A British study has found that chemically induced abortion can be safely completed at home.

Shirley Butler, the project manager of one pilot which has tested the abortions with 172 women patients since 2004, told the Guardian: “We haven’t had any significant problems apart from one woman who had a slightly heavy bleed. In my opinion medical abortions outside of acute hospitals seem to be safe.” She added that women who took part in the trial were positive about it.
…Chemical abortions are available before the 12th week of pregnancy. Women who request it take one tablet of mifepristone at a hospital then return two days later to take four doses of misoprostol which causes a termination within hours. Usually women remain in hospital after taking the second pills until the abortion is complete. Under the trials they took both sets of pills within local community clinics to test the theory that it is safe to be outside hospital, and therefore at home.

Well the MPs have got it wrong on ID cards and terror “glorification”, but they got it right at least on the smoking ban – yahoo – I’ll soon (well “summer 2007” – why SHOULD it take so long) be able to go into a pub without making myself ill with second-hand smoke.

And what is interesting is the lack of fuss; despite Blair’s timidity, everyone knew this had to be the decision, and England is only just catching up with the rest of the UK.

Health officials proclaimed the vote a historic victory, to be compared with the 1948 NHS Act or the clean air legislation which ended city smog in the 50s. … That should cut the 85,000 smoking related deaths a year, pro-ban MPs believe. Scotland and Northern Ireland have already enacted public bans and the Welsh assembly has agreed in principle.

A judge has also been seeing sense, in refusing to direct that the NHS supply a drug as yet unproven for the proposed use – early-stage breast cancer. The word that keeps popping into my head on this is “thalidomide”. The approvals process is there for a reason, having been slowly and painstakingly assembled over decades to avoid disasters. Yet the problem is now that as soon as a drug starts to look promising, patients are going to demand it – hey, if it were me I might be doing the same thing, but the fact is checks do have to be maintained, to ensure the benefits do indeed outweigh the risks.

If you’re depressed at the state of the world, I’d suggest a quick read that illustrates how far we’ve come. The complete text of Jack London’s The People of the Abyss is online (and unusually weel-presented for easy reading). A small sample:
Mr. A. C. Pigou has said that the aged poor and the residuum which compose the `submerged tenth,’ constitute 7 and 1/2 per cent of the population of London. Which is to say that last year, and yesterday, and to-day, at this very moment, 450,000 of these creatures are dying miserably at the bottom of the social pit called `London.’ As to how they die, I shall take an instance from this morning’s paper.

Yesterday Dr. Wynn Westcott held an inquest at Shoreditch, respecting the death of Elizabeth Crews, aged 77 years, of 32 East Street, Holborn, who died on Wednesday last. Alice Mathieson stated that she was landlady of the house where deceased lived. Witness last saw her alive on the previous Monday. She lived quite alone. Mr. Francis Birch, relieving officer for the Holborn district, stated that deceased had occupied the room in question for 35 years. When witness was called, on the 1st, he found the old woman in a terrible state, and the ambulance and coachman had to be disinfected after the removal. Dr. Chase Fennell said death was due to blood-poisoning from bed-sores, due to self-neglect and filthy surroundings, and the jury returned a verdict to that effect.
The most startling thing about this little incident of a woman’s death is the smug complacency with which the officials looked upon it and rendered judgment. That an old woman of seventy-seven years of age should die of self-neglect is the most optimistic way possible of looking at it. It was the old dead woman’s fault that she died, and having located the responsibility, society goes contentedly on about its own affairs.- Chapter 4

So the classic “died alone and body not found for x months” that causes great fuss today is in fact nothing new – except then landladies collected their cash in person.

Welcome to the carnival. I’d recommend the library, a leather armchair, a long winter evening (you might want to draw the blinds in the southern hemisphere), a dog to keep your feet warm, and a glass of whatever tipple takes your fancy – or you might want to bring the bottle …

In part inspired by the loss in one week of two great women, I called for posts celebrating the lives of women achievers. Ralph E. Luker on the History News Network provided an appropriate place to start, putting the lives of Coretta Scott King and Betty Friedan in context.

Robert Tatum on The Information Junkie concludes Scott Kinghad a tremendous influence over the civil rights movement. On Friedan, Intellectual Conservative accepts she “was a remarkable woman who deeply influenced the culture of her time”, but says “women’s liberation” would have arrived without her.

But so many great women never had the chance to be famous, to write their name on what’s usually called history. Jennifer, on Penguin Unearthed, digs out the story of her father’s mother. “At the end of her high schooling, she sat for a University Scholarship, an exam for the whole of New Zealand, to decide who got put through university by the state. That year, nine scholarships were awarded (all to boys), and she came 10th. The year before and after that, there were more scholarships awarded (also all to boys).” It is a story that, in varying forms, you read and hear so often.

And that’s been the case throughout written (and pre-written) history, a point that Alun makes in his excellent post on feminist archaeology. “I don’t think the real question is ‘is a “feminist archaeology” needed at all?’ It’s ‘is a “feminist archaeology” inevitable?’ ”

But lest I be accused of being unbalanced, I will note that some women found fame for all of the wrong reasons. Laura James on CLEWS: The Historic True Crime Blog has found a picture of one of them, Countess Marie Tarnowska. Laura says she was “one of the world’s worst women”.

******

Now, a light interlude … but no you can’t make anything so prosaic as a cup of tea, for Other Men’s Flowers has a small selection of recipes from a 1923 cookbook assembled from the suggestions of 400 actresses. Go on – you know you want to collect half a pint of rose petals …

Or if you would prefer a musical break, Diamond Geezer explores the white cliffs of Dover. You will, however, have to find your own MP3 of Vera Lynn. (Go on – leave one in the comments.)

For some visual stimulation, the always stunning Giornale Nuovo offers a “paper museum” that blooms, and crouches and growls.

But if you want to go highbrow, I’m going to use the host’s privilege of one link here to point you to one of my other blogs, My London Your London, where I reviewed an amazing theatre performance that blends ancient Greek music and Cheironomia with the stories of the classical world. It sounds inaccesible, but if Gardzienice ever come your way, I’d say you have to see them.

*****

Break over, I turn back to the weighty, geopolitical stuff. On The Moor Next Door, Nouri Lumendifi offers a theory of nationalism. The English/French/American model developed to legitimise pre-existing structures; the “eastern” model as a reaction to this. As someone who considers themselves a “citizen of the world”, I’m always interested in explanations for what I consider a curious phenomenon.

Sticking to the “nation-building theme”, on CLASSical Liberalism (yes those caps have meaning) Kenneth R. Gregg introduces Tadeusz (or Thaddeus) Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (pronounced KOS-CHOOS-KO. (But being Australian, I knew that – our biggest mountain, which Europeans would call a hill – is named after him.)

But is the American nation living through a giant Groundhog Day? That old question – can you use the past to predict the present? – is explored with more than usual sophistication by “the editor” on the OUPBlog: perhaps the nation really is re-entering the political world of 1976?

If you can’t answer that, the problem might lay in the lack of theory. On Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, Mark G. concludes that military history still sucks. (Correction, apologies, this was a guest post on Mark’s blog by Nicolas Palar.) It needs to look beyond the battlefield, he suggests. Tom, on Big Tent Extra, however, sounds like a man who’s entered this fight once or twice before: It is s a dynamic, complex, interesting, and important field of study, he says. And on goes the debate: Alan Baumer on Frog in a Wall (China) suggests historians are prepared to show their “ignorance” in this field in a an odd way.

Now I’ve whipped that old argument up nicely, I’ll switch my stirrer over to another bubbling cauldron, that of colonialism, or subaltern studies, or Orientalism or ….. (fill in your term of preference). On Frog in a Wall, Jonathan Dresner has a go at coining a new term – colonialogy – for the field. Owen Miller responded to that from the perspective of the continuing Korean/Japanese historiographical struggle.

****

Whew, after all of that, I feel the need for a bit of nicely digestible narrative.

I’ll begin with another time and another place, far, far away … Laputan Logic is travelling the Indian Ocean with a 10th-century sea captain, Buzurg (“Big”) ibn Shahriyar. (The book survives today in one copy in an Istanbul mosque – the sort of fact that immediately make me wonder how many similar wonders have been lost to us.)

Since I’m (roughly) in the vicinity, I’ll then point you to The Palm Leaf’s account of the dynasties of southern India. I immediately want to know more about “the revered elder sister of Raja Raja Chozhar, the consort of Vallavarayar Vandiyathevar, Azwar Paranthakar Kundavaiyar”, but I’m not sure that’s possible.

Turning back to the military, on The Dougout, Grant Jones has an account of the chequered career of Gregory “Pappy” Boyington. Again on the Korean Frog in a Well (could I put in a plea for Latin font blog heads on these, BTW, to make them easier to sort apart?) K.M. Lawson allows us to follow his explorations of the archives of the early postwar US occupation of Korea There seem to be lots of minutes of meetings involved; just the thought sends a shiver down my spine …

On Airminded, there’s an explanation of some poignant Japanese ARP posters. It reminds me of an English account of the immediate pre-WWII period, when multiple references are made to “gas chambers”, which then meant rooms sealed in the home of surviving a poison gas attack. There’s a second set of Japanese posters here.

Now you are not allowed to pull out the tapes until you’ve finished with the carnival, but on Memorabilia Antonina, Tony Keen is shocked to find that Boris Johnson (the British Conservative Party’s resident buffoon) has presented a decent account of Ancient Rome and its meaing for the EU.

Boris as a good “small government” Tory wouldn’t agree, but I can’t help thinking that an official town historian, required by statute – wouldn’t it be nice if London had employed one of those? Well, Blake Bell on Historic Pelham reports, New York State has required that from at least 1913.

I said “no tapes”, but you might want to turn to check out your bookshelf at this moment. On Nomadic Thoughts, Will says there’s only one text you should have for Meso-America, The Ancient Maya, now up to its sixth edition. On A Canadian Lefty in Occupied Land, Scott, meanwhile recommends Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages. (You can’t say the carnival isn’t a broad church.)

If you’re feeling like taking up your pen yourself a retro-blogger, the gorgeously named The Rev. Vicesimus Knox, has some suggestion on the personality you need if you want to be a satirist.

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Now, are you sitting comfortably? Well I’m about to really transport you far, far away …

On “The Official and Unofficial Weblog of the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project” (no, I don’t understand how that works) there’s an invitation not just to visit, but to get digging …

On the Portable Antiquities Blog, however, the digging has already been done. The work is all in the interpretation, of a mysterious runic fragment of gold. The conclusions are considerably more extensive than you might expect. (For those who don’t know, this is the blog of the scheme that encourages members of the public to present for recording archaeological objects that they have found. I hear regularly that it is throwing up vast amounts of information, as well as the occasional bobby pin.)

Glaukopidos is meanwhile wondering about the nature of archaeological evidence. How can you tell what an armless, legless, headless statue was?

But false identification can be a problem in lots of places. Now I’m sure you’ve remembered Valentine’s Day – you have remembered, haven’t you? – but if you need to send a belated apology, what could be better than turning to the words of Sappho. But whose words are they? Classics in Contemporary Culture has the answer.

If you’re going travelling, you’ll want the right wardrobe – BibliOdyssey offers some suggestions from the 19th-century Le Costume Historique.

*****

Not being a teacher myself, I’m afraid for all those academics straining at the leash I’ve left the “professional” section to last …

First up here, on Logan Lounge, Jeremy reviews a book on “the origins of us” – in other words a history of universities.

Then, a lament with which I’m sure many researchers will be familiar – The Little Professor finds she has too many Hermentrudes and too few Catholics. Data sets just never arrive in neat, appropriate quantities.

But this seems an appropriate point to mention something new and even revolutionary in the research world – research built around what was once a vast and unwieldly body of data, the records of London’s Old Bailey court, which have suddenly been made astonishingly accessible and usable through the internet. That inspired Jonathan on The Head Heeb to organise the First Online Symposium on the Old Bailey Session Papers. Eight researchers participated, yours truly among them, and I think I can say entirely fairly that the standard is excellent – and the range of papers illuminating. Conclusions were drawn on everything from the Polynesian community in early 19th-century London to the evolution of new forms of policing through word proximity searches. (Those into number-crunching will want to check out that paper.)

But what caused the murder in the university? History: Other suggests the victim was probably one of that dreaded breed, the seminar mutterer.

Finally, I’ll admit that Bardiac drew me in with his intro – anyone for a ovarium instead of a seminar? – but there are some excellent ideas in his post about teaching Chaucer. And that seems a nice point to finish the carnival on …

Thanks very much to everyone who contributed – particularly the carnival founder Sharon Howard, Alun and Jonathan Dresner; all errors are of course mine. If you find them, please tell me and I’ll fix them ASAP.

The next carnival will be on hosted by Miland Brown on World History Blog on March 1. Email: miland AT usa2014 DOT com. Or you can use the Blog Carnival submission form.

UPDATE, 11.30am: Just realised I missed a nomination: Blood & Treasure is enjoying some Aubrey blogging. Among the highlights, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, the greatest Patronesse of witt and learning of any Lady in her time. But of course, that means she must have been sexually deviant …

The five women playing all of the parts, including the male parts, might have reminded me of my school days, and as for the song and dance sections – well they might have been better sticking to taped music – but it is a long time since I’ve laughed so much in an hour as I did tonight at the opening of It’s a Girl! at the White Bear Theatre.

The conceit behind the production is that this is being presented by The “Bradshaw Regain Your Shape After Pregnancy Coffee Circle”. “Bradshaw” – somewhere Londoners call “up north” and northerners call “down South” – has, at the beginning of the play, been selected as the site for a “low-level” nuclear waste dump. They’re “trying to twin us with Chernobyl,” one of the circle complains.

But at first the identified heroine of the piece, Linda Bragg (Joanna Doyle, who does a nice line in pony-tailed vulnerability) is more concerned about getting pregnant, with her husband Melvyn (played to full comic effect by Marie Blount), who’s enthusiastic about the project. But when she succeeds, without the help of the American gangster-style doctor (Margaret-Ann Bain), her husband loses interest: “You’ve got a full tank and you want me to squeeze in a gallon”, he complains. Then he’s horrified at her sudden desire for a home birth: the bed’s “not even orthopaedic”, he exclaims.

The apparent frail Linda, while offering a social history in a sentence – “Me Mum had one in a prefab, two in a back-to-back and three on the 19th floor of a tower block” – sticks to her guns, and with the sometimes reluctant support of the coffee circle – an appropriately ill-matched group thrown together simply by the accident of date of conception – stands up for the village against the waste dump.

This is sketch comedy rather than drama, so the characterisation is Spice Girls-simple. There’s the pink-tracksuited, hoop-earringed Mary (who is always trying to get the “girls” to go down the pub) – played with verve by Sarah Armstrong. She has only to say “I think you have to be philosophical”, to crack up both her fellow coffee circle members and the audience. Celia, the grumpy opera-lover is the determined loner; Eve is the smart, cool one who does the “presentation” of the play within the play (and Bain does a good job stepping in and out of the two “roles”); and Mina is the middle class one who is into yoga and rose-hip tea.

Then there’s the histrionic, distinctly odd, childless spinster midwife (Avril Poole), who starts off on the doctor’s side but is won over to the women’s cause – of home birth and Greenpeace-style protest against the construction of a dump.

The wisecracks fly thick and fast, the tears are jerked for all their worth, and its hardly surprising that there’s a happy ending to love, and life and babies.

It’s a Girl! would make a great “girls’ night out”, although the boys in the audience were laughing just as hard last night. But it is only playing until Sunday, so you’ll have to arrange it quickly. And you might want to watch out for the production company, Pedlar – I have a feeling they’ll be good at entertainment.

The White Bear Theatre is two minutes from Kennington Tube. Tickets can be booked on 020 7793 9193.

You’ve only got about eight hours to get in your nominations for the next Carnival of History, which will be here tomorrow.

I’m particularly looking for celebrations of women’s lives – and we’ve lost several feminist icons in the past few weeks, so you shouldn’t be short of ideas for subjects. They just need to be written with a broadly historical approach.

But if you’ve written a neat little post on any other subject, then please do send that along to, whether it be about Neanderthals, (yes I consider “history” to include “prehistory” – since I don’t think it has got a carnival of its own), Nigeria or No Man’s Land.

The nomination address: natalieben AT journ DOT freeserve DOT co DOT uk. (But any other of my addresses will find me.)