text:
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 4, by Edward Gibbon, [1788], at sacred-texts.com
Amidst the glories of the succeeding campaign, Heraclius is almost lost to our eyes, and to those of the Byzantine historians. 91 From the spacious and fruitful plains of Albania, the emperor appears to follow the chain of Hyrcanian Mountains, to descend into the province of Media or Irak, and to carry his victorious arms as far as the royal cities of Casbin and Ispahan, which had never been approached by a Roman conqueror. Alarmed by the danger of his kingdom, the powers of Chosroes were already recalled from the Nile and the Bosphorus, and three formidable armies surrounded, in a distant and hostile land, the camp of the emperor. The Colchian allies prepared to desert his standard; and the fears of the bravest veterans were expressed, rather than concealed, by their desponding silence. "Be not terrified," said the intrepid Heraclius, "by the multitude of your foes. With the aid of Heaven, one Roman may triumph over a thousand Barbarians. But if we devote our lives for the salvation of our brethren, we shall obtain the crown of martyrdom, and our immortal reward will be liberally paid by God and posterity." These magnanimous sentiments were supported by the vigor of his actions. He repelled the threefold attack of the Persians, improved the divisions of their chiefs, and, by a well-concerted train of marches, retreats, and successful actions, finally chased them from the field into the fortified cities of Media and Assyria. In the severity of the winter season, Sarbaraza deemed himself secure in the walls of Salban: he was surprised by the activity of Heraclius, who divided his troops, and performed a laborious march in the silence of the night. The flat roofs of the houses were defended with useless valor against the darts and torches of the Romans: the satraps and nobles of Persia, with their wives and children, and the flower of their martial youth, were either slain or made prisoners. The general escaped by a precipitate flight, but his golden armor was the prize of the conqueror; and the soldiers of Heraclius enjoyed the wealth and repose which they had so nobly deserved. On the return of spring, the emperor traversed in seven days the mountains of Curdistan, and passed without resistance the rapid stream of the Tigris. Oppressed by the weight of their spoils and captives, the Roman army halted under the walls of Amida; and Heraclius informed the senate of Constantinople of his safety and success, which they had already felt by the retreat of the besiegers. The bridges of the Euphrates were destroyed by the Persians; but as soon as the emperor had discovered a ford, they hastily retired to defend the banks of the Sarus, 92 in Cilicia. That river, an impetuous torrent, was about three hundred feet broad; the bridge was fortified with strong turrets; and the banks were lined with Barbarian archers. After a bloody conflict, which continued till the evening, the Romans prevailed in the assault; and a Persian of gigantic size was slain and thrown into the Sarus by the hand of the emperor himself. The enemies were dispersed and dismayed; Heraclius pursued his march to Sebaste in Cappadocia; and at the expiration of three years, the same coast of the Euxine applauded his return from a long and victorious expedition. 93
Instead of skirmishing on the frontier, the two monarchs who disputed the empire of the East aimed their desperate strokes at the heart of their rival. The military force of Persia was wasted by the marches and combats of twenty years, and many of the veterans, who had survived the perils of the sword and the climate, were still detained in the fortresses of Egypt and Syria. But the revenge and ambition of Chosroes exhausted his kingdom; and the new levies of subjects, strangers, and slaves, were divided into three formidable bodies. 94 The first army of fifty thousand men, illustrious by the ornament and title of the golden spears, was destined to march against Heraclius; the second was stationed to prevent his junction with the troops of his brother Theodorus; and the third was commanded to besiege Constantinople, and to second the operations of the chagan, with whom the Persian king had ratified a treaty of alliance and partition. Sarbar, the general of the third army, penetrated through the provinces of Asia to the well-known camp of Chalcedon, and amused himself with the destruction of the sacred and profane buildings of the Asiatic suburbs, while he impatiently waited the arrival of his Scythian friends on the opposite side of the Bosphorus. On the twenty-ninth of June, thirty thousand Barbarians, the vanguard of the Avars, forced the long wall, and drove into the capital a promiscuous crowd of peasants, citizens, and soldiers. Fourscore thousand 95 of his native subjects, and of the vassal tribes of Gepidae, Russians, Bulgarians, and Sclavonians, advanced under the standard of the chagan; a month was spent in marches and negotiations, but the whole city was invested on the thirty-first of July, from the suburbs of Pera and Galata to the Blachernae and seven towers; and the inhabitants descried with terror the flaming signals of the European and Asiatic shores. In the mean while, the magistrates of Constantinople repeatedly strove to purchase the retreat of the chagan; but their deputies were rejected and insulted; and he suffered the patricians to stand before his throne, while the Persian envoys, in silk robes, were seated by his side. "You see," said the haughty Barbarian, "the proofs of my perfect union with the great king; and his lieutenant is ready to send into my camp a select band of three thousand warriors. Presume no longer to tempt your master with a partial and inadequate ransom your wealth and your city are the only presents worthy of my acceptance. For yourselves, I shall permit you to depart, each with an under-garment and a shirt; and, at my entreaty, my friend Sarbar will not refuse a passage through his lines. Your absent prince, even now a captive or a fugitive, has left Constantinople to its fate; nor can you escape the arms of the Avars and Persians, unless you could soar into the air like birds, unless like fishes you could dive into the waves." 96 During ten successive days, the capital was assaulted by the Avars, who had made some progress in the science of attack; they advanced to sap or batter the wall, under the cover of the impenetrable tortoise; their engines discharged a perpetual volley of stones and darts; and twelve lofty towers of wood exalted the combatants to the height of the neighboring ramparts. But the senate and people were animated by the spirit of Heraclius, who had detached to their relief a body of twelve thousand cuirassiers; the powers of fire and mechanics were used with superior art and success in the defence of Constantinople; and the galleys, with two and three ranks of oars, commanded the Bosphorus, and rendered the Persians the idle spectators of the defeat of their allies. The Avars were repulsed; a fleet of Sclavonian canoes was destroyed in the harbor; the vassals of the chagan threatened to desert, his provisions were exhausted, and after burning his engines, he gave the signal of a slow and formidable retreat. The devotion of the Romans ascribed this signal deliverance to the Virgin Mary; but the mother of Christ would surely have condemned their inhuman murder of the Persian envoys, who were entitled to the rights of humanity, if they were not protected by the laws of nations. 97
After the division of his army, Heraclius prudently retired to the banks of the Phasis, from whence he maintained a defensive war against the fifty thousand gold spears of Persia. His anxiety was relieved by the deliverance of Constantinople; his hopes were confirmed by a victory of his brother Theodorus; and to the hostile league of Chosroes with the Avars, the Roman emperor opposed the useful and honorable alliance of the Turks. At his liberal invitation, the horde of Chozars 98 transported their tents from the plains of the Volga to the mountains of Georgia; Heraclius received them in the neighborhood of Teflis, and the khan with his nobles dismounted from their horses, if we may credit the Greeks, and fell prostrate on the ground, to adore the purple of the Caesars. Such voluntary homage and important aid were entitled to the warmest acknowledgments; and the emperor, taking off his own diadem, placed it on the head of the Turkish prince, whom he saluted with a tender embrace and the appellation of son. After a sumptuous banquet, he presented Ziebel with the plate and ornaments, the gold, the gems, and the silk, which had been used at the Imperial table, and, with his own hand, distributed rich jewels and ear-rings to his new allies. In a secret interview, he produced the portrait of his daughter Eudocia, 99 condescended to flatter the Barbarian with the promise of a fair and august bride; obtained an immediate succor of forty thousand horse, and negotiated a strong diversion of the Turkish arms on the side of the Oxus. 100 The Persians, in their turn, retreated with precipitation; in the camp of Edessa, Heraclius reviewed an army of seventy thousand Romans and strangers; and some months were successfully employed in the recovery of the cities of Syria, Mesopotamia and Armenia, whose fortifications had been imperfectly restored. Sarbar still maintained the important station of Chalcedon; but the jealousy of Chosroes, or the artifice of Heraclius, soon alienated the mind of that powerful satrap from the service of his king and country. A messenger was intercepted with a real or fictitious mandate to the cadarigan, or second in command, directing him to send, without delay, to the throne, the head of a guilty or unfortunate general. The despatches were transmitted to Sarbar himself; and as soon as he read the sentence of his own death, he dexterously inserted the names of four hundred officers, assembled a military council, and asked the cadarigan whether he was prepared to execute the commands of their tyrant. The Persians unanimously declared, that Chosroes had forfeited the sceptre; a separate treaty was concluded with the government of Constantinople; and if some considerations of honor or policy restrained Sarbar from joining the standard of Heraclius, the emperor was assured that he might prosecute, without interruption, his designs of victory and peace.
Deprived of his firmest support, and doubtful of the fidelity of his subjects, the greatness of Chosroes was still conspicuous in its ruins. The number of five hundred thousand may be interpreted as an Oriental metaphor, to describe the men and arms, the horses and elephants, that covered Media and Assyria against the invasion of Heraclius. Yet the Romans boldly advanced from the Araxes to the Tigris, and the timid prudence of Rhazates was content to follow them by forced marches through a desolate country, till he received a peremptory mandate to risk the fate of Persia in a decisive battle. Eastward of the Tigris, at the end of the bridge of Mosul, the great Nineveh had formerly been erected: 101 the city, and even the ruins of the city, had long since disappeared; 102 the vacant space afforded a spacious field for the operations of the two armies. But these operations are neglected by the Byzantine historians, and, like the authors of epic poetry and romance, they ascribe the victory, not to the military conduct, but to the personal valor, of their favorite hero. On this memorable day, Heraclius, on his horse Phallas, surpassed the bravest of his warriors: his lip was pierced with a spear; the steed was wounded in the thigh; but he carried his master safe and victorious through the triple phalanx of the Barbarians. In the heat of the action, three valiant chiefs were successively slain by the sword and lance of the emperor: among these was Rhazates himself; he fell like a soldier, but the sight of his head scattered grief and despair through the fainting ranks of the Persians. His armor of pure and massy gold, the shield of one hundred and twenty plates, the sword and belt, the saddle and cuirass, adorned the triumph of Heraclius; and if he had not been faithful to Christ and his mother, the champion of Rome might have offered the fourth opime spoils to the Jupiter of the Capitol. 103 In the battle of Nineveh, which was fiercely fought from daybreak to the eleventh hour, twenty-eight standards, besides those which might be broken or torn, were taken from the Persians; the greatest part of their army was cut in pieces, and the victors, concealing their own loss, passed the night on the field. They acknowledged, that on this occasion it was less difficult to kill than to discomfit the soldiers of Chosroes; amidst the bodies of their friends, no more than two bow-shot from the enemy the remnant of the Persian cavalry stood firm till the seventh hour of the night; about the eighth hour they retired to their unrifled camp, collected their baggage, and dispersed on all sides, from the want of orders rather than of resolution. The diligence of Heraclius was not less admirable in the use of victory; by a march of forty-eight miles in four-and-twenty hours, his vanguard occupied the bridges of the great and the lesser Zab; and the cities and palaces of Assyria were open for the first time to the Romans. By a just gradation of magnificent scenes, they penetrated to the royal seat of Dastagerd, *_0067 and, though much of the treasure had been removed, and much had been expended, the remaining wealth appears to have exceeded their hopes, and even to have satiated their avarice. Whatever could not be easily transported, they consumed with fire, that Chosroes might feel the anguish of those wounds which he had so often inflicted on the provinces of the empire: and justice might allow the excuse, if the desolation had been confined to the works of regal luxury, if national hatred, military license, and religious zeal, had not wasted with equal rage the habitations and the temples of the guiltless subject. The recovery of three hundred Roman standards, and the deliverance of the numerous captives of Edessa and Alexandria, reflect a purer glory on the arms of Heraclius. From the palace of Dastagerd, he pursued his march within a few miles of Modain or Ctesiphon, till he was stopped, on the banks of the Arba, by the difficulty of the passage, the rigor of the season, and perhaps the fame of an impregnable capital. The return of the emperor is marked by the modern name of the city of Sherhzour: he fortunately passed Mount Zara, before the snow, which fell incessantly thirty-four days; and the citizens of Gandzca, or Tauris, were compelled to entertain the soldiers and their horses with a hospitable reception. 104
When the ambition of Chosroes was reduced to the defence of his hereditary kingdom, the love of glory, or even the sense of shame, should have urged him to meet his rival in the field. In the battle of Nineveh, his courage might have taught the Persians to vanquish, or he might have fallen with honor by the lance of a Roman emperor. The successor of Cyrus chose rather, at a secure distance, to expect the event, to assemble the relics of the defeat, and to retire, by measured steps, before the march of Heraclius, till he beheld with a sigh the once loved mansions of Dastagerd. Both his friends and enemies were persuaded, that it was the intention of Chosroes to bury himself under the ruins of the city and palace: and as both might have been equally adverse to his flight, the monarch of Asia, with Sira, *_0068 and three concubines, escaped through a hole in the wall nine days before the arrival of the Romans. The slow and stately procession in which he showed himself to the prostrate crowd, was changed to a rapid and secret journey; and the first evening he lodged in the cottage of a peasant, whose humble door would scarcely give admittance to the great king. 105 His superstition was subdued by fear: on the third day, he entered with joy the fortifications of Ctesiphon; yet he still doubted of his safety till he had opposed the River Tigris to the pursuit of the Romans. The discovery of his flight agitated with terror and tumult the palace, the city, and the camp of Dastagerd: the satraps hesitated whether they had most to fear from their sovereign or the enemy; and the females of the harem were astonished and pleased by the sight of mankind, till the jealous husband of three thousand wives again confined them to a more distant castle. At his command, the army of Dastagerd retreated to a new camp: the front was covered by the Arba, and a line of two hundred elephants; the troops of the more distant provinces successively arrived, and the vilest domestics of the king and satraps were enrolled for the last defence of the throne. It was still in the power of Chosroes to obtain a reasonable peace; and he was repeatedly pressed by the messengers of Heraclius to spare the blood of his subjects, and to relieve a humane conqueror from the painful duty of carrying fire and sword through the fairest countries of Asia. But the pride of the Persian had not yet sunk to the level of his fortune; he derived a momentary confidence from the retreat of the emperor; he wept with impotent rage over the ruins of his Assyrian palaces, and disregarded too long the rising murmurs of the nation, who complained that their lives and fortunes were sacrificed to the obstinacy of an old man. That unhappy old man was himself tortured with the sharpest pains both of mind and body; and, in the consciousness of his approaching end, he resolved to fix the tiara on the head of Merdaza, the most favored of his sons. But the will of Chosroes was no longer revered, and Siroes, **_0068 who gloried in the rank and merit of his mother Sira, had conspired with the malecontents to assert and anticipate the rights of primogeniture. 106 Twenty-two satraps (they styled themselves patriots) were tempted by the wealth and honors of a new reign: to the soldiers, the heir of Chosroes promised an increase of pay; to the Christians, the free exercise of their religion; to the captives, liberty and rewards; and to the nation, instant peace and the reduction of taxes. It was determined by the conspirators, that Siroes, with the ensigns of royalty, should appear in the camp; and if the enterprise should fail, his escape was contrived to the Imperial court. But the new monarch was saluted with unanimous acclamations; the flight of Chosroes (yet where could he have fled?) was rudely arrested, eighteen sons were massacred ***_0068 before his face, and he was thrown into a dungeon, where he expired on the fifth day. The Greeks and modern Persians minutely describe how Chosroes was insulted, and famished, and tortured, by the command of an inhuman son, who so far surpassed the example of his father: but at the time of his death, what tongue would relate the story of the parricide? what eye could penetrate into the tower of darkness? According to the faith and mercy of his Christian enemies, he sunk without hope into a still deeper abyss; 107 and it will not be denied, that tyrants of every age and sect are the best entitled to such infernal abodes. The glory of the house of Sassan ended with the life of Chosroes: his unnatural son enjoyed only eight months the fruit of his crimes: and in the space of four years, the regal title was assumed by nine candidates, who disputed, with the sword or dagger, the fragments of an exhausted monarchy. Every province, and each city of Persia, was the scene of independence, of discord, and of blood; and the state of anarchy prevailed about eight years longer, !!_0068 till the factions were silenced and united under the common yoke of the Arabian caliphs. 108
As soon as the mountains became passable, the emperor received the welcome news of the success of the conspiracy, the death of Chosroes, and the elevation of his eldest son to the throne of Persia. The authors of the revolution, eager to display their merits in the court or camp of Tauris, preceded the ambassadors of Siroes, who delivered the letters of their master to his brother the emperor of the Romans. 109 In the language of the usurpers of every age, he imputes his own crimes to the Deity, and, without degrading his equal majesty, he offers to reconcile the long discord of the two nations, by a treaty of peace and alliance more durable than brass or iron. The conditions of the treaty were easily defined and faithfully executed. In the recovery of the standards and prisoners which had fallen into the hands of the Persians, the emperor imitated the example of Augustus: their care of the national dignity was celebrated by the poets of the times, but the decay of genius may be measured by the distance between Horace and George of Pisidia: the subjects and brethren of Heraclius were redeemed from persecution, slavery, and exile; but, instead of the Roman eagles, the true wood of the holy cross was restored to the importunate demands of the successor of Constantine. The victor was not ambitious of enlarging the weakness of the empire; the son of Chosroes abandoned without regret the conquests of his father; the Persians who evacuated the cities of Syria and Egypt were honorably conducted to the frontier, and a war which had wounded the vitals of the two monarchies, produced no change in their external and relative situation. The return of Heraclius from Tauris to Constantinople was a perpetual triumph; and after the exploits of six glorious campaigns, he peaceably enjoyed the Sabbath of his toils. After a long impatience, the senate, the clergy, and the people, went forth to meet their hero, with tears and acclamations, with olive branches and innumerable lamps; he entered the capital in a chariot drawn by four elephants; and as soon as the emperor could disengage himself from the tumult of public joy, he tasted more genuine satisfaction in the embraces of his mother and his son. 110
The succeeding year was illustrated by a triumph of a very different kind, the restitution of the true cross to the holy sepulchre. Heraclius performed in person the pilgrimage of Jerusalem, the identity of the relic was verified by the discreet patriarch, 111 and this august ceremony has been commemorated by the annual festival of the exaltation of the cross. Before the emperor presumed to tread the consecrated ground, he was instructed to strip himself of the diadem and purple, the pomp and vanity of the world: but in the judgment of his clergy, the persecution of the Jews was more easily reconciled with the precepts of the gospel. *_0069 He again ascended his throne to receive the congratulations of the ambassadors of France and India: and the fame of Moses, Alexander, and Hercules, 112 was eclipsed in the popular estimation, by the superior merit and glory of the great Heraclius. Yet the deliverer of the East was indigent and feeble. Of the Persian spoils, the most valuable portion had been expended in the war, distributed to the soldiers, or buried, by an unlucky tempest, in the waves of the Euxine. The conscience of the emperor was oppressed by the obligation of restoring the wealth of the clergy, which he had borrowed for their own defence: a perpetual fund was required to satisfy these inexorable creditors; the provinces, already wasted by the arms and avarice of the Persians, were compelled to a second payment of the same taxes; and the arrears of a simple citizen, the treasurer of Damascus, were commuted to a fine of one hundred thousand pieces of gold. The loss of two hundred thousand soldiers 113 who had fallen by the sword, was of less fatal importance than the decay of arts, agriculture, and population, in this long and destructive war: and although a victorious army had been formed under the standard of Heraclius, the unnatural effort appears to have exhausted rather than exercised their strength. While the emperor triumphed at Constantinople or Jerusalem, an obscure town on the confines of Syria was pillaged by the Saracens, and they cut in pieces some troops who advanced to its relief; an ordinary and trifling occurrence, had it not been the prelude of a mighty revolution. These robbers were the apostles of Mahomet; their fanatic valor had emerged from the desert; and in the last eight years of his reign, Heraclius lost to the Arabs the same provinces which he had rescued from the Persians.
91 I cannot find, and (what is much more,) M. D'Anville does not attempt to seek, the Salban, Tarantum, territory of the Huns, &c., mentioned by Theophanes, (p. 260 - 262.) Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 231, 232,) an insufficient author, names Asphahan; and Casbin is most probably the city of Sapor. Ispahan is twenty-four days' journey from Tauris, and Casbin half way between, them (Voyages de Tavernier, tom. i. p. 63 - 82.)
92 At ten parasangs from Tarsus, the army of the younger Cyrus passed the Sarus, three plethra in breadth: the Pyramus, a stadium in breadth, ran five parasangs farther to the east, (Xenophon, Anabas. l. i. p 33, 34.) Note: Now the Sihan. - M.
93 George of Pisidia (Bell. Abaricum, 246 - 265, p. 49) celebrates with truth the persevering courage of the three campaigns against the Persians.
94 Petavius (Annotationes ad Nicephorum, p. 62, 63, 64) discriminates the names and actions of five Persian generals who were successively sent against Heraclius.
95 This number of eight myriads is specified by George of Pisidia, (Bell. Abar. 219.) The poet (50 - 88) clearly indicates that the old chagan lived till the reign of Heraclius, and that his son and successor was born of a foreign mother. Yet Foggini (Annotat. p. 57) has given another interpretation to this passage.
96 A bird, a frog, a mouse, and five arrows, had been the present of the Scythian king to Darius, (Herodot. l. iv. c. 131, 132.) Substituez une lettre a ces signes (says Rousseau, with much good taste) plus elle sera menacante moins elle effrayera; ce ne sera qu'une fanfarronade dont Darius n'eut fait que rire, (Emile, tom. iii. p. 146.) Yet I much question whether the senate and people of Constantinople laughed at this message of the chagan.
97 The Paschal Chronicle (p. 392 - 397) gives a minute and authentic narrative of the siege and deliverance of Constantinople Theophanes (p. 264) adds some circumstances; and a faint light may be obtained from the smoke of George of Pisidia, who has composed a poem (de Bello Abarico, p. 45 - 54) to commemorate this auspicious event.
98 The power of the Chozars prevailed in the viith, viiith, and ixth centuries. They were known to the Greeks, the Arabs, and under the name of Kosa, to the Chinese themselves. De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. part ii. p. 507 - 509.
Note: Moses of Chorene speaks of an invasion of Armenia by the Khazars in the second century, l. ii. c. 62. M. St. Martin suspects them to be the same with the Hunnish nation of the Acatires or Agazzires. They are called by the Greek historians Eastern Turks; like the Madjars and other Hunnish or Finnish tribes, they had probably received some admixture from the genuine Turkish races. Ibn. Hankal (Oriental Geography) says that their language was like the Bulgarian, and considers them a people of Finnish or Hunnish race. Klaproth, Tabl. Hist. p. 268 - 273. Abel Remusat, Rech. sur les Langues Tartares, tom. i. p. 315, 316. St. Martin, vol. xi. p. 115. - M
99 Epiphania, or Eudocia, the only daughter of Heraclius and his first wife Eudocia, was born at Constantinople on the 7th of July, A.D. 611, baptized the 15th of August, and crowned (in the oratory of St. Stephen in the palace) the 4th of October of the same year. At this time she was about fifteen. Eudocia was afterwards sent to her Turkish husband, but the news of his death stopped her journey, and prevented the consummation, (Ducange, Familiae Byzantin. p. 118.)
100 Elmcain (Hist. Saracen. p. 13 - 16) gives some curious and probable facts; but his numbers are rather too high - 300,000 Romans assembled at Edessa - 500,000 Persians killed at Nineveh. The abatement of a cipher is scarcely enough to restore his sanity
101 Ctesias (apud Didor. Sicul. tom. i. l. ii. p. 115, edit. Wesseling) assigns 480 stadia (perhaps only 32 miles) for the circumference of Nineveh. Jonas talks of three days' journey: the 120,000 persons described by the prophet as incapable of discerning their right hand from their left, may afford about 700,000 persons of all ages for the inhabitants of that ancient capital, (Goguet, Origines des Loix, &c., tom. iii. part i. p. 92, 93,) which ceased to exist 600 years before Christ. The western suburb still subsisted, and is mentioned under the name of Mosul in the first age of the Arabian khalifs.
102 Niebuhr (Voyage en Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 286) passed over Nineveh without perceiving it. He mistook for a ridge of hills the old rampart of brick or earth. It is said to have been 100 feet high, flanked with 1500 towers, each of the height of 200 feet.
103 Rex regia arma fero (says Romulus, in the first consecration) .... bina postea (continues Livy, i. 10) inter tot bella, opima parta sunt spolia, adeo rara ejus fortuna decoris. If Varro (apud Pomp Festum, p. 306, edit. Dacier) could justify his liberality in granting the opime spoils even to a common soldier who had slain the king or general of the enemy, the honor would have been much more cheap and common
*_0067 Macdonald Kinneir places Dastagerd at Kasr e Shirin, the palace of Sira on the banks of the Diala between Holwan and Kanabee. Kinnets Geograph. Mem. p. 306. - M.
104 In describing this last expedition of Heraclius, the facts, the places, and the dates of Theophanes (p. 265 - 271) are so accurate and authentic, that he must have followed the original letters of the emperor, of which the Paschal Chronicle has preserved (p. 398 - 402) a very curious specimen.
*_0068 The Schirin of Persian poetry. The love of Chosru and Schirin rivals in Persian romance that of Joseph with Zuleika the wife of Potiphar, of Solomon with the queen of Sheba, and that of Mejnoun and Leila. The number of Persian poems on the subject may be seen in M. von Hammer's preface to his poem of Schirin. - M
105 The words of Theophanes are remarkable. Young princes who discover a propensity to war should repeatedly transcribe and translate such salutary texts.
**_0068 His name was Kabad (as appears from an official letter in the Paschal Chronicle, p. 402.) St. Martin considers the name Siroes, Schirquieh of Schirwey, derived from the word schir, royal. St. Martin, xi. 153. - M.
106 The authentic narrative of the fall of Chosroes is contained in the letter of Heraclius (Chron. Paschal. p. 398) and the history of Theophanes, (p. 271.)
***_0068 According to Le Beau, this massacre was perpetrated at Mahuza in Babylonia, not in the presence of Chosroes. The Syrian historian, Thomas of Maraga, gives Chosroes twenty-four sons; Mirkhond, (translated by De Sacy,) fifteen; the inedited Modjmel-alte-warikh, agreeing with Gibbon, eighteen, with their names. Le Beau and St. Martin, xi. 146. - M.
107 On the first rumor of the death of Chosroes, an Heracliad in two cantos was instantly published at Constantinople by George of Pisidia, (p. 97 - 105.) A priest and a poet might very properly exult in the damnation of the public enemy but such mean revenge is unworthy of a king and a conqueror; and I am sorry to find so much black superstition in the letter of Heraclius: he almost applauds the parricide of Siroes as an act of piety and justice. Note: The Mahometans show no more charity towards the memory of Chosroes or Khoosroo Purveez. All his reverses are ascribed to the just indignation of God, upon a monarch who had dared, with impious and accursed hands, to tear the letter of the Holy Prophet Mahomed. Compare note, p. 231. - M.
!!_0068 Yet Gibbon himself places the flight and death of Yesdegird Ill., the last king of Persia, in 651. The famous era of Yesdegird dates from his accession, June 16 632. - M.
108 The best Oriental accounts of this last period of the Sassanian kings are found in Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 251 - 256,) who dissembles the parricide of Siroes, D'Herbelot (Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 789,) and Assemanni, (Bibliothec. Oriental. tom. iii. p. 415 - 420.)
109 The letter of Siroes in the Paschal Chronicle (p. 402) unfortunately ends before he proceeds to business. The treaty appears in its execution in the histories of Theophanes and Nicephorus.
Note: M. Mai. Script. Vet. Nova Collectio, vol. i. P. 2, p. 223, has added some lines, but no clear sense can be made out of the fragment. - M.
110 The burden of Corneille's song,
"Montrez Heraclius au peuple qui l'attend,"
is much better suited to the present occasion. See his triumph in Theophanes (p. 272, 273) and Nicephorus, (p. 15, 16.) The life of the mother and tenderness of the son are attested by George of Pisidia, (Bell. Abar. 255, &c., p. 49.) The metaphor of the Sabbath is used somewhat profanely by these Byzantine Christians.
111 See Baronius, (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 628, No. 1 - 4,) Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 240 - 248,) Nicephorus, (Brev. p. 15.) The seals of the case had never been broken; and this preservation of the cross is ascribed (under God) to the devotion of Queen Sira.
*_0069 If the clergy imposed upon the kneeling and penitent emperor the persecution of the Jews, it must be acknowledge that provocation was not wanting; for how many of them had been eye-witnesses of, perhaps sufferers in, the horrible atrocities committed on the capture of the city! Yet we have no authentic account of great severities exercised by Heraclius. The law of Hadrian was reenacted, which prohibited the Jews from approaching within three miles of the city - a law, which, in the present exasperated state of the Christians, might be a measure of security of mercy, rather than of oppression. Milman, Hist. of the Jews, iii. 242. - M.
112 George of Pisidia, Acroas. iii. de Expedit. contra Persas, 415, &c., and Heracleid. Acroas. i. 65 - 138. I neglect the meaner parallels of Daniel, Timotheus, &c.; Chosroes and the chagan were of course compared to Belshazzar, Pharaoh, the old serpent, &c.
113 Suidas (in Excerpt. Hist. Byzant. p. 46) gives this number; but either the Persian must be read for the Isaurian war, or this passage does not belong to the emperor Heraclius.


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Edmund S. Morgan, colonial era scholar, dies at 97
NEW YORK (AP) -- Edmund S. Morgan, a leading scholar of the colonial era who helped reinvigorate the reputations of the founding fathers, probed the country's racial and religious origins and, in his 80s, wrote a best-selling biography of Benjamin Franklin, has died in Connecticut. He was 97.
Morgan died Monday at Yale-New Haven Hospital, where he was being treated for pneumonia.
A professor emeritus at Yale University, he was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and author of more than a dozen books, including "Birth of the Republic," ''The Puritan Dilemma" and "Inventing the People." His other awards included a National Medal of the Humanities in 2000 and an honorary citation from Pulitzer Prize officials in 2006 for his "creative and deeply influential body of work."
Morgan shared Franklin's birthday, Jan. 17, and impish spirit. The historian had a prankster's smile; a soft, sweet laugh; and a willingness to poke fun at his own prestige.
He attributed the success of his Franklin book to "the geezer factor."
For decades, Morgan and Harvard professor Bernard Bailyn were cited as leaders of early American studies. Joseph Ellis, who studied under Morgan at Yale, dedicated his Pulitzer Prize-winning "Founding Brothers" to his former teacher. Gordon Wood, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," cited Morgan for often being ahead of his time.
"When he was first writing (in the 1940s) the dominant thinking among historians was that ideas didn't matter, that the founders only cared about the rich and that they didn't mean what they were saying about freedom and government," Wood told The Associated Press in 2002. "But Morgan started with the assumption that their ideas were to be taken seriously; he was really bucking the tide."
Morgan wrote several books and essays about the country's founders, especially Franklin and George Washington, praising them not just as men of action but of inaction. He cited the "genius" of Washington in declining to seize power after the surrender of the British and found the seemingly sloppy Franklin a far more effective diplomat overseas than the ever-prepared John Adams.
An informed and accessible prose stylist, Morgan liked to imagine his readers as "ignorant geniuses"; the public knew him best for "Benjamin Franklin," published in 2002, when Morgan was 86. It was a short, lively summation that began with the unlikely image of a young, athletic Franklin. Based solely on the historian's reading of Franklin's volumes of papers, which Morgan himself helped organize, the book sold more than 100,000 copies and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award.
But Morgan never imagined that the founders were perfect or that the country's early history was unscarred by racism or sly intentions. In his acclaimed "American Slavery, American Freedom," winner in 1976 of the Francis Parkman Prize, he documented how demands for greater freedom in colonial Virginia were influenced by the rise of slavery, which gave whites a heightened sense of entitlement. In "Inventing the People," Morgan stated that politicians often used democratic language as a cover for maintaining power.
"Government requires make-believe," Morgan wrote. "Make believe that the people have a voice or make believe that the representatives of the people are the people. Make believe that governments are the servants of the people. Make believe that all men are equal or make believe that they are not."
Morgan approached his work as both scholar and hobbyist. He had no agent and didn't accept advances because he disliked deadlines. Only when the Franklin manuscript was finished did he bother showing it to the Yale University press.
"Surprise" was a favorite word of Morgan's, and he loved discovering the unexpected in American history, whether the Puritans' tolerance and even advocacy of sex, or the 1787 persecution and murder of a suspected witch just outside the State House in Philadelphia where the U.S. Constitution was being drafted.
Morgan did not plan to major in history much less specialize in the colonial era. Born in Minneapolis and raised in New Haven, Conn., and the Boston area, he dreamed of owning a ranch as a boy and preferred English to history when he entered Harvard University. In one European history test, taken freshman year, he scored 27 out of 100.
But after studying at Harvard under colonial historian Perry Miller, Morgan became fascinated by the Puritans and wrote about them in his first book, "The Puritan Family," published in 1944. "Miller was an atheist, and so was I, but we both had this tremendous regard for the intellectual grounding of their theology," Morgan told the AP in 2002.
Morgan's restless mind often led him well away from the sedentary work of scholarship. After retiring as a Yale professor, in 1986, he took up flying, set up both a wood and metal shop in his basement and put together a lathe in his garage.
Known for his thorough research, Morgan preferred the founder's own words to the books written about them. He read all of Franklin and James Madison, both of whom lived into their 80s. He also worked through multiple volumes of Adams, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
"I don't read many biographies," he said in 2002, acknowledging that he hadn't even gotten around to David McCullough's million-selling book on Adams. "I can spend all day reading Washington's papers. ... I can do that all day long. But if I pick up the kind of book that I write I go to sleep."
Morgan was married twice. He and his first wife, Helen M. Morgan, co-authored "The Stamp Act Crisis," published in 1953. In recent years, he collaborated on reviews and essays with his second wife, Marie Morgan.

subset: commoncrawl


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Welcome to Fit For Life Fitness Center and Physical Therapy
Fit For Life is a unique combination of a fitness center and physical therapy clinic. We are the beach's premier fitness club and only physical therapy clinic.
We help our patients attain their highest functional levels and our members reach their fitness and wellness goals. Our staff is highly trained, experienced and dedicated to helping you.
Fit For Life promotes fitness, health, and quality of life for adults of all ages and abilities.


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Turn Right, Go Fast, Brake Hard, and Turn Left. Repeat as Necessary. American Muscle Rules the Roost at Road America.
Drive your car on any road course once and there's a good chance you'll want more. Open your car up on a track like Road America and there's a distinct possibility you'll become forever addicted to the adrenaline rush generated by North America's longest road course. John Gay knew this feeling firsthand and he wanted to share it with as many of his friends as possible. So, with the support of the Midwest F-Body Association, he rented out Road America for a weekend in April of 2000. The first year was a stretch financially, but John was soon joined by Dave Dill, Dan Kuehn and their spouses to form Speed Seekers LLP, which now organizes the annual event on behalf of the Midwest F-Body Association.
The popularity of the event has largely been driven by word of mouth and the rock bottom price of $320 for eight 20-minute sessions. The 120 slots sell out faster every year, while the waiting list of drivers hoping for last-minute cancellations continues to grow. The non-competitive, touring format makes the event appealing to everyone from seasoned hot shoes to road course newbies and registration is open to all makes and models. Entrants are divided into four groups based on car prep and driver experience, which prevents Corvettes from running over contours. Beginners are encouraged to ride along with veterans to learn the lines of the track and the nuances of driving on a road course. Passing zones are clearly marked and enforced throughout the track, making the event as safe and enjoyable as possible for everyone involved.
The track itself is highlighted by three high-speed sections, including a front stretch nearly three-quarters of a mile long and a variety of turns that place a strong emphasis on handling and braking. Safety is of paramount importance and all cars are sent through tech inspection prior to being allowed out on the track. Owners of totally stock cars can thoroughly enjoy themselves and push their cars all weekend without any problems, but a good set of brakes are highly recommended.
If you still aren't sure whether you or your car is ready to take on Road America, come to the Speed Seeker's 2004 track rental as a spectator. Five dollars will get you in the gate and a helmet will get you in the passenger seat for a ride that may change your entire outlook.


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In the early nineteen-eighties, Pat Furlong noticed that her infant son, Patrick, was "floppy." He would slip through her hands when she attempted to lift him from under his armpits. "You'd stand him up," Furlong says, "and he'd just kind of blob down." Her two daughters, then seven and five, were developing normally, but she began to look with concern at her other son, Christopher, who was two years older than Patrick. He, too, had been delayed in his motor skills; he had walked a little later than other kids, and now, at three years old, he could not turn a somersault. Furlong took the boys to doctors all over their home town, Middletown, Ohio. She was told that there was nothing wrong with them. Both boys were smiling and engaging, clearly normal in their mental functioning. But Furlong, a health educator and a former nurse, remained worried. "For me, it was a feeling in my stomach that something was wrong," she says. She complained to her husband, Tom, a family-practice physician, that other children in the neighborhood ran and jumped while Chris and Pat sat coloring. Tom dismissed her fears, saying that the other kids were simply unruly.
As a nurse, Furlong had spent years examining illness. She grew up in Cincinnati, the youngest child of first-generation German-American parents, and in 1969 she earned a nursing degree from Mount St. Joseph's, a local college. "I'm fascinated by medicine—what we can do and can't do," she told me. In graduate school, at Ohio State, she ran the intensive-care unit at the campus hospital. But her experience caring for adult patients was of no help in trying to understand what was wrong with the boys. "If an adult was sick, I could go through it systematically and say, 'What are we looking at?' " she said. "But with children I didn't have those tools."
When Chris was six, he suffered an unexplained injury to his calf. "He was riding his Big Wheel tricycle," Furlong told me. "Pointing his toe and flexing, he said all of a sudden that something hurt. And he started to cry. It was weird, because what could he have done? His calf muscle started to really swell." Enlarged calves are a leading diagnostic indicator of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rapid, fatal muscle-wasting disease that affects males almost exclusively. As the muscles die, they are replaced by scar tissue that looks, to the uninitiated, like increased muscle mass. Furlong had noted the unusual bulk of her sons' calves, but had taken it as an indication that the boys would grow up to be big, like their father, who had played football for Notre Dame.
Tom seemed mystified by Christopher's injury. But the next morning Furlong saw him looking at Chris with tears in his eyes. "I said, 'What are you looking at?' " Furlong recalls. "And he said, 'I don't know.' " Later, Tom admitted that the possibility of Duchenne had crossed his mind. "But it's not a diagnosis you want to make," Pat says. "And there was no family history of the disease."
Still hoping that the injury was a sprain or a muscle tear, Furlong made an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon in Middletown. The doctor saw Chris's calves and his distinctive gait—he lifted his shoulders and pushed his pelvis forward, to help swing his weakened legs—and knew immediately that the boy had Duchenne. "He didn't even have to do any tests," Furlong says. "He said, 'What does Patrick look like?' And I said, 'Well, he's the same.' "
Furlong was referred to Cincinnati Children's Hospital, where the boys underwent three days of testing. A neurologist there confirmed the diagnosis of Duchenne, and laid out a dire prognosis. The first signs of the disease usually appear in early childhood and are followed by rapid, progressive loss of muscle strength that lands sufferers in a wheelchair by their early teens and eventually renders them completely immobile. Victims typically die from cardiac or respiratory failure, often before the age of twenty. Since 1861, when the French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne first described the disease, no drug had been developed that affected its inexorable course.
Furlong recalls that the neurologist told her, "There is no hope and no help—just take them home and love them. They're going to die." Duchenne is a genetic condition, coded on the mother's X chromosome, and is usually inherited. The doctor upbraided her, she says, for having had a second boy. " 'You should have known about this,' " she recalls him telling her. "'This is a familial disease, it's genetic, you have it in your family.' I said, 'I don't.' " (She learned later that she was among the one-third of cases in which the mutation appears spontaneously.) The doctor insisted, "You could have prevented the second pregnancy, or you could have aborted the second pregnancy.' " Patrick, then four, was sitting on Furlong's lap. "Before that day, I was relatively mild-mannered," Furlong says. She remembers grabbing the doctor's tie and pulling him up to her nose. "I said, 'If somebody should have been aborted today, you're the one.' "
Furlong was determined to fight the disease, but Tom, as a physician, tended to accept the prevailing medical view that nothing could be done. He began to prepare for when Christopher and Patrick could no longer walk, building a wheelchair-accessible addition to their house and installing a small elevator. Furlong was furious: "I wasn't where I am now, able to stand back and say, 'He was crushed in his own way, and he was trying to survive.' " Tom withdrew from the family, shutting himself in his home office in the evenings and refusing to discuss the diagnosis with anyone. The two grew apart, as many Duchenne parents do.
As a nurse, Furlong understood that her sons would probably die of Duchenne. Still, she believed that she could somehow save them. "In my head," she says, "I could get there in time."
Duchenne—the deadliest of the more than forty disorders that go under the name muscular dystrophy—occurs once in every thirty-five hundred live male births. There are about two hundred and fifty thousand sufferers worldwide, between ten and twenty thousand of them in the United States. Duchenne is classified by the World Health Organization as a rare disease, and scientists often see little incentive to specialize in such diseases, because few research dollars are available. Thus, the burden of stimulating new research often falls on patients or their parents.
Furlong, at sixty-four, is a tall, attractive woman with a dramatic presentation—bright-red lipstick, ruffled black tops, artfully mussed brown hair—and a manner that blends unyielding resolve with self-deprecating humor and a certain sadness. She has been singularly effective as a parent activist, not only in spurring research into a cure for the disease but in working with doctors and drug companies to improve care. In 2001, she helped lobby Congress to pass legislation that has allocated more than four hundred million dollars for research into muscular dystrophy, of which more than a hundred and sixty million has gone to Duchenne research—far outstripping the research money raised for Duchenne by the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Dr. Steve Groft, the director of the Office of Rare Diseases Research, at the National Institutes of Health, told me recently that much of the current clinical research into the disease is the result of Furlong's efforts: "She has been the major mover with Duchenne muscular dystrophy—around the world."
Less than a week after her sons received their diagnosis, in June, 1984, Furlong went to the bank and, without her husband's knowledge, borrowed a hundred thousand dollars. "The president of the bank said, 'Does Tom know?' " Furlong recalled. "I said, 'Of course—would I be here if he didn't?' " She forged his signature as co-signer on the loan. Tom found out and "went wild," she says. When she told him that she was going to use the money to save their sons, he told her that it was a futile effort, but he did not force her to return the money. Furlong says he knew that "if he messed with me he would lose me."
Furlong began travelling to medical centers around the United States and Europe. "I wanted to understand the landscape—who the players were, what they thought, how they thought about Duchenne, what priorities, what plans," she says. She found that very little was being done, and that few doctors were willing to talk to her. "Most researchers and physicians will do anything to avoid meeting with distraught mothers," she says. To get past secretaries, she would impersonate a doctor on the phone, then arrive at meetings dressed for the part. "I would wear something very professional and the highest heels possible," she said. She added, "Of course, I'd start crying the minute I sat down with them—so they knew."
Not long into her research, she read a paper by Dr. Charles Bonsett, a neurologist in Indiana, who reported promising early results from adenylosuccinate acid. She flew to Indiana to meet him. No clinical trials for Duchenne existed, but Furlong persuaded Bonsett to launch one using the compound. She helped fund it with the money she had borrowed from the bank, and made sure that her sons were included. They took the drug—which was administered by a shunt surgically implanted in their abdomens—for two years, but their slide continued. At eight, Christopher lost the ability to walk; the same year, Patrick, whose Duchenne was more aggressive, lost the use of his legs, too. Subsequently, they enrolled in a treatment, overseen by a doctor in Memphis, that involved the transplantation of immature muscle cells, called myoblasts. It was no more successful, and Furlong withdrew them from the trial in 1993.
By then, doctors had discovered that steroids can slow muscle wasting in Duchenne boys, extending life into the twenties and sometimes beyond. (The drugs have serious side effects, including severe mood alteration, weight gain, stunted growth, suppressed puberty, and increased bone fragility.) Clinical trials of steroids for Duchenne were in progress, and Furlong tried to get her sons included. But, when she was told that a placebo group would not be given the treatment, she withdrew them, rather than take the risk that one of them would not receive the drug. Instead, she asked Tom to write a prescription for steroids. He refused, saying that they could not perform unregulated drug experiments on their children. Furlong, incensed, forged his handwriting on a prescription, but finally decided not to fill it. "I did not want to be culpable," she said.
At the ages of fifteen and thirteen, Christopher and Patrick were fully paralyzed, except for their organs of speech and their fingers. They moved around in motorized wheelchairs using joysticks, and relied on family members and a few paid helpers to lift them onto the toilet, or from wheelchair to bed. Unable to raise their arms, they ate with their elbows propped on high drafting tables that their father rigged for them. Despite these difficulties, Christopher regularly ranked at the top of his class in school; Patrick concentrated on friends and dreamed of success as a gambler. When the myoblast treatment failed, they were crestfallen. "Chris asked, 'Have you given up on us?' " Furlong recalls. She assured him that she had not, and shortly afterward, in 1994, she decided to start a patient-advocacy group.
"By this time, I was well acquainted with the small group of researchers in the field," Furlong says. "I thought it was time to call them together with the intention of funding research. To raise significant dollars, we needed to form a nonprofit." She got in touch with Duchenne parents whom she had met through clinical trials, and incorporated the organization under the name Muscular Dystrophy Research Foundation. Immediately, she received a letter from the executive director of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Robert Ross, accusing her of deliberately choosing a name that would confuse the public. "He was wrong," she says. "I just wasn't very creative." She changed the name to Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy.
The twenty or so parents who made up the group held bake sales and dinner dances and canvassed family, friends, and neighbors for donations. "For one holiday season, we were baking and sending out holiday cards to our donors," Furlong says. "I devised this holiday card full of sparkles and set up an assembly line in my kitchen, someone adding the glue to the card, the next person adding the sparkles." Her motivation in starting the parent group was not sadness but anger, she told me: "at God, at the world, at being in Middletown, Ohio, not having the academic resources at my fingertips, having doctors who say I'm crazy, angry at a husband who doesn't seem to be in synch with me, angry at myself for a genetic disease."
In 1986, Louis Kunkel, a research scientist at Boston University, isolated the gene implicated in Duchenne. This gene—by far the largest in the genome, with 2.3 million base pairs—is responsible for making a protein that Kunkel and his collaborators named dystrophin. The protein is found in every muscle of the body; it forms a shock absorber around the membrane that surrounds muscle cells and holds them together. Owing to errors in their genetic code, Duchenne boys do not produce dystrophin. Over time, the cell membranes rip, and calcium floods into the cells. The immune system, mistaking the activity for an invading pathogen, attacks the cells and kills them. Muscles fail progressively throughout the body: first the large skeletal muscles of the legs and arms and trunk, then the muscles of the diaphragm, digestive tract, and heart.
In the early nineties, Furlong began visiting gene-therapy researchers, including Eric Hoffman, a geneticist who had worked in Kunkel's lab and then established an independent laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. Furlong asked Hoffman to address the members of Parent Project, whom she was bringing together for an information-sharing meeting in Ontario, in the spring of 1994. Furlong says that many researchers were leery of associating with Parent Project out of fear, "real or imagined," that the Muscular Dystrophy Association would cancel their funding. But, she says, "if Eric Hoffman agreed to come, we knew the rest would come along."
Hoffman, however, declined the invitation. "He said, 'No one's going to come,' " Furlong recalls. " 'What would incentivize us?' " On a table in Hoffman's office was a copy of Time, with a cover story on the geneticist French Anderson, who had performed the world's first successful gene therapy, on children with ADA deficiency, an immune disorder. In desperation, Furlong grabbed the magazine and said, "He's coming." Hoffman was clearly dubious. "He just looked at me, like, 'You're the dumbest shit I've ever come across.' "
Furlong immediately flew to Pasadena, where Anderson had an office at U.S.C., and installed herself in his waiting room until he emerged. "I told him the whole story," she says. "I'm in tears: 'You have to do this, I made up a big lie, oh, my gosh—I'm crazy, I'm a liar, but you have to come!' He just said, 'O.K.' " Furlong shrugged. "I think he was afraid of me."
At the meeting in Ontario, Anderson (who, in 2006, was convicted of sexual abuse of a minor and is currently serving a fourteen-year prison sentence) announced to a crowd of parents, patients, and scientists that he would cure Duchenne in eighteen months—a grandiose claim that almost no one in the room believed. But Furlong had managed to assemble several of the world's leading experts on the disease, including Hoffman. "The meeting galvanized everyone," Furlong says. "I recall talking to the researchers after the meeting. They were pretty amazed that parents were not hysterical, did not expect magic, but wanted to do whatever they could to help. They asked questions about the disease and about us, exploring ideas."
The parents began raising money to establish a research center. They agreed that the University of Pittsburgh was the logical place; Hoffman was there, and it had a number of "bright minds in muscle and gene therapy," Furlong says. The parents pledged to raise three hundred thousand dollars. "We had about one hundred and fifty thousand in our accounts," she says. In the next twelve months, the group raised the rest—through more bake sales, "dinner dances, letters to friends and relatives, and general begging"—and the Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Research Center, the first of its kind, opened in 1995. Furlong says, "We found a place to land—a place to focus efforts, a place where we no longer felt like 'just parents.' "
Lee Sweeney, the scientific adviser to Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, has been studying the molecular basis of muscle movement since 1984, and is now the chairman of the Department of Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He was engaged in gene experiments in Duchenne using mice when, in the mid-nineties, Furlong sought him out and offered funding. "Parents, the minute they find the disease, do one of several things," Sweeney told me. "Either they withdraw and just feel like the world has attacked them or they decide that they're going to do something about it, and attack back. Often they do what Pat did, early on, which is to try to form some charity—usually in the name of the child—and they go out and raise money from their friends and other people." But developing a drug from initial lab experiments to F.D.A. approval costs hundreds of millions of dollars—far more than grass-roots charities can raise. "When I first met Pat, I thought, It's another one of these people, and I feel badly for her," he said. He turned down her offer. "The type of money she was talking about was relatively small," he said, and the gene approaches he was working on were far from yielding any benefit to humans. But Sweeney agreed to speak at an annual meeting of Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy.
In October, 1995, the Furlongs' older son, Christopher, then seventeen, caught a cold that developed rapidly into pneumonia—a common occurrence in Duchenne boys, whose weak diaphragms make it impossible for them to clear their lungs by coughing. (Furlong has since worked with the pediatric pulmonologist Jonathan Finder to include the mechanical insufflator-exsufflator—a device that aids in coughing—in the standard care for Duchenne.) Christopher was admitted to the hospital, intubated, and placed on a respirator. His condition worsened, and, after two weeks, he died.
Seven months later, Patrick, too, got a cold, and his health declined. "After Chris died, I think Patrick gave up," Furlong told me. "He watched his brother lose strength and die. He knew. Patrick and I could barely look eye to eye without tears. It was as if we knew a secret and if one or the other said it out loud it would come true." Furlong took Patrick to the hospital and stayed with him all night. In the morning, he said that she should go home and shower, and asked that she get his father to spell her. He joked that "having a doctor around was much better than a nurse." Furlong summoned Tom, then drove home. She was at the door of their house when Tom called her cell phone to tell her that Patrick's lungs and heart had failed.
Few parents, Sweeney says, remain committed to fighting Duchenne after their child's death: "I thought that, like most of the parents, Pat would never want to hear the name of the disease again—she would disappear, her organization would disappear, and that would be it. But, to my surprise, if anything she came back to me even more aggressive." Furlong says that she never contemplated quitting. "I don't understand how you can close the door and say, 'This part of my life didn't exist,' " she told me. She was also inspired by something that Christopher said to her shortly after he and his brother first received their diagnosis of Duchenne. "We were in the kitchen and I was getting ready for dinner," Furlong said. "I must have been crying. Chris said to me, 'Why are you upset?' and I said, 'I just want you two cured.' And he said, 'Do you think it's fair if it's just Pat and me?' Just in a very weird kind of kidlike way. 'Wouldn't you want everyone cured? Aren't there more kids like this?' "
One of Sweeney's first acts as scientific adviser to Parent Project was to speak frankly to its members about the ineffectiveness of their approach. "At a meeting, I told them, just flat out, 'You know, this raising money from your friends and from bake sales is never going to get you research dollars that are going to have any impact. Maybe it makes you feel better, but it's not going to do anything.' My advice to them was to use the power of parents lobbying for children—which is a pretty powerful message—with their congressmen."
Furlong had been trying for years to make headway in Washington. "Right after the boys were diagnosed, I was at the N.I.H. asking, 'What are you doing?' " Furlong told me. "The answer was nothing." She was introduced to Steve Groft, at the Office of Rare Diseases Research, and began visiting his office, which she describes as "Mother Teresa's waiting room of rare diseases." Many concerned parents came to ask for help, she says, "but I was a pretty persistent one, going back, and calling Steve and saying, 'What are we doing here?' I am, by nature, a pest."
Furlong's unusual knowledge of the disease made her persuasive, Groft said. "With her training in nursing, she had a very good understanding of diseases and the needs of patients and families, and, as a mother of patients, she knew very well what her needs were." But his office by itself could be of limited help. "Our office was not very large," Groft explained. "I think we had two people." Following Groft's advice, Furlong met with the directors of several divisions of the N.I.H. that were potentially relevant to Duchenne, and with Dr. Harold Varmus, the director of the agency. Furlong recalled that in one meeting someone said, "We have heard about you, Mrs. Furlong." She considered that a victory. In 2000, after six years of appeals, she received a commitment from the N.I.H. to fund a "workshop" in Duchenne—a two-day conclave of researchers whose areas of focus were related to the disease. But when she told Sweeney about the workshop he was unimpressed. "He said, 'They're going to give you a workshop because you're in the queue,' " Furlong told me. " 'Here's your workshop, now go away. It's not enough.' I realized he was right."
Furlong had recently met a Washington lobbyist named Joel Wood, who had a son with Duchenne. Wood put her in touch with B&D Consulting, a lobbying firm with expertise in pediatric legislation. Furlong and others from Parent Project worked with the lobbyists on a proposed bill that would compel the N.I.H. to fund a number of research centers for muscular dystrophy, with two devoted to Duchenne. Furlong then spent months visiting the office of Bettilou Taylor, the staff director of the Senate subcommittee in charge of health appropriations, to press for a hearing. Furlong describes Taylor as a formidable figure: "She was in her St. John's perfect outfits and the hair perfect and the makeup perfect and the Nancy Pelosi perfect face with the perfect smile and the sort of 'Tell me your story. Yes, I understand, I care a lot—next!' " Taylor was unable to schedule a hearing. Then, one day in late 2000, Furlong arrived with another Duchenne mother. Before they met with Taylor, Furlong told her not to sob; they had to be professional. "We went into this little conference room," Furlong recalls, "and she put her arms around Bettilou—put her tears on Bettilou's St. John jacket, or Armani or whatever—and I thought, Dear God, this is the end. And she just went, 'You have to save my son, he's going to die!' And Bettilou said, 'I'll do whatever you want,' and started crying."
In February, 2001, Congress held the hearing, with Senators Arlen Specter and Paul Wellstone leading the panel. The gallery was filled with muscular-dystrophy patients and their families. An N.I.H. director testified about what the agency had been doing for Duchenne—which was, the senators learned, not very much. "I'm sure it was very unpleasant," Sweeney, who also spoke that day, says. "It looked very unpleasant from where I was sitting." Furlong, too, testified before the panel. Speaking in a strong voice, she told the senators that Duchenne "gets only one one-thousandth of the N.I.H. budget" and called for an investment of a hundred million dollars over the next five years. She also told a brief but potent anecdote: "One day long ago, my son Patrick was trying to convince me of a crazy argument he had. He said to me, 'Mom, pretend I'm in a midlife crisis.' In fact, he was. He was eight." The bill passed the Senate and the House that spring, and in December, 2001, President Bush signed the Muscular Dystrophy CARE Act into law.
"That changed the landscape entirely," Sweeney told me. With millions of dollars available for research, scientists began to concentrate their attention on Duchenne. In 2000, there were fewer than ten trials and studies on Duchenne in process; there are now more than fifty. Parent Project has a membership of three thousand families in the United States, with affiliates throughout Europe, and an annual budget of five million dollars. Because the organization still has relatively small amounts of money to spend—usually two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand dollars for any given treatment—Sweeney and Furlong often invest in small laboratories or drug companies that need startup capital to bring a drug to a point where it can attract larger investment.
In 2007, Parent Project began working with a small company in New Jersey, PTC Therapeutics, which was developing a drug called ataluren, intended for boys whose Duchenne is the result of a "nonsense mutation" in the gene—a period in the genetic code's sentence, which renders it unreadable by the body's protein-making machinery. Furlong first learned of the company, from Sweeney, in 2000, and offered to help fund development of the drug. But the mutation addressed by ataluren accounted for only about fifteen per cent of all Duchenne sufferers. Stuart Peltz, the C.E.O. of PTC Therapeutics, told me, "After a couple of years working together, Pat said to me, 'I love what you're doing for the fifteen per cent of the patients—now you've got to do something for the rest.' " Furlong said that she would raise a million dollars from Parent Project's membership to support the company's efforts to find other targets on the gene. Four promising new targets turned up, and the N.I.H. awarded PTC Therapeutics and Parent Project, along with the University of Pennsylvania, $15.4 million for further research. Peltz says that the partnership between a drug company, a patient-advocacy group, and government "set up a new paradigm in how to fund drugs for these rare diseases."
In April, 2008, ataluren went to blind clinical trial, with a hundred and seventy-four boys at clinics in North America, Europe, Australia, and Israel. Two groups of boys were given the drug, in a high and a low dose, and a third group was given a placebo. Over forty-eight weeks, their progress was monitored by six-minute walk tests, a standard measure of muscle function in Duchenne boys. To the disappointment of everyone involved, boys on the high dose of ataluren declined at the same rate as boys not on the drug. The clinical trial was suspended. But researchers noted that boys on the lower dose did not decline in function. This tallied with preclinical experiments on cell cultures, which showed that if the dose is too high the drug's effect shuts off. "We initially discounted this as some artifact of cell culture and not real," Sweeney says. Furlong has advocated for patients to be allowed to take the drug as part of an F.D.A.-approved "access program," which permits terminal patients to take an experimental drug when no other treatment is available.
Sweeney and Furlong are optimistic that it will benefit the boys. Furlong, who has seen more than a thousand Duchenne patients, and who, according to Sweeney, "understands the disease a lot better than a lot of the clinicians and scientists who work on it," is convinced that she noticed an effect in boys on ataluren. "I am well aware there could be a placebo effect," she says, "but I saw changes, a posture that changed, a gait that improved, energy." Sweeney, though, believes that a cure is decades away and will likely involve stem-cell therapy. "It's not just fixing one muscle," he told me. "It's fixing every muscle in the body. That's the problem. Getting the cells to the right place and then getting them to do the right thing—it's a daunting engineering problem as much as anything else." For now, he says, researchers are focussed on developing multiple therapies that address various pathways of the disease. "It's the same sort of idea as with AIDS, where you have a combination of drugs, where none of them cure you but they can hold the disease at bay quite successfully with many patients. That's the goal here."
One morning in early November, Furlong had a meeting at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, where her sons originally received their diagnosis. After that, Furlong had not returned to Cincinnati Children's for almost a decade, but in 1999 the hospital hired a new pediatric neurologist, Dr. Brenda Wong, and Furlong began to meet with her regularly. She urged Wong to build a department that would focus on multidisciplinary care and treatment for Duchenne boys—epidemiologists to care for hormonal problems that arise with steroid treatment, lung specialists, immunologists, cardiologists. Thanks in part to Furlong's efforts, which included fund-raising for the hospital, Cincinnati Children's is now the leading clinical treatment center for Duchenne in the country. "I'm happy that this happened here," Furlong told me, when I met with her at the hospital. "Because it's payback."
Furlong was sitting in the airy cafeteria with a pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Linda Cripe, an open-faced blond woman in her forties. They became acquainted almost ten years ago, when Furlong called Cripe to persuade her to attend Parent Project's annual meeting, in Pittsburgh. The day before the meeting, Cripe's flight was cancelled because of bad weather, but, having promised Furlong she would be there, she drove from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh overnight. "I'm cursing her the entire way," Cripe told me. "I'm so angry, saying, 'Who is this woman? She's making me go to this thing . . . ' "
Doctors who attend Furlong's conferences often report a kind of conversion experience. Jonathan Finder, the pulmonologist, addressed the Parent Project annual meeting in 1999. He told me, "It was one of these things that are hard to describe, the emotional impact of being surrounded by parents. As a physician, you meet with parents one at a time; you don't go into rooms filled with them." Cripe, at her first conference, spoke to a crowd of three hundred and fifty parents. Afterward, she called the hospital's other senior cardiologist and persuaded him to focus more on Duchenne patients. "Pat forced me to go into a situation that I didn't want to be in," Cripe says. "She brought the problem to me. I think if you're paying attention in medicine you'd have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to see that there was a message there."
Three years ago, Cripe was instrumental in bringing about one of the first pediatric heart transplants given to a Duchenne child. During my visit, the recipient of the transplant, Riley Herrera, from Helena, Montana, was at Cincinnati Children's for a follow-up, and Furlong met him and his father, Ron, for lunch. Ron, a federal law-enforcement agent, is a trim, muscular man with a military bearing. Riley has dark hair, braces on his teeth, and a shy smile. He has been on steroids since the age of seven, and at eighteen is smooth-faced and under five feet tall; he might have been mistaken for a twelve-year-old. He was still walking, albeit with the characteristic Duchenne gait; we went to lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant, and his father had to lift him up the two stairs that led inside.
At lunch, Ron asked about the latest developments in treatment. "The myostatin—is that a good one?" he said. He was referring to a drug, being developed by a company called Acceleron Pharma, that promotes muscle growth by inhibiting the uptake of myostatin, a protein that the body produces to prevent muscles from growing too large.
"Well, we'll see what Acceleron does, right?" Furlong said, carefully. With parents, she dispenses what she calls "therapeutic doses of hope" but does not promise too much. The drug is still in the early stages of testing and far from approval by the F.D.A.
"I saw a video of that dog that had the exon-skipping," Ron said. A recent YouTube clip showed a puppy that had been treated with a drug for a Duchenne variety caused by gaps in the code of the dystrophin gene. The drug had shown some success in dogs, but it would be years before it could be used in humans.
"Oh, yeah," Furlong said, in a neutral voice.
Talk turned to Riley's heart transplant. In 2006, during a family trip to New York, Riley had turned pale and become too tired to walk. "I'd get stabbing pains in my stomach," Riley recalled. "It was hard to breathe." When the family got home, Ron took him to a cardiologist in Billings, who said that Riley's heart was failing and that only a transplant could save him. Ron, who had been a member of Parent Project since 1999, turned to Furlong. She approached Cincinnati Children's, but there was controversy about giving a transplant to a "terminal" child, since pediatric hearts were in such short supply. Cripe argued that Riley should be on the transplant list. "The definition of Duchenne includes loss of ambulation between eight and ten years," Furlong explained. "Riley was fourteen and walking, so by clinical definition he was not a typical Duchenne." The hospital agreed to put Riley on the list, and Furlong found a donor to pay for him and his family to live in Cincinnati while they waited for a pediatric heart to become available.
Riley arrived in Cincinnati in January, 2007. Three months later, no heart had arrived. Furlong, who visited Riley in the hospital one Friday at the end of March, knew that he was running out of time. His heart was so enlarged that she could see it beating beneath his rib cage, through his shirt. This time, there was nothing that she could do.
"You said, 'You're going to need a heart in the next day or two,' " Ron said to Furlong. "And it happened—I think the next day!"
"The next day," Furlong said. "It was Friday. The heart came Saturday."
Riley was looking closely at Furlong during this exchange, apparently learning for the first time how desperate his situation had been. Had it not been for Cripe—and for Furlong's long campaign to reform Cincinnati Children's Hospital—he would almost certainly have died. He said, "So—you're like an angel."
Furlong scoffed. "Oh, yeah," she said, chuckling. "Tell my husband."
After lunch, Furlong was due to drive home to Middletown. Despite years of difficulty, she and Tom have repaired their relationship. "He knows why I do what I do and is happy for progress," Furlong says, "but it is still an open wound. I think he knew that this family needed both of us, even if we hated each other for a time." Before Furlong left, I asked her about Parent Project's long-term goals. "It's about looking at the landscape and seeing where you can play in this chess match, see how you can maximize the impact on research, see how you can apply that directly and quickly to the kids," she said. "From the day my sons were diagnosed, I wanted to buy time. So we look at a research opportunity and say, 'What is going to buy us time? What do you think we could tweak, invest in, move, that would buy us more time?' " ♦


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November 15, 2011
Homemade Pumpkin Spice Latte Recipe
Mike is always curious to see what I've stirred into my morning coffee. He frequently finds mugs around the house with remnants of hershey kisses, cinnamon sticks, vanilla beans, etc... sometimes all in the same mug. I love to doctor up my coffee - it is my special treat in the morning. Here is the latest combination inspired by the famous Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte.
It is great to serve to a group for brunch, or after dinner. For those 'black coffee' only drinkers out there, they might not be interested, but if you serve it as dessert with a few Salted Caramel Chocolate Sandwich Cookies, they might be more open to it!
Pumpkin Spice Latte
the homemade version
1 cup of coffee or 2 shots of espresso
1/2 cup of milk
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of brown sugar
dash of cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
dash of ground cloves
a couple drops of vanilla extract (or a vanilla bean)
whipped cream
Heat milk in the microwave for 1 minute. Stir in sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and vanilla. Add coffee or espresso. Top with whipped cream and a pinch of nutmeg or cinnamon.
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FARMINGTON, Conn. – Ready. Set. School!
As summer winds down, and the kids head back to school, you can make back-to-school shopping an adventure for your kids. This year, take part in the "Ready. Set. School! Scavenger Hunt," enjoying Wellness at Westfarms while having some fun. Parents and students, grades K-5, will have the chance to turn their shopping experience into an adventure and learn how to make healthy choices from the wellness experts at Hartford HealthCare. Children who take part will receive special prizes from Hartford HealthCare and Westfarms retailers.
The is part of the "Wellness at Westfarms" program, a strategic partnership between Westfarms and Hartford HealthCare that is designed to improve community wellness by providing health information and resources to mall shoppers.
Ready. Set. School! Scavenger Hunt is geared toward teaching healthy lifestyle habits to elementary school students. But parents can join in the fun, too, by taking their children to the Westfarms Customer Service Desk from Aug. 19 through Sept. 14. There, parents can register for the self-guided scavenger hunt. Kids will receive a packet of clues as they search for answers to healthy lifestyle questions found on posters throughout the upper and lower levels of the shopping center. Upon completion of the adventure, children will receive a back-to-school bag with special prizes and offers to help start off the school year right. The offer is open to the first 250 people to register.
"Westfarms is enjoying its ongoing partnership with Hartford HealthCare and collaborating on unique programs like the Ready. Set. School! scavenger hunt. In addition to teaching health and wellness to our core shoppers, we are delighted to be reaching the younger generation at the shopping center with such important messages," said Kevin Keenan, general manager of Westfarms, in a press release. "The scavenger hunt is a perfect segue for parents to talk to their children about things that support success in school including healthy eating, getting enough sleep and exercising, which are all messages shoppers will find throughout the center."
"This partnership makes it possible for Westfarms and Hartford HealthCare to collaborate in providing wellness services and resources in a retail venue that is convenient for hundreds of thousands of people," said James Blazar, chief strategy officer and senior vice president, in a press release. "Our goal is to improve community wellness by increasing access to vital health information and educational resources. As the leading health care provider in the region, this is one of the ways we are able to connect with those in the communities we serve."


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Follow @LaneRasberry This is Lane Rasberry's personal blog. None of the information on this blog is private, but it is personal and I have not written it with the intent to make it of public general interest. Anyone visiting this site has my permission to use anything they find here for friendly, share-alike purposes.
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- Tech Trader Daily
Tablets: Pac Crest Sees Continued AAPL Dominance, Huge Samsung, Google Gains
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Pacific Crest analysts Michael McConnell, John Vinh, and James Faucette today offered up the latest installment of their "tablet tracker," with their predictions for the action in tablet computer sales this year.
The firm projects 172 million tablets will be sold this calendar year, up 61%, with Apple (AAPL) selling perhaps 86.3 million of those units, a 30% year-over-year increase.
"We continue to see Apple holding a share lead in the tablet market this year, with incremental share gains by Samsung [Electronics (005930KS)] and Google (GOOG).
Samsung, maker of devices such as the "Galaxy Note 10.1" and the "Galaxy Tab," will be especially aggressive this year, the trio believe, perhaps boosting its sales by 233% to 40 million units.
"Supply chain conversations indicate a goal of 40 million units for the Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Note 10.1 tablets in 2013 for Samsung," the authors write. "This would be alarge increase over our estimate of 12 million tablets sold in 2012. Supporting this goal is a significant increase in activity for 1Q13."
"Strong growth in Samsung tablet units would be beneficial for Atmel (ATML), Maxim Integrated Technology (MXIM), Synaptics (SYNA), and Broadcom (BRCM)."
Google, which sells its own "Nexus 7" and "Nexus 10" and such tablets, may have an even bigger jump, perhaps grabbing third place in tablet hardware sales away from Amazon.com (AMZN) with units of 15.3%, the firm believes, up 263%.
The analysts have an estimate of 6.3 million units of Microsoft's (MSFT) Surface RT and Pro tablets, which would be a quadrupling from the estimated 1.2 million the device sold in the December quarter, its first (partial) quarter on the market. But the analysts write that "We believe Microsoft's conservative approach represents a lack of confidence in x86 Surface Pro tablet and lower-than-expected demand for the original ARM Holdings (ARMH)-based Surface.


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Antisemitism can be expressed in the form of verbal and physical attacks, threats, harassment, property damage, graffiti or other forms of text, including hate speech on the internet. The present report – the ninth update of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) overview of Manifestations of antisemitism in the EU – relates to manifestations of antisemitism as they are recorded by official and unofficial sources in the 28 European Union (EU) Member States.
This update compiles available data on antisemitic incidents collected by international, governmental and non-governmental sources, covering the period 1 January 2002–31 December 2012, where data are available. No data on manifestations of antisemitism were available for Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Romania at the time this update was compiled.