Search

Background: Reprocessing of medical devices, being classified as semi-critical B is recommended to be performed in a washer-disinfector. In order to estimate, whether the expected contaminants of the various medical disciplines can be effectively removed by this washer-disinfector, different so called “test soils” have been proposed to be tested as a marker of cleaning efficacy of the disinfector. Todays described test soils are optimised for the testing of contaminations occurring in surgical procedures, but not for dental procedures. Methods: In this study the test soils being proposed in the EN 15883-5 (e.g. KMNE soil, recipe by Koller and coagulated sheep’s blood) were compared with 8 reference substances used in the conservative-prosthetic dental practice. The success of the cleaning efficacy in the washer-disinfector was checked visually and by determining the residual protein concentration on the contaminated instruments after the cleaning procedure. Results: It could be shown that in contrast to the proposed test soils of the EN 15883-5, the used reference substances of the dental practice could not be removed by the washer-disinfector. Removal of these reference substances was only possible after manual or ultrasonic cleaning. Conclusions: Since blood plays a subordinate role as a contaminant of instruments during conservative-prosthetic dental treatments, testing of the cleaning efficacy of the washer-disinfector with test soils according to the proposals of the EN 15883-5 is not representative in this discipline of dentistry. Most of the materials used in dental practice can only be removed manually or with the help of the ultrasound bath., GMS Krankenhaushygiene Interdisziplinär; 7(1):Doc13; ISSN 1863-5245

Rather than to seek the causes of war, it is perhaps more profitable to attempt to discover the conditions under which peace is possible. The American continent offers an opportunity for this type of study. Since the inhabitants of the Americas are largely of European origin, it is less plausible to assume that their psychological structure has been radically modified than to assume that a difference in social conditions is responsible for the more peaceful history of this continent. Where organized groups co-exist without conflicting interests, or with supplementary interests, peace is possible, and the adjacent groups may fuse into a single economic and political unit. The fact that personal conflicts within a group are settled by law or by norm is encouraging in suggesting the possibility of extending this type of settlement to intergroup conflicts. In order for norms to provide a basis for the peaceful resolution of conflicts, socialization of the individual is necessary. A democratic state requires a more socialized kind of human material than a social order based on suppression and coercion. In considering Freud's statement that wars result from man's innate destructiveness, it should be borne in mind that human aggression frequently finds sublimated outlets. There are two important conditions for peace: (1) human beings must be united in one large, well-integrated social organization; (2) there must be a technique for settling conflicting interests. It is scarcely conceivable that these conditions can be realized until one powerful group subdues the weaker ones and coerces them to participate in a larger organization. A future league of nations must recognize the necessity of coercion until consensus is established. Although the democracies should lead this super-national organization, they are averse to the use force. They must, however, recognize their call to assume leadership.

Emotional Factors in Essential Hypertension: Presentation of a Tentative Hypothesis FRANZ ALEXANDER; Psychosomatic Medicine

(1934). The Influence of Psychologic Factors Upon Gastro-Intestinal Disturbances: A Symposium. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly: Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 501-539.

Psychotherapy, as all curative procedures in medicine, attempts to alleviate suffering by restoring to normal a disturbed function of the biological organism. Psychotherapy's target, however, in distinction to all other therapeutic targets has a central function: human behavior. While surgery and internal medicine try to rehabilitate such circumscribed functions as locomotion, digestion, blood circulation, hormonal secretion, and seeing, psychotherapy is concerned with personality functions, that is to say, the behavior of the total organism in its relation to the environment, particularly to the human environment. Here lies the special social goal. For a long time the human personality was considered mainly determined by heredity. A person is born with certain basic characteristics and will die with them. Hippocrates' characterological theory of basic temperaments, which are determined by different distributions of body humors, had indeed a long hold on Western thought. Characterological features

Excerpts will be presented from a correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Eugen Bleuler, which is devoted mainly to Bleuler's withdrawal from the newly formed International Psychoanalytical Association. These excerpts are from seven letters from Freud to Bleuler and 50 letters from Bleuler to Freud, which were written between 1910 and 1925, and have never been published before. Permission was obtained by Dr. Alexander for their publication from Prof Manfred Bleuler, the son of Eugen Bleuler, and also from Ernst Freud, the son of Sigmund Freud.* This correspondence throws light upon the origin not of psychoanalysis as a science, but upon what became known as The Psychoanalytic Movement. It reveals the emotional needs of the pioneers of this young branch of knowledge to organize the psychoanalytic movement as an isolated scientific community outside and in opposition to the rest of the medical fraternity. Psychoanalysis is

For about thirty years psychoanalysis, a theoretical concept of the personality, a precise and elaborately described method of psychologic research and a therapy of mental disturbances, has been living a peculiar, isolated existence on the borderline of medicine and of the natural sciences. This borderline existence is not due entirely to the unreceptive attitude of medicine toward psychoanalysis, for psychoanalysis itself has also been undecided as to where it belongs. Many psychoanalysts, in fact, question whether psychoanalysis should not be considered a distinctive discipline, related to medicine but essentially independent of it, just as archeology, though related to history, is nevertheless itself a self-sufficient science, or as paleontology is related to geology but is different in its methods and purpose. Even those psychoanalysts who, like myself, are convinced that, so far as psychoanalysis is a therapy, it belongs to medicine cannot overlook the fact that its subject matter, methods and

Long experience has shown that it is by no means a popular task to give an address on psychoanalysis to a group of physicians. The reception of Professor Freud's first lecture in the Viennese Medical Society prescribed the attitude of the medical authorities for forty years. The causes of the resistance of medical circles against the concepts of psychoanalysis have been so often discussed that I do not wish to dwell on them again. On the other hand, I should like to win benevolent neutrality by calling attention to the chief historical and psychologic causes of the rejection of this branch of science in medical circles. After forty years' experience, the reasons for this rejection can be defined with considerable precision. If psychoanalysis had remained the modest therapeutic device by which Freud and the small group of his followers tried to influence hysterical symptoms forty years ago, the whole embittered