Digital Highlights: “The Nightless City”

Colored plate from De Becker's "The Nightless City."

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, architecture, and customs of the quarter and including several beautiful color prints and many illustrations in black and white. Continue reading

Digital Highlights: Eugenic Tracts

Title page of "The Problem of Race-Regeneration."

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) Continue reading

Digital Highlights: Medical Necrology

Cover of "A Necrology..."

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. In this case, Patterson created something more like a group biography or hagiography. Continue reading

Digital Highlights: Bathing Medicine

Image of a hypocasium from a Roman bath at Chester.

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 a greater or lesser degree of popularity. Today, therapies like acupuncture and medical massage are receiving critical attention; in the nineteenth century in Britain, the Turkish bath enjoyed a similar vogue. Continue reading

Digital Highlights: Doctor’s Orders

Title page of "Letters To A Young Physician..."

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 a lengthy dedication to his  friend, John Collins Warren, enumerating his colleague’s accomplishments, thanking him for his friendship, and giving the reasons for his publication of the work in hand. Continue reading

Digital Highlights: The Fascination of Crime

Table of contents from "Narratives."

Narratives of Remarkable Crimes, selected from the German works of Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach and published in 1846 in London, consists of 14 of the trials in Feuerbach’s original 1300 page work chosen and translated by Lady Duff Gordon. She provides a brief overview of the German justice system in her preface, commenting on the role of witnesses, judge, and the system of appeals. She spends only a brief paragraph explaining her reasons for choosing the trials here published, mentioning only the influence of an article from the influential and popular Edinburgh Review and her desire to “[choose] those trials which appear to me to have the greatest general interest…” (10) Continue reading

Digital Highlights: Pioneer Doctor

Frontispiece portrait of Owens-Adair.

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 married as a teenager and left her husband before she was twenty. She began attending school after leaving her husband and received funding from family friends and admirers, allowing her to set herself up as a school teacher and pursue her own further education. Continue reading