The article deals with the issue of illness and suffering in Carmelite sermons of the 17th–18th centuries. The question of the origin of suffering is considered along with the role of God’s mercy and justice in the preaching discourse about the rightness and purposefulness of suffering of the human being. In addition, an analysis of the views of preachers about topics related to passing away and the attitude they advocate in the face of death is included.

This article explores the themes and imagery of ill health in Małgorzata Lebda’s poetry. In the poetic triptych Sprawy ziemi [ Matters of the Earth] (2020) she keeps return-ing to the experience of illness and grieves for the loss of both parents (first her mother, then her father) and a missing sister, whose memory was blotted out from family history. In fact, though, Granica lasu [ The Forest Border] (2013) and Matecznik [ Wildwood] (2016) can be seen as earlier attempts to come to terms with all those traumas by transforming them into the texture of her poems. Similarly, the mysterious elder sister who has haunted the poets’ dreams is conjured up in the Sny uckermärkerów [ The Uckermärkers’ Dreams] (2019). The final part of the triptych makes is clear that both sisters bear an in-delible mark of illness, which, in one way or another, is omnipresent in Lebda’s poetic world. It is a tough world where illness and death spares no man, animal or plant.

The Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences (Bull.Pol. Ac.: Tech.) is published bimonthly by the Division IV Engineering Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the existence of the PAS in 1952. The journal is peer‐reviewed and is published both in printed and electronic form. It is established for the publication of original high quality papers from multidisciplinary Engineering sciences with the following topics preferred: Artificial and Computational Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, Civil Engineering, Control, Informatics and Robotics, Electronics, Telecommunication and Optoelectronics, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Power Systems and Power Electronics.

Journal Metrics: JCR Impact Factor 2018: 1.361, 5 Year Impact Factor: 1.323, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 2017: 0.319, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017: 1.005, CiteScore 2017: 1.27, The Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education 2017: 25 points.

Abbreviations/Acronym: Journal citation: Bull. Pol. Ac.: Tech., ISO: Bull. Pol. Acad. Sci.-Tech. Sci., JCR Abbrev: B POL ACAD SCI-TECH Acronym in the Editorial System: BPASTS.

Opotrzebie czułości i nieczułości systemu opieki zdrowotnej opowiada psychoterapeutka i psychoonkolożka Justyna Pronobis-Szczylik.

Wydobycie i eksport ropy naftowej jest podstawą gospodarki wielu krajów. Takie uzależnienie może być powodem pojawienia się zespołu niekorzystnych zjawisk gospodarczych określanych mianem „choroby holenderskiej”. Zjawisko to opisano jednak dla okresu, w którym ceny ropy naftowej wzrastały bądź utrzymywały się na wysokim poziomie. Brakuje natomiast opisu skutków spadku cen ropy naftowej, który pojawił się w połowie 2014 roku, dla gospodarek tych krajów. Celem niniejszego opracowania jest częściowe przynajmniej zapełnienie tej luki. Przedmiotem analizy był wpływ zmian cen ropy naftowej na poziom indeksów giełdy rosyjskiej (RTS), brazylijskiej (BOVESPA) i norweskiej (OSEAX) w okresie od początku lipca 2014 (moment rozpoczęcia trendu spadkowego cen ropy) do końca czerwca 2017 roku. W analizie tej wykorzystany został model ekonometryczny zbudowany zgodnie z metodologią Engla-Grangera. Wyniki tej analizy wykazały, że wpływ ceny ropy naftowej na rynki finansowe państw eksporterów ropy naftowej był w badanym okresie bardzo różnicowany. Najbardziej wpływ ten widoczny był w przypadku Rosji, nieco słabszy w przypadku Brazylii (w obydwu tych przypadkach spadek cen ropy wpływał ujemnie na wartość indeksu), zaś w przypadku Norwegii nie można go było stwierdzić.

This is an analysis of some selected poems by Halina Poświatowska using the ap-proach and conceptual tools of somapoetics. The discussion focuses in turn on the manifestations of the (sick) body in Poświatowska’s poems and poetic prose (especially when its connected with special sound effects), the verbalization of sensory experience (primarily with regard to the sense of touch) and the role of the sick woman’s body in her poetic world (including direct references to the sick body in the act of writing). The critical strategy employed in this article is intended to complement the legacy readings of Poświatowska’s work with a functional, somapoetic interpretation that would give full scope to her narrative of the ailing body.

The subject of depression, often driven by personal experience, has lately become very prominent in the public sphere. Olga Hund's Psy ras drobnych [Dogs of Smaller Breeds] (2018) is a novel about depression, though unlike many European films and novels, it does not blame the condition on the individual – the main character of the story. Her book is memoir of sorts, a series of dramatic scenes from a mental ward of the Kobierzyn Psychiatric Hospital in Cracow. The whole is written, we may assume, to provoke out-rage: it is an accusation of the health care system, yet the blame for the mental condition rather than the wrong therapy, is put squarely on the structures and socio-economic mechanisms of the neoliberal society. The book makes two points. First, the psychiatric hospital by its very nature is a total institution that’s totally indispensable; and second – as seen from the interface of the ‘normal’ people and the mental patients – the social, economic and ideological factors have a significant role in generating suffering and the mental illness itself.

The Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences (Bull.Pol. Ac.: Tech.) is published bimonthly by the Division IV Engineering Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the existence of the PAS in 1952. The journal is peer‐reviewed and is published both in printed and electronic form. It is established for the publication of original high quality papers from multidisciplinary Engineering sciences with the following topics preferred: Artificial and Computational Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, Civil Engineering, Control, Informatics and Robotics, Electronics, Telecommunication and Optoelectronics, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Power Systems and Power Electronics.

Journal Metrics: JCR Impact Factor 2018: 1.361, 5 Year Impact Factor: 1.323, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 2017: 0.319, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017: 1.005, CiteScore 2017: 1.27, The Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education 2017: 25 points.

Abbreviations/Acronym: Journal citation: Bull. Pol. Ac.: Tech., ISO: Bull. Pol. Acad. Sci.-Tech. Sci., JCR Abbrev: B POL ACAD SCI-TECH Acronym in the Editorial System: BPASTS.

Nasz indywidualny genom jest uważany za niezmienny, ale czasami pojawiają się mutacje. Ich identyfikacja może stanowić wyzwanie.

Tomografia komputerowa otwiera nowe możliwości w diagnostyce choroby wieńcowej. Rutynowe korzystanie z tej metody w przyszłości jako przesiewowej może wykrywać bardzo wczesne stadia choroby.

The Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences (Bull.Pol. Ac.: Tech.) is published bimonthly by the Division IV Engineering Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the existence of the PAS in 1952. The journal is peer‐reviewed and is published both in printed and electronic form. It is established for the publication of original high quality papers from multidisciplinary Engineering sciences with the following topics preferred: Artificial and Computational Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, Civil Engineering, Control, Informatics and Robotics, Electronics, Telecommunication and Optoelectronics, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Power Systems and Power Electronics.

Journal Metrics: JCR Impact Factor 2018: 1.361, 5 Year Impact Factor: 1.323, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 2017: 0.319, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017: 1.005, CiteScore 2017: 1.27, The Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education 2017: 25 points.

Abbreviations/Acronym: Journal citation: Bull. Pol. Ac.: Tech., ISO: Bull. Pol. Acad. Sci.-Tech. Sci., JCR Abbrev: B POL ACAD SCI-TECH Acronym in the Editorial System: BPASTS.

In the beginnings of COVID-19 pandemic outbreak public opinion has been con-centrated on the tragic events taking place at the cruise ships, where the new virus has spread substantially. It is not the first outbreak of the infectious disease at a cruise ship. The following article aims at presenting the relevant case law of the British courts that have considered carrier’s liability for passengers’ claims in relation to personal injury caused by the outbreak of gastrointestinal illnesses caused by the norovirus. Fur-thermore, the readers will be familiarized with the legal situation of injured passengers under the American law.

The author analyses problems of disease, dying, and death addressed in a play by Margaret Edson entitled Wit. Special attention is paid to the structure of meta-theatre and the function of wit in the play. The author investigates limitations of reason in the approach adopted by the doctors who take care of Vivian Bearing, and who subject her to an excruciating experiment in order to achieve a potential research success. She also discusses the protagonist’s attitude to literary works, dealing with her own disease, to other people and to God. This offers an opportunity to ruminate on the exact meaning of irretrievable loss involved in suffering. She also concentrates on the attitude of the nurse who – thanks to her emotional intelligence and empathy – accompanies Vivian on her way to death.

The defi nition of disease differs in various cultural and historical environments and is a part of the “vision of the world and of man”. In the modern era, one can speak about the successive changes in the ideals of science, including the medical sciences, designing subsequent modifi cations of the understanding of disease. Different possible approaches, cultural, anthropological, and medical, use distinct language and metaphors to present the concept of illness.

Anna Janko’s latest novel Finalistka [ The Finalist] (2021) contains a catalogue of ill-nesses that the main character, the poet Hanka M., has to struggle with. The book, which in many ways resembles a patient’s diary, is a record of the battles Hanka, the author’s alter ego, has to fight with the enemy which happens to be her own body. The article considers the strategies she employs to hold her body in check as it repeatedly lets her down and, in effect, becomes her enemy. Its disconcerting strangeness strikes her every time she slips into a search for the signs and symptoms of ageing (her reflections at this point are compared with those of Simone de Beauvoir and some other writers). In Finalistka suffering from illnesses is inscribed into life’s transience which is not just human but universal, and at the same time particular, affecting both men and women. Nonetheless, it is the woman’s perspective that this article finds more interesting.

This article presents a theoretical framework and a network of concepts that could be useful in analyzing illness narratives. As a relatively new field of the humanities, the cultural discourse of health and illness is still in need of an appropriate methodology and a set of handy concepts, i.e. a foundational cultural theory fit to deal with texts con-cerned with the specific experience of health and illness. Here the key concepts are fragility, reparability, vulnerability and harm. While drawing on the idea of ‘writing in a state of emergency’, based on Giorgio Agamben’s discussion in The State of Exception, the article also offers the author’s own conceptions of a ‘fragile alliance’ and of reading illness narratives as a therapeutic (restorative) activity.

This article deals with literary pathography, i.e. texts which purport to project rage or a mental disorder, and use narrative strategies adopted specifically for that purpose. The analysis is focused on two novels by Aleksandra Zielińska, Przypadek Alicji (Alicja’s Case) and Bura i szał (Bura and Rage) treated as literary representations of the protagonists' mental condition. The literary character of these 'records' is revealed by multiple intertextual tropes and poetic devices that deconstruct the cultural stereotype of female rage. Consequently, Aleksandra Zielińska's novels should be seen as projections of a fractured female subject (un sujet divisé) fixed on her somatic vulnerability, driven by an urge to cry out her affliction, trauma and rage, unease about woman-to-woman relations, and the pressure of erratic affective impulses.

Martin Heidegger’s philosophy influenced both psychiatry and practical psychotherapy of mentally disturbed patients. The essay deals with Heidegger’s concepts of corporeality and disease, as they were expounded in the Zollikon seminars, and discusses the influence of Heidegger’s Dasein-analysis on Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss. The concepts of Dasein-analysis, proposed by the two psychiatrists, are also discussed. At the end of the paper the author shows the relevance of Heidegger’s thought for psychiatry and psychotherapy in general and for the so-called anthropological psychiatry in particular.

This article deals with chronic fatigue, one of the characteristic features of contem-porary illness narratives written by women authors. First, it focuses on Małgorzata Ba-ranowska’s To jest wasze życie. Być sobą w chorobie przewlekłej [ This Is Your Life: How to Cope with a Chronic Illness], a story of her own life impaired by SLE (systemic lupus erythe-matosus). The descriptions of her experiences (the disruption of her daily life caused by chronic pain and her attempts make sense of it) provides a frame for the reading of other narratives, Anne Boyer’s The Undying and two journalistic texts on endometriosis, one by Dr Katarzyna Szopa and the other by Dr Karolina Wigura. The article defines chronic fatigue as a social condition which combines a resistance to regenerative therapies with the stress of having to act in demanding situations of real life. The precarious condition of exhausted bodies hovering between a life fully lived and a debilitating morbidity is compared with Byung-Chul Han’s philosophy developed in The Burnout Society and The Palliative Society: Pain Today (originally published in German in 2010 and 2020 respec-tively).

This paper presents a detailed analysis of the work of Theodoret of Cyrus, the theologian and representative of the fifth-century Antiochian exegetical school, entitled Cure of the Greek Maladies, with reference to the passages presenting the question of pagan worship and, more specifically, his [Theodoret’s] position towards it. The Antiochenian understands perfectly well that literature, culture and philosophy are the meeting point between Christianity and Hellenism. He does not explicitly reject the entire output of Greek culture, because he believes that an attempt to reconcile Christianity with Hellenism is possible, but without the participation of pagan worship. Christianity’s superiority to Hellenism must undoubtedly be granted. The author of the apologia offers the pagans a remedy to cure themselves of the disease of conceit. Theodoret of Cyrus condemned, among other things, secret practices and bowing to statues (III, 84; III 85), rejected bloody and impious sacrifices (VII, 3; VII, 10; VII 22; VII, 24), warned not to confuse the cult of martyrs with supplication offerings to the dead for the well-being of the living (VIII, 33; VIII 34), and was critical of the Greek oracles (X, 2-3; X, 9). In order to show more fully the issue referred to in the theme, the historical and social context of the apologia are analysed and the circumstances of the formation of the author’s own reason and spirituality are also discussed.

Kroniki pandemii to zbiór 27 stanowisk opublikowanych przez interdyscyplinarny Zespół doradczy ds. COVID-19 przy Prezesie Polskiej Akademii Nauk, działający od lipca 2020 roku. Jest to już drugie po Zrozumieć COVID-19 obszerniejsze opracowanie naszego zespołu porządkujące wiadomości dotyczące wirusa SARS-CoV-2 i powodowanej przez niego choroby COVID-19. Wydane we wrześniu 2020 roku Zrozumieć COVID-19 miało na celu podsumowanie przebiegu pierwszych miesięcy pandemii i przygotowanie społeczeństwa w Polsce do ciężkiego sezonu jesienno-zimowego 2020/2021. Niniejsze opracowanie powstaje po dwóch latach trwania pandemii, która rozpoczęła się w Wuhan w grudniu 2019 roku. Mamy nadzieję, że dzięki na bieżąco tworzonym tekstom raportującym przebieg pandemii i dylematy, przed którymi stawało społeczeństwo, w przypadku kolejnych podobnych wyzwań skorzystamy z tych trudnych i ważnych doświadczeń.

Kompendium wiedzy o wirusie SARS-CoV-2 i powodowanej przez niego chorobie COVID-19.

One of the main traits of a society of reflexive modernity is the critical analysis of categories that in the past appeared unquestionable. Socio-cultural gender and health or illness/mental disorders are categories of this type. Above all, they are socially constructed, that is, they are dependent on culture and on political, economic, and religious factors. The author undertakes to analyse the relations between the diagnostic criteria used in the international system of classifying mental diseases (DSM-IV and ICD-10) and traditional schemas of masculinity and femininity. Confirmation of the incidence of particular diseases in connection with gender is the author’s entry point for seeking answers to why individuals suffering from certain illnesses/mental disorders display behaviour corresponding to traditional gender roles, even though contemporary gender roles are fluid in many respects, and hypotheses about biological differences as causes of incidence of disease in men and women have not been empirically confirmed.