Ardith Hinton to  Anton Shepelev:

> AH>  I'm reminded here of Jacqueline Susann's novel VALLEY
> AH>  OF THE DOLLS, where women in particular were given pills
> AH>  which may have made them feel better temporarily but
> AH>  which did not address the underlying problem(s).
>
> AS>  [A learner's question:]
> AS>  I never became friendly with this consturction: may have
> AS>  made. Does it mean "it is possible that they made"? If so,
> AS>  is it correct to use the present tense to describe events
> AS>  in a novel introduced in the past tense (were given)?
>
>            It is possible [that] they made the users feel better
> temporarily... yes.  Either way the events of the story are in
> the past tense, and whatever we write in the preamble has far
> more to do with our own reasoning processes.

Thanks, I mean what you see (or the other way round).

> One of the things which may be confusing you here is an idiomatic
> use of "it".  ;-)

In "it is possible that..."? I have no problems with this dummy `it'
that I wot of... If, however, you refer to the error I made in a
tag quesion that you so kindly corrected in another post, that was
just a mental misstep (here is another alliteration for you).

>            While I don't know of any formal scientific studies on
> the topic I'd highly recommend Bernie Siegel's book LOVE,
> MEDICINE & MIRACLES.  The author is an oncologist who noticed
> that some of his patients appeared to be doing better than
> expected, and made it his business to figure out why.  Over the
> years I've noticed similar comments from various other front line
> workers as well....  :-)

That is certainly interesting. Our minds are have stronger effect
on our bodies than is usually thought, what with stigmae and the
yogi. As a nurse told me during a regular medical inspection at the
university, all illnesses are because of the nerves, and only one
because of love :-)

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