The city of Salem, Massachusetts, was a major port for American commerce to Africa for much of the nineteenth century. Even in the latter years of the century, when trade had moved to larger centers, the Salem men still played an important role in some African areas.

Due to the efforts of the Peabody Museum and the Essex Institute, many of the papers relating to this American contact with Africa have been preserved. The collections include logbooks of vessels, merchants' account books, and letters to and from agents and captains.

The following pages briefly describe the materials relating to the history of Africa in the archives of the two Salem institutions. The list includes only those items of historical interest. (There are many logs of voyages to Africa of only nautical value.) It attempts to be complete, but no claim is made to having found every document of interest to the historian. Part of the contents of the archives remain uncatalogued and materials relating to Africa are occasionally uncovered under unlikely headings. Research for new sources is being continued.

This brief piece addresses the dispute sparked by Donald Trump’s executive order denying birthright citizenship to two classes of people traditionally included under the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A primary goal is to provide a historical perspective on arguments made by both sides that are too frequently neglected in media coverage of the dispute. The piece does not predict how SCOTUS might rule, but it does make a case for the nation’s responsibility to children who have violated no law. Through textual and historical analysis, it also refutes two law professors who propose an originalist interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that supports Trump’s effort to deny birthright citizenship to children born to undocumented immigrants. Drawing on works of literature, this article hopes to clarify the consequences of the complicated legal issues involved, including the bigoted history of previous efforts to restrict birthright citizenship.

Maternal mental health represents a significant global health burden, not only in terms of maternal wellbeing, but also for the impact it has on child development. The relationship between maternal mental health and deleterious environmental exposures to the fetus is one mechanism of risk transmission. This study utilizes network analysis to a) explore how maternal mental health is associated with a wide array of fetal exposures, and b) examine how these exposures cluster together. A total of 485 pregnant women were recruited from the Mercy Hospital for Women in Melbourne, Australia between 2011–2017, as part of the Mercy Pregnancy and Emotional Wellbeing Study (MPEWS). The MPEWS includes measures of mental health diagnosis and symptoms, psychotropic medication, smoking, alcohol, substance use, and a wide range of lifestyle factors in the first and third trimesters of pregnancy. Regularized Partial Correlation Modelling was used to examine the network of relationships between maternal mental health and fetal exposures due to environmental factors, lifestyle and medications. For women diagnosed with mental health disorders there are relatively higher rates of exposure to smoking, anxiety and depression symptoms, psychotropic medications, pregnancy health conditions and less than optimal lifestyle factors. Factors such as physical exercise and folate supplementation show strong patterns of partial correlation. Trait anxiety emerged as the central variable in the network with the highest strength of relationship to all other exposure variables. The current study shows the value of approaching fetal exposures as a complex network of associated aspects of maternal lifestyle, mental health and environment. Viewing exposures together may assist clinical and public health interventions to target multiple associated risk factors, rather than the current focus on individual exposures. The preconception and perinatal periods offer important opportunities for the prevention of teratogenic fetal exposures and the promotion of a healthy start to life.