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Halloween


The Halloween is celebrated on 31st October, eve of All Saint’s Day. This is a traditional and cultural event, specially common in Anglo-Saxon countries, like USA, Canada, Ireland and United Kingdom, whose origin derives from ancient Celtic peoples, a Celtic pagan celebration, Samhain. Samhain was representing the end of the summer and had a purpose of worship the dead. People were believing that in Halloween, the dead were returning to places where had lived, and because of that, people were wearing masks, dancing and singing to dispel the spirits. Today’s days, Halloween has little to do with its origins.

Portuguese tradition, due Catholic Church, focus above all, on 1st November, All Saint’s Day, a holy day when believers worship the Saint’s and Christian martyrs. Commonly, 1st November is viewed as an opportunity of redemption to those who missed the consecration of any holy soul. In Portugal, one of the most common traditions is the Bread-Of-God, children go out to the streets, knocking from door to door, reciting vesicles, while receive as offer bread, maize bread, pomegranate and nuts. In some localizations is offered a cake named Santoro. Mindeiras and maize bread of honey are two traditional sweets very often in this period. All celebrations culminate in All Souls Day, on 2nd November, chosen data to remember the one’s who died. Frequently there are dislocations to cemeteries, flowers and candles on the graves of the dead.


Pumpkin History



In fact, the pumpkin were a turnip, at the beginning. The tradition started in Ireland, where were used illuminated turnips, according to “Jack o’ lantern”, however when the Irish immigrates arrived to USA, noticed that pumpkins were more abundant than turnips, and so the turnip was exchanged for the illuminated, by an ember, pumpkin. “Jack o’ Lantern” has origin in the legend of one man named Jack, which was forbidden of enter in the Paradise, because in life he was miser, the door of hell were also closed because he cheated the Devil. Condemned for eternity to walk into the darkness, Jack received one ember from a devil, to illuminate his path, that he placed inside a turnip, to keep lit longer.


Traditions


Whether celebrate on 31st October or not, Halloween and tribute to dead are sign in a way that diverges, more or less, from the original tradition.


Ireland: where the tradition arose, locals lit bonfires in rural areas, as at Celtic times.

Austria: some people leave bread, water and a lit lamp on the table, before sleep, in Halloween night, due the belief that the souls of dead return to Earth and should be received with greetings.

Mexico: known as Day of the Dead and it’s celebrated on 2nd November. According to locals belief, the dead resuscitate and return to Earth to reoccupying their places. The festivities start on 31st October afternoon as a preparation to 1st November, Day of little Angels, where are remembered all children which died without baptism.

Belgium: it’s common to lit candles, in memory of the dead.

China: festivities are known as Teng Chieh. People leave food and water near photos of dead familiars, while lit flashlights to illuminate the path of the spirits, who return to Earth, that night.

Czechoslovakia: it’s tradition to put chairs near the fireplace, one for which living member of family and one for which dead familiar.

Germany: people hide knifes to not injure inadvertently the spirits when they return.

Thailand: celebrates the Phi Ta Khon, a procession with parades of masks which follows the holy image of Buda. Reads the legend that spirits mix up with people, while monks recite the history of Buda last incarnation.

Japan: Is celebrate the Obon Festival, dedicated to ancestors spirits. Candles are lit, and then placed inside lamps, which are left drifting in rivers and sea.

Hong Kong: during the celebration of Yue Lan, some people burn photographies of fruit and money, believing that those images are received by the spirits, carrying on comfort to ghosts, that desolate the world 24 hours per day.

Posted by Immuniselectrun at 07:51

Hall of fame

Louis Pasteur

Birthday date: 27th December, 1822

The truth is surprising: as young, Louis Pasteur was a lazy student. His teachers never thought he was quite clever, as ahead he would show.

He studied physics and chemistry in Paris and chemistry was even the discipline in which we got a lower grade. Despite of that, later, He became a wise teacher and was one of the bigger scientists of ever, a genius of science. Only through one huge thirst of knowledge and an inexhaustible will of work the immortality was conquered and the death was defeated.

Facing all the expectations, the success arrived much early. With twenty six years he discovered the secret of crystals and a few time later he realized that the air we breathe it’s full of very small beings, He called them the invisible giants. Perhaps Pasteur already knew that these beings, apparently armless, were responsible for much part of the diseases shown in living beings. For sure he knew that the microorganisms used to enter in our organism with the purpose of unleash diseases. It was not easy to prove such theory in a time when all scientists thought that microorganisms were fruit of our own organism and not from outside. He wouldn’t give up anyway, He even bottled air to prove it, under the laugh of his colleagues , of course they didn’t even guess that what he was doing would become indispensable to his theory: none living being, including microorganisms, can appear in the world without descend from at least other of the same specie. In the course of his experiences, Pasteur could show up that microorganisms live in the air and reproduce themselves, entering in our body when they “feel” we are weakened and is the best shot to take. This was a very important discovery but his greatest feat, vaccine, would take more time to be created.

Before it, he helped the French farmers, solving a big problem: the quick sourness of wine. He observed microscopically the wine and found some kind of very short vegetation, called yeasts. Therefore, the yeasts were spoiling the wine, making it vinegary. Pasteur understood that wasn’t possible to take out those little creatures, they had to be killed and the only possible way: heat them up. The problem lied in the fact that the wine couldn’t heat up to high temperatures because it would change its quality. Persistent, Pasteur made a lot of experiences and found the solution: it was only necessary rise the wine’s temperature about sixty degrees centigrade to kill the microorganisms. These experiences gave rise to a much known process called pasteurization.

Pasteur was, undoubtedly, a chemistry genius and started to be called to solve the riddles that more nobody could. There was even a time when he was asked to find the origin of a plague which was killing thousands of silkworms. Pasteur, after some research, figured out that the butterfly was transmitting to her own eggs the disease and hence died so many of them. It was necessary to exterminate all larvae, butterflies and eggs which weren’t healthy. He had saved the French Industry of Silk and now, he’s stories of success were told not only in France but also abroad.

Modest, simple and not vain, Pasteur used to say that he only worked to help mankind. But, the fact of two of his sons have died with typhoid fever explain the dedication to Medicine and to studies about diseases caused by microorganisms.

Carbuncle was one of the first diseases studied by Pasteur. In that time, were dying many animals, mostly sheep due this disease. He discovered the responsible microorganism and made an experience: vaccinated twenty five sheep with the germ which caused the disease and left other twenty five sheep for vaccinate. Then he infected them all with the microorganism which made they feel sick. Happened that all vaccinated sheep survived and the others died. This was the first success of vaccination. However, he refused money to patent the medicine.

He wondered if would be worthwhile try to apply the same principles in the cure of human diseases. About 1880 Pasteur started to study the rage disease (affect animals, especially dogs, and normally is transmitted to humans by a nibble). Firstly, he discovered the rage virus. Then he used its “good” part to create an antidote and transformed it into a vaccine. Later, He started to inoculate it in the dogs but he didn’t have the courage to do the same in humans, until when on 6th July, 1885, a woman knocked on his door. She was carrying a boy with nine years old that was bitten by a dog fourteen times. The mother begged him to heal her son but the scientist didn’t want to experiment the serum in the kid named Joseph Meister because so far he never had used the vaccine in humans. However, once there was no other solution, eventually the kid would die with or without the inoculation, he applied the first of twelve anti-rage vaccines. During many weeks, the scientist and boy’s family feared the worst but in the end, Joseph Meister survived. From that time, people that had been bitten by raged dogs started to go to his laboratory asking for help. They came from different places of France and even from abroad although doctors didn’t recognize the worthwhile of Pasteur, what’s unthinkable, even because before his investigations, the only medicine available against rage was a spike in hot coal to burn the dog’s bite.

The vaccines were a huge triumph to medicine. Without them it’s difficult even think in survival.

Pasteur Institute:

The success of anti-rage vaccine was so enormous that the French Academy of Sciences decided to build one Institution dedicated only to laboratorial investigation. The Pasteur Institute was established in 1888 and is nowadays one of the most known centers of scientific investigation.

Curiosity – The HIV virus was isolated for the first time in these laboratories. This Institution without profitable ends was presided by Louis Pasteur until his death (28th September, 1895) and has a team of scientists that globally has eight Nobel Prizes in Medicine.

Microscope:

Nobody knows for sure who created it. Generally, its invention is attributed to Hans Janssen, Dutch glasses manufacturer, and his son Zacarias, in the year of 1590. However, will have been the Dutch Anton van Leeuwenhoek, that lived between 1632 and 1723, who made the first microscopic observations. He was a textile trader that used to mount lends. It was precisely through curved glasses that he mounted in a rudimental microscope that he saw little creatures which were walking along the drops of rain, vinegar and saliva. He was not a scientist but woke up the interest of scientific community. The first microscope had only one lend and so it couldn´t amplify very much.