The Lunatic Asylum Nightmare

Goya, Courtyard with Lunatics

Loretta reports:

The nightmare theme of a sane person being locked up in a lunatic asylum appears in fiction again and again. This is because it touched a chord. For all too many, especially women, this was a grim reality.

My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, which I came upon via the Public Domain Review, describes in disturbing detail a man’s experience in the Victorian era. For a woman’s point of view, you might want to look at Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House.

In the fictional world, the theme is prominent in Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White.

"I suppose that we most of us...quietly comforted ourselves with the reflection that 'in the nineteenth century' (an expression which is used as a sort of talisman, apparently, like the 'Briton' of Palmerston's day) such things are impossible.  It requires a personal experience of their amenities, such as fell to my lot, seriously to believe that the adventures of a novel may be transferred to the pages of an 'article," and be as strange--and true. Villainous conspiracies, for personal motive, to set the lunacy law in motion, are rare enough, I do not doubt. But the law favours them. What is not rare, I doubt even less, is the imprisonment in these fearful places of people who are perfectly sane, but suffering from some temporary disorder of the brain, the most delicate and intricate part of all the mechanism, and the least understood; and if asylums are a sad necessity for the really mad,—and even that I cannot help doubting; for from what I have seen I believe that they require a much more loving and more direction personal supervision than they can get, poor people,--for the nervous sufferers who are not mad they are terrible."—My experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, by a Sane Patient (1879)

Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum

Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on a caption link will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed. And, just so you know, if you order a book through one of my posts, I might get a small share of the sale.

The Invalid Chair in A Duke in Shining Armor

Mechanical Chair

Loretta reports:

The basics of this post appeared a few years ago, as Merlin's Mechanical Chair. Clearly, the ingenious device stuck in my mind, because it ended up playing an important role in A Duke in Shining Armor.

The trick was figuring out how the thing worked. In the first place, early 19th century prose can be very hard to follow. It tends to be much less direct than our way of writing. In the second place, my brain is easily confused by physics and mechanics. Doubtless it took me a lot longer to learn how to drive this chair than it did the Duke of Ripley, in my book. I will leave it to you to read the instructions and make what sense of them you can.

Meanwhile, let us consider for a moment the commentary that follows the instructions. "Amusement"? Oh, yes, I figured that one out pretty quickly. But the suggestions for running the chair by means of a "very small and portable steam-engine" remind me of the way some people used to imagine us flying around on individual rocket-propelled devices in The Future. Having a 19th C steam engine powering my chair does not strike me as a safer prospect.

And then there's the idea of finding a way "to enable it to carry a small cannon, which should be, both for itself and its operators, completely unassailable by the enemy, as well as, by the singular rapidity of its evolutions, terribly and unusually destructive." Is your hair standing on end? Mine sure is. But let us remember that Great Britain was at war with Napoleon in 1811, and things weren't going so well. At home, people carried on with their lives, but that didn't mean they weren't aware of what was happening on the Continent, or didn't take seriously the possibility of invasion. As it turned out, Napoleon continued to be a danger until June 1815.

By the time of my story (1833), however, that's all in the distant past, and the chair is perfoming its dual functions of serving those with limited mobility as well as providing amusement.

Mechanical chair described

Mechanical chair described

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the captions will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Friday Video: Victorian Paramedics

Loretta reports:

Researching those of my books in which characters become ill, I’ve grown familiar with 19th century medical practices, many of which were based on theories dating back to the middle ages.

The strange treatments in this Horrible Histories video are mainly superstitions, rather than actual medical procedures. Still, they’re less disturbing than many of the remedies physicians truly believed in, all too often to the fatal detriment of their patients’ health.

Do you ever wonder what people a couple of centuries from now will think of our medical practices? They’ll be horrified, I don't doubt.

Image: Screen shot from video, Horrible Histories- Victorian Paramedics.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

From the Archives: Finding Conjugal Bliss in Dr. Graham's Celestial Bed, 1781

Susan reporting:

We TNHG are generally very good at remembering things that happened two hundred years ago, but during the last ten - not so much. Sometimes it takes a reader to jog our memories about old posts that are worthy of a return appearance. Many thanks to Alun Withey for reminding me of this post that first appeared back in 2011!

Exploiting the love-lives of the rich and famous is hardly a new pursuit. From ancient times, charlatans have offered exotic, expensive potions to increase flagging libidos and unusual regimes designed to restore the magic to chilly marriages. One of the most infamous of these is Dr. James Graham (1745-1794), a self-proclaimed physician, self-promoter, and inventor (Wikipedia luridly categorizes him as a "sexologist") who captured the imagination of English society in the 1780s – and a good deal of their money besides.

Like all good quacks, Dr. Graham had a splendid gimmick, and his was the Temple of Hymen in Shomberg House in Pall Mall, a kind of overwrought clinic for his unusual treatments. His most profitable speciality was improving conjugal sex and fertility, and he found a clamoring audience among the upper classes whose survival depended on producing healthy heirs. Many of his customers were weakened by venereal disease and general dissipation, but that didn't stop Dr. Graham from making the same outlandish guarantees that often appear today in spam folders. His celebrity clientele included politicians John Wilkes and Charles James Fox, aristocrats such as the Duchess of Devonshire and the Duke of Richmond, and courtesans like Elizabeth Armistead and Mary Robinson.

While his treatments varied from elixirs to mud baths, the centerpiece of the Temple of Hymen was the Celestial Bed. This over-sized bed (it measured nine by twelve feet) could be tilted for an optimum angle, and was supported by glass rods that could permit the bed and its occupants to become so charged with static electricity that it gave off a greenish glow. Decorative automata, a pair of live turtle doves, and lush bouquets of fresh flowers were also features of the bed. Adding to the ambiance was a mattress stuffed with a special mixture of sweet-smelling herbs and hair from the tails of the most rampant English stallions, while a special celestial pipe organ played music calculated to inspire love-making. For the next three years, until Dr. Graham's extravagance landed him in prison for debt and bankruptcy, there were plenty of couples eager for the experience.

The price of a magical night in the Celestial Bed? An astonishingly steep fifty pounds. Did it work? Perhaps – though who wanted to admit that it didn't?

In honor of Valentine's Day, 2011, the Museum of London is recreated Dr. Graham's Celestial Bed as a special adults-only exhibition. For more information about this, as well as more detailed descriptions of Dr. Graham's claims, see here – though be forewarned that this post, like the exhibition, is probably best not read at work.

Above: The Celestial Bed, with the Rosy Goddess of Health reposing thereon, unknown artist, English School, 1782, private collection.

Care of Infants in 1837

Alken, The Infant

Loretta reports:



Well into the 20th century, a great many children did not survive infancy. In this context, the idea of "strengthening" and "hardening" a child makes sense, though we may find some of the practices a little alarming.
✼✼✼

A child is constitutionally weak and irritable to a high degree: hence we should endeavour to strengthen, and diminish this irritability, in order to procure it the greatest happiness of life,—a firm body, which may resist all the influence of air and weather. Such management is highly advantageous, as it will enable children, when adults, to support every species of fatigue and hardship...

All attempts to render children hardy, must, therefore, be made by gradual steps. Nature admits of no sudden transitions. For instance, infants should by imperceptible degrees be inured to the cool, and then to the cold bath…

The child's skin is to be kept perfectly clean, by washing its limbs morning and evening, and likewise its neck and ears; beginning with warm water, till, by degrees, he will not only bear, but like to be washed with cold.

After he is a month old, if he has no cough, fever, nor eruption, the bath should be colder and colder, (if the season is mild) and gradually it may be used as it comes from the fountain. After carefully drying the whole body, head, and limbs, another dry soft cloth, a little warmed, should be used gently, to take all the damp from the wrinkles, or fat parts that fold together. Then rub the limbs; but when the body is rubbed, take special care not to press upon the stomach or belly. On these parts, the hands should move in a circle, because the bowels lie in that direction. If the skin is chafed, hair-powder is to be used. The utmost tenderness is necessary in drying the head, and no binding should be made close about it. Squeezing the head, or combing it roughly, may cause dreadful diseases, and even the loss of reason. A small soft brush, lightly applied, is safer than a comb. Clean clothes every morning and evening, will tend greatly to a child's health and comfort.—The Female's Friend, and General Domestic Adviser 1837

Image: Thomas Henry Alken, The Infant, from Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man (1824), courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Views on Tobacco in 1832

Cigars, by H. Heath (1827)

Loretta reports:

From the time Sir Walter Raleigh brought it to England, tobacco had its detractors as well as proponents.

Henry James Meller's Nicotiana (1832), whose full title is almost as long as one of its chapters, is very much a pro-tobacco document. However, it’s also an interesting historical one. I chose one from hundreds of possible excerpts, mainly because this isn’t the only 1800s book I've found recommending tobacco as a preservative for teeth.

Tobacco for teeth

More tobacco treatment

If you start on page 83,
you can learn about the many ailments it was alleged to cure, including lung ailments.


Cigars, by H Heath 1827, courtesy Wellcome Images via Wikipedia.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Pulvermacher's Hydro-Electric Chains to Cure Whatever Ails You

Pulvermacher's Electric Chain

Loretta reports:

My vacation reading included Claire Tomalin’s Charles Dickens: A Life. You’d think, after all this time, all the bios, all the scholarly papers, there’s nothing new to learn about Dickens. Au contraire.

Maybe I overlooked it elsewhere, but, among other things, I discovered that Dickens’s health was worse than I'd supposed, and he suffered from gout (which he pretended was something else—there was a lot of fiction in his life as well as his books). And to treat his painful foot, on the night before he died, he ordered “a ‘voltaic band,’ a type of electric chain that had become a fashionable all-purpose cure, recommended to him by the actress Mrs. Bancroft and supplied by Isaac Pulvermacher, Medical Battery Maker.”

And yes, of course I tracked the thing down for our readers’ edification.

You can read about it in this detailed pamphlet.  And this pamphlet explains all the ailments it supposedly cures. And you can read the the Wikipedia overview, with illustrations. And  Hand-Book of Natural Philosophy 1856 explains some more here.

Puvermacher's advertisement 1859

Please note the impressive list in the ad, of those endorsing the device.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Remarkable Dr. Mead

Ramsay, Portrait of Dr. Richard Mead

Loretta reports:

Sometimes it’s my husband’s fault. He’s the one who asked me if I’d ever heard of Dr. Mead. When I looked blank, he read the following from a New Yorker piece  on papyrus scrolls: “Mead was a distinguished British physician, a fellow of the Royal Society, and a noted book collector, with a library of more than a hundred thousand volumes in his house in Bloomsbury, which was dispersed in an epic, fifty-six-day auction after his death, in 1754.”

A hundred thousand volumes? Naturally, I had to investigate.

Among other discoveries, I found this obituary in Munk’s Roll, Royal College of Physicians, Lives of the Fellows, and a series of blog posts, written in conjunction with an exhibition I wish I’d seen: "The Generous Georgian: Dr. Richard Mead."

He was, most definitely, a gentleman of the Enlightenment. Along with the book collection (which this site puts at 10K, not 100K), he was a patron of the arts, gave generously of time and money to The Foundling Hospital, experimented on himself—e.g., drinking snake venom—to test theories, published a number of treatises (here’s one), strongly supported smallpox inoculation (but do take a look at which persons were experimented on first) and ...

Gillray, The Cow-Pock 1802

But why not just click on the Generous Georgian link, and read the posts for yourself? In sum, this man was no slacker.

Online you can also find these catalogs from the auction of his collection:

“Valuable gems, bronzes, marble and other busts and antiquities" and some weird other stuff here.  "Pictures, consisting of portraits, landscapes, sea-pieces, architecture, flowers, fruits, animals, histories" here. "Genuine, entire and curious collection of prints and drawings (bound and unbound) here.

"The said collection may be view'd on Thursday the 9th and every day after (Sunday excepted) till the time of sale, which will begin each evening punctually at half an hour after five o'clock."

Images: Allan Ramsay, Dr. Richard Mead (1747) courtesy Coram in the Care of the Foundling Museum. James Gillray, The Cow-pock—or—the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation (1802) courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Death of John Keats

John Keats

Loretta reports:

William Hone, the author of Hone’s Every-Day Book (which I frequently cite) wasn’t shy about giving his opinions, a trait that landed him in court more than once.

I was aware of Byron’s having joked that a bad review finished Keats off. This entry in the Every-Day Book, though, was rather more touching, and very much in Hone’s plain-spoken, pugnacious spirit. Any writer  who’s suffered a nasty review can testify to the unpleasantness of the experience. It has certainly aided and abetted writer’s block in some cases; aroused defiance in others. Has it ever hastened an author’s death? I don’t know. But I promise you that it has led to some writers' fantasizing about hastening the critic’s demise.

In fact, though it’s generally agreed that Keats died of consumption (tuberculosis), there is debate about the role mercury played in shortening his life. He has written that he took it, so that’s not disputed. But why is another question. Some believe he took it to treat a venereal infection; others point out that mercury was used to treat other ailments, and Mr. Keats's health issues were complex.

~~~

February 23.

Chronology.

1821. John Keats, the poet, died. Virulent and unmerited attacks upon his literary ability, by an unprincipled and malignant reviewer, injured his rising reputation, overwhelmed his spirits, and he sunk into consumption. In that state he fled for refuge to the climate of Italy, caught cold on the voyage, and perished in Rome, at the early age of 25. Specimens of his talents are in the former volume of this work. One of his last poems was in prospect of departure from his native shores. It is an

Ode to a Nightingale.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk; 

Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 

But being too happy in thine happiness,— 

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, 

In some melodious plot 

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 

Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 

 ... *

This ode was included with "Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems,” by John Keats, published by Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, who, in an advertisement at the beginning of the book, allude to the critical ferocity which hastened the poet's death. —Hone’s Every-Day Book Vol II (originally published 1827)

~~~

*Please click on above the link to the Every-Day Book for the full poem.

Image: Cover of May Clarissa Gillington Byron's A Day with Keats (1913) courtesy Project Gutenberg.

Germs Discovered in 1835

Volvox globator

Loretta reports:

Well, I’ve just gone down a rabbit hole, all on account of this entry in the Athenaeum of 26 September 1835 (first column).

‘An Essay on the Nature of Diseases, by A. Green, L.L.B.‘—An essay on mirth by an undertaker, we could understand, for things may be defined by their contraries; but an essay on diseases by an L.L.B., was rather puzzling, until the secret transpired in the few first pages. The author has been to see the oxy-hydrogen microscope exhibited, and has been “ frighted from his propriety" by the spectacle. His hallucination is, that all diseases are occasioned by animalculae; and his logical formula is this: “ whatever may be, may be; nothing prevents it from being, therefore it is." It is curious to remark. that this theory ends precisely where all other medical theories have hitherto ended. " We may know, or at least believe, that a disease is caused by some minute creatures, of some kind, situated somewhere; but we may neither know the kind, nor the situation, nor what medicines can be made to come into contact with them, nor what will destroy them when it is in contact, except by experience. The means of cure can only be known by experience; and experience must therefore still be the foundation of medical science, or at least of such part o fit as is of practical utility." This, which is the last sentence of the book, looks something like a return to reason; and we hope that this first victory of the sane over the lunatic animalculae may be followed up to a complete and final conquest. In this hope, we should have passed the matter in silence, but that it affords a not uncommon specimen of "graduated" wisdom, which it may be useful to study, at the present moment of university reformation ; and as such, we recommend it to public attention.

Here's an excerpt from Mr. Green's Essay on the Nature of Diseases (1835):

It is known to every one, that by the aid of the microscope, there may be seen in water which has been exposed for some time to the open air, minute animated beings, generally very transparent, and presenting an organization more or less simple ... The popular interest recently acquired by the solar microscope, and still more by the oxy-hydrogen microscope, induces us to believe that all our readers have sufficient knowledge of the microscopic animalcula, to be interested in the discoveries which have recently been made in the part of natural history, which relates to them.  

Nearly all the reviewers went ballistic:

“The proposition that animalcules are the causes of all diseases is not new, neither is it true. Thus to imagine that animalcules are the cause of all continued and intermittent fevers, all contagious diseases, syphilis, plague, hydrophobia, small-pox, measles, hooping-cough, scarlatina, sea-scurvy ... appears to us not only untenable, but perfect nonsense.”—London Medical and Surgical Journal 1835.

Microscopic creature 1829 image

Review in The Spectator, Volume 8, 1835.   Somewhat more open-minded review in The Metropolitan Magazine, Volume 13, 1835 (Bottom of page). 

Images: (above) Volvox globator, from The Microscope and Its Revelations, 1891; (below) Microscopic illustrations of living objects, 1840—note that the image was drawn in 1829.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Grimstone's Eye Snuff

Loretta reports:

I came upon this advertisement while looking for something else. Mr. Grimstone has created a cure for eye ailments as well as headaches. Well, they can go together. The interesting part was the snuff—non-tobacco, by the way.

A little further research showed me that mine might have been one of Mr. Grimstone’s earlier ads, that his eye-snuff was a household word often employed for comic purposes in novels, 
and in magazines like Punch, and that he was harassed by the excise people. That last link will take you to quite the tale of woe.

A Cyclopedia of Domestic Medicine says “Grimstone’s eye-snuff ... is of service in many cases of chronic ophtalmia.”

Others call it quack medicine. The Quack Doctor offers a neat summary of Grimstone's patent medicine career here.

Image: Four eyes. Drawing, c. 1794, from Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust,

Text clipping is from my copy (courtesy author Candice Hern) of The Ladies’ Cabinet for what we believe is February 1836.

Bills of Mortality 1830

Loretta reports:

I’ve posted Bills of Mortality before, for 1820. It was a little disappointing not to get the same kind of detail—e.g., what people died of—for 1830. This Wikipedia entry seems to account for the dearth of information. It's important to remember that these are the figures for burials in the Church of England, which leaves out many people.

Even so, and allowing for the drawbacks of the data compilation, we can still find food for thought.  The slight increase in births and deaths would correspond, I think, to the increase in population. If the year were 1832 or 1833, I'd expect a much higher death rate, because this was when the first major cholera epidemic struck the U.K.

Bills of Mortality 1830

Meanwhile, though, given the increase in population, the rates are similar, including the high death rate of children under two years old.

Image: St. Mary's Church, Woolwich, 1845, courtesy Wikipedia. Image for 1820 edition is a scan from my copy of the book.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Medical Advice About Bathing in 1813

Warm Bath

Loretta reports:

Recently, I posted about shower baths in the 1800s.

Those of you who’ve followed our various posts on bathing are aware that our ancestors were not necessarily filthy and smelly, although they did not generally take full baths or showers every day.

But cleanliness wasn’t the only reason for bathing. In 1800s medical literature, one encounters discussions about the medicinal value of baths, of various temperatures. My post on the Royal Waterloo Bath included the quote, “Bathing is so essentially connected with health ...”

Going to Bath or another spa town to take the waters might include bathing in as well as drinking the healthful waters.

This Medical Report, a monthly item—at least for a time—in Ackermann’s Repository, offers both a glimpse at the ailments a physician encountered and his thoughts on bathing. Please note the last several lines, where he describes what bathing cures and what dangers it holds.

1813 Medical Report

Image from Poetical Sketches of Scarborough in 1813, courtesy Internet Archive.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

A Travelling Medicine Chest for 1827

Medicine Chest 1805

Loretta reports:

You may be interested to learn that improving stale beer falls under the category of Medicine, though this is not quite as exciting as the advice regarding lancets.  Note also the product placement.

~~~

Travelling Medicine Chests have been fitted up in a variety of forms : however, so many circumstances arise which it is impossible to foresee ... that all that the most wary Traveller can do, is by timely attention to the First Symptoms of Disorder, to prevent the increase of it: for this purpose, he will rarely require more than Salts—Rhubarb—Sal Volatile—and Sticking Plaster.

A Lancet is indeed necessary for a Traveller, because a Lancet which has been used in bleeding a person afflicted with an Infectious Disease may inoculate any other who may be bled with it a short time afterwards— and so may a Razor which has shaved a diseased person.

Carbonate of Soda is useful: you may occasionally get good Beer*, excepting that it is a little Stale, which this will correct; but the best Beverage for Travellers, is half of a common-sized Wine Glass; or One ounce of Brandy in a common-sized Tumbler; or Eight ounces, or half-a-pint of Water.

Strong Peppermint Lozenges are excellent Stomach warmers, and very comforting companions in Cold Weather; — they will often stop Sea-sickness, and will fortify your Stomach when you have to fast longer than usual. They are made by Smith, Fell Street, Wood Street, Cheapside...

Some Biscuits ; for the Languor felt when the Stomach is empty, may often be removed by eating a Biscuit; and when it can be so appeased, it is a more innocent way of amusing it, than by winding it up with Wine; however, it is more advisable to give it both, than to suffer the Circulation to go down.

* We can tell you where you can get good beer in London—at Field's, No. 22, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. Brown Stout, Burton Ale, and Cider Superlative, quite as agreeable to the Mouth, and ten times more so to the Stomach, than half of the Champagne that is now sold.  —John Jervis, The Traveller’s Oracle (1827)

~~~

Image: Medicine chest, winged front, from Reece's Medical Hall, Pic Credit: Science Museum, London. Wellcome Images, Wellcome Library, London. Description: Medicine chest, winged front, from Reece's Medical Hall, Piccadilly, with 30 painted glass bottles and 4 drawers, 5 confection glasses, 1 probang, 3 boxes, 1 plaster spreader, 1 seal, 1 spatula, 1 bowl, 1 pill tile, 1 fleam, 1 lancet, 2 syringes, 4 visiting cards, 1 receipt and engraved plate, c1805.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will allow you to view at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Friday Video: King George III's insanity cure

Treatment with tractors

Loretta reports:

Among other research for Dukes Prefer Blondes, my current WIP, I've been looking at medical books and treatises from the early 1800s.  These leave one amazed that any of the patients survived their treatments.  Even monarchs suffered at their physicians' hands.  This Horrible History is, if anything, quite an understatement, and King George III was by no means the only royal tortured by his doctors.










 Illustration: James Gillray, Metallic Tractors (1801), from Wikipedia

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the captions will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

Jeremy Bentham's Head & Other Matters

Loretta reports:

Like anybody else who studied English history, I knew who Jeremy Bentham was.

But I did not know he was still hanging around the University College of London until a respected U.S. newspaper pointed this out.  The paper also reported as fact what turns out to be mainly a myth that accreted, as myths often do, around the truth.

Jeremy Bentham wanted his body preserved and kept on display.  He definitely wanted to encourage dissection. He believed, too, that his preserved body would be a useful educational tool.  He believed others’ bodies should be preserved for posterity, too, as what he called “Auto Icons.”

Though, having been dissected, his body wasn't actually preserved, his skeleton was duly stuffed with straw and dressed.  He had hoped to have his head mummified, and somebody did try to carry out his wishes, but the result wasn’t pretty.  Instead, a wax head was made and stuck on.  The real one apparently sat at his feet for a while, then was stored in a cabinet.  Now it’s in temperature-controlled storage, in the care of conservation staff.

This page shows you the full auto-icon and other images, including a photo of Bentham with his mummified head between his feet.

Here is a 360º view.

Contrary to myth, Bentham did not leave money to the University College of London on condition his body appear at University Board Meetings and noted as “present but not voting.”  He did show up for a board meeting in 2013, though.

You can read more here.

Stolen Bodies in 1826

Resurrectionists at work

Loretta reports:

In the days before x-rays (near the turn of the 20th century), the only way to see what was inside the human body was to cut it open and actually look inside, preferably after death.  As Judith Flanders points out in The Invention of Murder, “medical schools officially used only the corpses of executed criminals for dissection.”  The trouble was, there weren’t enough dead criminals to keep up with the demand.  Enterprising individuals started digging up the recently interred from graveyards and selling the bodies to anatomy lecturers.  Desperate for fresh corpses, the latter didn’t ask awkward questions.

What I didn’t realize until reading Ms. Flanders’s book was, this was only “semi-illegal (‘semi’ because dead bodies in law belonged to no one; resurrectionists could be charged only with stealing grave clothes).” The info comes as part of her introduction to the Burke and Hare case of the late 1820s.*

My excerpt from The Gentleman’s Magazine (Volume 96, Part 2; Volume 140, 1826) is shortly before Burke & Hare, and the “friend of anatomical pursuits" is a lot more finicky about how the bodies are obtained than medical schools were.

Resurrectionists

Image: Hablot Knight Browne, Resurrectionists at work, accompanying the story of John Holmes and Peter Williams, whipped for stealing dead bodies in 1777, from The chronicles of crime; or, The new Newgate calendar, being a series of memoirs and anecdotes of notorious characters who have outraged the laws of Great Britain from the earliest period to 1841 (later ed. 1887)

*More here.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the captions will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

A physican reports in autumn 1810

George Cruikshank, The Head-ache

Loretta reports:

I have, undoubtedly, an unhealthy fascination with medical practices of the past.  My not so hidden agenda is the certainty that whatever we think now is true, won’t be true in the next generation—or possibly next week—as reading about 19th C "cures" for cholera or typhus or tuberculosis or rabies has demonstrated.  Remember when peptic ulcers were supposed to result from stress?  And now it’s ... bacteria?  As a migraine sufferer, I’ve directly experienced the change in attitudes about the ailment and treatments for it.

Medical report 1810 at source

Medical report 1810 at source

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But beyond the morbid fascination with what was sickening and killing people once upon a time, I find the medical reports interesting for literary and philosophical reasons.  Note the dramatic style describing a fevered patient.  And also, please don’t skip the concluding lines.

George Cruikshank image courtesy Wikipedia.
Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the captions will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Interesting Births, Marriages & Deaths in 1817

View at Internet Archive

Loretta reports:

The Marriages, Births, and Deaths sections of magazines can be surprisingly exciting, as the entry from La Belle Assemblée for April 1817 demonstrates.

~~~

BIRTHS.

In the Fleet Prison, the lady of Charles Henry Bazeley, Esq. of a daughter.

In Chester, the lady of the Rev. Rich. Massie, of a son, being her 20th child.

At Preston, the wife of Mr. John Counsel, weaver, was brought to bed of a fine boy and two girls, all of whom are doing well.

MARRIED.

At St. James’s Church, the Earl of March to Lady Caroline Paget. The bride’s maids were the Ladies Jane and Georgiana Lenox, Ladies Jane and Georgiana Paget. The Marquis of Anglesea gave the lovely bride away. The, bride was elegantly attired in a Moravian worked muslin dress, with robes and trimmings of fine Brussels lace, worn over white satin, with a pelisse of white satin, richly trimmed with lace; her headdress consisted of a cap of entire lace, over which she wore a beautiful white lace veil. Her dress was rich, elegant, and neat.

Re-married on their return from Gretna-Green, at the house of her father, at Boulogne-sur-Mer, Captain Somerset, son of Lord Charles Somerset, to Miss Heathcote, daughter of Capt. H. Heathcote, R. N.

View at Internet Archive

Juvenile indiscretion!—At Tarvin, Mr. James Mort, aged 60, to Mrs. Ann Edwards, aged 80, both of great Boughton, near Chester. To avoid suspicion, the bride prevailed upon the bridegroom to go to Tarvin on the evening of Sunday, to which place the disconsolate damsel followed him in mourning, but to the astonishment of her neighbours, she returned in virgin white! This is the third time Hymen’s chains have been rivetted on each of these young rogues.
At Whaplode, Lincolnshire, Mr. Sindal, to Miss Favel, of that place. Mr. Sindal had just before come into possession of a considerable sum of money, which induced Miss Favel to marry him, and on the following Sunday night she decamped with a journeyman baker, taking with her 133l. by way of support.

~~~

So as to keep my blog from going to infinity and beyond, I left off the deaths, but you may want to visit the page, and notice the ages of the deceased.

—La Belle Assemblée: or, Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine, 1817

The Iron Lung Story

Loretta reports:

We’ve blogged about historical medical practices before (here, here, here, here, and elsewhere (under the label “medical matters”).

But this device, which I encountered at the Southwest Florida Museum of History, falls well within the realm of at least some of our readers’ memories.

Not everybody these days remembers what life was like before the first polio vaccine was available:  the warnings to keep away from crowded areas, the fears of going to beaches and pools, and the stark terror of depending on an iron lung for survival.  In 1952, nearly 58,000 Americans contracted polio.

Anyone whose childhood touched on a  part of the pre-polio vaccine era will recognize this device, and for some, it’s the stuff of nightmares.  But it saved lives.  We may think of polio as a crippling disease, but the virus could kill by paralyzing muscles needed for breathing.

The iron lung is the solution Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw devised in 1927, and which John Emerson improved in 1931.

“The patient was enclosed in the iron lung up to his neck.  A bellows-like apparatus created and released a vacuum causing the lung to work and induce breathing.”  This means that “air was …forced in with such pressure as to actually force all air out of the lungs …think of someone sitting on your chest!  When that pressure was released …or the person on your chest got off …your lungs would suck in air.” An electric motor powered the device, But it could be worked with a hand crank if electricity failed.

The Fort Myers, Florida, Fireman’s Club held a series of fish fries to raise the $2,250  needed to buy this iron lung in 1950.  When it arrived in Fort Myers, it was placed on a float and displayed in the Edison Pageant of Light Parade.”  It arrived in time for the last of the big polio epidemics of the 1950s. 

The sight of children and adults wearing leg braces like these is less common, but it’s part of a not-so-distant past.

Quoted text is from information provided at the Southwest Florida Museum of History.