The following case report describes a Burmese subject with an unusual birthmark and birth defects thought by local people to be linked to events surrounding the death of his mother's first husband. The nature of the link is explored, including how the assumption of a linkage could have led to subsequent events.
Over the course of one hundred years Haymarket has provoked a considerable body of personal and historical writing offering a variety of interpretations and evaluations of its meaning. Thus historians have attributed to Haymarket local as well as national significance; they have viewed it as a conspiracy by the ruling elite against the labor movement, as a death-blow to anarchism in the United States, as an attempt at weakening the eight-hour movement, and as a critical watershed for the organization of American labor at large. Before adding yet another view, it may be appropriate to address not only one basic issue underlying any such endeavor but also the assumptions for attributing to this unique historical event important and far-reaching consequences. Claims about Haymarket's wide ramifications certainly cannot be sustained by dealing with it solely on the factual level; such an attempt could justifiably be criticized as a simplistic and reductionistic "cause-and-effect" explanation.It is true that, following the explosion of the bomb, anarchist and other labor institutions were subject to indiscriminate raids by the police in Chicago as well as in other cities, that civil liberties were in jeopardy, and that the law and the courts were made to serve the rich and powerful. However, these were not new measures resulting from Haymarket. They had been employed before, and were merely put to more concerted use in the spring of 1886 and after. Only by taking into account both the intentions of the parties directly or indirectly involved in the trial and their perceptions of its repercussions will we be justified in claiming a significance for Haymarket that extends beyond the 1880s. This latter would imply that Haymarket was a symbolic as well as a factual event; resulting in the death of individuals, the suffering of families, and the suppression of labor organizations, it was at the same time the enactment of a "public hanging"-it was "Anarchy on Trial," as the Chicago anarchists put it, and many workers also perceived it as a ruthless attempt by the upper echelons of society to quell their organized protest. Seizing the opportunity of the fatal bomb-throwing and immediately taking the initiative, the established part of Chicago society mercilessly exploited Haymarket for its own purposes. As a symbolic event, then, Haymarket helped to bring into sharper focus underlying social and political currents, to imprint them on people's minds, to
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