Who "Invented" Comedy? The Ancient Candidates for the Origins of Comedy and the Visual Evidence
The formal beginning of comedy is firmly dated to the Dionysia of 486 B.C.E.1 For what preceded it there were at least three ancient candidates: phallic processions, Doric comedy and Susarion. Each is supported by visual evidence of the sixth century B.C.E., each explains certain features of Old Comedy, but all have some anomalies as well. Striking is how many forms of performance attested in the sixth century contained comic elements. All these other forms ceased with the introduction of comedies to the Dionysia in 486 B.C.E., which coincides with the ascendancy of the demos; yet it was not until forty years later that comedy becomes unabashedly political.
Demosthenes Against Meidias
too supports them. None of Dover's 'tentative' suggestions is adopted, one at 222el3 not reported. I agree that one should take a broadly conservative stance in one's text, but if V. had had a commentary he could have explored further possibilities as Dover did. If there is little originality in the text, why was revision so important? Perhaps it is the updated apparatus which is valuable, but will it be any substitute for that of a new OCT? So who will use this volume? Undergraduates need grammatical help and fuller commentary. They don't need much more apparatus than Dover gave them (though they needed more accuracy at 222d6/e2). They can still benefit from Robin's elegant and informative introduction, but why not his text, translation and notes. The introduction was based on these, and once referred frequently to them. Now the link between the introduction and the rest is tenuous indeed. The notes refer nearly as often to V.'s tiny contribution to the notice as to Robin's. Scholars will still use Robin separately. They will welcome V.'s apparatus, but how much else? A great deal of interest has of late been focused on both the philosophic and the literary aspects of the Symposium; V., like Dover, does little justice to these aspects. To S. Rosen's effusive but stimulating book I find no reference. The volume will not be much used where French is not a medium of instruction. The combination of old and new elements has often resulted in inferior presentation: a large part of the page blank, or notes almost off the bottom of the page. Not a fitting tribute to the memory of Paul Vicaire.
Study on essential drug use status and its influencing factors among cerebral infarction inpatients in county level hospitals of Anhui Province, China
Background and purpose Drug costs is one of the main components of hospitalization expenditure for cerebral infarction inpatients. In China, the National Essential Medicine System (NEMS) was created to relieve the heavy drug-cost burden for patients. The objective of this study was to investigate essential drug-use status and its influencing factors among cerebral infarction inpatients in county-level hospitals of Anhui province, China. Methods Three county-level hospitals were selected through a multi-stage cluster random sampling method. The hospitalization cost data of cerebral infarction inpatients in the three hospitals were extracted from the Anhui provincial information platform of the New Rural Cooperative Insurance System (NCMS), and whether the proportion of essential drug cost in the total drug cost reached the median value of 33.05% which was set as the evaluation index for essential drug-use status. Questionnaires for hospitals and physicians were designed and given to them to assess influencing factors. Results We retrieved the cost data of 2,189 inpatients from the NCMS platform and investigated 51 corresponding physicians in total. The drug costs accounted for 52.6% of the total hospitalization cost, and essential drug costs alone accounted for 37.0% of the total drug costs. The essential drug-cost proportion was high among physicians with a higher recognition degree on NEMS, older age, lower final academic degree, longer work experience and lower professional title. Married physicians and those with tight organizational affiliation also prescribed more essential drugs. Conclusions Increasing the proportion of essential drugs was an effective way to reduce the disease burden for cerebral infarction patients. Perfecting the NEMS, increasing government investment, reinforcing education and propaganda, and formulating relevant incentive and restrictive mechanisms were all effective ways to promote and increase the number of essential drug prescriptions written by physicians.