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 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. …
The history of ‘alternative medicine’ does not begin in the twentieth century. The arguments between allopaths and homeopaths formed part of mainstream medical dialogue in the nineteenth century and alternatives to ‘heroic’ medicine or mainstream medical treatment have always enjoyed …
From Thomas Woolnoth’s The Study of the Human Face (1865.) As always, for more from the Medical Heritage Library, please visit our full collection!
From Walter J. Kilner’s The Human Atmosphere, or, The Aura Made Visible by the Aid of Chemical Screens (1911). 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, …
Modern-day students of history learn the use of primary sources almost from the minute they enter an undergraduate program; some, from high schools with engaged history faculty or by taking part in programs like History Day in Massachusetts, before then. …
Among the collection of works on hygiene and general health that the Francis A. Countway Medical Library has submitted to the Medical Heritage Library, one finds an eclectic mixture of theory and practice advocating everything from the reformation of cemetery burial to the …
John Harris’ Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men is a great read as we look forward to the Halloween season. Harris’ work is best approached in a kind of smorgasbord state of mind: there is no single through-line argument, rather Harris …
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