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 …
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, …
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)
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. …
James Jackson’s 1855 Letters to a Young Physician Just Entering Upon Practice makes for great reading. The volume consists of 27 “letters” of advice from Jackson to the newly qualified medical graduate. Jackson covers a variety of subjects and starts with …
In 1840 in Preston, in the north of England in Lancashire, Joseph Dearden published A Brief History of Ancient and Modern Tee-totalism, an apologia for the temperance movement.
Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair, born in Missouri in 1840, published her life-story in 1906, writing down her experiences of life with pioneering parents and her medical education as one of the first women to aim for a medical degree. She was …
In 1843, Sir Alexander Morison published The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases, a compilation of observations and sketches of mental patients.
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.”
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 …
Recent articles in history of medicine