A patient suffering from 'mania' during an episode.
In 1843, Sir Alexander Morison published The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases, a compilation of observations and sketches of mental patients. Continue reading
From Mrs. H.R. Haweis’ The Art of Beauty (1883).
As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!
Frontispiece portrait of Livingstone.
David Livingstone was a nineteenth century celebrity; his travels in Africa gained him an international reputation. In 1880, William G. Blaikie published The Personal Life of David Livingstone through the Fleming H. Revell Company, “publishers of evangelical literature.” Continue reading
From George J. Engelmann’s Labor Among Primitive Peoples (1883).
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Page from “The Pied Piper of Health.”In 1920, a contest was held in New York City under the guidance of the Child Health Organization to present plays supporting the “Milk and Child Health Campaign.” The resultant plays were donated by their authors, public school teachers, for republication in an anthology called Health Plays for School Children (1921). The volume also includes a reprint of the short pamphlet “Milk: The Master Carpenter” which was meant to be the inspiration for the plays. Continue reading
From Hereward Carrington’s Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomena (1909).
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Chapter 1 of "Sex in Education."
Education for women was a hot-button topic in the nineteenth century in much the same way that mandatory testing is today. In 1875, Edward H. Clarke capitalised on the public’s interest in this topic with a lecture that he turned into a book, Sex in Education: or, a fair chance for girls. The book makes for entertaining but rather disturbing reading. Continue reading
From George McClellan’s Anatomy in Its Relation to Art (1901).
As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!
One of the most popular alternative cures in the nineteenth century involved water — lots of water. Balneology, balneotherapy, or “the cold water cure” was popular on mainland Europe, in England, and in the United States. Spas flourished in England, for example, and scientist Charles Darwin credited the cold water cure with the recreation of his system after serious digestive problems left him almost prostrate and unable to work.
Frontispiece portrait of Priessnitz.
In Six Months at Graefenberg, H.C. Wright tells about his own cure at a German cold water spa run by a balneologist called Priessnitz (there’s an interesting article on Priessnitz and water therapy in the first volume of British Journal of Balneology and Climatology from 1897.) Continue reading
The original building of the York Retreat. (19)
The care of the mentally ill has been a current topic in medical discourse for centuries. In the late eighteenth century, a Quaker named William Tuke opened the York Retreat in York, England, as a new type of mental health hospital. In 1892, Tuke’s grandson, D. Hack Tuke, who had been a visiting physician at the Retreat, wrote Reform in the Treatment of the Insane as a history of his grandfather’s pioneering efforts towards reforming the care of the mentally ill. Continue reading
