In this paper we explore game-theoretic reasoning in dynamic games within the framework of belief revision theory. More precisely, we focus on the forward induction concept of ‘common strong belief in rationality’ (Battigalli and Siniscalchi (2002) and the backward induction concept of ‘common belief in future rationality’ (Baltag et al. 2009; Perea 2014). For both concepts we investigate whether the entire collection of selected belief revision policies for a player can be characterized by a unique plausibility ordering. We find that this is indeed possible for ‘common strong belief in rationality’, whereas this may be impossible in some games for ‘common belief in future rationality’.

In September 1939, Fiji's Legislative Council debated a testamentary disposition bill, patterned after the English Inheritance (Family Provision) Act of 1938. The bill's introduction followed a routine procedure of the transplantation of English legislation to colonial jurisdictions. The bill empowered the court to modify wills in which the testator had deprived the spouse and children of reasonable maintenance. As debate ensued, Said Hasan, the recently nominated Muslim Member of the Legislative Council, rose to offer his support. He noted that the bill gave partial effect to “the underlying principle of Mohammedan law.” The “policy” of Mohammedan law, he argued, was to prevent the testator from interfering with the devolution of property to family members in “fixed and definite shares.” A testator was entitled to will only a “bequeathable third” of the estate beyond the fixed shares assigned to dependents. Hasan further declared that the bill was a “tacit admission” of the injustice suffered by dependents excluded from their rightful share in family property.

I write with the aim of keeping subscribers and readers informed about forthcoming changes concerning Polar Record, the journal of the Scott Polar Research Institute, that is published by Cambridge University Press. Many will be aware that the journal dates from 1931 and that its name arises from the need to record activity in polar areas, and in those days this largely consisted in setting out the heroic deeds of the various pioneering expeditions. The very first issue (priced at 1 shilling or 5 pence in today's currency!) contained information about Mawson's British Australian New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition, Byrd's first Antarctic Expedition and referred to the then recent deaths of Nansen, Sverdrup and Royds.

Sometime during the middle of the nineteenth century, a correspondent from the interior of Oman wrote to the jurist Sa‘id bin Khalfan Al-Khalili (c. 1811–70) with an observation: “The Mazru‘is have wealth on the Swahili coast [al-Sawāḥil] and wealth in Oman.” This in itself was no surprise: the Mazru‘is, along with scores of other Arab clans, included a branch that had long since established its political authority in Mombasa, on the coast of what is now Kenya, but lately, the correspondent suggested, things had been changing. Members of the Mombasa Mazru‘is were now coming to Oman armed with wakalas (powers of attorney) from unknown scribes, for the sale of their familial properties in their ancestral homeland. “He [the Mazru‘i] sold what God likes from these properties and took the value… and the yield was separated from the property owners.” The people's acquiescence to the state of affairs was of particular surprise to the questioner. Days, months, and years went by, he noted, and the property owners (arbāb al-amwāl) did not seem the least bit interested in changing the system, “and the people, as you well know, come and go via this sea, from Oman to the Swahili coast, with confidence that they know [bi-ḥukm al-iṭma'ināna annahum ‘alamū].”

John Broome argues that fairness requires that claims are satisfied in proportion to their strength. Broome holds that, when distributing indivisible goods, fairness requires the use of weighted lotteries as a surrogate to satisfy proportionally each candidate's claims. In this article, we present two arguments against Broome's account of fairness. First, we argue that it is almost impossible to calculate the weights of the lotteries in accordance with the requirements of fairness. Second, we argue that Broome rules out those methods whose use might provide some resolution to this problem. From these arguments, we conclude that, contra Broome, fairness does not require the proportional satisfaction of claims.

This note concerns the little known sub-Arctic operations in the Russo-Japanese war, 1904–1905. Apart from a slightly farcical ‘invasion’ of the Kamchatka peninsula by a group of Japanese fishermen, and a naval engagement off the coast of southern Sakhalin, the main operations related to the efficiently conducted Japanese invasion of the sub–Arctic island of Sakhalin itself. This was the only occupation of Russian territory during the war and was intended to strengthen the Japanese position in the peace negotiations, held at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, that brought the war to a close.

Based on a wide range of primary materials, including WHO reports and Colonial Office correspondence, this article examines the UNICEF/WHO-funded mass BCG campaigns that were carried out in seven Caribbean colonies between 1951 and 1956. It explores the reasons behind them, their nature and aftermath and also compares them to those in other non-European countries and discusses them within a context of decolonisation. In doing so, it not only adds to the scholarship on TB in non-European contexts, which had tended to focus on Africa and Asia, but also to the relatively new field of Caribbean medical history and the rapidly expanding body of work on international health, which has paid scant attention to the Anglophone Caribbean and the pre-independence period.

In this article, I examine Galen’s credentials as an ethical philosopher on the basis of his recently discovered essay Avoiding Distress (Peri alypias). As compensation for the scholarly neglect from which Galen’s ethics suffers, I argue that his moral agenda is an essential part of his philosophical discourse, one that situates him firmly within the tradition of practical ethics of the Roman period. Galen’s engagement with Stoic psychotherapy and the Platonic-Aristotelian educational model affirms his ethical authority; on the other hand, his distinctive moralising features such as the autobiographical perspective of his narrative and the intimacy between author and addressee render his Avoiding Distress exceptional among other essays, Greek or Latin, treating anxiety. Additionally, I show that Galen’s self-projection as a therapist of the emotions corresponds to his role as a practising physician, especially as regards the construction of authority, the efficacy of his therapy and the importance of personal experience as attested in his medical accounts. Finally, the diligence with which Galen retextures his moral advice in his On the Affections and Errors of the Soul– a work of different nature and intent in relation to Avoiding Distress – is a testimony to the dynamics of his ethics and more widely to his philosophical medicine.

Although historians have shown that there has been a complex and multi-layered relationship between the body, medicine and the force of electricity, many avenues remain to be explored. One of the most prominent of these is the way in which electrotherapy technologies were marketed to a wide variety of different end users and intermediaries. This paper offers the first historical analysis of one such device – the Overbeck Rejuvenator – a 1920s electrotherapy machine designed for use by the general public. Its inventor, Otto Overbeck, was not a medical man and this enabled him to use aggressive strategies of newspaper advertising, using testimonials to market his product alongside appeals to his own scientific authority. He commissioned the prestigious Ediswan Company to manufacture the Rejuvenator on a large scale, and took out patents in eleven countries to persuade users of the efficacy of the device. In response to Overbeck’s activities, the British Medical Association enlisted an electrical engineer to examine the Rejuvenator, contacted practitioners whose endorsements were being used in publicity material, and denied Overbeck permission to advertise in the British Medical Journal. Despite this, the Rejuvenator brought its inventor wealth and notoriety, and helped redefine the concept of ‘rejuvenation’, even if the professional reception of such a device was almost universally hostile. This paper shows how the marketing, patenting and publishing of Overbeck combined to persuade members of the laity to try the Rejuvenator as an alternative form of therapy, bypassing the medical profession in the process.

During the First World War the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, in Queen Square, London, then Britain’s leading centre for neurology, took a key role in the treatment and understanding of shell shock. This paper explores the case notes of all 462 servicemen who were admitted with functional neurological disorders between 1914 and 1919. Many of these were severe or chronic cases referred to the National Hospital because of its acknowledged expertise and the resources it could call upon. Biographical data was collected together with accounts of the patient’s military experience, his symptoms, diagnostic interpretations and treatment outcomes. Analysis of the notes showed that motor syndromes (loss of function or hyperkinesias), often combined with somato-sensory loss, were common presentations. Anxiety and depression as well as vegetative symptoms such as sweating, dizziness and palpitations were also prevalent among this patient population. Conversely, psychogenic seizures were reported much less frequently than in comparable accounts from German tertiary referral centres. As the war unfolded the number of physicians who believed that shell shock was primarily an organic disorder fell as research failed to find a pathological basis for its symptoms. However, little agreement existed among the Queen Square doctors about the fundamental nature of the disorder and it was increasingly categorised as functional disorder or hysteria.

In 1856, the mayor of Brussels proposed the establishment of a municipal laboratory with a chemist to analyse food and beverages to restrain fraud. His proposal was accepted and a laboratory – possibly one of the first municipal laboratories in Europe – was set up. The laboratory still exists today. This paper aims at tracing the conditions in which it emerged, situating it within the laissez-faire context of the time. It was brought into existence by a liberal administration, in a period of little interventionism replete with unencumbered private interests (those of bakers, butchers, grocers, millers, pharmacists, doctors and so on). What will be considered here is the general mood with regard to food fraud, fair trade, correct price, and the quality of food in the first half of the nineteenth century. On a broader level, this contribution addresses the frictions between private and public initiative, while focusing on the process of construction of expertise. The paper makes use of contemporary documents such as reviews, newspapers, association reports and city council chronicles.