From Clifford G. Grulee’s Infant Feeding (1914).
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Tag: women
Digital Highlights: Abduction!
Title page of Ann Brookhouse's narrative.
Tabloid-style stories have been popular for far longer than what we think of as tabloid journalism. A Narrative of the Seizure & Confinement of Ann Brookhouse from the end of the eighteenth century is just such a piece. Purporting to be the true life narrative of a young female victim of abduction “as related by herself” and “written by a friend.” Continue reading
Digital Highlights: “Improved Under-Clothing”
Title page from Mrs. Flynt's manual.
In 1882, styles of clothing for women were restrictive to say the least: tight bodices and long sweeping skirts restricted breathing, made it hard to move freely, and, in some cases where lacing was taken to the extreme, might even crack ribs or damage internal organs. Whether or not all women adhered to the dominant style all the time is, of course, impossible to say; probably most women made adjustments as necessary for individual figures, injuries, or the daily work they had to complete. Serious dress reform for women was some years off, though, and many people thought that strict lacing and tight corsets were necessary for women’s health, particularly to brace up weak backs or prevent hysterics, to say nothing of the fact of keeping in line with the fashion which called for tiny waists. Continue reading
Digital Highlights: The Physician’s Answer
Title page from The Physician's Answer.
This slim volume, called The Physician’s Answer, was originally published in 1913 by the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association. The subtitle adds a little more information: Medical Authority and Prevailing Misconceptions about Sex.
It looks like — and might have been sold as — a Q and A-style manual of sex education, something like a far fore-runner of Our Bodies, Ourselves or a similar modern publication. In fact, it’s more like a moral treatise on the necessity of physical continence and self-restraint. While both genders are mentioned, Dr. M.J. Exner, author of the small volume, spends most of his 50-something pages talking about young men.
Dr. Exner spends most of his time exhorting young men, in terms that have a distinct tinge of muscular Christianity, to keep themselves clean and pure with married life in mind:
There is but one normal sex life for the young man–normal in relation to his own highest interests and to his social responsibilities–and that is the life in which his sex problem is left wholly to the care of nature, in which his sex impulses are controlled and transmuted into finer stuff by resolute will and high ideals of life as a whole. (5)
While the bulk of the text is devoted to young men — an exact age range is not specified, but it seems fairly clear from context that Dr. Exner has in mind adolescents and young men; anyone married is, obviously, beyond his purview in this case! — there is some commentary on women:
Womanhood outside of marriage does not demand any concessions from society regarding the sex life. Woman expects to control her sex impulses and does control them and every self-respecting man expects and demands that she do so. (18)
The text reflects a real concern with, in essence, what young men might be doing with their time when not at school or work. Anyone looking for day-to-day helpful advice, though, should probably look elsewhere; Dr. Exner has a high philosophical tone and manages to avoid any kind of detail that might have been described as salacious or even specific.
The assumptions about the sex lives of women, too, are fascinating material for historians of gender and women’s studies; the fact that women are so little mentioned in a volume which presumes heterosexuality is interesting in and of itself! The possibilities for study in this volume are widely varied: not only women’s studies historians but also historians interested in youth, medicine, and community organizations would find something here to interest them.
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Digital Highlights: God’s revenge against murder! Or, the tragical histories and horrid cruelties of Elizabeth Brownrigg, midwife, to Mary Mitchell, Mary Jones, & Mary Clifford, her three apprentices
Frontispiece from God’s revenge against murder! Or, the tragical histories and horrid cruelties of Elizabeth Brownrigg, midwife, to Mary Mitchell, Mary Jones, & Mary Clifford, her three apprentices. London, 1767? From the Boston Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine.
Medical jurisprudence is among the subject areas from which the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine’s Center for the History of Medicine has selected titles to be digitized. This image also tangentially represents another topic on which the Center will focus its digitization efforts, namely obstetrics.
Elizabeth Brownrigg, a midwife in 18th-century London, was executed for her cruel mistreatment of orphaned children apprenticed to her in order to be trained as domestic servants. The Center’s holdings in medical jurisprudence include many pamphlets describing lurid trials such as this one, from its Boston Medical Library collection.
To view this and other titles digitized for the Medical Heritage Library, go to the Internet Archive, click on “Texts” on the top of the page, then enter the search tag “medicalheritagelibrary.”
Link to: God’s revenge against murder! Or, the tragical histories and horrid cruelties of Elizabeth Brownrigg, midwife, to Mary Mitchell, Mary Jones, & Mary Clifford, her three apprentices at http://www.archive.org/details/godsrevengeagain00brow.