Melvin Konner. Why the Reckless Survive...and other Secrets of Human Nature. New York

n.a. "Ancient Egyptian Timeline." Guardian's Egypt.

Since the wind blew reliably against the river's current, the Egyptians learned they could sail upstream, then drift or row downstream again, turning the Nile into a people-mover par excellence. (Anne Millard. The Egyptians. Morristown, NJ, Silver Burdett, 1975

Time-Life Books, the editors of. The Age of God-Kings. New York

Herodotus. The History of Herodotus. In Library of the Future, 4th Edition, Ver. 5.0. Irvine, CA

Claudius Ptolemy's Sexta Asiae Tabula ascribes this discovery to the Greek Hippalus in 50 b.c. Ptolemy, in turn, derived his information from a sailing manual called "The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea." (Susan Ludmer-Gliebe. "Sinbads of the Sea.". William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples. New York

Daniel J. Boorstin. The Discoverers

Albert A. Trever. History of Ancient Civilization - Volume II

Albert A. Trever. History of Ancient Civilization - Volume II

Honor Frost. "How Carthage Lost The Sea." Natural History, December, 1987

Suetonius. C. Suetonius Tranquillus. Divi Augusti Vita. Edited by Michael Adams. London

Albert A. Trever. History of Ancient Civilization - Volume II

Geoffrey Barraclough, editor. The Times Atlas of World History. London

Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume I

Wolfram Eberhard. A History of China. London

Allen W. Johnson and Timothy Earle. The Evolution of Human Societies

Allen W. Johnson and Timothy Earle. The Evolution of Human Societies

A common language, uniform weights and measures, and the regulation of axle widths were instituted under the Ch'in, from 250 to 200 b.c. in China. (Wolfram Eberhard. A History of China

Philip D. Curtin. Cross-Cultural Trade in World History

Will Durant pegs the Roman trade deficit at well over 400 million sesterces per year, with 100 million each going to China, India, Arabia, and Spain. (Will Durant. The Story of Civilization

Alexander's general Seleucus established an empire which reached as far as Afghanistan. His descendants would later establish Indo-Greek kingdoms in Northwest India. (For more, see

Andrea Schulte-Peevers. "The Brothers Grimm and the Evolution of the Fairy Tale." German Life, March 31, 1996; Robert Darnton. The Great Cat Massacre And Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York

Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume II

Will Durant. The Story of Civilization

In the Philippines, sweet potatoes are still known by their Aztec name, camotl. (E.N. Anderson. The Food of China. New Haven

D.B. Grigg. The Agricultural Systems of the World

E.N. Anderson. The Food of China

This information comes from a historical project carried out by percussionist Ralph MacDonald in which I was a participant. See also

The posts disappeared in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, only to be resumed haltingly in the thirteenth century, when Italian merchants built up limited mail systems to communicate with their customers and representatives at the growing network of trade fairs, and when guilds created small-scale postal systems in the north. The invention of the printing press made letter carrying a major commercial opportunity, one seized on by two families from Bergamo in Italy - the Thurns and the Taxis. Between them, they built a highly profitable relay network of 20,000 letter carriers covering routes throughout the Hapsburg Empire.

Desiderius Erasmus. The correspondence of Erasmus. Translated by R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson. Toronto

William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples

William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples

William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples

William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples

William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples

William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples

Ling recalls witnessing "the sufferings and anxiety" tuberculosis produced "from day to day." He says, "When I was attending college in Chungking, the University had 7 giant dormitories each housing more than one thousand students in closely packed double bunks. The Seventh dormitory was occupied all by TB-ill students. One of my best friends, a highly talented young man occupied a bed next to mine in one of the other six dormitories. One night he coughed on and off for a long time. The next morning half of his mosquito net was red with his blood. He died not long after." Gilbert Ling. Personal Communication. December 1, 1998.

H. Philip Spratt. "The Marine Steam-Engine." in Charles Singer, E.J. Holmyard, A.R. Hall and Trevor I Williams, eds. A History of Technology

Robert L. O'Connell. Of Arms and Men

Paul Kennedy. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

Wolfram Eberhard. A History of China

n.a. "Hong Kong - From Opium War to 1997 and Beyond." interlog.

Warren wrote home to the family proclaiming that "as a merchant I insist that it [the drug trade] has been...fair, honorable, and legitimate." (n.a. "Hong Kong - From Opium War to 1997 and Beyond." interlog. See also

By now 61 years had passed since the first Opium War, and the Boxers had widened their targets to include all things foreign, including locals who had been polluted by conversion to Christianity, missionaries, churches, mines, and railroads. Many of the boxers were canalmen whom the railroads had rendered jobless. See William J. Duiker. Cultures In Collision

It is frequently claimed that the "ancients" utilized the lens, however this is a bit of an exaggeration. The Assyrians knew that by removing slices from a glass sphere, they could obtain a magnifying device. However the Greeks did not employ such bulging bits of glass to enlarge minute or distant objects. Aristotle merely discusses the ability of the "burning-glass" to start fires in his Posterior Analytics. In his play The Clouds, Aristophanes also toys with the mischief one can do by using "a crystal lens" to melt from a distance the wax letters some unsuspecting victim is reading.(Aristotle. Posterior Analytics (1

Thomas E. Jones. "History of the Light Microscope." 1997. Daniel J. Boorstin. The Discoverers

Daniel J. Boorstin. The Discoverers

Will Durant and Ariel Durant. The Story of Civilization

Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann were comparing notes over dinner one night when they spotted a common thread which linked their research. Schleiden contributed the portion of cell theory which said all plants are composed of cells. Schwann added all animals. (Lewis Wolpert. "The evolution of 'the cell theory'." Current Biology, 1996

Thomas S. Hall. Ideas on Life and Matter, vol. 2. Chicago

According to Gilbert Ling, for every ion of sodium inside the cell there are ten straining to get in. (Gilbert Ling. "Some High Lights of the Association-Induction Hypothesis.") A good standard biology textbook gives a similar ratio, 11 to one. (William K. Purves, Gordon H. Orians. Life

The cell's ability to imprison potassium is even more impressive than its power to shut out sodium. For every molecule of potassium on the cell's exterior, there are 40 trapped inside trying to escape. However escape they cannot. Such is the cell's ability to defy the forces of osmotic pressure and hydraulic randomness. (Gilbert Ling"Some High Lights of the Association-Induction Hypothesis." The figure given in Purves and Orians for the nerve cell of a squid is 20 potassium molecules inside for every one outside. William K. Purves, Gordon H. Orians. Life

"Moritz Traube (1826-1894) - Life and work of an universal private scholar and a pioneer of the physiological chemistry." Dr. Michael Engel. "Studien und Quellen zur Geschichte der Chemie" Verlag für Wissenschafts- und Regionalgeschichte.

Gilbert Ling. "The so-called 'sodium-' and 'potassium channels'."

Ling claims that over 200 journal articles have been published presenting his Association-Induction Hypothesis, disproving the sodium-potassium pump hypothesis, dealing with the criticisms of his detractors, and attempting to demonstrate the broader ramifications of his theories. In addition, he has laid out his work in three books spanning three decades

Gilbert Ling. "Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".

G.N. Ling. "The new cell physiology

Ling's Pennsylvania research facility was funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation - whose wealth had come from the establishment of the Great American and Pacific Tea Company - a participant in the 19th century China trade which resulted in the Boxer Rebellion and, incidentally, in Ling's association with western science. A&P was founded in 1859 as a company which purchased Chinese tea fresh from the New York docks and sold it in "Oriental palace stores" at a discount. The strong-arm tactics used by America and other gunboat powers back in Canton kept the tea the A&P sold flowing. (The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. The A&P Homepage. "Company History

Gilbert Ling"Education, jobs held and vignette of close relatives." For information on Pennsylvania Hospital, see

Gilbert Ling "Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".

Gilbert Ling "Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?". For more on Troshin, see

Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging owes its birth in part to American researcher Raymond Damadian's fusion of Ling's work with Isidor Rabi's discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance phenomenon in molecular beams. Rabi won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1944. (James Mattson and Merrill Simon. The Pioneers of NMR and Magnetic Resonance in Medicine

The number of researchers besides Ling who have applied the concept of thermodynamic cooperative states to biology is small, but their results are intriguing. For examples see

G.N. Ling. "A physical theory of the living state

G.N. Ling, M.M. Ochsenfeld, C. Walton, T.J. Bersinger. "Experimental confirmation, from model studies, of a key prediction of the polarized multilayer theory of cell water." Physiological Chemistry and Physics, 10

G.N. Ling. "Solute exclusion by polymer and protein-dominated water

G.N. Ling. "Can we see living structure in a cell?" Scanning Microscopy, June 1992

G.N. Ling. "Can we see living structure in a cell?"; Gilbert Ling. "Some High Lights of the Association-Induction Hypothesis."

The most significant cardinal absorbent is ATP, adenosine triphosphate, a central molecule in cell metabolism.

G.N. Ling, A. Fisher. "Cooperative interaction among cell surface sites

L. Yamasaki L, P. Kanda P, R.E. Lanford. "Identification of four nuclear transport signal-binding proteins that interact with diverse transport signals." Molecular and Cellular Biology, July 1989

R. Lahoz-Beltra, S.R. Hameroff, J.E. Dayhoff. "Cytoskeletal logic

Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart. "Evolvability." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, July 1998

Elizabeth Gould. "The Effects of Adrenal Steroids and Excitatory Input on Neuronal Birth and Survival." In Hormonal Restructuring of the Adult Brain

When Librarians Burn the Books

G.N. Ling. "Oxidative Phosphorylation and Mitochondrial Physiology

For information on the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which today consists of seventeen organizations in the life sciences, see

Gilbert Ling. "Invitation to public debate consistently declined by my opponents."

As an organizer of scientific groups to combat dogmatism, I've tracked several inquisitions of the kind to which Ling was subjected from up close, and have worked to undo their effects. Ling's report of his experience is consistent with the episodes which have cropped up in the pursuit of this goal.

Edelmann had read Ling's 1962 A Physical Theory of the Living State

Gilbert Ling

Edelmann has demonstrated his underlying ability in his new area. Between 1966 and 1997, he published 43 articles in such peer reviewed journals as Journal of Biological Chemistry, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Microscopy, and American Journal of Clinical Pathology.

Gilbert Ling. "Affidavit."

Ling is not the only one to have noticed how the peer review process suppresses originality. E.I. Cantekin, T.W. McGuire, and R.L. Potter, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded that, "The current peer review system...is unable to embrace dissent within the peer review process and to use dissent to serve scientific truth and the public interest." (E.I. Cantekin, T.W. McGuire, R.L. Potter. "Biomedical information, peer review, and conflict of interest as they influence public health." Journal of the American Medical Association, March 9, 1990

Dr. George N. Eaves. "The Project-grant Application of the National Institute of Health." Bethesda, Maryland

Ling's testimony was given before the Congressional Investigation of the Peer Review System of the National Science Foundation in 1975. (Gilbert Ling

Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".

Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".

Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".

According the Medline, the leading medical database, there were 1,567 articles published in peer-reviewed journals on just one of these pumps - the sodium pump - between 1966 and 1998. Each of the studies on which these articles was based had been the beneficiary of one or more funding grants.

I.M. Glynn, S.J. Karlish. "The sodium pump." Annual Review of Physiology, 37, 1975

Gilbert Ling. "Corruption."

As an example, Ling cites the symposium volume "Structure, Mechanism and Function of the Na/K Pump (Academic Press, 1983) altogether 122 papers were presented citing a total of 1598 references (some are repetitions) in which not one single paper presenting evidence against the concept of Na/K pump was included." (Gilbert Ling. "Corruption." Joseph F. Hoffman, Bliss Forbush III, editors. Structure, mechanism, and function of the Na/K pump. New York

Gilbert Ling. "Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".

Ling published 58 articles setting forth new ramifications of his approach between 1980 and 1998. He also cites independent studies which provided evidence in support of his theories long after his virtual banishment. These include

Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".

When the two National Institute of Health officials who had saved Ling from the funding guillotine retired, the blade finally fell and his last trickles of NIH and ONR (Office of Naval Research) financing disappeared. (Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?"

Damadian began the quest which led him to develop whole-body NMR scanning with a search for Ling's nemesis, the sodium pump. His work, performed at Washington University's School of Medicine in St. Louis, led him to Ling's conclusion - that the sodium pump model is erroneous. Damadian credits Ling's contribution to Nuclear Magnetic Resonance imaging in the following words

The National Inventors Hall of Fame. "Raymond V. Damadian." Inventure Place, The National Inventors Hall of Fame! "Welcome to the FONAR Home Page - A Leading Manufacturer of MRI Scanners."; Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".

For some of Ling's work on cancer and drug activity, see

Gilbert Ling. "Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?".

Gilbert Ling. " Why Science Cannot Cure Cancer and AIDS without Your Help?"

F. Baquero. "Gram-positive resistance

The 1990s saw a spate of books predicting microbial catastrophe. Some were fiction, but the majority were very much books of fact. See