This is a qualitative examination of ethics consultation requests, outcomes, and ethics committee recommendations at a tertiary/quaternary pediatric hospital in the U.S. The purpose of this review of consults over an 18-year period is to identify specific trends in the types of ethical dilemmas presented in our pediatric setting, the impact of consultation and committee development on the number and type of consults provided, and any clinical features and/or challenges that emerged and contributed to the nature of ethical situations and (...) dilemmas. Furthermore, in reviewing clinical ethics consultation trends for nearly two decades, we can identify topic areas for further ethics education and training for ethics consultants, ethics committee members, and pediatric healthcare teams and professionals based on our experiences. Our study with nearly two decades of data prior to the COVID-19 pandemic can serve as groundwork for future comparisons of consultation requests and ethics support for pediatric hospitals prior to, during, and following a pandemic. (shrink)

The following note proposes a simple solution for an insufficiently considered difficulty in the much-debated dialogue between Mary and Joseph, the seventh of the extant lyrical divisions of the Old English Advent . In what follows I am assuming that the usual assignment of speeches, first set forth by Thorpe in the editio princeps of the Exeter Book, and accepted in all major editions up to and including that of Campbell, is to be preferred to the various alternatives that have (...) been proposed, notably the radically different assignment by Cosijn that has been tentatively adopted and defended by Robert B. Burlin. (shrink)

A little more than a hundred years ago Eduard Sievers drew attention to the abnormal anacrusis in Beowulf 9b, þara ymbsittendra, and 402b, þa secg wisode. He had discovered that anacrusis, or Auftakt as he called it, though admitted with some frequency before verses of types A and D in the first half-line, was very rare in the second half-line, where the obligatory single alliteration on the first of two lifts seemed to call for a more limited range of syllabic (...) patterns. He found only seven or eight certain instances of anacrusis, invariably monosyllabic, before verses of type A , and only the two instances here in question before verses of type D. Were these two instances above suspicion, like those he had accepted as authentic before type A? He did not immediately pass judgment on the seemingly more irregular disyllabic þara of line 9b, but he noted at once that the þā of 402b could perhaps be omitted, since secg wisode would serve by itself as a parenthetic clause parallel to the preceding snyredon ætsomne. No doubt he was aware that secg wisade had occurred as an independent clause in a paratactic series at line 208b. Yet he proposed the omission of þa somewhat tentatively, with a vielleicht. A few years later he took more decisive action against the þara of line 9. Having occasion to quote the passage containing it in another connection, he enclosed þara in brackets as a sign that the word was to be canceled. (shrink)