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Background: Sickle cell anemia (SCA) or sickle cell disease (SCD) is a genetic disease associated with increased morbidity and mortality in Africa and other developing nations. Therefore, modern and traditional remedies are being introduced for use in the treatment and management of this disease. This is because safe, effective, and inexpensive therapeutic agents are urgently needed for the treatment of this disease in Africa and other developing nations.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to identify medicinal plant species commonly used by traditional healers in the treatment of sickle cell patients across some localities in the west region of Cameroon. Material and Methods. The ethnopharmacological survey was carried out in several districts within some localities of the western region of Cameroon. The survey was based on a semistructured questionnaire that was administered to 17 traditional healers and 62 sickle cell patients. It took place between November 2018 and March 2019. Personal information of participants and plant therapy data were gathered. Plants were identified at the National Herbarium of Cameroon. Literature review determined pharmacological effects and phytochemical compounds of the identified plants. Data were generally analysed using Epi Info 7 software for Windows.

Results: Twelve medicinal plant species belonging to 10 families are being used in the treatment of sickle cell anemia across the study sites. Euphorbiaceae is the dominant family with three plant species. Bark (39.3%) and seeds (35.7%) are the most used plant parts, which get administered through maceration, decoction, and chewing in water. According to the literature review, the identified plants have pharmacological effects and phytochemical compounds (especially polyphenols and alkaloids) that signify the presence of antioxidant compounds, which may possess an antisickling activity. There is therefore a need to conduct another study to scientifically validate (in vitro) antisickling properties of these plants.

Conclusion: This study has revealed promising medicinal plants that are currently applied in the traditional treatment of sickle cell anemia. Although still inconclusive, the association of pharmacological effects and phytochemical compounds with these medicinal plants justifies their use in traditional pharmacopoeia.

The Great Irish Famine of 1845–1852 was a defining event in the development of modern Ireland. As a result of large-scale and sustained emigration, it was also a transnational event, creating diasporas that regarded the Famine as their foundation story. Following decades of silence and limited scholarship, the 150th anniversary of the first appearance of potato blight in 1995 triggered a global interest that extended far beyond academia. This overview of the historiography and recent debates concerning the Great Famine suggests a vibrancy and an interest that shows no sign of abating. It has resulted in an ever-growing body of scholarship that is constantly providing fresh and nuanced ways of understanding this tragedy, through the use of new methodological and theoretical approaches and partnerships with professionals outside the academy.

Slavery was practiced in parts of the Islamicate world from the 7th through 21st centuries. Until the late 20th century, many authors claimed that Islamicate slavery was relatively benign and free from racism. However, recent scholarship has found evidence of race-thinking in Islamicate history—particularly anti-Black racism and an association between Blackness and enslavement—tracing back at least to the ninth-century CE. Scholars still contest what racial categories or forms of race-thinking existed in the first centuries of Islamicate history. The Quran is free from overt race-thinking, but the Islamic conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries seem to have precipitated the articulation of new racialized categories and the application of old ones from the Biblical and Greek traditions. Considerations of gender further complicate the picture, as most of those enslaved in early Islamicate history were women, and many enslaved concubines bore children for their enslavers. The identity of these children was contested in the seventh century, but they seem to have defined themselves as full Arabs by the mid-eighth century. Ultimately, the intersection of race, gender, and slavery in early Islamicate history is not a linear narrative, but a complex story of negotiation and contestation.

In this contribution, our common point of convergence as an anthropologist and a literary scholar is to see Swahili language, literature and other texts as interwoven with the depth, scope, and complex dynamics of human experience and social life on the East Africa coast, with its long history of Islam. This includes prominently a view as to how this relates or is integral to the larger Indian Ocean world. Swahili language and its genres have been shaped in relation to, and in context of, transregional interaction with other languages and traditions that carry influence, and significance for the coastal residents. Ideas, thoughts, arguments and verse are taken on, adapted, mediated and disseminated flexibly by Swahili speakers through language repertoires and (mostly poetic) genres in changing media. These range from oral performances and handwritten manuscripts to booklets, CD recordings, radio programs and social media platforms.

In Capital and Ideology, Thomas Piketty takes a highly structured approach to the history of inequality in human societies. Much depends on this approach, notably the book's temporal and geographical ambitions and its bold and provocative claims, but by exploring how Piketty constructs his ‘big history’ of inequality regimes we can see there is loss as well as gain. Focussing on the history of early modern Europe, which features prominently in Piketty's book, I suggest that our grasp of movement and, relatedly, of change and continuity in inequality regimes, suffers in his account. There is ample scope, therefore, for historians to enhance our understanding of the history of the ideologies and institutions from which Piketty's inequality regimes are constituted. Enriching the historical study of inequality regimes that Piketty proposes in Capital and Ideology might be seen as a polite form of interdisciplinary exchange but I suggest that a more 'muscular' interdisciplinary engagement around his book may be more promising still. Especially interesting in this regard would be efforts to both challenge the explanatory analysis that Piketty develops in Capital and Ideology and to develop microscopic analyses of inequality alongside the macroscopic approach that Piketty employs.

This article explores the use of textual sources in Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology as seriously as others have examined Piketty's use of statistics. Although a commendable attempt to engage with non-quantitative sources, the book focuses on elite novels, selects works unsystematically, and takes an old-fashioned approach to media. Ironically, Piketty's use of literature perpetuates the same focus on the upper classes that he wishes to guard against. In this response, I suggest how a book on capital and ideology might examine novels and newspapers rigorously. First, I look at how a broader understanding of literary production as a business and a focus on non-elite books might inform the use of novels. Second, I consider how to employ big-data techniques to study newspapers. Overall, I argue, taking novels and newspapers seriously shows the importance of non-elite sources and of incorporating big-data techniques often pioneered by literary scholars.

This essay considers Piketty's characterization of U.S. economic development in Capital and Ideology in the decades between 1860 and 1900, a period that historians have begun to call the “Second Great Divergence.” It contends that Piketty's characterization of this period rests on outdated assumptions about the relationship between economic development and political contestation, and that Piketty's neglect of historical writing on this topic raises questions about his policy proposals. To highlight the limitations of Piketty's approach, it includes case studies of the telegraph industry and the telephone industry. For all of its erudition, range, and literary panache, Piketty's Capital and Ideology is, at its most persuasive, an updated restatement for a twenty-first century audience of the Polanyian critique of nineteenth-century economic liberalism. This is a worthy project, yet it is less novel in its conception and more problematic in its execution than might at first appear.

This article engages Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology from the perspective of the human body and public health. It explores how Piketty's account could be enriched by examining how economic inequality produces physiological inequity and how human health is essential to understanding the intractability of capitalist crises.

This essay introduces this forum on Thomas Piketty's Capitalism and Ideology. We outline the debates that emerge from a joint reading of the six contributions to the forum. In doing so we assess the importance of Piketty's contribution to historical debates on capitalism, ideology, and inequality and consider how historians might respond to the challenges Piketty presents.