Title page from "Home and Health and Home Economics."
Manuals of behavior, etiquette, deportment, and home economics are common publications even today. The authors of the 1880 Home and Health and Home Economics would probably have a very hard time recognizing the relationship between their publication and, say, Netiquette. Continue reading
Title page from "An Account of the Disease..."
Medical mysteries are a popular genre — or subgenre, depending on how you classify it! The details of Napoleon’s poisoning, the exact violence used on the Romanovs or Rasputin, or the “Black Dahlia” murder are historical narratives that still get readers. Alongside these large-scale stories, though, there are smaller puzzles in the history of medicine and science. Continue reading
Warnings from the front matter of "The Lady's Own Book."
In 1877, in England, Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, who would become notorious for refusing to take a religious oath to take his seat in Parliament in 1880, were prosecuted for publishing and distributing a book on birth control.
In 1847, in Michigan, Dr. Z.J. Brown published The Lady’s Own Book, or, Female Safeguard; the title goes on to specify that Dr. Brown intends talking about “Generation, Sterility, Impotency, Female Complaints, the Diseases of Infants and Children…” as well as a host of other topics all covered “…in a plain, yet chaste, style…” Continue reading
Page from Dr. Townsend's "Hay Fever, Asthma, and Chronic Catarrh."
With the approach of what seems like an extremely early spring — particularly in the Northeast — many of us are checking the expiry dates on our allergy medications.
According to Dr. M.M. Townsend, however, all we need is a pint or four-ounce bottle of his hay fever, allergy, and catarrh remedy to have a sneeze-free season: “…this Remedy, it is believed, will relieve every case.” (5) Continue reading
Bookplate from Volume I of "Demonology and Devil-lore."
The supernatural has enduring appeal in pop culture — as evidenced by the popularity of shows like Supernatural, True Blood, and Misfits — but also has a firm place in more academic surroundings. Before the physiological or neurological reasons were known for issues like epilepsy or schizophrenia, demoniac possession or the curse of a deity seemed as good an explanation as any for the symptoms at hand. Continue reading
Title page from "My Lady's Dressing-Room."
“The abuse of the habit of kissing is injurious to the complexion.” (86) This somewhat baffling statement is part of the survey of the “The Face” in My Lady’s Dressing-Room, a 1892 translation of a French volume by the Baronne Staffe on personal care and beauty for women. Harriet Hubbard Ayer writes in her introduction that she has “translated and adapted [the original French] for the women of America.” (iii) Continue reading
In an earlier post on this blog, we talked about the English attempts to locate Sir John Franklin, unsuccessful searcher after the Northwest Passage. Franklin left England in 1845 with two ships, the Erebus and Terror, on his second attempt to locate the Passage, one of the rocs’ eggs of nineteenth century navigation. The second voyage resulted in a worse disaster than the first — Franklin and some of his men had staggered back overland from the first attempt; the second resulted in the total loss of both ships and men. Continue reading
Colored plate from De Becker's "The Nightless City."
In 1899, Joseph Ernest De Becker published an expose of the geisha quarter of the Japanese capital of Tokyo — then named Yedo — called the yoshiwara. De Becker ended up with a tome of over 500 pages, detailing the history, architecture, and customs of the quarter and including several beautiful color prints and many illustrations in black and white. Continue reading
Title page of "The Problem of Race-Regeneration."
In the April 1912 edition of Eugenics Review, an E. Schuster wrote about a new series of pamphlets, “New Tracts for the Times”: “We welcome the publication of this series, aiming as it does at awakening ‘an enlightened social conscience’…” (94) Continue reading
Cover of "A Necrology..."
In 1899, David N. Patterson assembled a necrology of physicians “in Lowell and vicinity” for the North Massachusetts Medical Society. A “necrology” is technically nothing more than a list of the dead, usually those from a certain place or time. In this case, Patterson created something more like a group biography or hagiography. Continue reading
