‘Munchausen's syndrome by proxy’ characteristically describes women alleged to have fabricated or induced illnesses in children under their care, purportedly to attract attention. Where conclusive evidence exists the condition's aetiology remains speculative, where such evidence is lacking diagnosis hinges upon denial of wrong-doing (conduct also compatible with innocence). How might investigators obtain objective evidence of guilt or innocence? Here, we examine the case of a woman convicted of poisoning a child. She served a prison sentence but continues to profess her innocence. Using a modified fMRI protocol (previously published in 2001) we scanned the subject while she affirmed her account of events and that of her accusers. We hypothesized that she would exhibit longer response times in association with greater activation of ventrolateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices when endorsing those statements she believed to be false (i.e., when she ‘lied’). The subject was scanned 4 times at 3 Tesla. Results revealed significantly longer response times and relatively greater activation of ventrolateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices when she endorsed her accusers' version of events. Hence, while we have not ‘proven’ that this subject is innocent, we demonstrate that her behavioural and functional anatomical parameters behave as if she were.

‘It was a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close and stale.’ I This line from Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit encapsulates the common view that the nineteenth-century Sabbath was a tedious, gloomy and tiresome institution that embodied the full weight of Victorian Britain’s old-fashioned, sombre and somewhat hypocritical evangelical piety. Taking such contemporary portrayals at face value, historian John Wigley, whose thirty-year-old monograph remains the only full treatment of the subject, depicted the Victorian Sabbath as ‘a day which had a funereal character, notorious for its symbols – the hushed voice, the half-drawn blind and the best clothes’. Sabbatarianism, he argued, ‘appeared to consist of a perverse reluctance to enjoy oneself on Sundays and a determination to stop other people enjoying themselves too’.

This article is a contribution to the recent debate in this Journal between Ralph Brown and Boyd Hilton concerning the nature of British nineteenth-century premillennialism.1 It discusses the premillennialists' view of time and argues that a sense of God's involvement with the historical process led them to affirm temporal development and progress as the media for divine activity. It also discusses their view of the destiny of the earth and shows how premillennialist eschatology was fully materialistic, placing a high view on the body and the physical world. These are important factors in accounting for the premillennialist social vision.

This paper explores the nineteenth-century doctrine of the ‘restitution of all things’, a concept of the afterlife which emphasized material continuity with the present and generated detailed speculation about the activities and events which would take place in the eternal realm. Such beliefs, it will be suggested, resonated with broader developments in nineteenth-century theology which tended to soften the boundary between this life and the life to come, and increasingly suggested that the Christian hope was for the coming of the kingdom of God on earth rather than for the soul to go to heaven after an individual’s death. This belief has been almost completely neglected in previous historiographical discussions of nineteenth-century evangelical eschatology. To recognize its existence challenges many historiographical depictions of the ‘world-denying’ nature of Evangelicalism in general and the pessimistic temperament of pre-millennialism in particular.

El “síndrome de Munchausen por poderes” se refiere, en general, a mujeres acusadas de haber inventado o producido enfermedades en niños bajo su cuidado, destinadas a atraer la atención sobre sí misma. Cuando hay pruebas concluyentes, hay dudas sobre la etiología de la enfermedad, pero cuando no hay pruebas, el diagnóstico depende de la negación de la intencionalidad (conducta también compatible con la inocencia). ¿Cómo podrían los investigadores conseguir pruebas objetivas sobre culpabilidad o inocencia? En este artículo analizamos el caso de una mujer condenada por envenenar a su hija. Cumplió la condena en la cárcel, pero sigue reclamando su inocencia. Usando un protocolo modificado de RMf (publicado ya en 2001) realizamos la prueba de neuroimagen mientras ella confirmaba su versión de los acontecimientos y mientras aceptaba la de sus acusadores. Sugerimos la hipótesis de que los tiempos de respuesta serían más largos y se asociaran con mayor activación de la corteza cingular anterior y prefrontal ventrolateral cuando hacía declaraciones falsas (es decir, cuando “mentía”). La mujer fue sometida 4 veces a RM de 3 teslas. Los resultados revelaron tiempos de respuesta considerablemente más largos y un activación relativamente mayor de la corteza cingular anterior y prefrontal ventrolateral cuando aceptaba la versión de los acontecimientos de sus acusadores. Es decir que aunque no hemos “probado” que esta mujer es inocente, demostramos que sus parámetros conductuales y funcionales anatómicos se comportan como si lo fuera.