visit the Spotty Princess."

And, for their mother Pam, an enthusiastic runner of marathons.

Top Mum Pam came home from her run,
Saying "O that was good, I had fun.
On the riverbank road
I raced Mr. Toad -
And would you believe it, I won!'

Having a doting grandpa / father-in-law has its disadvantages!

The Price of Experience

2010-12-11T09:21:00.004Z

I have removed the text of this posting. I may repost this tragic story in a more appropriate future context.

Athos 7: The Greek Religion

2010-12-07T11:05:00.003Z

Jesus, like Socrates, wrote nothing. His first language was Aramaic, in the Galilean dialect, as it was for his disciples.

But Greek is the first language of Christianity, not Aramaic. Greek in its 'koine' vernacular was spoken and understood widely through the eastern Mediterranean in Jesus' time, and he and his disciples may well have been familiar with it.

Still, it is unexpected to find the gospels are in Greek. The disciples are presented as working men, of uncertain literacy, not expected to be capable of writing fluent Greek: the Gospel and Revelation of John are especially remarkable. Greek was a common language, but Aramaic was widely spoken and written too. Why did the gospel writers choose not to record Jesus' teachings and life in his and their native language?

Maybe Jesus' message was reckoned too subversive to present in the language of the high priests and the scribes.

The choice of Greek permitted the fusion of Jewish messianic prophecy with Hellenic science and philosophy, to create the rich and vigorous hybrid of Christianity. Perhaps, too, it brought into the new religion the Greek love of debate; of meticulous analysis and discussion; of reasoned, eloquent argument: maybe, too, the Greek tendency to discord and fission.

Greek gave Christianity the advantage of perhaps the finest language for the creation and expression of precise, detailed thought. Classical Greek has complex grammar and syntax, permitting refined and subtle thinking, and a huge dictionary. Greek writers created an unequalled legacy of intellectual and artistic literature, an unparalleled tradition for those developing the new religion.

Greek is written using a detailed, complete alphabet. The reader knows how to say each word.

By contrast, the first and only language of Islam is Arabic. Compared to Greek, Arabic is simple and limited. For example, the Arabic verb has only two tenses, denoting incomplete and completed action: there is no formal future tense in Arabic. But the imperative is well developed.

Arabic is written from right to left, in normal use omitting short vowel signs; so pat, pet, pit, pot, put, would each be written pt.

Lucretius complains of the difficulty of presenting Greek thinking in Latin (1): translation into Arabic is more difficult still.

Many Greek texts were translated into Arabic in the Caliphate, but not into the Arabic of Mohammad. Hourani, in his History of the Arab Peoples, pages 75-76, describes how Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians translated Greek texts into Syriac (a language related to Aramaic) and then into Arabic. He tells how their Arab rulers knew little of 'the languages of thought', and 'the Arabic language had not yet acquired the capacity to express the concepts of science and philosophy in a precise way'.

In the second to fourth centuries after Mohammad translation was intensive, mostly by Christian scholars.

'An essential part of their work was to expand the resources of the Arabic language, its vocabulary and idiom, to make it an adequate medium for the whole intellectual life of the age.'

It isn't clear that they succeeded. Still today it is difficult to translate English texts precisely into Arabic. In 'Oman our students had to be fluent in English to read textbooks. Despite huge expenditure by Arab governments on education, there are few textbooks in Arabic - neither originals nor translations.

Arabic-English dictionaries are few.

Arabic is a male language: it suits the master, the didact and the demagogue.

Here is the Greek Lord's Prayer, the central text of Christianity, in English transliteration. Nouns are in bold, verbs are in italics; ē is long ee (eta), ō is long o (omega).

The Lord's Prayer has been translated into almost every language on earth. I can safely assume any reader is familiar with it.

Pater hēmōn ho en tois ouranois,

agiasthētō to onoma sou,

elthetō hē basileia sou,

genēthētō to thelēma sou,

hōs en ouranōi kai epi gēs.

Ton arton hēmōn ton epiousion dos hēmin sēmeron;

kai aphes hēmin ta opheilēmata hēmon,

hos kai hēmeis aphēkamen tois opheiletais hēmōn;

kai mē eisenegkēs hēmas eis peirasmon,

alla rusai hēmas apo tou ponērou.

There are 57 words in total, of these 8 are verbs, and 12 are nouns.

Here is the nearest equivalent from the Qur'an, the 'Opening Surah', the Surah al Fatihah, again transliterated to English. Again nouns are in bold, with some difficulty, since Arabic may not always distinguish noun and adjective. Verbs are again in italic.

This is chanted millions of times everyday, in Arabic only. Translation is not approved. Many muslims can recite this with little or no comprehension. In Muscat Aziz, a muslim from Kerala, told us he could recite most of the Qur'an, but understood little of it. "O no, it is not for me to say what it means, the mullah does that."

Bismillahi ar rahmani ar rahimi

In the name of God the compasionate one, the merciful;

al hamdu lillahi rabbi al alamina

praise to God, lord of the worlds,

ar rahmani ar rahimi

the compassionate one, the merciful;

maliki yawmi ad dini

king of the day of judgement;

iyyaka na'budu wa iyyaka nasta'inu

you we worship and your aid we seek;

ihdina as sirata al mustaqima

show us the right way;

sirata al ladina an'amta 'alayhim 'gayr al maqdubi 'alayhim wala ad dalina

the way of grace, not the way of those of your anger, nor of those who stray.

In 41 words, 17 are nouns and 3 are verbs.

This is primarily a dedication, a commitment. The last line is usually taken to mean the Jews, who suffer God's anger, and Christians, who have strayed from the truth. Note that judeophobia is visceral in Islam.

The muslim message is simple: fear God and obey Mohammad - a terrible fate awaits those who do not.

The muslim aspires to be Abd-al-Lah: slave of the God.

The Christian message is truly a prayer. We are each the child of a heavenly father. We must love God, and serve him in the love of one another.

The christian prays to God the Father; the muslim prostrates before God the Führer.

And the original Christianity is in the Orthodox.

------------------------

(1) Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 1:136-140

Nec me animi fallit Graiorum obscura reperta

difficile inlustrare Latinibus versibus esse,

multa novis verbis praesertim cum sit agendum

propter egestatem linguae et rerum novitatem;

I know how hard it is, in Latin verse, to tell the deep discoveries of the Greeks,

Chiefly because our narrow speech must find the new terms needed to explain their originalities.

Dark Matters

2010-12-05T16:41:00.002Z

Familiar forms of matter and energy comprise just 4% of the universe; the balance is Dark Energy [70%] and Dark Matter [26%]. This is the startling conclusion from two recent major research programmes: satellite measurements of minute spatial variations in the temperature of the source of cosmic background microwave radiation, and studies relating the red-shift in the spectra of supernovae to their distance.

What is Dark Matter, and what is Dark Energy? The short answer is that we don't know.

Dark Matter is the easier concept to consider. Previous analyses of motions of galaxies revealed that the gravitational forces involved were much greater than predicted from the estimated mass interacting in the galaxies. The simplest explanation is that galaxies contain much dark matter that is not detected directly by our instruments, although its effects can be seen and measured. So there is growing evidence that dark matter is an observable reality, with the prospect that its nature will be determined eventually.

Dark Energy is much more problematic.

It is invoked to explain a further important conclusion from these researches. The evidence suggests that the expansion rate of the universe reduced during the first 8 billion years after the big bang, but has been increasing during the subsequent 6 billion years. Dark energy is invoked as a sort of anti-gravity to explain this acceleration.

So dark energy is an unknown entity introduced to make cosmological equations conform to observations. In short, it is a 'fudge factor'.

'Fudge factors' always reduce confidence in the theory behind the equations: when a 'fudge factor' is 70% of the conclusion the theory must be in serious trouble.

The theory in question is general relativity. Einstein himself found it necessary to introduce a 'cosmological constant' to make his equations balance. Later he said this was his biggest mistake, but maybe he was in advance of his time on this issue too.

Relativity works very well on scales up to galactic. It is in the intergalactic, cosmological scale that difficulties arise. The problem may be that relativity has minor inaccuracies that matter only at the largest scales, in the same way as Newtonian gravitational theory works well for most planetary calculations, but proves inadequate at greater distances and greater gravitational fields.

When a theory is in trouble it is a good principle to consider the things that are generally assumed to be beyond question.

One assumption is that the mass of the universe is constant. Yet everywhere we look we see evidence of matter being converted to energy: particles with mass giving rise to mass-less photons of radiant energy. Such processes power the stars and cause stellar explosions. To be sure, the loss of mass is very small in relation to the energy released, but the universe is big, and the time scale enormous.

Nowhere have we seen evidence of the converse: matter being created from energy. To be fair, this would be more difficult to observe; but (naively perhaps) it does appear that the total mass of the universe is reducing, and the total gravity with it. This may be the factor ignored in current theory, which might - just might - make the hypothesis of dark energy unnecessary.

Further, if matter and mass are being destroyed, with no compensatory reverse processes, then the ratio E/M is increasing [where E is the total energy in the universe, and M the total mass]. Now mass and energy are related to the speed of light according to the Einstein equation, e=mc^2 ; or c=√(e/m). Could it be that the balance of energy and mass in the universe determines the speed of light? If so, it means the speed of light is increasing with E/M: the relation of time to the other dimensions of space is changing.

Increasing speed of light gives a new explanation of the red-shift of the spectra of distant radiation sources, and hints that the apparent expansion of the universe may be an optical illusion.

Is this absurd? I lack the skills and knowledge to examine these questions properly. I take comfort in the thought that it was the simpleton who spotted that the emperor was naked.

Cui Bono: For Whose Benefit?

2010-11-29T08:47:00.002Z

So Irish citizens - men, women and children - are to be crucified on a cross of gold, to shore up the failing Euro.

These huge loans are not for Ireland's benefit.

Ireland needs export-driven industry, creating jobs, the means to repay debt, and to move back to a sustainable prosperity.

But Ireland is small country on the periphery of Europe; exporting is more expensive than in Germany. For this and other reasons the Euro is an over-valued currency in Ireland. A new Irish Punt would be valued much below the Euro.

Ireland cannot export successfully and remain in the eurozone. The Euro blocks Ireland's route to recovery.

Meanwhile German industry exports with increasing success. If Germany restored the Deutschmark it would be valued way above the exchange rate of the Euro. Like China, Germany has an undervalued currency. This has encouraged the development of the huge trade imbalances which caused the crisis.

Some are saying that the value to Germany of an undervalued currency exceeds the costs of loans to states crippled by the Euro, so Germany will fight to keep the Euro until this calculation reverses.

Unless the German Constitutional Court declares such Euro rescues are unlawful. I understand the court's judgement is expected in February.

In the meantime we should recognise reality: the European Union, and specifically the Eurozone, is the Deutsches Wirtschafts Reich - the German industrial empire.

Too Clever By Half

2010-11-25T15:18:00.002Z

Being too clever can complicate diagnosis. Most often it is a problem for the able young doctor, not yet case-hardened, not yet clear that common things are common, and that an unusual presentation of a common disease is more likely than a rarity.

But over-clever errors can afflict us all, no matter how learned and experienced we may be.

This happened to me after nearly a half-century in practice.

Elwyn was 54 years old. He had a hill farm with a flock of sheep. He was tall, slim and fit, and a non-smoker.

So it was a surprise when he was sent to the hospital as a suspected myocardial infarction.

Soon after getting up that morning he had a sudden severe chest pain, which stopped him. He sat down, in pain, and feeling nausea. He felt his heart thumping and became short of breath. The pain subsided after several minutes but the palpitations and breathing difficulty continued.

He had no significant past medical history; and no heart disease in the family.

He had an electrocardiogram on arrival, which showed some anomalies, but not the changes of acute myocardial infarction.

On examination he looked grey, sweaty and ill. He was sitting up, visibly short of breath, and became distressed at any attempted to lie flat. From the foot of the bed I could see pulsation in his carotid arteries.

His pulses were increased and collapsing, at a rate of 100/minute, regular. Blood pressure was over 250 systolic, with no clear diastolic cut-off down to zero.

The immediate suspicion was that he had suffered some sort of acute failure of the aortic valve, so I was surprised to find a forceful apex beat in the right place - in the 5th. left interspace, in the mid-clavicular line. Leaking valves put a volume load on the heart, causing dilation.

The stethoscope revealed a loud diastolic murmur of aortic regurgitation, as expected.

But listening at the apex of the heart I heard a second, low-pitched, diastolic murmur. Austin Flint's name is associated with an apical mid-diastolic murmur, and this was my first thought. But listening further I hear an early diastolic snap, followed by a decrescendo murmur, increasing again before a loud first sound. These are the classical signs of mitral stenosis.

I demonstrated these signs to the house physician and two students, who agreed with me. Well, I suppose they would.

But it didn't make sense. A double valve lesion must mean a heart damaged by rheumatic fever, probably in child-hood, and long-standing valvular disease. But this man had no such history, and was in good health until a few hours before.

An associated mitral stenosis might explain the undisplaced apex beat.

I was perplexed. I called my cardiological colleague. By good fortune he was in the cardiac laboratory; bring down the patient for an echo-cardiogram.

I watched fascinated. The root of the aorta was dilated, and the valve stretched, the cusps not meeting. There was massive reflux of blood into the left ventricle during diastole. The left ventricular cavity was dilated.

The mitral valve was normal, but it could scarcely open in diastole before the flood of reflux had filled the cavity, pushing the mitral valve cusps back and together. The phonogram showed this was the cause of the opening snap I had heard. The diastolic murmur was functional: high left atrial pressure and atrial systole forcing blood through a closed valve into the full ventricle.

And the heart had not dilated because it was all so acute. Over the next few hours it would, with rapidly increasing left ventricular failure.

Elwyn needed emergency surgery. He was transferred to the cardiac surgeons in another hospital that afternoon, who operated that evening. They put in aortic arch and aortic valve prostheses.

The pathologist reported the resected aorta showed cystic medial necrosis, a recognised degenerative condition.

Elwyn did well, but I didn't see him again - he was followed up by the cardiologist. I heard later he decided the farm was too much for him.

As a young doctor studying for a higher examination I had spent many hours practising with the stethoscope. I had become - yes, I'll admit it - proud of my skill with that challenging instrument. On this occasion I had fallen.

Had I not been so clever when I listened I would have got the right diagnosis.

The Vital Reaction

2010-11-24T14:14:00.003Z

Carbon dioxide, CO2, or O=C=O, is a gas at the temperature and pressure of our environment.
Water, H2O, or H-O-H, is a liquid.
Both compounds are relatively stable in chemical terms, and abundant in our biosphere and in the kosmos.

Carbon dioxide is soluble in water, and in solution the two compounds may combine to form carbonic acid:

CO2 + H2O <---> H2CO3

This reaction is incomplete: at equilibrium carbon dioxide, water, and carbonic acid exist together in significant proportions in the solution. Of course, removal of one component will pull the reaction in that direction. So, for example, adding calcium hydroxide leads to the precipitation of solid calcium carbonate, eventually trapping all the carbon dioxide. This process cleared huge quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of the young earth.

The formation of carbonic acid is an important process in geochemistry and physiology, but a second and much more difficult reaction of carbon dioxide and water is perhaps the most important chemical reaction in our biosphere.

The vital reaction is the combination of carbon dioxide and water to produce formaldehyde and oxygen:

CO2 + H2O ---> H2C=O + O2

Formaldehyde is the simplest carbohydrate - compounds which have molecular formulas which reduce to multiples of hydrated carbon, (C.H2O)n.
Under normal conditions this reaction does not proceed at all. The reason is that the products - formaldehyde and oxygen - together contain much more energy than the starting materials. Energy from radiation - photon energy - can drive the reaction. Radiation from stars can cause the production of formaldehyde in surrounding gas clouds. In our biosphere photosynthesis traps solar radiation energy to fix carbon dioxide to produce carbohydrates. Photosynthesis does not produce formaldehyde, which is very toxic to cells, but glucose and other carbohydrates, which are polymers of formaldehyde. Let me explain.

Two molecules of formaldehyde can combine to form glycol aldehyde:

H2C=O + H2C=O ---> H2COH.HC=O

Glycol aldehyde still has the reactive HC=O aldehyde group, so it can react again with formaldehyde to produce glyceraldehyde:

H2COH.HC=O + H2C=O ---> H2COH.HCOH.HC=O

Glyceraldehyde also keeps an aldehyde group, so it too can react further with formaldehyde. In theory the process can go on and on, producing huge molecules. In biology it stops usually at six - glucose, galactose, fructose, and other sugars.

The photosynthetic reaction may be written thus:

(C.H2O)5 + CO2 + H2O ---> (C.H2O)6 + O2

The stages of the reaction are complicated, but overall 1 formaldehyde unit is added to ribulose, a 5-fold formaldehyde polymer, producing the 6-fold polymer glucose, and molecular oxygen. The reaction is driven by radiation energy from the sun.

Glucose is a remarkable molecule. It will form a 6-membered ring structure, by the interaction of the aldehyde and the hydroxyl group on carbon 5 in the chain. The resulting ring has 5 carbon and 1 oxygen atoms. Excellent diagrams can be found here.

Glucose is an important biological fuel, releasing energy as it is broken down in stages, eventually releasing the carbon dioxide and water from which it was made. Glucose is also a starting material in the biosynthesis of many other compounds, and it can polymerize into chains of glucose molecules, notably cellulose, the dominant biological product on earth.

Glucose molecules may combine together in one of two ways. The first is the 1-4-beta linkage. Cellulose is a high molecular weight polymer of glucose units linked in this way. The resultant chain molecules have abundant hydroxyl groups, which are in a configuration favouring intermolecular linkages, excluding water. In this way the insoluble long fibres of cellulose are made and are woven to form the cell walls of plants.

Wood is cellulose impregnated with lignins: complex organic molecules which waterproof, stabilise and protect the cellulose.
Chitin, the tough outer shell of insects, is a similar polymer of a simple derivative of glucose - N-acetyl-2-glucosamine.

The second linkage, 1-4-alpha, produces polymers which tend to form branching coils rather than fibres, more soluble in water, and used as biological energy stores: starch in plants, and glycogen in the muscle and liver of animals.

Starches and glycogen are easily broken down to release glucose: the necessary enzymes are common in the biosphere.
Cellulose is much more difficult to digest, and few organisms have enzymes to do this. Those which do are mostly bacteria or fungi, and animals able to digest cellulose usually rely on bacteria in the gut to start the process for them: wood-boring insect larvae, for example. Cattle and other ruminants have complex stomachs in which bacterial enzymes ferment cellulose from plant structures reduced by grinding teeth, often given a second grinding by 'chewing the cud'.

In our biosphere the rarity of cellulases is remarkable, given the energy potentially available from the digestion of cellulose. In consequence woods are biologically stable, and forests are possible.

But here's another spooky fact. At 19% the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere is near the maximum if cellulose is to be stable. At 25%, for example, fire might well be so frequent and so extensive that forests could not survive. At 33% cellulose would degrade rapidly on exposure to air, and fire would spread explosively.

Life and the planet must interact to maintain the environment most favourable for life, in ways which we do not understand.

Next time you look at a tree, remember that most of what you see is polymerized formaldehyde, the virtual first product of that remarkable reaction of carbon dioxide and water, energetically unfavourable but vital; which biology achieves with aplomb, and which chemists strive to emulate.

And next time you see wood burning, remember you are seeing the release of energy formed by nuclear fusion reactions in the solar core, many years ago.

Diagnosis is Dangerous

2010-11-21T12:18:00.002Z

Diagnosis is dangerous. A mistaken diagnosis means wrong advice and management; and failure to identify the realities and respond correctly.

A diagnosis also tends to inhibit thought, especially if a senior doctor has made it.

When there is uncertainty we may speak of a provisional diagnosis, or a working diagnosis, but, being human, all too often those warning adjectives are forgotten.

The obvious diagnosis is especially risky, quickly made, an easy case, time for tea. But the obvious may conceal the real, perhaps much more sinister.

Here are two examples: the first shows the dangers of a wrong diagnosis, the second the danger of the obvious.

Jane was in her early 60's. I was asked to review her at home. Her general practitioner met me there, with a bulky folder of notes.

At the age of 25 she had lost vision in her left eye, but recovered after several weeks. The doctor had recognised retrobulbar neuritis, an inflammation of the optic nerve. In about half of cases retrobulbar neuritis is a first sign of multiple sclerosis; equally, in about half of cases it is not.

During the next two or three years she had seen doctors on several occasions with recurring, transient minor symptoms: numbness and tingling in one or other hand, headaches, an episode of difficulty in writing, and another of double vision. None of these episodes had lasted more than a day, and none had left any disability.

But a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis was made, and discussed with her. To be fair, multiple sclerosis is often a difficult diagnosis, but easier now we have MRI brain scanning.

Over the years she had lived in the expectation of progressive disability and an early death. Her minor symptoms continued, but no demonstrable physical disability developed. She had never married, and lived in a small flat on invalidity benefits. She was active in charities for disabled people, indeed she held a national post in one.

She had received little formal medical treatment, but was on a complicated vegetarian diet, and a number of mineral and vitamin supplements, including regular injections of vitamin B12.

On examination she was tense and talkative, rather obsessive about herself, wearing blue-tinted spectacles, but well nourished and apparently healthy. I found no physical abnormalities, in particular I found no signs of nervous system disease.

As a rough guide, a rule of thirds applies in multiple sclerosis. At 15 years from diagnosis, one third will be dead, one third will be disabled, and one third will be living reasonably normally. Jane was well some 40 years from diagnosis. Either her multiple sclerosis was exceptionally benign, or the diagnosis was in error.

Reviewing her case notes I concluded that the diagnosis was wrong: the original evidence was inadequate, and her subsequent course was not compatible with multiple sclerosis. [Yes, I had the benefit of hind-sight.]

But what to say to her? The belief she had multiple sclerosis had dominated her life for many years; could I kindly say it was all a dreadful mistake? I chose to say her case was exceptionally benign, and the disease had burned out. That might just have been the truth.

I learned later that my assessment had been reported with approval to her many friends, but she had continued much as before - perhaps the best outcome.

Pat was the second case, in her forties, mother of three, working part-time in a local hotel. She had been admitted the day before for a minor operation on her varicose veins. She should have gone home the same day, but persistent vomiting had set in after the operation. It had continued and my surgical colleague asked me to see her.

The consultation request was on my desk when I returned from my Friday morning out-patients' clinic. I had an hour for lunch and the 12 mile journey to another hospital where I was due at 2 pm.

Pat complained of nausea, but the sickness had subsided and she had been able to have some toast and tea. She was anxious to get home.

There was an obvious cause for her nausea: she was taking Distalgesic for pain control. Distalgesic combines paracetamol with dextropropoxyphene, which is a synthetic opiate, prone to cause nausea in susceptible people. It was a familiar problem with this drug.

So the prescription was easy: stop Distalgesic, take simple paracetamol if needed. Go home.

A week later my surgical colleague told me she had gone home, but had returned the next day because the nausea and vomiting had increased, despite stopping the Distalgesic.

Blood tests had shown her serum calcium value was 4.6 mmol/L - seriously increased above normal. Vomiting is a symptom of such a high calcium value. A chest X-ray showed her ribs had multiple translucent areas - the appearance of malignant secondary deposits.

Finally a proper clinical examination found a large hard lump in her right breast. Biopsy confirmed Pat had breast cancer, widely disseminated, a terminal disease.

Opportunity is fleeting; experience fallacious; judgement difficult.

The Four Horsemen of Apocalypse

2010-11-14T10:42:00.005Z

Another Armistice Day - a cold grey November morning of commemoration, 92 years on from the armistice ending the first of the great European catastrophes of the twentieth century.

My intention was to explore the disastrous wars of the twentieth century, which bled Europe near to death, and unleashed untold suffering on the world. It is the sequence of classical tragedy writ large: koros, hubris, ate, nemesis.

Koros - success, satiety, disdainful self-satisfaction;

Hubris - arrogance; smug, contemptuous pride;

Ate - reckless, self-confident stupidity;

Nemesis - punishment, retribution, downfall.

This grim sequence repeats and repeats again in the histories of humanity, great and small. When will we ever learn?

Do we not see the same grisly sequence revealed in our present banking crisis?

But let me be content to offer a simple calculation, to show the magnitude of the disaster into which Europe sleep-walked in 1914.

John Keegan, in his history of the first world war, estimates that the war cost 10 million deaths. Most of these were young men, disproportionately the brightest and best, the seed-corn of the next generation.

Imagine a parade of those 10 million. Let them march past in ranks of 10, 3 ranks to a platoon, 4 platoons to a company, 4 companies to a battalion. Let them march in quick time, at the rate of a battalion a minute; 48 ranks, 480 men, each minute.

That means 28,800 march past in 1 hour.

And the parade would last 347 hours, more than two weeks, marching day and night.

And that was just the beginning. God help us.

PS And let the ranks be spaced at 5.28 feet - that is 1000 ranks per mile. Then the parade would be a thousand miles long, approximately London to Munich, or London to Inverness and back.

Athos 6: Aphroditi, Dawn-Bearer

2010-11-02T19:45:00.004Z

Karakallou Monastery on Mount Athos; Tuesday, 2nd. September 2010; 0630.

I was waiting in the courtyard west of the church; my two companions had been at the morning service since 0500. I could hear the rise and fall of the chants, punctuated once by the clashing of the censor. Candles were visible, dimly through the windows.

It was still dark, the monastery obstructing any view of the eastern horizon, and signs of sunrise.

The air was clear and cool. At the zenith the half-moon reflected moonshine enough to see details of the buildings, and bats flying round the church.

A brilliant morning star shone down about twenty degrees west of the moon. Pure white, no twinkling, a tiny disk to the naked eye. The planet Venus, in glory.

My companions emerged from the church. Knowing Ilias is interested in astronomy, I drew his attention to the moon and Venus. He became excited, pointing and calling 'Aphroditi, Aphroditi!'. His voice echoed round the courtyard: a strange name to be heard in such a place.

Aphroditi shining into Karakallou, unseen by the monks buried in the church.

He explained to me that Aphroditi is the morning star, Hesperos the evening star: two names for Venus in opposite chords of her orbit. She may also be called Eosphoros, 'dawn-bearer'. In Latin she is Lucifer, light-bearer.

[Lucifer became a name of Satan. This association may be more apt now we know that Venus is hellish. She has a dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide, a surface hot enough to melt lead, and the brilliant white we admire is sunlight reflected from clouds of sulphuric acid. But she retains her great beauty at our distance.]

In Tolkien Venus becomes The Flammifer of Westernesse, the Silmaril on the ship bearing Earendil, doomed forever to be the herald of dawn and a sign of hope to mortal men.

But these musings were interrupted by the procession of monks coming from the church, black hooded heads bowed, eyes unlifted, black cloaks blowing in the breeze: comparison with the bats still flying was inevitable. With my companions I joined the end of the procession into the refectory with icons in bright paint on every wall, to sit at the pilgrims' table. After a lengthy grace, a monk reading a holy text timed the 10-minute breakfast of pasta, with feta cheese and - surprisingly - red wine.

And then, alas, time to pack up and leave this beautiful place.

On the road from Karakallou, these Ricinus plants graced the wall retaining one of the monastery's vineyards.

The Eleventh Month

2010-11-01T11:19:00.002Z

November - that should mean the ninth month.

Today is a nicely palindromic date: 01-11-10 in DD-MM-YY format. Enjoy it while it lasts - it will be a century before it happens again.

Today is bright, autumn golds brilliant in the low sun. But this will prove exceptional. You will not be disappointed if you expect November in England to be as Thomas Hood described so memorably.

No sun, no moon,
No morn, no noon,
No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day;
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member;
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds:
November!

Athos 5: Orthodox Monasteries

2010-10-29T09:00:00.011+01:00

Churches dominate monasteries in western Europe. A magnificent church is the largest building: cloister, chapter house, refectory, library and dormer cluster around it, commonly are dwarfed by it.

This pattern is well seen in the baroque abbeys of southern Germany: Ottobeuren, Kempten, Benediktbeuren, Vierzehnheiligen, and others; each attesting the consequences of abbots being also bishops and princes, able to set tithes, rents and taxes, and decide their expenditure.

Here in England we have only the ruins of the great mediaeval monasteries, after their dissolution by Henry the Eighth. But we see the same pattern, the church is the dominant ruin.

The church is not the largest building in the four monasteries I stayed in on Mount Athos: IM Agiou Paulou, IM Grigoriou, IM Karakoullou, and IM Koutloumousiou. Their churches are central in a courtyard surrounded by the monastery buildings, usually higher then the church, which may not easily be seen from outside.

[IM stands for Iera Muni - Holy Church - the title of respect for the monasteries and sketes on Athos.]

This image of IM Karakallou shows the layout. The central red-ochre building is the church. The tower and fortified west front were built to protect from pirates.

This the view of IM Karakallou from the approach road. The church is hidden by the monastery.

And this is an image of IM Karakallou church, as seen in the courtyard.

These orthodox churches are aligned east-west, but are not overtly cruciform. A domed central area carries a cupula or lantern, with slit windows. Other roof cupulae admit light to other parts.

Inside they appear small, high and dark, by comparison with British churches. Lights - usually candles on Athos - reveal a wealth of furnishings - icons, gold and silver fittings, and vestments.

Only Greek Orthodox had free admission to the churches in the monasteries I visited: for non-orthodox admission is by invitation, in the company of monks. Photography is not possible. I could attend service only in the ante-chamber - the Narthex.

This is the interior of the small church of Hagia Marina, which we visited on the way to Ouranopolis.

And this diagram shows the features of an Orthodox church - with thanks to Wikipaedia and Phiddipus.

This English Physician found the Athos monasteries fascinating and strangely moving. I am attracted to Orthodoxy, but still sceptical, and suspicious of being manipulated by tradition, beauty, and the radiant confidence of the faithful. A monk I spoke to had no problems with the proposition that Christianity might enter through the emotions, if the intelligence demurs.

That is a concept I need to ponder at length.

Athos 4: The Wine-Dark Sea

2010-10-26T09:00:00.002+01:00

Oinops pontos - the wine-dark sea - is a favourite epithet of Homer's.

It surely applies to the seas around the Athos peninsula - a crisp blue in sunshine, from a boat or shore, darkening to indigo from higher angles, in certain lighting conditions.

This happens because the water is very clear; it has little particulate material in suspension to scatter light passing through. In harbours the sea bed is easily visible to considerable depths - I would guess at least 20 feet.

This lack of suspended particles may be attributed in part to relative stillness of the sea. There are no strong tidal flows around Athos; diurnal ebbs and flows are minor, with a tidal rise of maybe one foot - scarcely noticed by visitors. So there are no strong currents or eddies to stir up sediment.

But another factor is infertility of the sea: there is little or no growth of plankton to cloud surface waters, nor of algae and seaweeds near shores. Algae and plankton are the base of the food chain, consequently there is not the abundance of barnacles, limpets, and other molluscs which is familiar on British shores.

Blue waters, bare rocks, low biological productivity.

Here is a picture of rocks near Grigoriou monastery: the absence of attached algae and molluscs is striking.

Fish also seem to be relatively few around Athos. I saw few sea birds - occasional cormorants and gulls. I saw no seals, and no dolphins [OK - human predation may have exterminated seals, and dolphins come and go]. Shoals of small fish are seen in harbours.

But the general infertility of the seas at Athos contrasts with the abundant life in comparable British waters.

Why should this be? I suspect deficiency of essential nutrients, especially iron. This is an oligotrophic environment.

The rocks of Athos are limestones, and generally white or grey. Calcium is in abundance, which may exacerbate the effects of iron deficiency. The north-eastern slopes are covered with sweet chestnut forest - and the chestnut grows well on the white chalk downs of England, another calcium-rich, iron-poor environment.

This picture shows blue sea and white rocks near the southern tip of the peninsula. The erosion at the base of the rocks illustrates the low tidal rise and fall.

Oinops pontos - the wine-dark sea; wine-dark because it is a hungry, infertile sea. Its blue waters and white beaches attract tourists, but disappoint the naturalist.

Finally, this is Cape Pennes, the southern tip of the peninsula.

The Reality of Ruin

2010-10-25T09:51:00.001+01:00

Kataphusin lay awake contemplating the coalition, seeing political pygmies tactically tinkering with the reality of ruin; in deliberate denial of a broken, bursting, bankrupt, balkanized Britain; industrially devastated, commercially conquered, socially shattered, economically exhausted; colonised by its colonials; in disrepute after stupid wars.

Kataphusin concludes the threat to the future of Britain may be different in 2010 to the threat in 1940, but is of comparable magnitude.
'Cometh the hour, cometh the man' - but where is a Churchill, waiting for the call?

The prognosis is bad.

Paracelsus: The Incomparable Physician

2010-10-19T18:41:00.000+01:00

Einsiedeln is a small town in Switzerland. It is best known for its huge baroque basilika housing a black madonna, which attracts thousands of pilgrims annually.

But it was also the birthplace of one of the most original and colourful of all physicians - Paracelsus.

His true name was Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. Notoriously a braggart, he took the pseudonym Paracelsus, meaning 'Beyond Celsus' - the classic Roman encyclopaedist of medicine.

Paracelsus was self-taught. He wrote about his own observations and interpretations. He travelled widely.

He studied the properties of minerals and worked in mines. He is recognised as perhaps the first systematic botanist. He pioneered the study of the medical uses of salts and minerals.

He documented the diseases of miners, and recognised the association of cretinism [the consequence of thyroid failure in babies] with endemic goitre [swelling of the thyroid gland in people living where iodine is deficient in the soil - usually mountain districts]. He wrote about diabetes mellitus.

He made important improvements to the surgery of wounds, based on his own experience, not the classic writers.

He is credited with original work in psychology.

He was a mystic. His universe is a complex single organism, whose life-giving creator spirit is God - a view towards which my own thoughts are trending.

Unfortunately his writings are obscure and difficult to read and understand. He practised astrology and alchemy, using symbols, ideas and allegories familiar to practitioners of those cryptic specialties, but impenetrable to the modern reader. He is also prone to extravagant and boastful claims.

So obscure is his vocabulary that a student wrote a Dictionarium Paracelsicum to help those struggling to elucidate his writings.

Paracelsus enraged the medical establishment. He wrote and taught in German, not Latin. He spoke of his own knowledge and ideas, ignoring the approved classics. He was forced to flee Basel, where he was briefly town physician, and spent his last decade a wanderer.

He was accused of keeping low company, and hard drinking.

In Einsiedeln today there is this memorial to Paracelsus, beside the great square in front of the basilika.

Here is the inscription on the base.

Here is a translation.

In memory of the physician, researcher and philosopher THEOPHRASTUS PARACELSUS:

medical reformer;

father of chemotherapy;

promoter of biology and wound management;

saviour of those benighted in spirit;

champion of medical ethics;

independent thinker and humble follower of Christ;

friend of the poor.

Born at the end of 1493 near the Devil's Bridge at Etzel, he died after a Faustian life on 24 September 1541 in Salzburg.

Remembered in Einsiedeln, his home.

The right base carries his brief autobiography.

Which translates something like this - the German is dialect and archaic. His disclaimer of rhetoric must be considered ironic!

Because I can by no rhetoric or subtlety declare myself, but only in the language of my birth and dialect, I am from Einsiedeln region a Swiss.

Then I have wandered through the lands and become a foreigner in my time, alone and strange and other. There, O God, you have grown patiently your art under the breath of the fearful wind with pain in me.

And on the left base there are these quotations.

Let no man be other who can be himself.

Each one remains as a rock in his being.

The child needs no stars and no planets: his mother is his planet and his star.

Blessed and more than blessed is the man to whom God gives the grace of compassion.

The right door of medicine is the light of Nature.

The highest plane of medicine is Love.

Incomparable - there has been no other physician like him. But he is an example of an important principle.

No matter how original and important your observations and ideas may be, they are valuable only if you explain them clearly, simply and fluently.

Epilepsy: Difficult Judgements.

2010-10-11T17:10:00.000+01:00

A case of epilepsy is in my experience the most searching test of a physician's skill. This case is perhaps an extreme example, but the management of epilepsy is never easy.

Gail was 19 when she first came to my out-patients' clinic. She was a student at a local college.

She had suffered two major epileptic fits two days before, a Sunday. On the Friday before she had drunk to considerable excess at a party, so much that she could not remember how she had got back to her student lodgings, and she had stayed in bed most of Saturday.

As a young child she had suffered a number of fits, indeed she had a substantial folder of hospital notes generated during attendances in the paediatric department. Extensive investigation at age 5 had shown only minor anomalies on the electro-encephalogram. She had taken anti-convulsant tablets until the age of 12, but had then stopped, having been free of fits for 3 years. A repeat electro-encephalogram at that time showed no abnormality.

Off treatment she had had no more fits until the recent events. Until Saturday she considered herself to be a normal, healthy, active young woman.

Her big interest was her 500 cc motor bike. She belonged to a local motor-cycle club, and spent most of her weekends out with them. Indeed she had come to the hospital on her motor-cycle, arriving in leathers and helmet.

Examination and a set of routine tests were unremarkable. A repeat electro-encephalogram and a CT scan were each reported normal, but those results took several days to come through.

Two important issues had to be considered immediately.

1. Should she take anti-convulsants again?

2. Should she continue riding motor-cycles?

Anti-convulsant treatment is not simple. Anti-convulsants reduce the fit frequency; they do not guarantee that no more fits will occur. Anti-convulsants have a long list of side-effects, notably sedation. Gail was at college, preparing for exams. Her academic performance could well be impaired.

The drunkenness was an obvious aggravating factor. What was the risk of further fits if she took no medication but avoided alcohol, fatigue, noise, flashing lights, excitement? Probably low, but not negligible. Just 4 days had passed since the party, and 2 days since the fits: she had to be considered still at some additional risk for several days more.

I decided to recommend a 1 month course of phenobarbitone: a 30 mg. tablet at bedtime for 2 weeks, then a 15 mg. tablet for 2 weeks more.

Phenobarbitone has the advantage of long duration of effect. A single daily dose aids compliance; a bedtime dose means the worst of the sedation is during the night.

Phenobarbitone increases the metabolism of hormones and drugs. It can interfere with the effectiveness of oral contraceptives. I warned her of this; she blushed, she wasn't on the pill.

She took the tablets as prescribed. She had no further fits and stopped medication at the end of the month.

But what about the motor-cycling? I advised strongly she should not do it: I had a duty to advise her to inform the Licensing Authority. That might well mean losing her licence for a minimum of 2 years.

I also advised she should inform her insurance company, which would risk loss of cover.

She became very upset. This was her main leisure interest; her friends were in the motor-cycle club; if she couldn't ride she couldn't meet them. Tears flowed, tissues were passed.

I recorded my advice in her notes, and in my letter to her general practitioner.

I saw her for review several times over the next 3 months. No more fits occurred during this time, but she continued riding her motor-cycle, not informing the licensing and insurance people.

I repeated my advice at each visit, but she did not heed me. She reassured me she was very careful with alcohol, avoided fatigue, and felt very well.

Still I was worried. She was epileptic. Further fits were unlikely, but not impossible.

I had visions of a fit causing an accident. On her motor-cycle she was a serious risk to herself, and, even worse, to other people. Supposing she crashed into school children at a bus-stop?

Did I have a duty to inform the Licensing Authority myself, without her consent?

I had a professional duty of confidentiality; did I have a public duty of protection?

Eventually I sought the opinion of the Regional Hospital Board's Solicitor. His advice was unequivocal. My duty was to Gail: I must advise her, and record that I had done so. It was Gail's responsibility to inform the relevant authorities. For me to do so would be a serious breach of professional confidence. On his advice I sent to Gail by recorded delivery a letter explaining the issues raised by her relapse and advising her that she a legal duty to inform the Licensing Authority, and that she must also inform her insurance company.

She did not reply, and failed to come to further appointments: I never saw her again.

Athos 3: Can Paulinus Persuade?

2010-10-09T12:27:00.002+01:00

Why does a man become a monk? What mind-set turns a man's eyes and thoughts inward, away from the world?

One clear and forceful answer is in a latin poem by Paulinus of Nola.

The story of Paulinus and Ausonius opens Helen Waddell's study of late Latin poetry - 'The Wandering Scholars'.

Ausonius: scholar, royal tutor, consul in 379, now old and in retirement on his estate near Bordeaux.

Paulinus, his favoured student, a short-time senator, who became an ascetic christian and the founder of a small monastic settlement at the tomb of St. Felix of Nola, in Italy.

Ausonius wrote to Paulinus, begging him to visit. Eventually Paulinus replies, explaining his choice of a secluded, contemplative life devoted to religion. Paulinus was married, and not himself a monk; but went on to become Bishop of Nola, and finally a saint.

Here is Helen Waddell's translation of Paulinus' response to Ausonius [the latin is appended].

Not that they beggared be in mind, or brutes,

That they have chosen their dwelling place afar

In lonely places: but their eyes are turned

To the high stars, the very deep of truth.

Freedom they seek, an emptiness apart

From worthless things: din of the market-place,

And all the noisy crowding up of things,

And whatsoever wars on the divine,

At Christ's command, and for His love, they hate;

By faith and hope they follow after God,

And know their quest shall not be desperate,

If but the Present conquer not their souls

With hollow things: that which they see they spurn

That they may come at that they do not see,

Their senses kindled like a torch, that may

Blaze through the secrets of eternity.

The transient's open, everlastingness

Denied our sight; yet still by hope we follow

The vision that our minds have seen, despising

The shows and forms of things, the loveliness

Soliciting for ill our mortal eyes.

The present's nothing: but eternity

Abides for those on whom all truth, all good,

Hath shone, in one entire and perfect light.

For those blessed by faith and hope, this is a powerful argument, maybe a final answer. These eloquent lines resonate even in the sceptical mind of this English physician:

"by hope we follow the vision that our minds have seen'.

Siegfried Sassoon speaks for me, unsure if Paulinus describes a reality which all may enter, if he is indeed describing a reality.

Redemption

I thought; These multitudes we hold in mind -

This host of souls redeemed -

Out of the abysm of the ages came -

Out of the spirit of man - devised or dreamed.

I thought; To the invisible I am blind;

No angels tread my nights with feet of flame;

No mystery is mine -

No whisper from that world beyond my sense.

I think; If throughout some chink in me could shine

But once - O but one ray

From that all-hallowing and eternal day,

Asking no more of Heaven I would go hence.

Yes, that plaintive poem with its elaborate rhymes also resonates in me.

But I have received in my later years the vision of the Autopoietic Kosmos, perhaps the grandest unifying theory. It suffices.

I enjoy access to a wealth of reliable knowledge and understanding, far beyond the hopes of Paulinus or the dilemmas of Sassoon. We in our times must follow the vision that our minds have seen.

"To the solid ground of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye" - but Wordsworth speaks as a nature mystic, not intending his words to have quite the meaning I attribute them.

So once again, my favourite quotation, from Rhazes, Persian physician in 10th century Baghdad:

Human perception and cognition alone give reliable knowledge;

The way of philosophy is open to all abuses;

Claims of divine revelation are false;

Religions are dangerous.

Not even the advocacy of Paulinus will persuade me into the way of the monk.

[ Appendix. Paulinus' original latin.

Ad Ausonium

Non inopes animi neque de feritate legentes

desertis habitare locis, sed in ardua versi

sidera spectantesque deum verique profunda

perspicere intenti, de vanis libera curis

otia amant strepitumque fori rerumque tumultus

cunctaque divinis inimica negotia donis

et Christi imperiis et amore salutis abhorrent

speque fideque deum sponsa mercede sequuntur,

quam referet certus non desperantibus auctor,

si modo non vincant vacuis praesentia rebus,

quaeque videt spernat, quae non videt ut mereatur

secreta ignitus penetrans caelestia sensus.

namque caduca patent nostris, aeterna negantur

visibus, et nunc spe sequimur quod mente videmus.

spernentes varias, rerum spectacula, formas

et male corporeos bona sollicitantia visus.

attamen haec sedisse illis sententia visa est,

tota quibus iam lux patuit verique bonique,

venturi aeternum saecli et praesentis inane. ]

Athos 2: Leaving Aphroditi

2010-10-08T17:54:00.001+01:00

I departed for Athos from a village east of Lamia with my two companions, Ilias and Vangelis, who had invited me to join them on their visit. Ilias is the father of my Greek daughter-in-law; Vangelis is the father of her sister's husband. Vangelis is a classical scholar and expert on Orthodox liturgy. Neither spoke much English, and I speak little Greek, but language proved to be little problem.

Ilias and Vangelis had visited Athos before, so were familiar with routes and procedures. The motor journey on the afternoon of our first day lasted some 5 hours.

A new motorway is mostly complete. From Athens it runs north past Lamia and Larissa; then, with the impressive massif of Olympos to the west, to Thessaloniki. From there the new Egnatia Odos runs east, passing two large freshwater lakes, Koronia and Volvi, the land becoming increasingly fertile and forested. After Volvi we turned off to the sea at Stauros, then south through beautiful forested hills, passing Stageira, the birthplace of Aristotle, and Nea Roda, the site of Xerxes' canal.

The road ends at Ouranopolis, Sky Town, a pleasant seaside resort, where small hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops cater to the Athos pilgrims. Prominent in Ouranopolis are shops selling icons, prayer beads, religious books and other items for the Orthodox.

Further travel into Athos is by boat.

Next morning at 0830 we were here, in the Grapheion Proskunyton, the Pilgrim's Office, with passport and 30 euros to collect the Diamonytyrion, the necessary permission to stay 4 days on Athos: an A4 sheet with the double headed eagle of Byzantium at the top left-hand.

An hour later we were on the ferry, the Agios Pantaleimon, a large landing craft. It has a vehicle deck and passenger superstructure reached across a bow ramp, lifted at sea, and dropped when the ship is brought bow first against a quay.

The sun was warm, the sea was blue, with white-crested waves whipped up by a brisk southerly. I watched monks, pilgrims and workmen coming aboard, while on the narrow quay maybe a dozen cars and small trucks queued for their turn to negotiate the ramp.

I noticed an old monk with a long white beard climbing the steps of the companion-way with difficulty, carrying two heavy plastic carriers labelled Lidl. A small group of young men were dressed for the beach - T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops: they proved to be Romanians, and they did not arrive at the monastery so clad.

Then I noticed her, an image which I shall not easily forget.

She was young mother with a child in a push-chair. She stood quite still, on the seaward end of the quay, watching the loading. She was tall and beautiful, with her dark hair carefully tied back. A phrase from Virgil came into my head - his Copa Syrisca has caput Graeca redimita mitella: 'hair dressed back with a ribbon in the Greek fashion'.

[In museums you can see classical Greek statues with the same hair style.]

She wore a fitted 3/4 length sleeved dress of grey and light blue gingham. The gusty wind alternately ballooned her dress, then blew it against her body.

Standing there, Aphroditi incarnate, she seemed to challenge us.

'O what is a woman, that you forsake her?'

What drives a man to forsake the real world and bury himself in a monastery? Is he seeking or fleeing?

Why were we turning away from her into the monks' world of Athos, dedicated to a legendary virgin who became mother of God?

Questions which the learned Professor Jung may be best placed to answer. The virgin goddess is an important archetype of the collective unconscious, well known in Greek and Middle-Eastern myth long before Christianity: Artemis, for example, and Athena, to whom was built the Parthenon: Mary moved onto ground well prepared.

Or perhaps Professor Freud or one of his disciples can explain how the male libido may be obstructed, and diverted or repelled from Aphroditi.

I have heard that feminists have demonstrated on the quay at Ouranopolis. Was she there that morning by chance or design - that young woman whose questions demand an answer?

I hope it was by design.

A Pilgrimage to Athos: 1

2010-10-06T14:11:00.001+01:00

I first saw Mount Athos from an Airbus A321, Aegean Airways flight A3603, 3 hours out from London Heathrow to Athens. The aircraft flew the line from Sarajevo to Larissa at 36,000 feet, and the captain had announced we were now in Greek airspace with landing expected in 50 minutes.

To the left I could see we were abeam Thessaloniki. Looking further east there was a mirage: an atmospheric layer mirrored the sky, obscuring land and horizon, a pale blue reflection, against which clouds in grey silhouette gave an impression of islands in a sea.

But there, further east, maybe 200 kilometres distant, the cone of Athos was above the reflection, its white rock shining in the afternoon sun.

I could understand how it came to be Holy Mountain - Agion Oros Athos.

Athos mountain is the tip of a narrow peninsula projecting some 70 km. from the mainland. The body of the peninsula is a ridge rising maybe 500 metres, running south-east into the 2033 metre high mountain. Chestnut forest covers much of the north-east slope of the ridge; the south-west slopes are drier, with a mixed scrub of conifers and evergreen oak. The south-east shoulder of the mountain is semi-arid; I heard it called 'the desert'.

A flat sandy 2-km. isthmus connects the peninsula to the mainland. Here, 2490 years ago, Xerxes commanded a canal be dug to pass his navy west, to avoid the risk of rounding the stormy cape of Athos, which had cost his father dear. The sand collapsed and buried the canal, so there is little to see today.

Agion Oros Athos is today an autonomous province of Greece, governed by an ecclesiastical council representing the Orthodox communities of 20 monasteries and 12 sketes. [A skete is a group of monks living in a village, not a single large building cluster.]

The only lay settlements are the capital, Karyes, a small village, and the tiny port of Dafni, about 2/3 of the way along the south-west coast.

Athos has been sacred to Mary, mother of Jesus, for much more than a thousand years. It is her paradise, her garden and her inheritance for ever, and a haven for those seeking salvation.

The holiness of Athos has been respected through many centuries, not least by the Ottomans. Exceptions include Arab and other pirate raiders, and hooligan crusaders.

Today Athos is a World Heritage Site. The monasteries have lost much of their former income from estates and patronage. The monasteries I saw need expensive maintenance and repair. I saw blue plaques recording European Union support - which no doubt has conditions attached. The traditional exclusion of women from the peninsula may not survive much longer. But there is nowhere for women on Athos, and I doubt the monasteries will provide guest facilities for women as they do for men.

Ecclesiatical control of Athos means its beauty is protected from commercial exploitation: long may it continue.

Access to Athos requires ecclesiastical permission, a visa. The number of visas is strictly limited, which limits further the human impact on this special place.

Agion Oros, AO, the alpha and the omicron: near but not quite the alpha and the omega.

[Modern Greeks pronounce Agion Oros 'with an aspirated g and s - something like 'aghyon orosh' - the g is especially difficult for an Englishman to get right.]

Managing Epilepsy

2010-10-05T10:37:00.001+01:00

If you see someone seized by an epileptic fit, then it is a reasonable first explanation to attribute the seizure to an evil spirit or demon, which has entered and is for a time venting its fury on the patient. Some believed that a god enters the epileptic, so the fit manifests the power of the divine. Hippocrates needed specifically to deny that epilepsy is "The Sacred Disease", asserting instead that it is a physical illness.

We know now that a fit is caused by a storm of electrical activity in the brain, triggered by some focus of abnormal electrical activity. Sometimes the focus is identifiable in an area of brain damage, but often it is not, and the underlying cause remains uncertain.

A case of epilepsy in a boy is described twice in the New Testament, in graphic terms, interpreted as spirit possession. The first is in Luke's gospel, chapter 9, 38.

And behold, a man from the multitude cried, saying,

"Master, I beseech thee to look upon my son; for he is mine only child: and behold, a spirit taketh him, and he suddenly crieth out; and it teareth him that he foameth, and it hardly departeth from him, bruising him sorely."

That is a succint description of the tragedy of epilepsy in a child, made yet more vivid by the archaic language.

In Mark's gospel, chapter 9,17, the same case is described in even more telling words. In addition it seems that the boy's epilepsy is part of a more generalized brain disease, perhaps congenital, perhaps birth injury, perhaps after infection or trauma.

And one of the multitude answered him,

"Master, I brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; and wheresoever it taketh him, it dasheth him down: and he foameth, and grindeth his teeth, and pineth away."

... And they brought him unto him: and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him grievously; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming.

And he asked his father, "How long time is it since this hath come unto him?"

And he said, "From a child. And oft-times it hath cast him both into the fire and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us."

"Wheresoever it taketh him" - the cruel unpredictability of this disease.

"It dasheth him down" - the fit throws the victim down violently, often causing injury.

"He foameth, and grindeth his teeth" - the convulsive champing and salivation; the blood-stained foam on the face when the tongue has been bitten.

No mention of the embarrassment of incontinence, nor of the gnawing fear of losing control and dignity in another fit.

Jesus commands the spirit to leave, and it does, after a last and very severe fit. We are not told if the boy recovered speech and hearing. Jesus says the power to cast out such devils comes through prayer and fasting. Would it were so.

We now have we a variety of drugs useful in epilepsy; but no drug cures epilepsy, or guarantees freedom from fits. Drugs reduce the fit frequency, and must be used carefully and conservatively. Side-effects are common, and treatment demands continuing supervision and adjustment. A frequent problem is that the medication is increased if another fit occurs, so that a patient prone to fits eventually may be taking several drugs in full dose, with inevitable sedation, and other undesirable consequences. Sometimes a reduction in medication is the wisest advice.

The objective, as always, is to maximise benefit and minimise harm. In epilepsy this means finding the minimum drug dose to minimise the fit frequency. This isn't easy.

Most epileptic patients and their relatives live in fear. The prospect of another fit is alarming and painful. The only acceptable fit frequency is zero. Often this cannot be achieved, and can never be guaranteed. The physician has the difficult task of explaining that more drugs will mean more problems, and a lower quality of life.

Better to suffer the occasional fit than be constantly intoxicated.

If my child had epilepsy I would resist such advice. But I hope I would remember that only an inexperienced physician believes epilepsy can be controlled without causing side-effects.

No disease challenges the skill of a physician more than epilepsy.

Blogging Again

2010-10-05T10:24:00.000+01:00

I am back after a 2 month break. At the end of August I was privileged to visit four monasteries on Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain: a most interesting and memorable experience, which I intend to discuss in future posts.

I have also read through previous postings, and I plan to republish edited - and I hope improved - versions of some of them.

So, a new beginning ...

Summer Break

2010-08-07T12:20:00.000+01:00

My apologies to readers for the lack of recent postings. My plan is to begin this blog again in the Autumn, say at the beginning of October.
So enjoy your summer - and watch this space!

Medical Saints

2010-05-18T18:03:00.000+01:00

Churchill is perhaps the best source of English quotations after Shakespeare, the King James' Bible, and the Book of Common Prayer.
This caught my eye: I have blogged similar sentiments, but it seems Churchill said it first. It is not Churchill at his best - he was 73 when he wrote it - and in the rambling first sentence there may be a sign of the dementia which afflicted him in his last years.

I have been inclined to feel from time to time that there ought to be a hagiology of medical science, and that we ought to have saints' days to commemorate the great discoveries which have been made for mankind, and perhaps for all time - or for whatever time may be left to us. Nature, like many of our modern statesmen, is prodigal of pain. I should like to find a day when we can take a holiday, a day of jubilation, when we can fete good Saint Anaesthesia and chaste and pure Saint Antiseptic.

Immunisation, anaesthesia, and antibiotics are the big three for canonisation; and a fourth saint should be created for the host of benefits vital in special cases, such as the obstetric forceps, diuretics, and hormones, to name just three.
But the highest honour should be reserved for Saint Morphine the Merciful.

'Twould ring the bells of heaven their wildest peal for years, if Patriarchs would turn away from theology to call for thanks for medical science, for medical scientists, and for the human faculties of observation and analysis which deliver such great benefits.

The Price of Beauty

2010-05-10T14:22:00.000+01:00

In this song Percy French summarised the difficulties in pricing beauty better than any philosopher.

MCBREEN'S HEIFER

McBreen had two daughters and each one in turn
Was offered in marriage to Jamesy O'Burn.
Now Kitty was pretty, but Jane she was plain,
So to make up the differ, McBreen would explain,
He'd give the best heifer he had on his land,
As a sort of a bonus with Jane, understand.
But then Kitty would char-um a bird off a bush,
And that left the lad in a horrid non-plush.

Now there's no denyin' Kitty was remarkably pretty,
Though I can't say the same for Jane,
But still there's not the differ of the price of a heifer,
Between the pretty and the plain.

Entirely bothered was Jamesy O'Burn.
He thought that he'd give the schoolmaster a turn.
Says he, "To wed Kitty is very good fun,
But a heifer's a heifer when all's said an' done.
A girl she might lose her good looks anyhow,
And a heifer might grow to an elegant cow,
But still there's no price for the stock, d'ye mind,
And Jane has a face that the Divil designed."

Now there's no denyin' Kitty was remarkably pretty,
Though I can't say the same for Jane,
But still there's not the differ of the price of a heifer,
Between the pretty and the plain.

Now the schoolmaster said, with a great deal of sense,
"We'll reduce the two girls to shillin's an' pence.
Add the price of the heifer, and Jane, I'll be bound,
Will come out the top by a couple o' pound;
But still I'm forgettin' that down in Glengall,
The stock is just goin' for nothin' at all."
So Jim thought he'd wait till the end of the year,
Till girls might be cheaper or stock might be dear.

But when he came for Kittie, she was married to McVittie,
And McGee had appropriated Jane,
So whether there's the differ of the price of a heifer,
Is a thing that he never would explain.

Two More Aphorisms

2010-05-01T18:39:00.000+01:00

If patients say a physiotherapist is nice or kind, she / he is not doing a good job.

So I was pleased when my old dad said to me after his aortic valve graft: 'That young woman physiotherapist, she's cruel; she made me get out of bed the morning after my operation'.

The best physios. are popular with patients when they are recovered and ready to go home, but not before.

A Curious Restraint

2010-04-30T07:18:00.002+01:00

Last night's TV debate began with a preposterous claim from Gordon Brown. "I may not be popular, but I have 13 years experience: I know how to govern, I know how to manage the economy."

This from the man who pumped up the boom, so creating a catastrophic bust.
This from the man who signed the Lisbon Treaty without the referendum his party had promised.
This from the man who has committed British soldiers with inadequate equipment to an unwinnable and unnecessary war.
This from the man whose covert policy of mass immigration is causing unprecedented population growth, and dangerous fractures in our society.
And the list of failings goes on.

To a lifelong democratic socialist the grotesque excesses and betrayals of 'New Labour' are painful and embarrassing in the extreme. It is beyond belief that Gordon Brown should crawl from the wreck and claim he is a good steward and a safe driver.

So I am puzzled that David Cameron argued with such restraint.
Is he just too much of a gentleman to kick a man when he's down?
Does he believe Brown's claims are so obviously preposterous that they are beneath his dignity to refute?
Maybe his election managers advised he should stress his own agenda, and be wary of increasing public sympathy for the underdog.
He must know that an instinct for the jugular is essential in a prime minister.

Whatever the reason, Cameron had an open goal, but would not kick the ball in. Why?

Maybe his strategy is longer term.
He read the newspapers yesterday. He heard the warning of the governor of the Bank of England: the austerities needed to manage the economic crisis are so severe the next government will be hated for a generation.
His first task as Conservative leader was to break the popular image of the nasty party. He succeeded, but an election win now would destroy years of work, maybe label the Conservatives as nasty for ever.

The winner of this match will lift a poisoned chalice; Gordon Brown has seen to that. In justice he should drink it.
For Cameron the best strategic result may be a hung parliament, with an unstable labour-liberal coalition floundering and failing in government. Let them take the hate and ignominy of managing the austerity, or the disgrace of failing in economic meltdown needing IMF intervention. A second election could not be long delayed, and the Conservative's might inherit a country at the nadir, on the rebound.
A cynical strategy, but that's politics.

I suspect Cameron's prayer is 'Lord make me Prime Minister, but please, Lord, not this time'.

Loveliest of Trees

2010-04-29T14:03:00.000+01:00

Housman famously praised the cherry in bloom as ‘Loveliest of trees’, but he was mistaken.

There is no blossom more beautiful than the apple. Most delicately flushed and perfumed, it’s transience intensifies the pleasure of its appearance, signifying spring is really here, after the long cold damp winter.

And no-one hymned an English apple orchard better than William Barnes, in his Dorset dialect.

'Ithin the woodlands, flow'ry gleaded,

By the woak tree's mossy moot,

The sheenen grass bleades, timber-sheaded,

Now do quiver under voot;

An' birds do whissle auver head,

An' water's bubblen in its bed,

An' ther vor me the apple tree

Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

When leaves that leately wer a-springen

Now do feade 'ithin the copse,

An' painted birds do hush ther zingen

Up upon the timber's tops;

An' brown-leav'd fruit's a-turnen red,

In cloudless zunsheen, auver head,

Wi' fruit vor me the apple tree

Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

Let other vo'k meake money vaster

In the air o' dark-room'd towns,

I don't dread a peevish measter;

Though noo man do heed my frowns,

I be free to goo abrode,

Or teake agean my hwomeward road

To where vor me the apple tree

Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

Home is where the orchard is. I like that.

The blossom in the picture is on my Arthur Turner apple tree now. This variety is noted for the colour and perfume of its flowers.

Thought for Today

2010-04-28T07:23:00.000+01:00

This is by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in relaxed and unbuttoned mood.

Ob der Koran von Ewigkeit sei?
Darnach frag ich nicht!
Ob der Koran geschaffen sei?
Das weiß ich nicht!
Daß er das Buch der Bücher sei,
Glaub ich aus Mosleminenpflicht.

Daß aber der Wein von Ewigkeit sei,
Daran zweifl' ich nicht;
Oder daß er vor den Engeln geschaffen sei,
Ist vielleicht auch kein Gedicht.
Der Trinkende, wie es auch immer sei,
Blickt Gott frischer ins Angesicht.

It might be translated thus.

Comes the Koran from the Eternal?
That I do not ask!
Was the Koran composed?
That I do not know!
That it is the Book of Books,
I believe as Muslim duty.
 
But that wine comes from Eternity,
That I do not doubt;
Or that it was created for the angels
Perhaps is no myth.
The drinker, as it always may be,
Looks God afresh in the face.

A nice conceit!
More likely drink reveals the realities of the drinker, as maybe God sees them.
In vino veritas.

Airspace Realities

2010-04-21T17:46:00.000+01:00

Europe's airways are open again, with a few exceptions. The volcano is still erupting, the weather pattern has not changed: what has changed is the definition of 'safe to fly'. The realities have forced a hard cold look at the regulations, and their urgent revision.
The airlines forced this revision. The people most experienced in safe airline operations were able eventually to influence those who have the power of decision.

The computer model used by the regulators is called NAME - Nuclear Accident Model. NAME was developed after the Chernobyl disaster. It is designed to model the spread of radioactivity after a release into the atmosphere. I understand it performed well, where it was possible to check predictions against measurements, but the information needed when assessing air safety around a volcano differs from that after a nuclear accident.

Critical parameters for an aircraft flying into dust include the mass of dust per unit air volume, the average size of the dust particles, and the speed of the aircraft and its engines.
I understand the smallest ducts in a jet engine are in the turbine blades, passing cooling air. These are sized around 1 millimetre, so may be blocked by particles of that size.

From the Icelandic volcano central England lies approximately 1000 miles south-east. So volcanic dust in a 50 mph wind from the north-west will take 20 hours to get here. In practice the dust followed a longer path, in the clockwise circulation round high pressure west of Ireland.
So what size of volcanic dust grain will still be airborne more than 20 hours after eruption?
I don't know, but it must be very small, micrometric at the most, I would guess.

Really we should talk about 'smoke', not 'ash' or 'dust'. An aircraft or engine susceptible to damage by smoke should not be flying at all.

Obviously no aircraft should fly through the erupting plume. The urgent need is to develop means to plot contours of maximum particle size and concentration around the eruption, and to determine the safe limits for aircraft. The danger zone round a volcano is likely to be much smaller than that round a nuclear release - radioactive smoke might well be more dangerous that radioactive dust.

It is now imperative to measure and model, so future airways management is evidence based. And I would restore to airlines the responsibility to decide when it is safe to operate, tasking the meteorological services to provide reliable information.

Smaug Stirring

2010-04-18T09:40:00.000+01:00

Eyja is the Icelandic word for island; fjall means mountain; jökull means ice-cap or glacier.

Eyjafjall is the Island Mountain; Eyjafjallajökull is the Island Mountain Glacier. It is an outlier of the larger Myrdalsjökull to the east.

[In Iceland ll is aspirated, as in Welsh llan. So the spoken name should sound something like eiya-fyatla-jerkutl.]

Eyjafjall: might that translate as Lonely Mountain? Remember, this is the country that inspired so much in Tolkien.
And who had occupied the deep spaces of the Lonely Mountain? It was that most dreaded of disasters, that most catastrophic of calamities, the Great Worm from the northern wastelands, Smaug the Magnificent, the giant dragon.
And Smaug was violently possessive and jealous of his treasure, to the last tiny jewel. Bilbo stole a goblet, arousing Smaug to fury, and to wreak fire and havoc on Esgaroth.

Now Britain and other European countries are demanding treasure from Iceland, reparations for their losses in the collapse of the icelandic banks. Maybe Smaug is aware, stirring, giving warning when his treasure is threatened. His closure of our airspace is just a starter, telling us to back off or else he'll erupt from his lair to unleash an Armageddon of flame and fury on London.

Does he still have a scale missing on the left breast? Can we hope that in a showdown a grim, heroic Bard will hear a thrush report Smaug's weakness? Will he have one last black arrow, forged by elven-smiths, to snatch victory from the jaws of hell?

Do our leaders know all this? Is there a conspiracy of silence, 'in the national interest'?

Put no trust in officials; check your fire extinguisher. That is the doctor's advice for today.

Dust and Aircraft

2010-04-17T11:08:00.000+01:00

Arabia is very dusty. Any wind tends to sir up dust; strong winds cause sand-storms.
Muscat has dusty days as Leamington has fogs.
But aircraft operate normally on dusty days there, as they do on foggy days here.

This is a picture of the Burj Roundabout and Rusail shopping centre on a dusty day, taken from a Fokker Friendship about 2 miles from touchdown at Muscat-Seeb Airport. Such conditions were common - often the dust haze was much worse, and extended up several thousand feet. Temperatures were rarely much below 30 degrees C., and humidities usually 80% or more.
The dust is presumably mostly from sand, so it is silica, very abrasive.

I can't help wondering if our current shut-down is an over-reaction. We are told the dust isn't enough to impair visibility.

Thanks, Eyjafjall

2010-04-17T06:59:00.000+01:00

It's a lovely morning here in the English Midlands: a clear blue zenith, with a rosy sunrise. It is hard to believe there is significant volcanic dust and sulphur dioxide up there, but probing flights show there is.

Sunset yesterday was similarly clear, with a sky of darkening blue and a pink sunset.

I recall the spectacular sunsets and sunrises I witnessed in 1991 in Al 'Ain, in Abu Dhabi Emirate. Mount Pinatubo had erupted a few days before, in the Philippines, half a world away. That eruption injected cubic kilometres of volcanic solids and gases into the atmosphere, enough to spread around the globe.

In Al 'Ain the sun rose and set beneath great curtains of red and purple, reaching up to the zenith. This went on for several days. Our present displays are trivial in comparison.

No airspace was closed in Arabia during this event: flying continued as normal, if I remember correctly.

Today we have a rare opportunity to enjoy a spring morning unspoiled by aircraft: quiet, and no contrails. It demonstrates the degree of pollution inflicted by aircraft, to which we have become accustomed.

On a flight to Spain last year I saw the extent of the pollution at the contrail level, and how some contrails at least have a brownish tint when seen from the side.

Contrails are visible pollution: outside the contrail level the pollution is the same, but invisible. And much of it is stratospheric, slow to circulate to ground level, where most natural clean-up occurs.

Reduction of air transport and travel must be a priority if we want a cleaner atmosphere.

So, this morning I say: Eyjafjall, þakk yður fyrir.

You have reminded us about the mess we are creating, and the natural beauty we are destroying.

Woddis, Thou Shouldst Be Living At This hour ..

2010-04-14T17:47:00.001+01:00

The late great Roger Woddis wrote this poem, after some scandal had been given a whitewash after an investigation.
It keeps going round in my head, especially as the electioneering gets under way. It seems to summarise so much about our 'low, dishonest decade', ending in banking, economic, social and political crisis.

Nobody put their hand out,
Nobody took a bribe,
Nobody was compromised
By acts you could describe.

Nobody got away with it,
Nobody thought they could,
And all of them were honest men,
And all of them were good.

Nobody bought a cabinet,
Whatever you may hear,
And all of them were honest men,
And all were in the clear.

Nobody did a secret deal,
Nobody was for sale,
Nobody bent the rules at all, 
And nobody went to jail.

And all of them were honest men,
As white as driven snow, 
And all lived on a higher plane,
And spat on those below.

There is uncertainty about the second letter of the second word in the last line.

Simple Arithmetic

2010-04-06T10:31:00.002+01:00

A general election has been called. A few simple calculations show the magnitude of the problems the next government will inherit. Forget politics, no government will have any choice; economics will dictate.

This year our national debt will exceed 800 billion pounds. Over the next 2 to 3 years it will pass the 1 trillion pound mark, that is 1 thousand thousand million pounds.

These are the official figures, the real total of government debt is much more. The true figure should include off balance-sheet, stealth debt such as the Private Finance Initiative, and commitments for under-funded public sector pensions.

Total British debt is the sum of state and private borrowing. Private debt is currently estimated at 1.4 trillion pounds.

Total British debt must be more than 2 trillion pounds, and increasing.

This is an unprecedented, catastrophic total. Interest payments alone must exceed 100 billion pounds annually. It will be a massive burden on Britain, its children and its grandchildren.

To get some idea of the magnitude of these figures, try the simple experiment suggested by the BBC.

Imagine we started to repay debt at the rate of 1 pound per second: how long to repay 1 trillion pounds?

Well, there are 60x60x24 = 86,400 seconds in a day;

so a million seconds is 11.5741 days;

and a billion seconds is 11,574.1 days, or 31.688 years [assuming 365.25 days / year];

and 1 trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

Therefore, at 1 pound per second it will be 31,700 years before our debts are repaid;

if we increase repayment to 100 pounds per second we need 317 years;

and that takes no account of interest.

At 1 pound per second we pay 31.56 million pounds annually. That is 0.000032% of 1 trillion pounds. To pay 3% interest on 1 trillion pounds requires 30 billion pounds annually, 82.2 million pounds per day, 951 pounds per second.

These sums - interest and repayment of capital - are impossible to achieve. Can a country go bankrupt? I guess the International Monetary Fund would be the receiver, and dictate socially devastating economic strictures: a recipe for revolution.

Governments have an option denied to private borrowers. Governments can print money, undo the link between money and value, create inflation, and destroy the debt. The Bank of England printed 200 billion pounds during the past year, to buy government debt.

This is a sophisticated, dishonest means of default.

Inflation renders a currency worthless. It breeds poverty, lawlessness, ugly politics and violence.

Inflation created by insupportable reparation debt destroyed the Reichsmark, with disastrous consequences for Germany, Europe and indeed the world.

But the resolution of an inflation crisis must be the creation of a new currency, a fresh start built on a ruined country and a devastated reputation.

So I would advise Brown and Cameron secretly to pray to lose this election. The next prime minister has a task impossible to fulfil; he can expect only criticism, ignominy and grief. Better to be in opposition and watch the storm destroy the governing party; this crisis must come to a head before an election 5 years from now.

A Hymn to April

2010-04-04T11:16:00.004+01:00

The chill and desolation of Edith Sitwell's poem is appropriate for Good Friday. Now on Easter Sunday I turn to Swinburne, that pre-Raphaelite word-smith noted for his distinctive verse forms and rhythms, and his sumptuous, luxuriant, Victorian images and language.
As with many Victorian poets, Swinburne may sound to modern ears at times mannered, even pretentious.
He is also well educated in the Greek classics, so some of his allusions are unfamiliar to readers 1-1/2 centuries later. The tragic legend of Itylus is summarised here.

This is Swinburne's great hymn to April, and Spring in England. It is an early chorus from 'Atalanta in Calydon', an early literary success, a drama in classical form. The 'Maiden most perfect' is Artemis.

WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
  The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
  With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
  The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers,
  Maiden most perfect, lady of light,
With a noise of winds and many rivers,
  With a clamour of waters, and with might;
Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet,
Over the splendour and speed of thy feet;
For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers,
  Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night.

Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
  Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her,
  Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
  And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
  And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
  The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember'd is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
  Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

The full streams feed on flower of rushes,
  Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot,
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes
  From leaf to flower and flower to fruit;
And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire,
And the oat is heard above the lyre,
And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes
  The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root.

And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night,
  Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid,
Follows with dancing and fills with delight
  The Mænad and the Bassarid;
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
  The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair
  Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes;
The wild vine slipping down leaves bare
  Her bright breast shortening into sighs;
The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves,
But the berried ivy catches and cleaves
To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare
  The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies.

Still Falls the Rain

2010-04-03T19:30:00.001+01:00

Easter Saturday; a broadcast of Easter music and readings from the chapel of King's College, Cambridge, which included this poem, read powerfully by a woman undergraduate. It is by Edith Sitwell, who wrote it during the bombing of London in 1940.

Still Falls The Rain

Still falls the Rain
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss -
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet
On the Tomb.

Still falls the Rain
In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the starved man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us,
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain
Still falls the blood from the starved man's wounded side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds, those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart; the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,
The wounds of the baited bear,
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh, the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain
Then - 'O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune?'
See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the brow we nailed upon the tree
Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world, dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar's laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain:
"Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my blood, for thee.

{ The quotation in the penultimate stanza is from Marlowe's play. In the final act Doctor Faustus is waiting terrified for Mephistopheles, coming to claim his due from the Faustian pact. ]