AmateisGal
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 6,126
- Location
- Nebraska
Back from the dump with an armload of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century books deposited, apparently, by the heirs of someone who took very good care of their volumes. Quite a few books on nature, science, religion, and international affairs.
The one I'm looking at now is "Woman and her Diseases," by Edward H. Dixon, MD, the 1860 printing of a work first published in 1855. It was one of the most popular of the semi-scientific works focusing on "female issues," and while some of the basic medical information is interesting, considering what was known at the time, the chapter on "Hysteria," is, if you'll pardon the expression, quite hysterical.
I'm usually pretty forgiving in books like this, "context of the time" and all that, but this one's a real pip. "Well-directed and good-natured ridicule, from a person from whom she cannot escape, as a relative inhabiting the same house, is the best means of overcoming this morbid state."
Yessir, Mister Victorian Doctor, M. D., sir. You come right over here and try that. Come riiiiiiiiight overrrrrrrrr here.
OHHHH. I can't believe what some people throw away. Just blows my mind. Thank you for rescuing them!