Did you know that the Wellcome Library is making available a treasure trove of public health information in the Medical Officer of Health reports? There are thousands of reports from the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries covering a wide geographic area across the United Kingdom.
…we offer you The Life Story of a Fowl (1908).
Check out all our titles on spas!
Including…
Drop “Valentine” into the search box on the MHL’s Internet Archive page and you get some interesting results. Lots on nineteenth century physician Valentine Mott, as you might imagine, but also items about a blind child prodigy, Valentine Miller and a 1909 warning on the perils of venereal disease from the AMA.
You can also flip through F. C. Valentine’s 600 Medical Don’ts and, if you’re tired of reading, watch a compilation of Marlboro commercials!
The Archives and Special Collections of the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library of Columbia University have digitized the 1661 German translation of Johann Remelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum.
Check out the great video made about the process:
Mrs. Priestley’s 1885 lecture Unseen dangers in the home is a tour de force collection of late Victorian concerns about health and hygiene. She starts right off with the dangers of polluted air and moves on through bad water and the dangers of in-house piping among other things. It’s interesting to note that Priestley’s text assumes her audience is one of well-off matrons with disposable income; this is not a lecture designed to help the working poor, for example. She recounts anecdotes from friends with houses in Mayfair, Picadilly, and St. James, who have had to deal with complaints from their servants of bad air in basements, kitchens, bathrooms, and attics.
Flip through the pages of Mrs. Priestley’s lecture below or follow this link to read Unseen dangers in the home.
I always enjoy looking through the cookbooks and home manuals in our collection and it always seems as though a holiday is a good time to point out a few.
What about the 1903 texts The White House cookbook : a comprehensive cyclopedia of information for the home; containing cooking, toilet, and household recipes, menus, dinner-giving, table etiquette, care of the sick, health suggestions, facts worth knowing, etc., featuring a recipe for both an English and a Christmas plum pudding.
Or this 1959 Food at Your Fingertips: In One Volume, put together by the Cookbook Committee of the Homemaking Section of the American Association of Instructors of the Blind.
There’s also the 1902 Cook book, published by the Ladies’ Aid Society of the Pullman Memorial Church, Albion, New York, which starts off with Pea soup. Dr. Fluhrer’s Favorite, and Mrs. Willingham Rawnsley’s 1908 An old-world recipe book, offering The Pudding. The simply titled Myra’s cookery book (1880) provides a wealth of recipes from soup to pickles.
Did I miss out your favorite? let me know in the comments! And, as always, please do visit our full collection for more.
Many of us are looking at an uptick in home baking as the holidays approach and some of us are dusting off recipes that we don’t use all that often: shortbread, cinnamon rolls, croissants, Eccles cakes! Never fear, though, George Read is here with directions for a variety of confectionery items in a “plain and concise manner.”
Flip through the pages of The confectioner’s and pastry-cook’s guide below or follow this link to read it online.
Now might be about the time in the fall semester when a little remedial something-or-other starts to sound like a pretty good idea — particularly remedial sleep.
Or perhaps you could just use the techniques in The remedial uses of hypnotism to convince yourself you have had more sleep and were ready to go all over again! (If you try that and it works, please do let me know.)
Page through below or follow this link to read Frederic Henry Gerrish’s 1892 The remedial uses of hypnotism.
If you’re a fan of the personal narrative, as I am, then any new one you find is an immediate treasure be it a collection of letters, autobiography, diary, or whatever.
The 1887 Letters from a Mourning City, originally written in Swedish by the traveller Axel Munthe and translated into English by Maude V. White, is a fascinating travelogue of Munthe’s trip to Naples in 1884 during an outbreak of cholera in the city.
Flip through the pages below or follow this link to read Letters from a Mourning City (Naples. Autumn 1884).
