title: Capitoline Wolf

text: The Capitoline Wolf was widely assumed to be the very sculpture described by Cicero, due to the presence of damage to the sculpture's paw, which was believed to correspond to the lightning strike of 65 BC. The 18th-century German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann attributed the statue to an Etruscan maker in the fifth century BC, based on how the wolf's fur was depicted. It was first attributed to the Veiian artist Vulca, who decorated the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and then reattributed to an unknown Etruscan artist of around 480–470 BC. Winckelmann correctly identified a Renaissance origin for the twins; they were probably added in 1471 AD or later.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: During the 19th century, a number of researchers questioned Winckelmann's dating of the bronze. August Emil Braun, the secretary of the Archaeological Institute of Rome, proposed in 1854 that the damage to the wolf's paw had been caused by an error during casting. Wilhelm Fröhner, the conservator of the Louvre, stated in 1878 that the style of the statue was attributable to the Carolingian art period rather than the Etruscan, and in 1885, Wilhelm von Bode also stated that he was of the view that the statue was most likely a mediaeval work. These views were largely disregarded, though, and had been forgotten by the 20th century.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: In 2006, Italian art historian Anna Maria Carruba and archaeologist Adriano La Regina contested the traditional dating of the wolf on the basis of an analysis of the casting technique. Carruba had been given the task of restoring the sculpture in 1997, enabling her to examine how it had been made. She observed that the statue had been cast in a single piece, using a variation of the lost-wax casting technique. This technique was not used in Classical antiquity; ancient Greek and Roman bronzes were typically constructed from multiple pieces, a method that facilitated high-quality castings, with less risk than would be involved in casting the entire sculpture at once. Single-piece casting was, however, widely used in the Middle Ages to mould bronze items that needed a high level of rigidity, such as bells and cannons. Carruba argues, like Braun, that the damage to the wolf's paw had resulted from an error in the moulding process. In addition, La Regina, former superintendent of Rome's archaeological heritage, argues that the sculpture's artistic style is more akin to Carolingian and Romanesque art than that of the ancient world.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: Radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating were carried out at the University of Salento in February 2007 to resolve the question. The results revealed with an accuracy of 95.4% that the sculpture was crafted between the 11th and 12th centuries AD.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: A 2019 radiocarbon study, based on organic residues in the casting cores recovered from the inner part of the statue, "firmly anchor[s] the statue to the XI-XII centuries CE, in the Middle Ages."


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: However, a recent study by John Osborne at the British School at Rome concluded that the radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dates were totally inconsistent. He pointed out that metal from which the wolf is made is of the Etruscan type using copper from Sardinia and that there is no sign of the adulteration common in mediaeval times, and that on the balance of probabilities, the wolf should be considered to be Etruscan.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: When the sculpture was first erected it is unclear, but a number of mediaeval references mention a "wolf" standing in the Pope's Lateran Palace. In the 10th-century "Chronicon" of Benedict of Soracte, the monk chronicler writes of the institution of a supreme court of justice "in the Lateran Palace, in the place called the Wolf, viz, the mother of the Romans." Trials and executions "at the Wolf" are recorded from time to time until 1438.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: The 12th-century English cleric Magister Gregorius wrote a descriptive essay "De Mirabilibus Urbis Romae" and recorded in an appendix three pieces of sculpture he had neglected; one was the wolf in the portico, at the principal entrance to the Lateran Palace. He mentions no twins, for he noted that she was set up as if stalking a bronze ram that was nearby, which served as a fountain. The wolf had also served as a fountain, Magister Gregorius thought, but it had been broken off at the feet and moved to where he saw it.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: The present-day Capitoline Wolf could not have been the sculpture seen by Benedict and Gregorius, if its newly attributed age is accepted, though it could have been a replacement for an earlier (now lost) depiction of the Roman wolf. In December 1471, Pope Sixtus IV ordered the present sculpture to be transferred to the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline Hill, and the twins were added some time around then. The Capitoline Wolf joined a number of other genuinely ancient sculptures transferred at the same time, to form the nucleus of the Capitoline Museum.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: The image was favoured by Benito Mussolini, who cast himself as the founder of a "New Rome" and donated copies of the statue to various places around the world. To encourage American goodwill, he sent several copies of the Capitoline Wolf to U.S. cities. In 1929 he sent one replica for a Sons of Italy national convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was switched for another one in 1931, which still stands in Eden Park, Cincinnati. Another replica was given to the city of Rome, Georgia, the same year. A third copy went to Rome, New York, in 1956 by Alfonso Felici, a veteran of World War II. Another ended up at North-Eastern Normal University, China, where ancient Greek and Roman history is studied.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: The Capitoline Wolf was used on both the emblem and the poster for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. The Roman football club A.S. Roma uses it in its emblem as well.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: It was used as the logo for Artie Ripp's record label Family Productions, which in 1971 released Billy Joel's first album as a solo artist, "Cold Spring Harbor". Due to contractual obligations, it continued to appear on numerous Joel albums even after he was subsequently signed to Columbia Records.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: The programme of conservation undertaken in the 1990s resulted in an exhibition devoted to the "Lupa Capitolina" and her iconography.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: Anthony Mann's 1964 epic film "The Fall of the Roman Empire" prominently features an enlarged replica prop of the Capitoline Wolf as a republican symbol at the back of the Senate House, where, historically, the altar and statue of Victory would have stood.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: The 1976 TV series "I, Claudius" also features the statue in its depiction of the interior of the Senate House.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: In the 2009 film "Agora", set in 5th-century Alexandria, the Capitoline Wolf—complete with the del Pollaiolo twins—can be seen in the prefect's palace. This is visible in the scene before Hypatia's capture, directly behind her character.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: In Rick Riordan's "The Son of Neptune", Lupa is the wolf that trains all demigods who wish to enter Camp Jupiter. She trains Percy Jackson and is mentioned that she trained Jason Grace also. It is also possible that she trained Frank Zhang, Hazel Levesque, and Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano. Although she is stern and tough, she still has a soft side.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: In the first episode of the American television programme "The Addams Family", a mirror-image sculpture of the Capitoline Wolf is on display in the Addams's living room. It can be seen standing atop a table, just to the right of the main staircase.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: The Boston Latin School uses an image on the cover of their agenda book as well as being the official school emblem.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: The Capitoline Wolf is used in Romania and Moldova as a symbol of the Latin origin of its inhabitants and in some major cities there are replicas of the original statue given as a gift from Italy at the beginning of the 20th century.


title: Capitoline Wolf

text: The Capitoline Wolf is reimagined in "Look at Me (new Capitoline Wolf)", a 2011 installation by Polish artist Paweł Wocial.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: Sorry! is a board game that is based on the ancient Indian cross and circle game "Pachisi". Players move their three or four pieces around the board, attempting to get all of their pieces "home" before any other player. Originally manufactured by W.H. Storey & Co in England and now by Hasbro, "Sorry!" is marketed for two to four players, ages 6 and up. The game title comes from the many ways in which a player can negate the progress of another, while issuing an apologetic "Sorry!"


title: Sorry! (game)

text: The objective is to be the first player to get all four of their coloured pawns from their start space, around the board to their "home" space. The pawns are normally moved in a clockwise direction but can be moved backward if directed. Movement of pawns is directed by the drawing of a card.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: The board game is laid out in a square with 16 spaces per side, with each player assigned their own coloured Start location and Home locations offset towards the centre, one per side. Four five-square paths, one per colour, lead from the common outer path towards a player's Home and are designated their "Safety Zone". On each side are two "Slides", grouping four or five spaces each.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: Older versions of "Sorry!" contain a coloured "diamond space" directly one space back from each start square; a pawn of the diamond's colour may not move forward over this square. Instead, a pawn of that colour must diverge from the outer space square towards their "Home". The diamond space and corresponding rule were removed from subsequent editions.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: William Henry Storey of Southend-on-Sea filed for a patent for the game in England, where it was registered as a trade mark on 21 May 1929 (UK number 502898). It was subsequently sold in the United Kingdom by Waddingtons, the British games manufacturer who sold it from 1934.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: In the United States, was filed for "Sorry!" on 4 Aug 1930 by William Henry Storey. A Canadian patent followed in 1932. The US patent was issued on 11 April 1933. "Sorry!" was adopted by Parker Brothers in 1934. Hasbro now continuously publishes it.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: Each player chooses four pawns of one color and places them in their Start. One player is selected to play first.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: Each player, in turn, draws one card from the deck and follows its instructions. To begin the game, all of a player's four pawns are restricted to Start; a player can only move them out onto the rest of the board if they draw a 1 or 2 card. A 1 or a 2 places a pawn on the space directly outside of start (a 2 does not entitle the pawn to move a second space).


title: Sorry! (game)

text: A pawn can jump over any other pawn during its move. However, two pawns cannot occupy the same square; a pawn that lands on a square occupied by another player's pawn "bumps" that pawn back to its own Start. Players can not bump their own pawns back to Start; if the only way to complete a move would result in a player bumping their own pawn, the player's pawns remain in place and the player loses their turn.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: If a pawn lands at the start of a slide (except those of its own color), either by direct movement or as the result of a switch from an 11 card or a Sorry card, it immediately "slides" to the last square of the slide. All pawns on all spaces of the slide (including those belonging to the sliding player) are sent back to their respective Starts.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: The last five squares before each player's Home are "Safety Zones", and are specially colored corresponding to the colors of the Homes they lead to. Access is limited to pawns of the same color. Pawns inside the Safety Zones are immune to being bumped by opponents' pawns or being switched with opponents' pawns via 11 or Sorry! cards. However, if a pawn is forced via a 10 or 4 card to move backward out of the Safety Zone, it is no longer considered "safe" and may be bumped by or switched with opponents' pawns as usual until it re-enters the Safety Zone.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: The modern deck contains 45 cards: there are five 1 cards as well as four each of the other cards ("Sorry!", 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12). The 6s or 9s are omitted to avoid confusion with each other. The first edition of the game had 44 cards (four of each) and the extra 1 card was soon introduced as an option for quicker play. A 1996 board from Waddingtons had 5 of each card.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: The 7 can be split; it is often possible to do so such that one of the pieces ends up on a slide, thus increasing the value of this card. It also provides an additional opportunity for pawns to get Home, so long as there's another pawn on the board to use up the remaining spaces.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: All other things being equal, moves that cause a pawn to end up in front of an opponent's start square are poor choices, due to the high number of cards that allow that opponent to enter. Some feel that leaving a pawn on one's own square just outside "Start" (also known as the "Dot") is a poor position to be in since new pawns are blocked from entering play.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: There are numerous strategies and tactics employed by skilled players. One such strategy is to leave the last pawn in the "Start" square and move the other pawns around the board while waiting for a "Sorry" card.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: Due to the 11 (switching places), 4 (moving backwards, as noted above), and "Sorry" (allowing the player to send virtually any pawn back to its start) cards, the lead in the game can change dramatically in a short amount of time; players are very rarely so far behind as to be completely out of the game. This should be considered when playing a "Sorry" or an 11.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: Leaving one of your pawns near your start space will allow give you the advantage to move backwards and make it into your safety zone or close enough without having to go all around the board.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: Slowing the game down is a risky yet effective move when given the opportunity. Essentially, when a player has the chance to switch with or hit the apparent leader, even though the move will not be to the player's immediate advancement around the board, the move should be made to keep the leader out of "Safety" and more importantly, out of "Home".


title: Sorry! (game)

text: The 1939 edition of the game includes "Point-Scoring Sorry!", a variant where the game is scored at the end. The game also gives players a hand of cards, each player being dealt five at the start of the game. On a player's turn, they play one card from their hand to determine their move, and then draw a replacement card from the remaining deck. If a player cannot play any of their cards, they may discard a card and draw a replacement.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: At the end of the game, each player scores a point for every man they got home. The winner also scores one point for every man their opponents had got home, and a bonus of either 24 (if no opponent has a man home), 16 (if no opponent has more than one man home) or 8 (if no opponent has more than two men home).


title: Sorry! (game)

text: Players can elect to play the game in two teams of two. The team pairings are always colours on opposite sides of the board (i.e. Red and Yellow vs. Blue and Green). The game is then played as if two players had eight pawns each: for example, the yellow player may move a red pawn for any legal move. A 7 card could be split between a yellow pawn and a red one but can still be split between no more than two pieces. However, a partner's pawns are not "bump-proof": if yellow were to draw a Sorry! card with only red pawns on the board, or land on a red pawn's occupied space, yellow would have to bump its teammate.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: Once one of the partners has played all of their pieces into home, he continues to draw and play cards on their turn, if possible, for their partner. The first partnership to play all eight pieces in its home wins.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: In the 2013 edition, several rules were changed. Two additional items known as Fire and Ice were added, and depending on which card is drawn, can be placed on certain pawns on the board, modifying the playing rules for those pawns. In short, fire gives a pawn the ability to move ahead quickly before the player's turn, and ice stops a pawn from being moved (or removed from play) at all.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: Furthermore, each player only has three pawns. A pawn can be moved out from Start upon any positive number card. A Sorry! card gives the alternative option of moving forward 4 spaces. The 2 card no longer allows one to pull another card.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: An electronic gaming version of "Sorry!" was released in 1998 as a "Sorry!" computer game. Also, a handheld version was released in 1996.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: In the "Hoyle Table Games" collection of computer games, the game "Bump 'Em" is similar to "Sorry!". Pawns are represented as bumper cars, and the board follows a path akin to a freeway cloverleaf instead of a regular square. There are no partnerships allowed.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: Parker Brothers has released a travel version of Sorry! called Sorry! Express. The game consists of three dice, four home bases, a start base, and sixteen pawns, four in each color. Up to four players can play this game. To play, each player takes a home base and sets it on a different color and all of the pawns are put on the start base no matter how many people are playing. The first person rolls all three dice and gets one of four possibilities for each die:


title: Sorry! (game)

text: Sorry! Not Sorry! is an adult-themed edition of Sorry! which consisted of the classic game, but added several cards each containing a "Have you ever...?" question. Upon drawing, the player must ask an opponent the fill-in-the-blank question printed on the card. If the opponent answered yes, both the player and opponent move six spaces; if the answer is no, then they can only move three spaces.


title: Sorry! (game)

text: This game was part of Hasbro's collection of parody versions of their classic games, which included The Game of Life, Operation, and Clue, which were respectively retitled "The Game of Life: Quarter Life Crisis", "Botched Operation", and "Clue: What Happened Last Night? Lost in Vegas".


title: Grandparent

text: Grandparents are the parents of a person's father or mother – paternal or maternal. Every sexually-reproducing living organism who is not a genetic chimera has a maximum of four genetic grandparents, eight genetic great-grandparents, sixteen genetic great-great-grandparents, thirty-two genetic great-great-great-grandparents, sixty-four genetic great-great-great-great grandparents, etc. In the history of modern humanity, around 30,000 years ago, the number of modern humans who lived to be a grandparent increased. It is not known for certain what spurred this increase in longevity but largely results in the improved medical technology and living standard, but it is generally believed that a key consequence of three generations being alive together was the preservation of information which could otherwise have been lost; an example of this important information might have been where to find water in times of drought.


title: Grandparent

text: In cases where parents are unwilling or unable to provide adequate care for their children (e.g., financial obstacles, marriage problems, illness or death), grandparents often take on the role of primary caregivers. Even when this is not the case, and particularly in traditional cultures, grandparents often have a direct and clear role in relation to the raising, care and nurture of children. Grandparents are second-degree relatives to their grandchildren and share 25% genetic overlap.


title: Grandparent

text: A step-grandparent can be the step-parent of the parent or the step-parent's parent or the step-parent's step-parent (though technically this might be called a step-step-grandparent). The various words for grandparents at times may also be used to refer to any elderly person, especially the terms "gramps", "granny", "grandfather", "granddad", "grandmother", "nan", "maw-maw", "paw-paw" (and others which families make up themselves).


title: Grandparent

text: When used as a noun (e.g., "... a grandparent walked by"), grandfather and grandmother are usually used, although forms such as grandma/grandpa, granny/granddaddy or even nan/pop are sometimes used. When preceded by "my ..." (e.g., "... my grandpa walked by"), all forms are common (anywhere from "... my grandfather ..." to "... my Gramps ..."). All forms can be used in plural, but Gramps (plural Gramps) is rare.


title: Grandparent

text: In writing, "Grandfather" and "Grandmother" are most common, but very rare as a form of address. In speech, "Grandpa" and "Grandma" are commonly used in the United States, Canada, and Australia. In Britain, Ireland, United States, Australia, New Zealand and, particularly prevalent in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, "Nan", "Nana", "Nanna", "Nanny", "Gran" and "Granny" and other variations are often used for grandmother in both writing and speech.


title: Grandparent

text: In Bangladesh, Pakistan, and many parts of India, maternal grandparents are called "Nana" and "Nani". Similarly, paternal grandparents are called "Dada" and "Dadi". One's parents' maternal grandparents are called "Par-nani" and "Par-nana". On similar lines, parents' paternal grandparents are called "Par-dadi" and "Par-dada."


title: Grandparent

text: Numerous other variants exist, such as "Gramp", "Gramps", "Grampa", "Grandpap", "Granda", "Grampy", "Granddad", "Granddaddy", "Grandpappy", "Pop(s)", "Pap", "Papa", "Pappy", and "Pawpaw" for grandfather; "Grandmom", "Grandmama", "Grama", "Granny", "Gran", "Nanny", "Nan(a)", "Mammaw, Meemaw" and "Grammy" for grandmother. "Gogo" can be used for either, etc.


title: Grandparent

text: Given that people may have two living sets of grandparents, some confusion arises from calling two people "grandma" or "grandpa", so often two of the other terms listed above are used for one set of grandparents. Another common solution is to call grandparents by their first names ("Grandpa George", "Grandma Anne", etc.) or by their family names ("Grandpa Jones", "Grandma Smith"). In North America, many families call one set of grandparents by their ethnic names (e.g., Hispanic grandparents might be called "abuelo" and "abuela" or "abuelito" and "abuelita", French grandparents might be called "papi" and "mamie", Italian grandparents might be called "nonno" and "nonna", or Dutch and German grandparents might be called "Opa" and "Oma". In Flanders pepee or petje and memee or metje are most used). In Friesland, a common pair is pake and beppe. Mandarin-speaking Chinese people refer to maternal grandparents as "wài pó" (外婆, mother's mother) and "wài gōng" (外公, mother's father) and paternal grandparents as "nǎi nai" (奶奶, father's mother) and "yé yé" (爷爷, father's father). In the Philippines, grandparents are called "lolo" (grandfather) and "lola" (grandmother).


title: Grandparent

text: Languages and cultures with more specific kinship terminology than English may distinguish between paternal grandparents and maternal grandparents. For example, in the Swedish language there is no single word for "grandmother"; the mother's mother is termed "mormor" and the father's mother is termed "farmor". However, the other Scandinavian languages, Danish and Norwegian, use words which specifies the kinship like in Swedish (identically spelled among all three languages), as well as using common terms similar to grandmother (Danish: bedstemor, Norwegian: bestemor).


title: Grandparent

text: The parents of a grandparent, or the grandparents of a parent, are called the same names as grandparents (grandfather/-mother, grandpa/-ma, granddad/-ma, etc.) with the prefix "great-" added, with an additional "great-" added for each additional generation. One's great-grandparent's parents would be "great-great-grandparents".


title: Grandparent

text: To avoid a proliferation of "greats" when discussing genealogical trees, one may also use ordinals instead of multiple "greats"; thus a "great-great-grandfather" would be the "second great-grandfather", and a "great-great-great-grandfather" would be a third great-grandfather, and so on. This system is used by some genealogical websites such as Geni. One may also use cardinal numbers for numbering greats, for example, great-great-great-grandmother becomes 3×-great-grandmother.


title: Grandparent

text: Individuals who share the same great-grandparents but are not siblings or first cousins are "second cousins" to each other, as second cousins have grandparents who are siblings. Similarly, "third cousins" would have great-grandparents who are siblings, and "fourth cousins" would have great-great-grandparents who are siblings.


title: Grandparent

text: The use of the prefix "grand-" dates from the early 13th century, from the Anglo-French "graund". The term was used as a translation of Latin "magnus". The prefix "great-" represents a direct translation of Anglo-French "graund" and Latin "magnus" to English. In Old English, the prefixes "ealde-" (old) and "ieldra-" (elder) were used ("ealdefæder"/"-mōdor" and "ieldrafæder"/"-mōdor"). A great-grandfather was called a "þridda fæder" (third father), a great-great-grandfather a "fēowerða fæder" (fourth father), etc.


title: Grandparent

text: Grandparents are changing their roles in contemporary world, especially as they are becoming increasingly involved in childcare. According to a 2012 study based on 2010 census and survey data, around 10% of children in the U.S. live in a household including a grandparent. Of these, approximately a third live in a household consisting of two parents and a grandparent. Likewise, more than 40% of grandparents across 11 European countries care for their grandchildren in the absence of the parents. In Britain, around 63% of grandparents care for their grandchildren who are under 16 years old. Grandparent involvement is also common in Eastern societies. For instance, 48% of grandparents in Hong Kong reported that they are taking care of their grandchildren. In China, around 58% of Chinese grandparents who are aged 45 or older are involved in childcare. In Singapore, 40% of children from birth to three years old are cared by their grandparents and this percentage is still increasing. In South Korea, 53% of children under the age of 6 years old are cared by their grandparents. Therefore, grandparents taking care of their grandchildren has become a prevalent phenomenon around the world.


title: Grandparent

text: There are a few reasons why grandparent involvement is becoming more prevalent. First, life expectancy has increased while fertility rates have decreased. This means that more children are growing up while their grandparents are still alive and able to become involved in childcare. In addition, the reduced fertility rates mean that grandparents can devote more attention and resources to their only grandchildren. Second, more mothers are involved in the workforce, and thus, other caregivers need to be present to care for the child. For instance, in Hong Kong, 55% of grandparents reported that they took care of their grandchild because his or her parents have to work. In South Korea, 53% of working mother reported that they once received child care services from their parents. Third, the increasing number of single-parent families creates a need for grandparental support.


title: Grandparent

text: The degree of grandparent involvement also varies depending on the societal context, such as the social welfare policies. For example, in European countries such as Sweden and Denmark, where formal childcare is widely available, grandparents provide less intensive childcare. By contrast, in European countries such as Spain and Italy, where formal childcare is limited, and welfare payment is low, grandparents provide more intensive childcare. In Singapore, the grandparent caregiver tax relief was established in 2004, which enables working parents (Singapore citizens with children age 12 and below) whose children are being cared for by unemployed grandparents to receive income tax relief of 3,000 Singaporean dollars.


title: Grandparent

text: There are different types of grandparental involvement, including nonresident grandparents, co-resident grandparents, grandparent-maintained household, and custodial grandparents.


title: Grandparent

text: Grandparents have different functions in child development. Not only do they provide instrumental support such as picking grandchildren up from school or feeding them, but they also offer emotional support. Furthermore, grandparents protect children from being impacted by negative circumstances, such as harsh parenting, poor economic status, and single-parent families. In addition to providing support, grandparents can also help grandchildren with their schoolwork or teach them values that are integral to their society.


title: Grandparent

text: Grandparents can have a positive or negative impact on child development. On the one hand, previous research suggests that children and adolescents who have a close relationship with their grandparents tend to have better well-being, experience fewer emotional problems, and demonstrate fewer problematic behaviours. They are also more academically engaged and are more likely to help others. On the other hand, there are also research studies indicating that grandparent involvement is associated with more hyperactivity and peer difficulties among young children. In other words, children who are cared for by their grandparents can have more interpersonal relationship problems. Also, children who are under the care of their grandparents have poorer health outcomes such as obesity, and more injuries due to low safety awareness.


title: Grandparent

text: Since taking care of grandchildren could be a highly demanding job that requires constant energy and time devotion, grandparental involvement in child raising could have a negative impact on grandparents’ physical and emotional health. For example, taking care of grandchildren can reduce grandparents’ own time for self-care such as missing their medical appointments. Therefore, they are likely to have a higher chance to suffer from physical health issues. In the US, compared with those who do not take care of their grandchildren, grandparents who are involved in childcare are more likely to have poor physical conditions, such as heart disease, hypertension or body pain. Besides physical health issues, grandparents are also likely to have emotional issues. To be more specific, raising young children again could be a stressful and overwhelming experience and thus results in different kinds of negative emotions such as anxiety or depression. In addition to physical and emotional issues, grandparents who are involved in caring for their grandchildren can also suffer socially. For instance, grandparents will be forced to limit their social activities so as to care for their grandchildren. By doing so, grandparents become more isolated from their social relations. Taking care of grandchildren also means more responsibilities, grandparents would fear for their grandchildren's future well-being because of their disability and death in the future. If grandparents cannot handle the caregiver role of their grandchildren well, this job can eventually become a burden or stressor and bring more severe physical health and emotional issues to grandparents.


title: Grandparent

text: However, there are also positive effects of being involved in grandchildren raising. Compared with grandparents who do not provide caregiving to their grandchildren, those who take care of their grandchildren with long hours are more likely to have better cognitive functions. To be more specific, taking care of grandchildren helps elder grandparents maintain their mental capacities in later life, they are also less likely to develop diseases such as dementia. Moreover, frequent interactions with their grandchildren could reduce the cognitive aging process, allowing grandparents a chance to live a more vibrant and active life. Grandparents also get benefits of physically exercising more during this process.


title: Grandparent

text: Taking care of grandchildren can also have benefits on grandparents’ emotional health. As an example, many grandparents start to feel a sense of purpose and meaning in life again after their retirement; as another example, their ties with their adult children and grandchildren are also strengthened. Many grandparents also think of the caregiving experience as positive because it provides another chance for them to make up mistakes they made with their own children and give them more opportunities to educate their grandchildren and improve their parenting styles.


title: Grandparent

text: Grandparental involvement differs between Western and Eastern cultures. Grandparents taking care of their grandchildren is a common phenomenon in China due to Chinese traditions which emphasize family harmony, collective well-being, intergenerational exchanges and filial responsibilities. China's unique philosophies, Buddhism and Taoism, play important roles in forming these cultural values. While Chinese Buddhism emphasizes prioritized role of the family in Chinese society and harmonious relations among family members, Taoism emphasizes the importance of harmony in interpersonal relations and relations between nature and the humans. These philosophies underline the important role that families play in Chinese cultures. Besides cultural factors, grandparents taking care of their grandchildren also appears in the context in which their adult children need to work full-time, and the child care services are either too expensive (in big cities) or too scarce (in remote areas). Grandparents serving as their grandchildren's caregiver is particularly common in rural China. Due to the fast development of urbanization in China since the 1980s, up to 220 million migrant workers from rural areas move to urban areas to seek for more job opportunities, which leave around 58 million children behind in rural areas, grandparents, therefore, undertake the role of parents and become caregivers to their grandchildren. A new population named “left-behind grandparents” appears in this context, these grandparents live in rural China, and their main job is to look after their grandchildren, most of these grandparents are facing financial burdens and wish their adult children could come back. The mental and physical health of “left-behind grandparents” needs more attention from the public. Even though in urban areas where child care services are available, nearly all grandparents still prefer to take care of their grandchildren voluntarily. Not only because this can reduce their adult children's financial burdens on child care services but also taking care of their own grandchildren is a more effective way to maintain family harmony.


title: Grandparent

text: In the US, taking care of grandchildren is not a necessary responsibility of grandparents. Grandparents taking care of their grandchildren is often caused by involuntary events or crisis, and it is more like a solution to a problem, not an initiative desire, which is a distinct difference from that in China. For example, grandparents in the USA often take care of their grandchildren when their adult children get into troubles such as substance abuse, incarceration or parental death. Differences also exist in different ethnicities in the US. Caucasian individuals generally regard individual independence as more important, so grandparents are less likely to take care of their grandchildren. However, African American and Latino individuals are more likely to regard looking after grandchildren as a family tradition and are more willing to provide help for their adult children. Ethnic differences in grandparents looking after their grandchildren reflect different cultural values that different ethnic groups hold. To be more specific, African American grandparents are more likely to provide guidance and discipline to their grandchildren due to their flexible family system in which relatives, nonblood kin are all willing to help each other. Latino families have a strong preference to live together and keep frequent contact with family members because most of them are immigrants or first-generation born in the US, they are more likely to live and function as a unit. Grandparents in Latino culture also play important roles in stabilizing the family unit as family leaders. Although Caucasian grandparents are less likely to raise their grandchildren, they have more cognitive or physical burdens of taking care of grandchildren compared with other ethnic groups, mainly because their caregiver roles are less normative, and they rely more on remote or companionate parenting styles. On the contrary, African American and Latino grandparents rely more on disciplinary and instructional parenting styles and they are less likely to have cognitive or physical burdens when taking care of their grandchildren.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Commentarii de Bello Gallico (; ), also Bellum Gallicum (), is Julius Caesar's firsthand account of the Gallic Wars, written as a third-person narrative. In it Caesar describes the battles and intrigues that took place in the nine years he spent fighting the Celtic and Germanic peoples in Gaul that opposed Roman conquest.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: The "Gaul" that Caesar refers to is ambiguous, as the term had various connotations in Roman writing and discourse during Caesar's time. Generally, Gaul included all of the regions primarily inhabited by Celts, aside from the province of Gallia Narbonensis (modern-day Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon), which had already been conquered in Caesar's time, therefore encompassing the rest of modern France, Belgium, Western Germany, and parts of Switzerland. As the Roman Republic made inroads deeper into Celtic territory and conquered more land, the definition of "Gaul" shifted. Concurrently, "Gaul" was also used in common parlance as a synonym for "uncouth" or "unsophisticated" as Romans saw Celtic peoples as uncivilized compared with themselves.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: The work has been a mainstay in Latin instruction because of its simple, direct prose. It begins with the frequently quoted phrase ""Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres"", meaning "Gaul is a whole divided into three parts". The full work is split into eight sections, Book 1 to Book 8, varying in size from approximately 5,000 to 15,000 words. Book 8 was written by Aulus Hirtius, after Caesar's death.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Although most contemporaries and subsequent historians considered the account truthful, 20th-century historians have questioned the outlandish claims made in the work. Of particular note are Caesar's claims that the Romans fought Gallic forces of up to 430,000 (an impossible army size for the time), and that the Romans suffered no deaths against this incredibly large force. Historian David Henige regards the entire account as clever propaganda meant to boost Caesar's image, and suggests that it is of minimal historical accuracy.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: The Latin title, "Commentaries on the Gallic War", is often retained in English translations of the book, and the title is also translated to "About the Gallic War", "Of the Gallic War", "On the Gallic War", "The Conquest of Gaul", and "The Gallic War".


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: The victories in Gaul won by Caesar had increased the alarm and hostility of his enemies at Rome, and his aristocratic enemies, the boni, were spreading rumors about his intentions once he returned from Gaul. The boni intended to prosecute Caesar for abuse of his authority upon his return, when he would lay down his imperium. Such prosecution would not only see Caesar stripped of his wealth and citizenship, but also negate all of the laws he enacted during his term as Consul and his dispositions as pro-consul of Gaul. To defend himself against these threats, Caesar knew he needed the support of the plebeians, particularly the Tribunes of the Plebs, on whom he chiefly relied for help in carrying out his agenda. The "Commentaries" were an effort by Caesar to directly communicate with the plebeians – thereby circumventing the usual channels of communication that passed through the Senate – to propagandize his activities as efforts to increase the glory and influence of Rome. By winning the support of the people, Caesar sought to make himself unassailable from the boni.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: The "Commentarii" cover the Gallic Wars over a period of 8 years, beginning with conflict over the migration of the Helvetii in 58 BC, which drew in neighboring tribes and the Germanic Suebi. By 57 BC, Caesar had resolved to conquer all of Gaul, and led campaigns in the east, where the Nervii nearly defeated him. In 56 BC, Caesar defeated the Veneti in a naval battle and took most of northwest Gaul. In 55 BC, Caesar sought to boost his public image, and undertook expeditions across the Rhine river and the English Channel that were the first of their kind. Upon his return from Britain, Caesar was hailed as a hero, though he had achieved little beyond landing because his army had been too small and he was unable to land his cavalry. The next year, he went back with a larger army, including cavalry, and was more successful, setting up a friendly king and bringing his rival to terms. However, tribes rose up on the continent, and the Romans suffered a humiliating defeat. 53 BC saw a draconian campaign against the Gauls in an attempt to pacify them. This failed, and the Gauls staged a mass revolt under the leadership of Vercingetorix in 52 BC. Gallic forces won a notable victory at the Battle of Gergovia, but the Romans' indomitable siege works at the Battle of Alesia utterly defeated the Gallic coalition.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: In 51 BC and 50 BC, there was little resistance, and Caesar's troops were mostly mopping up. Gaul was conquered, although it would not become a Roman province until 27 BC, and resistance would continue until as late as 70 AD. There is no clear end-date for the war, but the imminent Roman Civil War led to the withdrawal of Caesar's troops in 50 BC. Caesar's wild successes in the war had made him extremely wealthy and provided a legendary reputation. The Gallic Wars were a key factor in Caesar's ability to win the Civil War and declare himself dictator, in what would eventually lead to the end of the Roman Republic and the establishment of the Roman Empire.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: In the "Commentarii de Bello Gallico", Caesar mentions several leaders of the Gallic tribes. Among these, Diviciacus and Vercingetorix are notable for their contributions to the Gauls during war.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Book 1 and Book 6 detail the importance of Diviciacus, a leader of the Haedui (Aedui), which lies mainly in the friendly relationship between Caesar and Diviciacus ' ("the one person in whom Caesar had absolute confidence") (I, 41). His brother, Dumnorix had committed several acts against the Romans because he wanted to become king ' and "" (I, 41); thus Caesar was able to make his alliance with Diviciacus even stronger by sparing Dumnorix from punishment while also forcing Diviciacus to control his own brother. Diviciacus had, in tears, begged Caesar to spare the life of his brother, and Caesar saw an opportunity to not only fix his major problem with Dumnorix, but also to strengthen the relationship between Rome and one of its small allies. Another major action taken by Diviciacus was his imploring of Caesar to take action against the Germans and their leader, Ariovistus. His fear of Ariovistus and the general outcry from the Gallic people led Caesar to launch a campaign against the Germans, even though they had been considered friends of the Republic.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Vercingetorix, leader of the Arverni, united the Gallic tribes against Caesar during the winter of 53–52 BC. This appears in Book VII, chapters 1–13. Vercingetorix's father, Celtillus, was killed after attempting to seize power amongst the Arverni; for that reason, Vercingetorix was a social outcast and had much to gain from a rebellion. When it was clear that Caesar had defeated the Gallic rebellion, Vercingetorix offered to sacrifice himself, and put himself at the mercy of Caesar, in order to ensure that his kinsmen were spared. After the defeat, Vercingetorix was brought to Rome and imprisoned for six years before being brought out to adorn Caesar's triumph over Gaul and then publicly executed. Today, Vercingetorix is seen in the same light as others who opposed Roman conquest; he is now considered a national hero in France and a model patriot.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: In "De Bello Gallico" 6.21–28, Julius Caesar provides his audience with a picture of Germanic lifestyle and culture. He depicts the Germans as primitive hunter gatherers with diets mostly consisting of meat and dairy products who only celebrate earthly gods such as the sun, fire, and the moon (6.21–22). German women reportedly wear small cloaks of deer hides and bathe in the river naked with their fellow men, yet their culture celebrates men who abstain from sex for as long as possible (6.21). Caesar concludes in chapters 25–28 by describing the Germans living in the almost-mythological Hercynian forest full of oxen with horns in the middle of their foreheads, elks without joints or ligatures, and uri who kill every man they come across.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: However, the distinguishing characteristic of the Germans for Caesar, as described in chapters 23 and 24, is their warring nature, which they believe is a sign of true valour (', 6.23). The Germans have no neighbors, because they have driven everyone out from their surrounding territory (', 6.23). Their greatest political power resides in the wartime magistrates, who have power over life and death (', 6.23). While Caesar certainly respects the warring instincts of the Germans, he wants his readers to see that their cultures are simply too barbaric, especially when contrasted with the high-class Gallic Druids described at the beginning of chapter six. For example, Caesar writes that robberies committed outside of the state are legalized in hopes of teaching young people discipline and caution, an idea nearly offensive to the judicial practices of the Romans (', 6.23). Caesar's generalizations, alongside the writings of Tacitus, form the barbaric identity of the Germans for the ancient world.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Caesar's account of the Druids and the "superstitions" of the Gallic nations are documented in Book 6, chapters 13, 14 and 16–18 of "De Bello Gallico". In chapter 13, he mentions the importance of Druids in the culture and social structure of Gaul at the time of his conquest. Chapter 14 addresses the education of the Druids and the high social standing that comes with their position. He first comments on the role of sacrificial practices in their daily lives in chapter 16. Caesar highlights the sacrificial practices of the Druids containing innocent people and the large sacrificial ceremony where hundreds of people were burnt alive at one time to protect the whole from famine, plague, and war (DBG 6.16). Chapter 17 and 18 focuses on the divinities the Gauls believed in and Dis, the god which they claim they were descended from. This account of the Druids highlights Caesar's interest in the order and importance of the Druids in Gaul.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Caesar spent a great amount of time in Gaul and his book is one of the best preserved accounts of the Druids from an author who was in Gaul. However, although Caesar provides what is seemingly a first-hand account, much of his knowledge of the Druids comes not from personal experience, but rather from the hearsay of others, and is regarded as anachronistic. Caesar based some of his account on that of Posidonius, who wrote a clear and well-known account of the Druids in Gaul. Caesar provides his account of the Druids as a means of sharing his knowledge and educating the Roman people on the foreign conquests.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: There is no doubt that the Druids offered sacrifices to their god. However, scholars are still uncertain about what kind of offerings they made. Caesar and other Roman authors assert that the Druids would offer human sacrifices on numerous occasions for relief from disease and famine or for a successful war campaign. Caesar provides a detailed account of the manner in which the supposed human sacrifices occurred in chapter 16, claiming that "they have images of immense size, the limbs of which are framed with twisted twigs and filled with living persons. These being set on fire, those within are encompassed by the flames" (DBG 6.16).


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Caesar, however, also observes and mentions a civil Druid culture. In chapter 13, he claims that they selected a single leader who ruled until his death, and a successor would be chosen by a vote or through violence. Also in chapter 13, he mentions that the Druids studied "the stars and their movements, the size of the cosmos and the earth, the nature of the world, and the powers of immortal deities," signifying to the Roman people that the Druids were also versed in astrology, cosmology, and theology. Although Caesar is one of the few primary sources on the Druids, many believe that he had used his influence to portray the Druids to the Roman people as both barbaric, as they performed human sacrifices, and civilized in order to depict the Druids as a society worth assimilating to Rome (DBG 6.16).


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo were two centurions in the garrison of Quintus Tullius Cicero, brother of Marcus Tullius Cicero, and are mentioned in Book 5.44 of "De Bello Gallico". They were bitter rivals who both sought to achieve the greatest honors "and every year used to contend for promotion with the utmost animosity" ['] ("DBG" 5.44). Their garrison had come under siege during a rebellion by the tribes of the Belgae led by Ambiorix. They showed their prowess during this siege by jumping from the wall and directly into the enemy despite being completely outnumbered. During the fighting, they both find themselves in difficult positions and are forced to save each other, first Vorenus saving Pullo and then Pullo saving Vorenus. Through great bravery they are both able to make it back alive slaying many enemies in the process. They return to the camp showered in praise and honors by their fellow soldiers. The phrase, ', is used to emphasize that though they started out in competition, they both showed themselves to be worthy of the highest praise and equal to each other in bravery ("DBG" 5.44).


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Caesar uses this anecdote to illustrate the courage and bravery of his soldiers. Since his forces had already been humiliated and defeated in previous engagements, he needed to report a success story to Rome that would lift the spirits of the people. Furthermore, the tale of unity on the battlefield between two personal rivals is in direct opposition to the disunity of Sabinus and Cotta, which resulted in the destruction of an entire legion. He relates this particular account to illustrate that, despite the losses against Ambiorix and his army, Rome is still able to trust in the valor of its soldiers. Thus, Caesar turns a military blunder into a positive propaganda story.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: In the first two books of "De Bello Gallico", there are seven examples of hostage exchanges. First, the Helveti exchange hostages with the Sequani as a promise that the Sequani will let the Helveti pass and that the Helveti will not cause mischief (1.9 and 1.19). The Helveti also give Caesar hostages to ensure that the Helveti keep their promises (1.14). Then the Aedui gave hostages to the Sequani, during the Sequani's rise to power (1.31). In Book 2, the Belgae were exchanging hostages to create an alliance against Rome (2.1) and the Remi offered Caesar hostages in their surrender (2.3, 2.5). Later in the book Caesar receives 600 hostages from the Aedui (2.15) and other hostages from most of Gaul (2.35). This practice of exchanging hostages continues to be used throughout Caesar's campaigns in diplomacy and foreign policy.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Today the term hostage has a different connotation than it did for the Ancient Romans, which is shown in the examples above. Where the Romans did take prisoners of war, hostages could also be given or exchanged in times of peace. The taking of hostages as collateral during political arrangements was a common practice in ancient Rome. The idea of the practice was that important people from each side were given to ensure that both sides kept their word; a type of contract. Two examples of this: Caesar demanding the children of chieftains (2.5) and accepting the two sons of King Galba (2.13). However, as seen by Caesar, sometimes it was only a one-way exchange, with Caesar taking hostages but not giving any.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: There is evidence though, particularly in Caesar's "De Bello Gallico", indicating that the practice was not always effective. Cities often moved to rebel against Rome, even though hostages were in Roman custody. Occasionally, hostages would be entrusted to a neutral or mediating party during a rebellion, such as the time one hundred hostages surrendered by the Senones were placed in the custody of the Aedui who helped negotiate between the dissidents and Caesar. Some sources say there is not much evidence that hostages were even harmed, at least severely, in retribution of the broken agreements. It is commonly noted that Caesar never mentions penalties being dealt to hostages. Taking hostages did benefit Rome in one particular way: since hostages were commonly the sons of political figures and would typically be under Roman watch for a year or more, Romans had ample time to introduce those hostages to the Roman customs in hopes that when they were freed, they would go on to become influential political leaders themselves and favor Rome in subsequent foreign relations.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: This book is often lauded for its polished, clear Latin; in particular, German historian Hans Herzfeld describes the work as "a paradigm of proper reporting and stylistic clarity".


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: It is traditionally the first authentic text assigned to students of Latin, as Xenophon's "Anabasis" is for students of Ancient Greek; they are both autobiographical tales of military adventure told in the third person. It contains many details and employs many stylistic devices to promote Caesar's political interests.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: The books are valuable for the many geographical and historical claims that can be retrieved from the work. Notable chapters describe Gaulish custom (VI, 13), their religion (VI, 17), and a comparison between Gauls and Germanic peoples (VI, 24).


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Since the work of Karl Nipperdey in 1847, the existing manuscripts have been divided into two classes. The first (α) encompasses manuscripts containing only "De Bello Gallico" and characterized by colophons with allusions to late antique "correctores". The oldest manuscript in this class is MS. Amsterdam 73, written at Fleury Abbey in the later ninth century. The second (β) encompasses manuscripts containing all of the related works—not only "De Bello Gallico", but "De Bello Civili", "De Bello Alexandrino", "De Bello Africo", and "De Bello Hispaniensi", always in that order. The oldest manuscript in this class is MS Paris lat. 3864, written at Corbie in the last quarter of the ninth century. For "De Bello Gallico", the readings of α are considered better than β.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: The original publication time of the "Bello Gallico" is uncertain. It had been definitely published by 46 BC, when Cicero reviewed it and gave it great praise. It is unclear whether the books were released individually, or all at once. Nipperdey's 1847 account believed that they had been mostly all composed at once in 50 BC. Frank Adcock suggested in 1956 that they had been written in stages, but then published simultaneously. T. P. Wiseman believed they were written and published yearly, as Caesar would have gained enormous utility from keeping the public informed about his exploits. The debate as to the time and nature of publication continues, with critical examination of the evolution of the writing style the chief tool for dating the work. Even if the works were published after the wars, it was clear that Caesar was waging a propaganda campaign during the war, including writing copious letters to his political allies back in Rome. Because of the questionable nature of the war, and threats by his enemies to have him essentially tried for war crimes, winning the public relations battle was critical for Caesar.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Caesar's account was largely taken as truthful and accurate until the 20th century. Nipperdey's manuscript in 1847 was considered "monumental", and was the first critical examination of the text, which considered Caesar to be infallible. Nipperdey even chose to modify his translation of the text where it contradicted itself, giving Caesar the benefit of any doubts. Even in 1908, Camille Jullian wrote a comprehensive history of Gaul and took Caesar's account as unerring. But after World War II historians began to question if Caesar's claims stood up.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Historian David Henige takes particular issue with the supposed population and warrior counts. Caesar claims that he was able to estimate the population of the Helvetii because in their camp there was a census, written in Greek on tablets, which would have indicated 263,000 Helvetii and 105,000 allies, of whom exactly one quarter (92,000) were combatants. But Henige points out that such a census would have been difficult to achieve by the Gauls, that it would make no sense to be written in Greek by non-Greek tribes, and that carrying such a large quantity of stone or wood tablets on their migration would have been a monumental feat. Henige finds it oddly convenient that exactly one quarter were combatants, suggesting that the numbers were more likely ginned up by Caesar than outright counted by census. Even contemporary authors estimated that the population of the Helvetii and their allies were lower, Livy surmised that there were 157,000 overall. But Henige still believes this number inaccurate.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: During the campaign against the Usipetes and the Tenceri, Caesar makes the incredible claim that the Romans faced an army of 430,000 Gauls, that the Roman victory was overwhelming, that the Romans lost not a single soldier, and that upon their loss the Gauls committed mass suicide. Henige finds this entire story impossible, as did Ferdinand Lot, writing in 1947. Lot was one of the first modern authors who directly questioned the validity of Caesar's numbers, finding a fighting force of 430,000 to have been unbelievable for the time.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Not all contemporaries of Caesar believed the account to have been accurate. Gaius Asinius Pollio, who served under Caesar, noted that the account had been put together without much care or regard for the truth. Still, Pollio attributed this to mistakes by Caesar's lieutenants, or even that Caesar intended to rewrite the text more accurately. Up until the 20th century authors tended to follow Pollio's thinking, attributing mistakes not to Caesar but to the process, such as errors in translation and transcription throughout time. Ernest Desjardins, writing in 1876, suggested (in what Henige considers to be very charitable on Desjardins part) that the error in numbers in the Usipetes campaign was the result of a mis-transcription of "CCCCXXX" instead of "XXXXIII", which would mean that the real size of the Gaulic force was actually just 43,000. But even Henige suggests that it is possible the numbers have not always been accurately written down, and that the earliest surviving manuscripts are only from the ninth to twelfth centuries.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Part of the dispute over the historiography of the "Commentarii" revolves around modern authors trying to use it to estimate the pre-Roman population of Gaul. In the 18th century, authors extrapolated from the text populations of 40200 million. Authors in the 19th century guessed in the 15-20 million range based on the text. 20th century authors guessed as low as 4 million, with Henige giving a modern range of 4-48 million between authors.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Ultimately, Henige sees the "Commentarii" as a very clever piece of propaganda written by Caesar, built to make Caesar appear far grander than he was. Henige notes that Caesar's matter of fact tone and easy to read writing made it all the easier to accept his outlandish claims. Caesar sought to portray his fight as a justified defense against the barbarity of the Gauls (which was important, as Caesar had actually been the aggressor contrary to his claims). By making it appear that he had won against overwhelming odds and suffered minimal casualties, he further increased the belief that he and the Romans were godly and destined to win against the godless barbarians of Gaul. Overall, Henige concludes that "Julius Caesar must be considered one of history's earliest and most durably successful "spin doctors"".


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Classicist Ruth Breindal believes it likely that Caesar did not directly write the work, but instead dictated most of it to a scribe at one time and the scribe wrote as Caesar spoke, or that the scribe took notes and wrote the account afterwards. Still, she does believe that Caesar had an overwhelming hand in creating the work, but believes much of the grammar and clarity of the work to be the result of the scribe or scribes involved. Breindal also considers the main point of the work to be as a propaganda piece to protect Caesar's reputation in the vicious politics of Rome. Book eight was written after Caesar's death in 44 BC by consul Aulus Hirtius; Hirtius must have written the book before his own death in the civil war in 43 BC.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: The author portrays Caesar's thoughts frequently, with an emphasis on making Caesar seem efficient, decisive, and straightforward, and that his view on how war should be waged is the same. The work paints the conflict as inevitable and necessary.


title: Commentarii de Bello Gallico

text: Beginning in the 1970s, authors began to regard the work less as a historical work, but more of a literary work, in the tradition of poets and striving to follow in the mould of Homer.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Eradication is the reduction of an infectious disease's prevalence in the global host population to zero.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Two infectious diseases have successfully been eradicated: smallpox in humans, and rinderpest in ruminants. There are four ongoing programs, targeting the human diseases poliomyelitis (polio), yaws, dracunculiasis (Guinea worm), and malaria. Five more infectious diseases have been identified as potentially eradicable with current technology by the Carter Center International Task Force for Disease Eradication—measles, mumps, rubella, lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis) and cysticercosis (pork tapeworm).


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: The concept of disease eradication is sometimes confused with disease "elimination", which is the reduction of an infectious disease's prevalence in a regional population to zero, or the reduction of the global prevalence to a negligible amount. Further confusion arises from the use of the term 'eradication' to refer to the total removal of a given pathogen from an individual (also known as clearance of an infection), particularly in the context of HIV and certain other viruses where such cures are sought.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: The targeting of infectious diseases for eradication is based on narrow criteria, as both biological and technical features determine whether a pathogenic organism is (at least potentially) eradicable. The targeted pathogen must not have a significant non-human (or non-human-dependent) reservoir (or, in the case of animal diseases, the infection reservoir must be an easily identifiable species, as in the case of rinderpest). This requires sufficient understanding of the life cycle and transmission of the pathogen. An efficient and practical intervention (such as a vaccine or antibiotic) must be available to interrupt transmission. Studies of measles in the pre-vaccination era led to the concept of the critical community size, the minimal size of the population below which a pathogen ceases to circulate. The use of vaccination programs before the introduction of an eradication campaign can reduce the susceptible population. The disease to be eradicated should be clearly identifiable, and an accurate diagnostic tool should exist. Economic considerations, as well as societal and political support and commitment, are other crucial factors that determine eradication feasibility.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: So far, only two diseases have been successfully eradicated—one specifically affecting humans (smallpox) and one affecting cattle (rinderpest).


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Smallpox is the first disease, and so far the only infectious disease of humans, to be eradicated by deliberate intervention. It became the first disease for which there was an effective vaccine in 1798 when Edward Jenner showed the protective effect of inoculation (vaccination) of humans with material from cowpox lesions.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Smallpox (variola) occurred in two clinical varieties: "variola major", with a mortality rate of up to 40 percent, and "variola minor", also known as alastrim, with a mortality rate of less than one percent. The last naturally occurring case of "variola major" was diagnosed in October 1975 in Bangladesh. The last naturally occurring case of smallpox ("variola minor") was diagnosed on 26 October 1977, in Ali Maow Maalin, in the Merca District, of Somalia. The source of this case was an outbreak in the nearby district of Kurtunwarey. All 211 contacts were traced, revaccinated, and kept under surveillance.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: After two years' detailed analysis of national records, the global eradication of smallpox was certified by an international commission of smallpox clinicians and medical scientists on 9 December 1979, and endorsed by the General Assembly of the World Health Organization on 8 May 1980. However, there is an ongoing debate regarding the continued storage of the smallpox virus by labs in the US and Russia, as any accidental or deliberate release could create a new epidemic in people born since the late 1980s due to the cessation of vaccinations against the smallpox virus.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: During the twentieth century, there were a series of campaigns to eradicate rinderpest, a viral disease that infected cattle and other ruminants and belonged to the same family as measles, primarily through the use of a live attenuated vaccine. The final, successful campaign was led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. On 14 October 2010, with no diagnoses for nine years, the Food and Agriculture Organization announced that the disease had been completely eradicated, making this the first (and so far the only) disease of livestock to have been eradicated by human undertakings.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: A dramatic reduction of the incidence of poliomyelitis in industrialized countries followed the development of a vaccine in the 1950s. In 1960, Czechoslovakia became the first country certified to have eliminated polio.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: In 1988, the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) passed the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Its goal was to eradicate polio by the year 2000. The updated strategic plan for 2004–2008 expects to achieve global eradication by interrupting poliovirus transmission, using the strategies of routine immunization, supplementary immunization campaigns, and surveillance of possible outbreaks. The WHO estimates that global savings from eradication, due to forgone treatment and disability costs, could exceed one billion U.S. dollars per year.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: The lowest annual wild polio prevalence seen so far was in 2017, with only 22 reported cases, although there were more total reported cases (including circulated vaccine-derived cases) than in 2016, mainly due to reporting of circulated vaccine-derived cases in Syria, where it likely had already been circulating, but gone unreported, presumably due to the civil war. Only two or three countries remain in which poliovirus transmission may never have been interrupted: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and maybe Nigeria. (There have been no cases caused by wild strains of poliovirus in Nigeria since August 2016, though cVDPV2 was detected in environmental samples in 2017.) Nigeria was removed from the WHO list of polio-endemic countries in September 2015 but added back in 2016, and India was removed in 2014 after no new cases were reported for one year.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: On 20 September 2015, the World Health Organization announced that wild poliovirus type 2 had been eradicated worldwide, as it has not been seen since 1999. On 24 October 2019, the World Health Organization announced that wild poliovirus type 3 had also been eradicated worldwide. This leaves only wild poliovirus type 1 and circulating vaccine-derived polio circulating in a few isolated pockets, with all wild polio cases after August 2016 in Afghanistan and Pakistan.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Dracunculiasis, also called Guinea worm disease, is a painful and disabling parasitic disease caused by the nematode "Dracunculus medinensis". It is spread through consumption of drinking water infested with copepods hosting "Dracunculus" larvae. The Carter Center has led the effort to eradicate the disease, along with the CDC, the WHO, UNICEF, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Unlike diseases such as smallpox and polio, there is no vaccine or drug therapy for guinea worm. Eradication efforts have been based on making drinking water supplies safer (e.g. by provision of borehole wells, or through treating the water with larvicide), on containment of infection and on education for safe drinking water practices. These strategies have produced many successes: two decades of eradication efforts have reduced Guinea worm's global incidence dramatically from over 100,000 in 1995 to less than 100 cases since 2015. While success has been slower than was hoped (the original goal for eradication was 1995), the WHO has certified 180 countries free of the disease, and in 2020 six countries—South Sudan, Ethiopia, Mali, Angola, Cameroon and Chad—reported cases of guinea worm. , the WHO predicted it would be "a few years yet" before eradication is achieved, on the basis that it took 6–12 years for the countries that have so far eliminated guinea worm transmission to do so after reporting a similar number of cases to that reported by Sudan in 2009. Nonetheless, the last 1% of the effort may be the hardest, with cases not substantially decreasing from 2015 (22) to 2020 (24). As a result of missing the 2020 target, the WHO has revised its target for eradication to 2030. The worm is now understood to be able to infect dogs, domestic cats and baboons as well as humans, providing a natural reservoir for the pathogen and thus complicating eradication efforts. In response, the eradication effort is now also targeting animals (especially wild dogs) for treatment and isolation since animal infections far outnumber human infections now (in 2020 Chad reported 1570 animal infections and 12 human infections).


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Yaws is a rarely fatal but highly disfiguring disease caused by the spiral-shaped bacterium (spirochete) "Treponema pallidum pertenue", a close relative of the syphilis bacterium "Treponema pallidum pallidum", spread through skin to skin contact with infectious lesions. The global prevalence of this disease and the other endemic treponematoses, bejel and pinta, was reduced by the Global Control of Treponematoses (TCP) programme between 1952 and 1964 from about 50 million cases to about 2.5 million (a 95% reduction). However, following the cessation of this program these diseases remained at a low prevalence in parts of Asia, Africa and the Americas with sporadic outbreaks. In 2012, the WHO targeted the disease for eradication by 2020, a goal that was missed.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: , there were 15 countries known to be endemic for yaws, with the recent discovery of endemic transmission in Liberia and the Philippines.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: In 2020, 82,564 cases of yaws were reported to the WHO and 153 cases were confirmed. The majority of the cases are reported from Papua New Guinea and with over 80% of all cases coming from one of three countries in the 2010-2013 period: Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Ghana. A WHO meeting report in 2018 estimated the total cost of elimination to be US$175 million (excluding Indonesia).


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: In the South-East Asian Regional Office of the WHO, the eradication efforts are focused on the remaining endemic countries in this region (Indonesia and East Timor) after India was declared free of yaws in 2016.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: The discovery that oral antibiotic azithromycin can be used instead of the previous standard, injected penicillin, was tested on Lihir Island from 2013 to 2014; a single oral dose of the macrolide antibiotic reduced disease prevalence from 2.4% to 0.3% at 12 months. The WHO now recommends both treatment courses (oral azithromycin and injected penicillin), with oral azithromycin being the preferred treatment.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Malaria has been eliminated from most of Europe, North America, Australia, North Africa and the Caribbean, and parts of South America, Asia and Southern Africa. The WHO defines "elimination" (or "malaria free") as having no domestic transmission (indigenous cases) for the past three years. They also define "pre-elimination" and "elimination" stages when a country has fewer than 5 or 1, respectively, cases per 1000 people at risk per year.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: In 1955 the WHO launched the Global Malaria Eradication Program (GMEP). Support waned, and the program was suspended in 1969. Since 2000, support for eradication has increased, although some actors in the global health community (including voices within the WHO) thought that eradication as goal was premature and that setting strict deadlines for eradication may be counterproductive as they are likely to be missed.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: According to the WHO's World Malaria Report 2015, the global mortality rate for malaria fell by 60% between 2000 and 2015. The WHO targeted a further 90% reduction between 2015 and 2030, with a 40% reduction and eradication in 10 countries by 2020. However, the 2020 goal was missed with a slight increase in cases compared to 2015.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: While 31 out of 92 endemic countries were estimated to be on track with the WHO goals for 2020, 15 countries reported an increase of 40% or more between 2015 and 2020. Between 2000 and 30 June 2021, twelve countries were certified by the WHO as being malaria-free. Argentina and Algeria were declared free of malaria in 2019. El Salvador and China were declared malaria free in the first half of 2021.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Regional disparities were evident: Southeast Asia was on track to meet WHO's 2020 goals, while Africa, Americas, Eastern Mediterranean and West Pacific regions were off-track.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: The six Greater Mekong Subregion countries aim for elimination of "P. falciparum" transmitted malaria by 2025 and elimination of all malaria by 2030, having achieved a 97% and 90% reduction of cases respectively since 2000. Ahead of World Malaria Day, 25 April 2021, WHO named 25 countries in which it is working to eliminate malaria by 2025 as part of its E-2025 initiative.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: A major challenge to malaria elimination is the persistence of malaria in border regions, making international cooperation crucial.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Some diseases have already been eliminated from large regions of the world, and/or are currently being targeted for regional elimination. This is sometimes described as "eradication", although technically the term only applies when this is achieved on a global scale. Even after regional elimination is successful, interventions often need to continue to prevent a disease becoming re-established. Three of the diseases here listed (lymphatic filariasis, measles, and rubella) are among the diseases believed to be potentially eradicable by the International Task Force for Disease Eradication, and if successful, regional elimination programs may yet prove a stepping stone to later global eradication programs. This section does not cover elimination where it is used to mean control programs sufficiently tight to reduce the burden of an infectious disease or other health problem to a level where they may be deemed to have little impact on public health, such as the leprosy, neonatal tetanus, or obstetric fistula campaigns.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: There is no global commitment to eliminate helminthiasis (worm infections); however, the London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases and the WHO aim to control worm infections, including schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminthiasis (which are caused by roundworms, whipworms and hookworms). It is estimated that between 576 and 740 million individuals are infected with hookworm. Of these infected individuals, about 80 million are severely affected. The current WHO goals are to control soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH) by 2020 to a point where it does not pose a serious public health problem any more in children and 75% of children have received deworming interventions. By 2018, an average of 60% of school children were reached, however only 16 countries reached more than 75% coverage of pre-school children and 28 countries reached over 75% coverage of school-age children. In 2018, the number of countries with endemic STH was estimated to be 96 (down from 112 in 2010). Sizeable donations of a total of 3.3 billion deworming tables by GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson since 2010 to the WHO allowed progress on its goals. In 2019, the WHO targets were updated to eliminate morbidity of STH by 2030, with less than 2% of all children being infected by that date in all 98 currently endemic countries.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: The WHO set a goal to control morbidity of schistosomiasis by 2020 and eliminate the public health problems associated with it by 2025 (bringing infections down to less than 1% of the population). The effort is assisted by the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative. In 2018, a total of 63% of all school age children were treated.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: In North American countries, such as the United States, elimination of hookworm had been attained due to scientific advances. Despite the United States declaring that it had eliminated hookworm decades ago, a 2017 study showed it was present in Lowndes County, Alabama.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: The Rockefeller Foundation's hookworm campaign in the 1920s was supposed to focus on the eradication of hookworm infections for those living in Mexico and other rural areas. However, the campaign was politically influenced, causing it to be less successful, and regions such as Mexico still deal with these infections from parasitic worms. This use of health campaigns by political leaders for political and economic advantages has been termed the science-politics paradox.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Lymphatic filariasis is an infection of the lymph system by mosquito-borne microfilarial worms which can cause elephantiasis. Studies have demonstrated that transmission of the infection can be broken when a single dose of combined oral medicines is consistently maintained annually for approximately seven years. The strategy for eliminating transmission of lymphatic filariasis is mass distribution of medicines that kill the microfilariae and stop transmission of the parasite by mosquitoes in endemic communities. In sub-Saharan Africa, albendazole is being used with ivermectin to treat the disease, whereas elsewhere in the world albendazole is used with diethylcarbamazine. Using a combination of treatments better reduces the number of microfilariae in blood. Avoiding mosquito bites, such as by using insecticide-treated mosquito bed nets, also reduces the transmission of lymphatic filariasis. In the Americas, 95% of the burden of lymphatic filariasis is on the island of Hispaniola (comprising Haiti and the Dominican Republic). An elimination effort to address this is currently under way alongside the malaria effort described above; both countries intend to eliminate the disease by 2020.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: , the efforts of the Global Programme to Eliminate LF are estimated to have already prevented 6.6 million new filariasis cases from developing in children, and to have stopped the progression of the disease in another 9.5 million people who have already contracted it. Overall, of 83 endemic countries, mass treatment has been rolled out in 48, and elimination of transmission reportedly achieved in 21.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: As of 2018, all six WHO regions have goals to eliminate measles, and at the 63rd World Health Assembly in May 2010, delegates agreed to move towards eventual eradication, although no specific global target date has yet been agreed. The Americas set a goal in 1994 to eliminate measles and rubella transmission by 2000, and successfully achieved to reduce cases from over 250,000 in 1990 to only 105 cases in 2003. However, while eradication in the Americas was certified in 2015, the certification was lost in 2018 due to endemic measle transmission in Venezuela and subsequent spread to Brazil and Colombia; while additional limited outbreaks have occurred elsewhere as well.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Europe had set a goal to eliminate measles transmission by 2010, which was missed due to the MMR vaccine controversy and by low uptake in certain groups, and despite achieving low levels by 2008, European countries have since experienced a small resurgence in cases. The Eastern Mediterranean also had goals to eliminate measles by 2010 (later revised to 2015), the Western Pacific aims to eliminate the disease by 2012, and in 2009 the regional committee for Africa agreed a goal of measles elimination by 2020. In 2019, the WHO South-East Asian region has set a target to eliminate measles by 2023. , a total of 82 countries were certified to have eliminated endemic measle transmission.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: In 2005, a global target was agreed for a 90% reduction in measles deaths by 2010 from the 757,000 deaths in 2000 (later updated to 95% by 2015). Estimates in 2008 showed a 78% decline to 164,000 deaths, further declining to


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: however, progress has since stalled since and both the 2010 and 2015 target were missed: in 2018, still over 140,000 deaths were reported.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: As of 2018, global vaccination efforts have reached 86% coverage of the first dose of the measles vaccine and 68% coverage of the second dose.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: The WHO region of the Americas declared on 27 September 2016 it had eliminated measles. The last confirmed endemic case of measles in the Americas was in Brazil in July 2015. May 2017 saw a return of measles to the US after an outbreak in Minnesota among unvaccinated children. Another outbreak occurred in the state of New York between 2018 and 2019, causing over 200 confirmed measles cases in mostly ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. Subsequent outbreaks occurred in New Jersey and Washington state with over 30 cases reported in the Pacific Northwest.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: The WHO European region missed its elimination target of 2010 as well as the new target of 2015 despite overall coverage of 90% of the first dose of the measles vaccine. In 2018, 84,000 cases were reported in the European region (an increase from 25,000 in 2017); with the majority of cases originating from Ukraine.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: As of 2018, 35 countries out of 53 European countries have eliminated endemic measles and two additional ones that have interrupted transmission; with four countries re-establishing transmission in 2018. European countries with endemic measles in 2018 were: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Four out of six WHO regions have goals to eliminate rubella, with the WHO recommending using existing measles programmes for vaccination with combined vaccines such as the MMR vaccine. The number of reported cases dropped from 670,000 in the year 2000 to below 15,000 in 2018, and the global coverage of rubella vaccination was estimated at 69% in 2018 by the WHO. The WHO region of the Americas declared on 29 April 2015 it had eliminated rubella and congenital rubella syndrome. The last confirmed endemic case of rubella in the Americas was in Argentina in February 2009. Australia achieved eradication in 2018. , 82 countries were certified to have eliminated rubella.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: The WHO European region missed its elimination target of 2010 as well as the new target of 2015 due to undervaccination in Central and Western Europe.<ref name="urlWHO/Europe2019"></ref> As of 2018, 39 countries out of 53 European countries have eliminated endemic Rubella and three additional ones that have interrupted transmission; a total of 850 confirmed rubella cases were reported in the European region in 2018 with 438 of these in Poland. European countries with endemic Rubella in 2018 were: Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine. The disease remains problematic in other regions as well; the WHO regions of Africa and South-East Asia have the highest rates of congenital rubella syndrome and a 2013 outbreak of rubella in Japan resulted in 15,000 cases.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Onchocerciasis (river blindness) is the world's second leading cause of infectious blindness. It is caused by the nematode "Onchocerca volvulus", which is transmitted to people via the bite of a black fly. The current WHO goal is to increase the number of countries free of transmission from 4 (in 2020) to 12 in 2030. Elimination of this disease is under way in the region of the Americas, where this disease was endemic to Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico and Venezuela. The principal tool being used is mass ivermectin treatment. If successful, the only remaining endemic locations would be in Africa and Yemen. In Africa, it is estimated that greater than 102 million people in 19 countries are at high risk of onchocerciasis infection, and in 2008, 56.7 million people in 15 of these countries received community-directed treatment with ivermectin. Since adopting such treatment measures in 1997, the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control reports a reduction in the prevalence of onchocerciasis in the countries under its mandate from a pre-intervention level of 46.5% in 1995 to 28.5% in 2008. Some African countries, such as Uganda, are also attempting elimination and successful elimination was reported in 2009 from two endemic foci in Mali and Senegal.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: On 29 July 2013, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) announced that after 16 years of efforts, Colombia had become the first country in the world to eliminate the parasitic disease onchocerciasis. It has also been eliminated in Ecuador (2014), Mexico (2015), and Guatemala (2016). The only remaining countries in America in which the disease is endemic are Brazil and Venezuela as of 2021.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Following an epidemic of variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD) in the UK in the 1990s, there have been campaigns to eliminate bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle across the European Union and beyond which have achieved large reductions in the number of cattle with this disease. Cases of vCJD have also fallen since then, from an annual peak of 29 cases in 2000 to five in 2008 and none in 2012. Two cases were reported in both 2013 and 2014: two in France; one in the United Kingdom and one in the United States.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Following the ongoing eradication effort, only seven cases of BSE were reported worldwide in 2013: three in the United Kingdom, two in France, one in Ireland and one in Poland. This is the lowest number of cases since at least 1988. In 2015 there were at least six reported cases (three of the atypical H-type).


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: In 2007, the WHO launched a roadmap for the elimination of congenital syphilis (mother to child transmission).


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: In 2015, Cuba became the first country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child syphilis. In 2017 the WHO declared that Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis and four British Overseas Territories—Anguilla, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, and Montserrat—have been certified that they have ended transmission of mother-to-child syphilis and HIV. In 2018, Malaysia also achieved certification. Nevertheless, eradication of syphilis by all transmission methods remains unresolved and many questions about the eradication effort remain to be answered.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Early planning by the WHO for the eradication of African trypanosomiasis, also known as "sleeping sickness", is underway as the rate of reported cases continues to decline and passive treatment is continued. The WHO aims to eliminate transmission of the "Trypanosoma brucei gambiense" parasite by 2030, though it acknowledges that this goal "leaves no room for complacency." The eradication and control efforts have been progressing well, with the number of reported cases dropping below 10,000 in 2009 for the first time; with only 992 cases reported in 2019 and 565 cases in 2020. The vast majority of the 565 cases in 2020 (over 60%) were recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, some researchers have argued that total elimination may not be achievable due to human asymptomatic carriers of "T. b. gambiense" and non-tsetse modes of transmission.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: The Pan African Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Campaign (PATTEC) works to eradicate the tsetse vector population levels and subsequently the protozoan disease, by use of insecticide-impregnated targets, fly traps, insecticide-treated cattle, ultra-low dose aerial/ground spraying (SAT) of tsetse resting sites and the sterile insect technique (SIT). The use of SIT in Zanzibar proved effective in eliminating the entire population of tsetse flies but was expensive and is relatively impractical to use in many of the endemic countries afflicted with African trypanosomiasis.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Because the rabies virus is almost always caught from animals, rabies eradication has focused on reducing the population of wild and stray animals, controls and compulsory quarantine on animals entering the country, and vaccination of pets and wild animals. Many island nations, including Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Malta, and the United Kingdom, managed to eliminate rabies during the twentieth century, and more recently much of continental Europe has been declared rabies-free.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Chagas disease is caused by "Trypanosoma cruzi" and is mostly spread by Triatominae. It is endemic to 21 countries in Latin America. There are over 30,000 new cases per year and 12,000 deaths due to the disease. Eradication efforts focus on the elimination of vector-borne transmission and the elimination of the vectors themselves.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Eradication is hampered by the large chronically infected population in the endemic area in humans, and animals, and emigration of infected humans to non-endemic areas. Production of effective vaccines is inherently difficult.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Since the introduction of multi-drug therapy in 1981, the prevalence of leprosy has been reduced by over 95%. The success of the treatment has prompted the WHO in 1991 to set a target of less than one case per 10,000 people (eliminate the disease as a public health risk) which was achieved in 2000.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: The elimination of transmission of leprosy is part of the WHO "Towards zero leprosy" strategy to be implemented until 2030.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Following rinderpest, many experts believe that ovine rinderpest, or "peste des petits ruminants" (PPR), is the next disease amenable to global eradication. PPR is a highly contagious viral disease of goats and sheep characterized by fever, painful sores in the mouth, tongue and feet, diarrhea, pneumonia and death, especially in young animals. It is caused by a virus of the genus "Morbillivirus" that is related to rinderpest, measles and canine distemper.


title: Eradication of infectious diseases

text: Public upheaval by means of war, famine, political means, and infrastructure destruction can disrupt or eliminate eradication efforts altogether.


title: Adolf Hitler and vegetarianism

text: Near the end of his life, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) followed a vegetarian diet. It is not clear when or why he adopted it, since some accounts of his dietary habits prior to the Second World War indicate that he consumed meat as late as 1937. In 1938 Hitler's doctors put him on a meat-free diet and his public image as a vegetarian was fostered, and from 1942, he self-identified as a vegetarian. Personal accounts from people who knew Hitler and were familiar with his diet indicate that he did not consume meat as part of his diet during this period, as several contemporaneous witnesses—such as Albert Speer (in his memoirs, "Inside the Third Reich")—noted that Hitler used vivid and gruesome descriptions of animal suffering and slaughter at the dinner table to try to dissuade his colleagues from eating meat. An examination of Hitler's skull carried out by French scientists in 2017 found no traces of meat fibre in the tartar on Hitler's teeth.


title: Adolf Hitler and vegetarianism

text: Some modern-day analyses have speculated that Hitler's vegetarianism may have been for health reasons due to Richard Wagner's historical theories, or even a psychological reaction to his niece's death rather than a commitment to animal welfare. In contrast, several eyewitness sources maintain Hitler was a vegetarian because of his concern for animal suffering, noting that he was often distressed by images of animal cruelty and suffering, and was an antivivisectionist.


title: Adolf Hitler and vegetarianism

text: In a 1937 article, "The New York Times" noted "It is well known that Hitler is a vegetarian and does not drink or smoke. The lunch and dinner consist, therefore, for the most part of soup, eggs, vegetables and mineral water, although he occasionally relishes a slice of ham and relieves the tediousness of his diet with such delicacies as caviar ...". In November 1938, an article for the English magazine "Homes & Gardens" describing Hitler's mountain home, "The Berghof", stated that in addition to being a teetotaler and a non-smoker, Hitler was also a vegetarian. Ignatius Phayre wrote, "A life-long vegetarian at table, Hitler's kitchen plots are both varied and heavy in produce. Even in his meatless diet Hitler is something of a gourmet – as Sir John Simon and Anthony Eden were surprised to note when they dined with him in the Chancellery at Berlin. His Bavarian chef, Herr Kannenberg, contrives an imposing array of vegetarian dishes, savoury and rich, pleasing to the eye as well as to the palate, and all conforming to the dietic standards which Hitler exacts."