Background: Surgical mortality data are collected routinely in high-income countries, yet virtually no low-or middle-income countries have outcome surveillance in place. The aim was prospectively to collect worldwide mortality data following emergency abdominal surgery, comparing findings across countries with a low, middle or high Human Development Index (HDI).Methods: This was a prospective, multicentre, cohort study. Self-selected hospitals performing emergency surgery submitted prespecified data for consecutive patients from at least one 2-week interval during July to December 2014. Postoperative mortality was analysed by hierarchical multivariable logistic regression.

Milton's Areopagitica (1644) is one of the most significant texts in the history of the freedom of the press, and yet the pamphlet's clandestine printers have successfully eluded identification for over 375 years. By examining distinctive and damaged type pieces from 100 pamphlets from the 1640s, this article attributes the printing of Milton's Areopagitica to the London printers Matthew Simmons and Thomas Paine, with the possible involvement of Gregory Dexter. It further reveals a sophisticated ideological program of clandestine printing executed collaboratively by Paine and Simmons throughout 1644 and 1645 that includes not only Milton's Areopagitica but also Roger Williams's The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, William Walwyn's The Compassionate Samaritane, Henry Robinson's Liberty of Conscience, Robinson's John the Baptist, and Milton's Of Education, Tetrachordon, and Colasterion.