The ethical basis of suicide prevention is illustrated by contrasting helpline emergency rescue policies of the Samaritans in the UK and the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline network. We contrast moralist, relativist and libertarian ethical premises and question whether suicide can be rational. Samaritans respect a caller’s right to decide to die by suicide; US helplines oblige emergency intervention during an attempt even against the caller’s will. We analyse the effect of emergency rescue when there is high suicide risk but an attempt has not been initiated. Issues of legal imperatives, jurisprudence and leeway given to helpers are analysed. We examine links between values and actions, the need for empirical evidence to guide practice, and propose vigorous dialogue about values in the grey zone of moral practice.

The first power of the police is their ability to use force to protect and rescue third parties. This understanding departs in a critical way from the Weberian argument that the government has a monopoly on the use of force by observing that a police officer’s ability to use force to defend others is available to all people. It is not only provided for under laws that allow all people to defend others but also as a moral prerogative that exists prior to and outside of political arrangements, democratic or otherwise. The police are distinguished from their fellow citizens by embodying a role that discharges protection and rescue as a duty, rather than a prerogative. The discharge of this duty by what Nozick would call a “dominant protective association” is a necessary requirement to demarcate the state from nature, suggesting that the police role is integral to the definition of the state and a requirement of its initial formulation. From this duty follows the role responsibility to use this force as minimally and economically as possible, and as a backstop, the police role further sanctifies life by creating the citizen’s duty to retreat from interpersonal threats when they can safely do so.

Chapter 4, “The Warsaw Ghetto: A People Set Apart,” considers how Polish elites grappled with Jewish victimhood in their midst and differentiates between Nazi targeting of Polish elites and the better known targeting and murder of Polish Jews. It traces initial Nazi persecution of Warsaw’s Jewish community, ghettoization in 1940, persecution within the ghetto, and its liquidation to the death camp at Treblinka in 1942, and the outbreak of violent resistance in 1943. This is contextualized against Polish antisemitism before and during the war and particular Polish elite reactions to the developing Holocaust. A handful of intelligentsia figures who reacted strongly to antisemitic persecution in various ways demonstrate the complexity of Polish response to the Nazi Holocaust and how prewar and wartime antisemitism widened gulfs between ethnic Poles and the Polish-Jewish community. It argues that, because of a combination of targeted Nazi violence and native antisemitism, Polish elite response to Jewish persecution arose very late, typically only in 1943 with the outbreak of the ghetto uprisings, which captured the attention of resistance-minded Poles.

Supraglottic airways (SGAs) have been part of core anaesthetic practice for approximately 30 years, since the introduction of the classic laryngeal mask which is described in some detail. In many countries an SGA is now used for airway management for the majority of anaesthetics. Optimal use and insertion technique are described. The range of SGAs available and their roles have expanded dramatically in this time. Second generation SGAs are those designed to reduce the risk of aspiration and are emphasised in this chapter. With the wide range of SGAs available it can be problematic to decide which device to use and this is especially so as the boundaries of acceptable use are ever widened. This chapter describes those devices with the greatest versatility and utility – arguably also with the greatest safety profile too – and some newer devices. SGAs have a major role to play in advanced and difficult airway management. The use of an SGA as a rescue device and as a conduit for intubation during management of the difficult airway is described in detail.

Obesity is a risk factor for increased difficulty in most modalities of airway management. It decreases ease and effectiveness of face mask ventilation, supraglottic airway device use and front of neck airway techniques and probably makes laryngoscopy more difficult. When difficulty occurs, airway rescue techniques are more likely to fail in the obese patient. Obesity also increases the risk of aspiration and difficulty in lung ventilation, both of which may necessitate changes in anaesthetic technique. Most importantly, obesity reduces the time available for airway management before hypoxia supervenes. To worsen matters, obesity reduces the efficacy of pre-oxygenation and safe apnoea time is less prolonged with apnoeic oxygenation techniques than in the non-obese population. To compound these factors obesity is associated with obesity-specific (e.g. obstructive sleep apnoea, obesity hypoventilation syndrome) and non-specific co-morbidities (diabetes, asthma, hypertension). With increasing numbers of obese patients and increasing degrees of obesity in the surgical population it is essential that all anaesthetists are familiar with the potential complications of airway management in the obese and the techniques that may mitigate or manage risk.

Abduction can be described as the practice of carrying off a woman with the purpose of compelling her to marry a particular man who would then have access to the available dowry of money, land or other property, tied to the woman.Abduction was a noted phenomenon of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and, within the context of the history of marriage in Ireland, reflects the desire, and in some cases the ability, of couples to overcome parental decisions on their marriage partners, but perhaps primarily the desire among individuals and families for property and status that was achievable through marriage.Abduction was most often a crime of considerable terror and violence and it is worth exploring for what it says about marriage strategy, attitudes to marriage, consent, parental authority and property, women’s agency in choosing a marriage partner and the value of women in Irish society. Abduction in Ireland between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries was a common practice.In this chapter we examine the motives behind, and assess reactions, to abductions, including the role of the family and wider community in this often very violent enterprise.