2019 - Female Authors Challenge

As a theme for next year, I'll be reading books from my library by female authors!
**need to buy or borrow from library

1.) The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens
2.) Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
3.) Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe ed. by Kathryn Edwards
4.) A Professor, a President, and a Meteor: The Birth of American Science by Cathryn J. Prince
5.) The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
6.) Divulging of Useful Truths in Physick: The Medical Agenda of Robert Boyle by Barbara Kaplam
8.) Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music by Jane Glover
9.) Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser
10.) Pandemic 1918: The Story of the Deadliest Influenza in History by Catherine Arnold
11.) The Speckled Monster: a Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox by Jennifer Lee Carrell
12.) Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle by Juliet Barker
13.) Thomas Jefferson and Music by Helen Cripe
14.) Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured by Kathryn Harrison
15.) Ten Days in a Mad House by Nellie Bly
16.) The Last Man by Mary Shelley
17.) The Odyssey trans by Emily Wilson
18.) The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV by Anne Somerset
19.) Envoy to the Terror: Gouverneur Morris and the French Revolution by Melanie Randolph Miller
20.) The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials by Marion L. Starkey
21.) Witchcraft and Society in England and America, 1550-1750 by Marion Gibson
22.) God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot by Alice Hogge
23.) We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals by Gillian Gill
24.) Audubon: Life and Art in the American Wilderness by Shirley Streshinsky
**25.) Ugliness: A Cultural History by Gretchen Henderson
26.) The Parting of the Sea by Barbara Silvertsen
27.) Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by Tori Telfer
28.) The Wicked Boy: An Infamous Murder in Victorian London by Kate Summerscale
29.) Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes
30.) The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris
31.) Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris by Asti Hustvedt
32.) Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
33.) The Hermaphrodite by Julia Ward Howe
34.) Voltaire in Love by Nancy Mitford
35.) Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall by Eve Laplante
36.) Hawthorne: A Life by Brenda Wineapple
37.) Malory: The Knight Who Became King Arthur's Chronicler by Christina Hardyment
38.) Wilde's Women: How Oscar Wilde Was Shaped by the Women He Knew by Eleanor Fitzsimons
39.) Domesticating Drink: Women, Men, and Alcohol in America, 1870-1940 by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
40.) Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts by Anne L. Barstow
41.) On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss
42.) A Slave in the White House by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor
43.) Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England by Jane Kamensky
44.) Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
45.) Dr. Mutter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
46.) Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson
47.) Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Deborah Blum
48.) The English Yeoman by Mildred Campbell
49.) The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity by Jill Lepore
50.) American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic by Victoria Johnson

Bonus Options:

**The Medical Detective: John Snow, Cholera And The Mystery Of The Broad Street Pump by Sandra Hempel
**The Penguin Book of Witches by Katherine Howe
**The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
**Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia by Kathleen M. Brown
**The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries by Marilyn Johnson
**Circe by Madeline Miller
**Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid by Wendy Williams
**Cholera: The Victorian Plague by Amanda Thomas
** Making Big Money in 1600: The Life and Times of Isma'Il Abu Taqiyya, Egyptian Merchant by Nelly Hanna
**Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War by Joanne Freeman
**The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler
**Fear: A Cultural History by Joanna Bourke
**Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha’s Vineyard by Nora Groce
**Bedlam: London and its Mad by Catharine Arnold
**Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey
**The Culture of Piracy, 1580–1630: English Literature and Seaborne Crime by Claire Jowitt

Sounds like a great challenge. Good luck and keep us posted.

Wow! Great list.

The books by female authors I read during 2018 included:

Commencement by Roby James
Murder in Bloom by Lesley Cookman
Speak to Me, Dance with Me by Agnes de Mille**
Madensky Square by Eve Ibbotson**
Dolly's Cottage: The History of a Thatched House in Strandhill, County Sligo presented by the Strandhill Guild of the Irish Countrywomen's Association
The Epic of Gilgamesh translated by N.K. Sandars**
The Incarnations by Susan Barker*
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot**
The Grandma Stubblefield Rose: The Life of Susan Stubblefield, 1811-1895 by Edna Beth Tuttle and Dennie Burke Willis*
The Hangman's Whip by Mignon G. Eberhart*
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion**
The Appointment by Herta Müller**

I've also been gradually working my way through
Canaries in the Mineshaft: Essays on Politics and Media by Renata Adler**
The Norton Book of Women's Lives edited by Phyllis Rose (an anthology of selections from the memoirs of noteworthy women)**

* Recommended
** Highly recommended

Good luck to you too. I look forward to seeing your list as it comes along.

Good luck!

I loved The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks!

Good luck with your challenge!

@angela072015 and @Madcow299 Thank you!! :)

@rocketjk I would love to read a translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh. I haven't read it in a very long time. I'm really liking these suggestions, thanks!

Finished reading The Wicked Boy: An Infamous Murder in Victorian London by Kate Summerscale
Pages: 400
Words: "knocking on ginger" aka ding, dong, ditch; panopticon principle; Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, "plastic"
Notes: "On July 1st 1895 an employee at the sewage pumping station had become dizzy with fumes as he climbed down a ladder into a well; he lost his balance and fell in. One of his workmates descended the ladder to try to help, but collapsed and fell into the pit as sewer gases overtook him. Three more men attempted rescues and every one fainted and fell. All five drowned in the filth at the bottom of the well. Their deaths were attributed in part to the putrid conditions created by the drought."

"During the first adjournment of the inquest into Emily Coombe's death, Charles Lewis had investigated the deaths from diphtheria of several children whose parents were Peculiar People, members of a Wesleyan sect formed in Essex in 1838. In accordance with their interpretation of a passage in St. Jame's Epistle, the parents had not called a doctor when their children fell ill and instead tried to cure them through prayer and the anointment of oil. The Children's Act of 1889 enabled the state to prosecute a parent for the ill-treatment or culpable neglect of a child, and an amendment of 1894 specified that failure to obtain medical help could be an offence."

"In the mid-1890s the prevalence of penny dreadfuls (as they were known to the press) or penny bloods (as they were known to shopkeepers and schoolboys..."

"An act of parliament of 1870 had given local authorities the power to enforce school attendance, and successive acts made elementary education compulsory (in 1880) and then free (in 1890). Between 1870 and 1885 the number of children at elementary schools trebled and by 1892 four and a half million children were being educated in the board schools.

"In the summer of 1890 Fox was one of 95 men aboard the "Egypt", the largest of the National Line steamships, as it crossed the Atlantic from New York to Liverpool with a cargo of battle and cotton. On July 17th a fire broke out in the ship's hold. The sailors were lowered into the water in six lifeboats. Some of the cows broke free of their halters and leapt away from the flames into the sea and then struggled to swim clear of the burning vessel. John Fox had been badly burnt in the fight to put out the fire and he was so shaken by his experience that he developed a stutter and a horror of the open sea. He did not serve on a ship again."

"According to the trajectory of degeneration set out by the French psychiatrist Benedict Morel in 1857; a retrogressive family exhibited mild nervous disorders in one generation, neurosis or hysteria in the next, and psychosis in the third; the subsequent and probably last generation would be marked by idiocy."

"On Emily Coombe's corpse, the quantity and distribution of maggots helped to date the murder. A blowfly's egg took a day to hatch into a maggot, which fed for 2 days before moving away to find a dark nook in which its soft body could stiffen into a cocoon. 10 days later it would break out as a fly. Since the maggots had strayed far beyond their breeding and feeding grounds int he body cavities, spilling onto the bed and onto the floor, it was evident that they had been alive for a week or more."

"The case against Robert and Fox was to be presented by Charles Gill and Horace Avory, both of whom regularly appeared for the Crown at the Old Bailey. Earlier in the year the two had prosecuted Oscar Wilde. Famously, Gill had asked Wilde to gloss a line from a poem by his friend Lord Alfred Douglas, "what is the love that dare not speak its name?"

"Homicidal mania was a condition identified by the French psychiatrist Jean-Etienne Esquirol earlier in the century. A homicidal monomaniac became obsessed by the desire to kill and after the murder achieved a sort of peace...and some homicidal monomaniacs seemed to be relieved of a state of agitation and anguish which was exceedingly painful to them...They contemplate their victim with indifference and some even experience and manifest a kind of satisfaction. The greater part, far from flying, remain near the body."

"Bromide of potassium was a sedative and depressant used to treat disorders of the brain. Though recommended in the Dictionary of Psychological Medicine as a safe drug, prolonged use can cause a condition known as "bromism": the symptoms include stupor, paranoid delusions, pupillary dilation, insomnia, restlessness and psychosis."

"The Broadmoor staff used no mechanical restraints, such as straitjackets and fetters- there was not even a padded room on the premises. The asylum rules stipulated that kindness and forbearance should be the touchstones of the patients' treatment."

"Brayn and Nicolson worked together on Home Office assignments before and after Brayn took charge of the asylum. In October 1895, the two doctors were asked by the Home Secretary to appraise the mental condition of Oscar Wilde, who was still being held at Wandsworth prison. After examining Wilde, they conluded that he was not mentally ill, but suggested that his conditions be improved. He should be moved to a prison outside London. They recommended that he be given more food, more space and more books. They advised that it was dangerous to his mental well-being to deprive him of a wide range of literature. Wilde was transferred in November to Reading gaol."

"The Broadmoor men had no contact with the women except at chapel on Sundays, and even then the men were all seated on the ground floor, facing the front, by the time the women were allowed to file into the first floor gallery."

Rating: 4 out of 5

Happy reading! You've got an amazing cross section of books on that list 👍

@PlaidApple Thanks! I enjoy history the most and I feel like female authors have contributed more to that field than they get credit for and I want to give them their due this year

Finished reading The Odyssey trans by Emily Wilson
Pages: 592
Words: gerenian, ossifrage, emmer, hecatombs, gimlet
Notes: Book 2 416-434: "Athena led the way, She sat down in the stern, and next to her Telemachus was sitting. Then the crew released the ropes and boarded, each at oar. Athena called a favorable wind, pure Zephyr whistling on wine-dark sea. Telemachus commanded his companions to seize the rigging: so they did, and raised the pine-wood mast inside the rounded about, and raised the bright white sails with leather ropes. Wind blew the middle sail: the purple wave was splashing loudly round the moving keel. The goddess rode the waves and smoothed the way. The quick black ship held steady, so they fastened the tackle down, and filled their cups with wine. They poured libations to the deathless gods, especially to the bright-eyed child of Zeus. All through the night till dawn the ship sailed on."

Book 4: 219-232: "Then the child of Zeus, Helen, decided she would mix the wine with drugs to take all pain and rage away, to bring forgetfulness of every evil. Whoever drinks this mixture from the bowl will shed no tears that day...Helen had these powerful magic drugs from Polydamna, wife of Thon, from Egypt, where fertile fields produce the most narcotics: some good, some dangerous. The people there are skillful doctors. They are the Healer's people."

Book 4: 402-404: "Around him sleep the clustering seals, the daughters of Lady Brine. Their breath smells sour from gray seawater, pungent salty depths."

Book 5: 77-80: "Calypso, the splendid goddess, knew the god on sight: the deathless gods all recognize each other, however far away their homes may be."

"Ino, the White Goddess: Cadmus' child, once human, once human-voiced..."

Book 11: 218-224: "This is the rule for mortals when we die. Our muscles cease to hold the flesh and skeleton together; as soon as life departs from our white bones, the force of blazing fire destroys the corpse. The spirit flies away and soon is gone just like a dream."

Book 17: 360-365: "...Athena stood beside Odysseus, and prompted him to go among the suitors, begging for scraps, to find out which of them were bad and good -although she had no thought of saving any out of the massacre which was to come."

"King Echetus in mainland Greece, the lord of cruelty and pain" - used as a threat 2x

Book 19: 565-570: There are two gates of dreams: one pair is made of horn and one of ivory. The dreams from ivory are full of trickery; their stories turn out false. The ones that come through polished horn come true."

Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by Tori Telfer
Pages: 277
Words: tripartitum, gynaeceum, cruentation, fitiwwa, knout "za chlebem", facsiga, "the ordinary and extraordinary questions", brodequins
Notes: "Tragica Historia" by a Jesuit, 1729;

"...one woman wanted to decide for herself if Lizzie Halliday was using the insanity dodge. Nellie Bly used her considerable celebrity to score an exclusive two part interview with Lizzie."

Rating: 3 out of 5

Yes, I completely agree. I started reading Emily Wilson's translation (which I am loving! glad to see you gave it a 5/5) and it inspired me to pick up/plan for some Anne Carson books, as I realized how much translation work and my enjoyment of translated works can be shifted by ((((centuries)))) of male translators.

@frahealee Pro tip: If history isn't your thing, don't start off with something like "THE HISTORY OF WW-" ...no. Grab something like Lady Killers above. Entertaining, less than 300 pages. Just to dip your toe in. Or if you do have a favorite historical figure, start with a biography of them. That way you're guaranteed to enjoy it. The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World is one I highly recommend. It's 432 pages, but really entertaining.

Finished reading Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
Pages: 272
Words: cremulator, kotsuage, anthropophagy, trocar, rogyapa, desquamation, commingling, saudade
Notes: "Des Monstres et Prodiges" by Ambroise Paree; "The American Way of Death" by Mitford
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 (I felt like I needed more! Still, I really enjoyed Caitlin's voice)

Finished reading Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured by Kathryn Harrison
Pages: 320
Words: Ecorcheurs: "or flayers. Deserters, mercenaries, looters, plunderers of the countryside during war."; Villein: "free peasant"; Greffier: "clerk"; Stricta: "narrow in the hips"; peplum; Galettes: "cakes"; pseudepigraphia; houppelandes; pigases, tam-o'shanters; culverin; jasseran; termagant; houssepailliers
Notes: Lots of notes! Will edit this later.
Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson
Pages: 231
Words: None.
Notes: During Rosemary's childhood, the distinction between the intellectually disabled and the mentally ill was rarely made. Instead, according to psychological definitions of the day, "idiots" were the most severely disabled, classified as those with the intellectual capacity of a 2 yr old or younger, "imbeciles" as those with a 3 to eight yr old capacity and "morons" as those with an 8-12 yr old capacity. These labels limited society's understanding of people with intellectual and physical disabilities, and lacked nuanced interpretation of the causes and conditions of carious disabilities, including many types of simple and complex learning disorders.

Eugenics was fueled by pseudo-scientific claims that the human race consisted of "two classes", the eugenic and the cacogenic (or poorly born). The cacogenic "inherited had germ plasm and thus as a group...at the very least, should not breed" African Americans, immigrants, the poor, criminals, the disabled, were often deemed cacogenics. Forced sterilization they argued, was society's cure. Teddy Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, John Kellogg, Mary Williamson Harriman and early feminist Victoria Woodhull became advocates of eugenics. At the time, Christian beliefs overtly blamed parents for the disabled, as God's punishment for their sins. The Roman Catholic Church refused the sacraments of Holy Communion to the disabled, especially those with Down Syndrome.

Rosemary remained for a short time at George Washington University hospital but was soon transferred to a private psychiatric facility called Craig House. Zelda Fitzgerald, the deeply troubled and depressed wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald spent months at Craig House in 1934 and actor Henry Fonda's second wife Frances Seymour Brokaw would spend several months there in early 1950 before committing suicide in her room.

Rating: 4 out of 5 (I had first heard about her from the Walter Freeman episode of the Lore podcast. This book is very sad, uplifting at the end, but I wish we all could've known Rosemary)

Finished reading The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens
Pages: 266
Words: "draugr" or undead corpse; trenchancy; cony-catcher: a swindler, cony being a victim; grisaille
Notes: "History of English Affairs" by William of Newburgh; "Twelve Medieval Ghost Stories" by MR James; "A Disputation Between the Body and the Worms"; "Of Ghosts and Spirites Walking by Night" by Ludwig Lavater (1569); "Discoverie of Witchcraft" by Reginald Scott; "Miscellanies" by John Aubrey; "A Philosophical Endeavor Towards the Defense of the Being of Witches and Apparitions" by Joseph Glanvill; "Saducismus Triumphatus" by Joseph Glanvill; "Pandemonium or the Devil's Cloyster" by Richard Bovet; "Satan's Invisible World Discovered" by George Sinclair; "The Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits" by Richard Baxter; "An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions" by Daniel Defoe; "The Nightside of Nature or Ghosts and Ghost Seers" by Catherine Crowe
Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading Agincourt: The King, The Campaign, The Battle by Juliet Barker
Pages: 386
Words: Salic Law; oriflamme; mangonels, "nakerer" or drummer; "tregatour" or conjurer; Order of the White Lady on a Green Shield; Order of the Fer du Prisonnier; a outrance; chevauchee; hilary; Cabochiens; pyx
Notes: Too many to list here.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (it's really good! Thanks to this book I know what my next research paper will focus on)

Finished reading Hawthorne: A Life by Brenda Wineapple
Pages: 382
Words: cloddish, colchicum, peripatetic, mellifluous, transcendentalism, prurient, mawkish, ontological, solipsistic
Notes: None.
Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser
Pages: 295
Words: recusants/refuseniks; Praemunire; peine forte et dure; poursuivant; strangury; "hucusque"; badinage;
Notes: "There were gangs called Swaggerers whose specialty was to prey upon the vulnerable homeless Scots in London."
"In 1591 John Florio had written a poem on the 'Ten Pains of Death."
"In 1585 500 of the besiegers of Antwerp had been killed by the use of an explosive-packed machine, invented by one Giambelli."
"...There was an enormous explosion on 27 April 1603 while the King was at Burghley...at the powdermill at Radcliffe...13 people were slain..."
"But when it came to working in the cramped conditions needed to construct a hideaway - a chimney, a drain - Little John's tiny size was a positive asset. He nearly always worked alone, praying silently as he toiled away, in the covering darkness of the night hours."
"The Council made a virtue of necessity: there could be bonfires so long as they were "without any danger or disorder." So the very first flames in commemoration of "gunpowder, treason and plot" flames that would flicker on down the centuries, were lighted on 5 November 1605."
"Torture of course had its rules. No one was supposed to be tortured to death: this woul d have been counter-productive...For this reason maimed or mutilated people were not supposed to be subjected too it because the might be too weak to survive. If a session failed to provide the desired information , the victim in theory could not be tortured again and again..Lastly, torture was supposed to be increased gradually."
"The gentler tortures referred to the manacles and the worst to the rack."
"At Holbeche House...the gunpowder taken away from Whewell Grange, conveyed in an open cart, had suffered from the rain. It was now spread out in front of the fire to dry...It was a quick and violent blaze which engulfed Rookwood, John Grant and Henry Morgan. Catesby was reasonably well and so was Rookwood, although John Grant had been so badly disfigured by the fire - "his eyes burnt out" - that he was blind. Morgan also had been burnt."
"During one search, at Braddocks near Saffron Walden in the 1590s, Gerard had had to exist for four days on two biscuits and aa pot of quince jelly which his hostess, Mrs Wiseman, happened to have in her hand as the poursuivants burst in and he was bundled away."
"Orange juice remains visible once it has been exposed to heat (as opposed to lemon juice, which becomes invisible once more when it is cold."
Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Deborah Blum
Pages: 291
Words: sorghum, oleomargarine, Pittsburg rye essence, Scheele's green, Paris green, Omaha Milk Scandal
Notes: "In 13th c. England there were tradespeople called garblers hired to inspect imported spices and sift out grain and grit. Predictably some garblers did just the opposite and mixed in ground twigs and sand into the spices themselves. Eventually this is how the word garble came to mean to mix things up incorrectly."
"Doctors continued to worry over reports of "grocer's itch", a side effect of the deceptive practice of grinding up insects and passing the result off as brown sugar. Sometimes live lice survived the process."
"In late 1937, more than 100 people - many of them children - died, poisoned by cough syrup sweetened with the solvent diethylene glycol (often found in antifreeze)."
Rating: 4 out of 5

This is a great list, I found many new interesting reads!

Finished reading Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe ed. by Kathryn Edwards
Pages: 179
Words: immanent, Donatism, mariolatria, oneiromancy, billiment, carquenets
Notes: Too many.
Rating: 5 out of 5

Books to Check Out: Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, Witchcraft Persecutions in Bavaria, Witches of Lorraine, Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice, Exorcism and Enlightenment, Demon-mania of Witches, "The Most Pleasant Art of the Interpretation of Dreams" by Thomas Hill, 1576, "Interpretation of Dreams" by Artemidorus, 1644, "True Account of the Jena Tragedy of Christmas Eve" publ. in 1716, Magical Treasure Hunting, Magiologia by Bartholomaeus Anhorn in 1674, "Antidemon of Mascon" by Francois Perrault

Finished reading American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic by Victoria Johnson
Pages: 335
Words: scarlatina; trocar; hydrocele; William Bartram: Travels and Other Writings; ha-ha
Notes: "Castor oil, prized for its antispasmodic properties, was derived from beavers' anal glands which were harvested whole and smoke-dried. Today castor oil comes from a plant called castor bean. Spermaceti, a white substance harvested from the head of a sperm whale, was often used to make candles, but also a key ingredient of skin salves including cold cream. The shops also sold "sal ammoniac volatilis" as a smelling salt that came in little cakes and was made from animal bones or manure."

"April 1788: A student supposedly waves a severed arm out the window at Bayley's laboratory at a child. The child tells his parents and troops storm the building. The news spreads and a riot breaks out to attack the lab. Hosack runs to the lab but is knocked out by a rock and saved by a family friend. Mayor James Duane locks the doctors and students in the jail for protection. General Matthew Clarkson goes to John Jay's house to arm himself and John Jay goes with him. Jay is knocked unconscious by a rock but is taken home. Sunset on the second day the militia open fire and three are killed."

"The leaves of mugwort, for example, a member of the daisy family that dotted the lanes and fields of England, could be boiled into a medicinal tea believed to reduce menstrual bleeding. An infusion from leaves of menyanthes, a flowering plant known more commonly as bogbean, soothed herpes sores. The resin of arborvitae trees produced an excellent cough syrup that was thought to have prevented scurvy in the British army at Boston during the American Revolution."

"At the end of the 14th c, an adulterous nobleman named Alexander Stewart (also known as the Wolf of Badenoch) led a marauding band of Highlands men to Elgrin to avenge Stewart's excommunication by it's bishop. They burned the town together with its cathedral."

"Dr. James Earle avoided slicing off a hydrocele or searing it with caustic. Instead, he punctured the testicle with a sharp, tubular trocar in order to drain fluid. Then he injected the testicle with a mixture of alcohol and water."

"In March 1792 he treated a Frenchman suffering a hydrocele larger than his head. The man had kept it hidden by bandaging it backward between his thighs. Earle pierced the inflamed testicle with his trocar and siphoned out more than six pints of blood-tinged water."

"Yellow Fever: first came intense back pain and yellowing skin, then came a black crust on the tongue, delirium and a diarrhea that resembled molasses in the last hours of life. Victims often lay with their knees drawn up to their chins as if to shield themselves from an attacker. Expiring bodies purge their contents so violently that the dying seem to be retching up chunks of their own stomachs, vomit that had the look and feel of coffee grounds."

"John Bartram wrote that a decoction made from the roots of horse weed (Collinsonia canadensis) is much commended for "women's after-pains" and that Native Americans drank a juice made from the roots of an orange flowered plant called "pleurisy root" to fight dysentery also known as butterfly milkweed, Ascelpias tuberosa, it can be highly toxic. "

"The wisteria is named for Caspar Wistar, a prominent physician in Philadelphia"

"In 1793, Jefferson had helped the American Philosophical Society organize a western expedition for Andre Michaux but then Jefferson himself accidentally sabotaged it by involving the French minister to the United States, Edmond Charles Genet, who wanted to use Michaux as a French spy. Michaux's expedition was abandoned. Then in 1803, Jefferson read an account of a recent British expedition to the Pacific Northwest that made him more anxious than ever to secure an all-water route to the Pacific Ocean."

Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
Pages: 295
Words: charwoman (day servant doing general housework); picking oakum (a workhou selabor that was assigned to men and women. It involved ysing a spike and bare hands to pull apart old ships' ropes so that the fibers could be mixed with tar and used to caulk ships.) Workhouse Encyclopedia by Peter Higginbotham; "Spike" (cant for the workhouse casual ward. The word could reference the spiked implement that was used for picking oakum, the spike on which one's admission ticket was placed or the word spiniken, the tramps' name for the workhouse); In Darkest England and the Way Out by William Booth; Book of Household Management by Mrs. Beeton; Kurhuset or "cure house" the venereal hospital; "Lipski" a reference to Moses Lipsky, a notorious murderer and also a term of abuse often leveled at Jews; japanner; "snob" (a shoemaker); The History of John Cheap the Chapman; Bright's disease
Notes:
"The Peabody trustees took pains to ensure that only the most deserving of the working poor, those of the appropriate moral character as well as the means to meet the weekly cost of their rent were admitted as residents. All male heads of household had to produce a letter of character from their employers proving that their jobs were not only relatively secure but there was nothing to disqualify them. The trustees then visited an applicant's home. Anyone who was found to be a habitual drunkard or entangled with the law was disqualified. Equally, those judged to have too comfortable an income or a family too large for the accommodations were also refused. Finally, to gain admission, each household member needed to provide proof of inoculation against smallpox."

"Upon entering the workhouse, families were divided by gender and made to live in separate wings. Young children were allowed to remain with their mothers but those over age 7 were placed in the workhouse school and isolated from their parents. All new inmates were stripped of their clothing and what personal belongings they possessed. They were then required to enter a communal bath and scrub themselves in water that had been used by every other person who had gained admission that day. Following this, much like prisoners, inmates were clothed in a functional workhouse uniform which never truly belonged to them. Their diet was basic: water porridge of known as skilly, as well as small portions of poor-quality bread, cheese and potatoes, and occasionally meat."

"Baby Farming" as it was called in the 19th century was the practice of accepting the care of an infant or infants while the mother worked. Parents who paid a small fee for the child to be looked after often never returned to reclaim it, thereby making this a convenient way of disposing an unwanted baby. As the care of the child eventually outstripped the fee originally paid, a caretaker might find that it was more expedient to let the infant die from neglect or sell the child on to someone else. The practice of baby farming continued into the 20th century."

"Flying stationers" or "general paper sellers": the "running patterer" walked through the streets and squares, shouting out titles and summaries of broadsides and chapbooks. The "standing patterer" sought out a patch on the corner of a street or outside a pub. Both were often accompanied by a female "chaunter" who would assist by singing or reciting passages of a ballad. Together they could perform duets.

Women's Tattoos: Thomas Conway's initials were marked on Kate's forearm. Perhaps by this means the couple solemnized their commitment to one another without wedding bands or a church ceremony.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History by Catharine Arnold
Pages: 299
Words: "la grippe"
Notes: Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain; Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Ann Porter; Black November: The 1918 Influenza Pandemic in New Zealand by Geoffrey Rice; Influenza 1918: The Worst Epidemic in American History by Lynette Iezzoni; America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 by Alfred Crosby

"Spanish flu: Symptoms seem consistent with lobar pneumonia but large amounts of purulent pus is produced, hemorrhaging of the lungs, severe breathlessness, a cyanosis of the face due to lack of oxygen."

"A funeral that was making its way along a central street saw, to the amazement of those who witnessed it, the coach driver fall from his seat to the ground dead, as if struck by lightning, and one of the mourners keeled over on the ground, having also died suddenly. Panic gripped the others who were part of the processions and they scattered, leaving the coach abandoned. An ambulance had to come and collect the dead and a municipal guard tied a cord to the horse's bridle and walking ahead some twelve meters pulled the coach to the cemetery."

"In order to maintain some level of humanity the Archdiocese brought in a steam shovel to excavate section 42 of Holy Cross Cemetery what became known as the "trench"

"We didn't have time to rest or to treat them, we didn't take temperatures, we didn't even have time to take blood pressures. We would give them a little hot whiskey toddy, that's about all we had time to do. They would have terrific nose bleeds with it. Sometimes blood would just shoot across the room. You had to get our of the way or someone's nose would bleed all over you. Some were delirious and some had their lungs punctured, then their bodies would fill with air. You could feel somebody and he would be bubbles. You would see them with bubbles all through their arms. When their lungs collapsed, air was trapped beneath their skin. As we rolled the dead in winding sheets their bodies crackled an awful crackling noise which sounded like Rice Krispies when you pour milk over them."

"Back in Chicago a young man nicknamed Diz lied about his age and enlisted as a an ambulance driver with the Red Cross. When he was struck down by influenza, he was sent home and nursed by his mother. He survived to become the world's most successful animator under his full name of Walt Disney."

"Louis Brownlow, City Commissioner for Washington D.C. was not above theft. When he heard that two cartloads of coffins destined for Pittsburgh were in the Potomac freight yards, Brownlow hijacked the shipment and had them redirected to the playground of Central High School, where they were placed under armed guard."

"Among the flu's 1919 victims were the mother and sister of baby John Burgess Wilson whose father arrived home to discover "my mother and sister dead...the Spanish Influenza pandemic had struck Harpurhey...there was no doubt of the existence of God. Only the supreme being could contrive so brilliant an after piece to four years of unprecedented suffering and devastation...I apparently was chuckling in my cot while my mother and sister lay dead on a bed in the same room." A kindly neighbor had bed baby Burgess Wilson a bottle of baby food shortly before being struck down with flu herself. The baby survived and grew up to be novelist Anthony Burgess, author of "A Clockwork Orange."

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes
Pages: 370
Words: None.
Notes: "In 1600 London physician and philosopher William Gilbert was appointed Chief doctor to Queen Elizabeth I. The very word electric was coined by Gilbert who played on the Greek world for amber, elektron, a term to describe amber's attracting qualities for certain materials."

"Georg Richman, a Swedish scientist living in St. Petersburg, sought to replicate Benjamin Franklin's experiments. He held aloft a wire tipped pole during a lightning storm and had the misfortune to attract a full hit of lightning. He was electrocuted to attract a becoming in 1753 the first person to die during an electrical experiment."

"Tesla silently counted each step he took as he made his early morning walk down to the Ivry Factory. Every activity ideally had to be divisible by 3 (hence the 27 laps each morning in the Seine.) Before eating or drinking anything, he felt obliged to calculate its cubic contents. He deeply disliked shaking hands with anyone. He had a violent aversion against the earrings of women (pearls above all.) "I would not touch the hair of other people except perhaps at the point of a revolver." The mere sight of a peach brought on a fever. Moreover Tesla could and happily did recite long swaths of Serbian poetry from heart."

"Apr 15, 1888: 15yr old Moses (or Meyer) Streiffer seizes a broken telegraph wire hanging down from a pole and is electrocuted."

"May 11, 1888: A Brush Electrical Company worker was cutting away old wires on a second story cornice. An employee inside "saw smoke curling in the window" and heard a sputtering sound. He found Murray dead and charred."

"It was something of an odd pairing, for Tesla, with his priestly devotion to electricity and his phobias for germs, showed no interest in women or sex, while White was a sexual satyr whose lubricious pursuit of delicious young females eventually led to his shooting death by an outraged husband."

Rating: 4 out of 5

>30 asukamaxwell: Sounds terrifying! Thanks for sharing!

Finished reading The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Pages: 354
Words: cordon; "car of fate"
Notes: "Life is not the thing romance writers describe it; going through the measures of a dance, and after various evolutions arriving at a conclusion, when the dancers may sit down and repose. While there is life there is action and change. We go on, each thought linked to the one which was its parent, each act to a previous act. No joy or sorrow dies barren of progeny, which for ever generated and generating, weaves the chain that make our life."

"Among the other transcendent attributes of Mozart's music, it possesses more than any other that of appearing to come from the heart; you enter into the passions expressed by him, and are transported with grief, joy, anger, or confusion, as he, our soul's master, chooses to inspire."

"One word, in truth, had alarmed her more than battles or sieges, during which she trusted Raymond's high command would exempt him from danger, that word, as yet it was not more o her, was "plague." This enemy to the human race had begun early in June to raise its serpent head on he shores of the Nile; parts of Asia, not usually subject to this evil, were infected. It was in Constantinople; but as each year that City experienced a like visitation, small attention was paid to those accounts which declared more people to have died there already, than usually made up the accustomed prey of the whole of the hotter months."

"Let us live for each other and for happiness, let us seek peace in our dear home...let us leave"life" that we may "live."

"Ye are all going to die, I thought, already your tomb is built up around you. Awhile because you are gifted with agility and strength, you fancy that you live: but frail is the "bower of flesh" that encaskets life; dissoluble the silver cord that binds you to it. The joyous soul charioted from pleasure to pleasure by the graceful mechanism of well-formed limbs, will suddenly feel the axle-tree give way and spring and wheel dissolve in dust. Not one of you, O fated crowd, can escape - not one!"

"Thousands die unlamented; for beside the yet warm corpses the mourner was stretched, made mute by death."

"We first had bid adieu to the state of things, which having existed many thousand years seemed eternal; such a state of government, obedience, traffic and domestic intercourse, as had moulded our hearts and capacities, as far back as memory could reach. Then to patriotic zeal, to the arts, to reputation, to enduring fame, to the name of country, we had bidden farewell. We saw depart all hope of retrieving our ancient state - all expectation, except the feeble one of saving our individual lives from the wreck of the past."

Rating: 4 out of 5 This book is terribly sad, but I enjoyed followed the characters to the very end if at times it can get a little off-track.

Finished reading On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss
Pages: 216
Words: stridor
Notes: "Public health, we assume, is for people with less - less education, less healthy habits, less access to quality healthcare, less time and money. I have heard mothers of my class suggest, for instance, that the standard childhood immunization schedule groups together multiple shots because poor mothers will not visit the doctor frequently enough to get the twenty-six recommended shots separately. No matter that any mother might find so many visits daunting. That, we seem to be saying of the standard schedule, is for people like them."

"Unvaccinated children, a 2004 analysis of CDC data reveals, are more likely to be white, to have an older married mother with a college education, and live in a household with an income of $75,000 or more."

Rating: 3 out of 5. I liked what this book had to say and I'm in agreement with the author's opinion of vaccinations (what sane person wouldn't be?!), but I still had to give it a 3. I realize that as someone with no children and as someone already steeped in literature concerning diseases, plagues, vaccinations, etc, I am definitely not the targeted audience for this book but I thought I'd give it a shot. However, some of the historical references were written rather lazily. For instance, "Mather who had lost a wife and three children to measles, convinced a local doctor to inoculate two slaves and the doctor's own young son..." The "local doctor"'s name is Zabdiel Boylston and more importantly, it was actually a black man, Onesimus, who helped convince Cotton Mather and Zabdiel Boylston to attempt the inoculation for smallpox. Also the numerous allusions to Dracula/vampires were wearisome and weren't really necessary. (pgs 15, 16, 46, 68, 72, 77, 78, 80, 93, 95, 103, 143, 153, 156 oof)

Finished reading Ugliness: A Cultural History by Gretchen Henderson
Pages: 196
Words: Les gueules cassees: soldiers who had experienced facial injuries during WWI; "Ugly Laws"; MUSTIE: among librarians, an acronym used to weed out old books, stands for Misleading, Ugly, Superseded, Trivial, Irrelevant, Elsewhere; jolie laide
Notes: "The Secrets of Women" 13th c. medical text; "Gynaecology" by Soranus; Deformity: An Essay by William Hay;

"The ancient historian Herodotus claimed that the Babylonians devised auctions to marry off their daughters, where the lowest bidders won ugly brides and monies gained from the auction house of beauties helped to subsidize the dowries of their ugly sisters."

"If a misfortune afflicted a city as the result of divine wrath, whether famine or plague or some other catastrophe, they let out the ugliest person of all for sacrifice beating and burning the body, to be the expiation and pharmakos of the suffering city" - Byzantine scholar, Johannes Tzetzes

"Ugly clubs arose as social fraternities in Britain and America; organized around merrymaking and the satirizing of members' so-called ugly features. Interspersed among descriptions of members' animal-like features, faux racial characteristics stated "ugly: qualifications like "Jew Sallow Phiz" "Hottentot Complexion" "Negro Teeth" and "Japanezy Grin."

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Finished reading We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals by Gillian Gill
Pages: 383
Words: dormeuse, The Kensington System, amenorrheic, espiegleries: practical jokes; adamantine; rodomontade; battues; sterbe-zimmer: death chamber;
Notes: "After the death of Princess Charlotte due to complications from childbirth and that of her stillborn, Sir Richard Croft, the man who presided over her death, committed suicide."

"Lord Melbourne knew Lady Carolyn Ponsonby, Duchess Georgiana's niece when they were children, fell in love with her and married her. Both were brilliant, fascinating, erotic adults who found promiscuity normal. He had a taste for sadomasochism, which she found difficult to satisfy. She liked to dress as a boy and took lovers, most famously Lord Byron. After the poet threw her over, Lady Carolyn sent Byron a letter enclosing a tuft of blood-stained pubic hair she'd hacked off with scissors. She went mad and had to be confined."

"Albert gave his first speech in English to the Society for the Abolition of Slavery."

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Finished reading Divulging of Useful Truths in Physick: The Medical Agenda of Robert Boyle by Barbara Kaplan
Pages: 175
Words: millenarianism, iatrochemistry, Discourse of the Cure of Wounds by Sympathy
Notes: "One of Boyle's favorite recipes was the "ens veneris" prepared from calcined vitriol and used for a variety of ailments."

"In 1650 Petty became professor of anatomy at Oxford, where he came to be high regarded for his prowess in anatomical dissection. (He also gained widespread fame that same year for his involvement in the successful revival of the "executed" criminal Ann Green." More: Ann entered the household of Sir Thomas Reade as a scullery maid. She was raped by her master's grandson and gave birth to a child, which was stillborn. However she was sentenced to death for murder, and on December 14, 1650 was hanged at Oxford. After being pronounced dead by the prison doctor, Ann was given to the medical students for dissection. A day later Oxford University physicians Ralph Bathurst, Thomas Willis, William Petty and Henry Clerke, found out that Green had a faint pulse and with the help of restoratives, she soon regained her health. She was granted a free pardon. The event was regarded as the special interference of the hand of God on behalf of the innocent.

"Boyle also suggests that God encourages human beings to apply their own reasoning powers to understanding nature's design because it provides them a good lesson in humility. In the act of searching for knowledge, the individual gains an appreciation not only of the grand complex design of creation, but also how limited human powers are compared with those of God. Wile these human investigators can take comfort in the belief that their search is pleasing to God and that their efforts may result in limited discovery, they also become aware that their very humanity flaws their search and permits them, ta best, to obtain only a partial understanding of the Design of nature."

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Finished reading Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris by Asti Hustvedt
Pages: 310
Words: "Sphgmograph": a device adapted from an apparatus used to take arterial pulses, graphically recorded a patient's trembling; prodrome; clownism: term coined by Charcot for the grand movements of a hysterical attack; "hysterogenic zones": triggers for hysteria located on the trunk, ovaries and breasts; torticollis; peignoir; "Saint Guy's Dance"; scopophilia; Marguerite A. Affair; Hypnotisme et Spiritisme by Cesare Lombroso; metallotherapy: thé use of metals and magnets to treat hysterical systems. Introduced by Victor Jean-Marie Burq. Patients suffering from hemianesthesia had metals and magnets applied to their skin and tactile sensibility returned. Charcot coined the term "aesthesiogens" for these healing agents; "Stigmata": Used by 19th c doctors to describe the signs or localized spots of insensitivity on the body that would immediately identify the patient as hysterical.

Notes: "By looking, Charcot described what he called "grand hysteria" or major hysteria, a form of the disease that was characterized by episodic convulsions and isolated 4 distinct phases. First, the epileptoid phase of tonic and clonic seizures preceded by an aura, or prodrome, mimicked the seizures found in epilepsy. Second, the phase of grand movements or clownism simulated contortions and acrobatics of circus performers. The third phase was called the "attitudes passionelles" or passionate poses, during which the hysteric acted out emotional states such as terror, ecstasy and amorous supplication. The fourth and final stage of the hysterical attack was delirium.

Dermagraphism: given that hysterics were knwon to have extreem cutaneous sensitivity, their skin would become red and raised when lightly traced with a blunt object, the marks lasting anywhere from 3 hours to 3 months. At times, the doctor's diagnosis was recorded on the back of a patient, other times doctors wrote "Satan" and "demoniaque" or bodies became canvases where doctors signed their works of art.

In another episode that expands the definition of medical research, Gilles de la Tourette described how he and some of the other doctors hypnotized Blanche and asked her to undress in front of them. Another skit was performed for Delboeuf. Another hysteric was hypnotized and then "divided in two." She was told that each side of her body had its own husband, in this case Delboeuf and Fere. "We could each caress our side."

"By 1889 there were more than five hundred of these cabinets somnambulists in Paris promising to treat disorders resistant to traditional medicine."

"After Charcot died, Blanche Witmann's hysterics ceased. With the end of the belle époque, hysteria was no longer in fashion. She stayed at the Salpêtrière as a radiology employee. Blanche became one of the early victims of radiology induced cancer and spent her last years suffering from the burns and serial amputation that is brought about by the disease. Blanche first had a finger removed, then another, than her hand, then her forearm, and then her upper arm before the same process began on the other side."

"Blanche really "had" hysteria, she lived during a period that allowed her to express her suffering a particular way through a particular set of symptoms, symptoms that are no longer an admissible way to express illness. Diseases do not exist outside of diagnoses. As anyone who has spent time outside of their own country knows, different cultures experience bodies in different ways. The French suffer from mal au foie or liver ache. The Japanese can be afflicted by taijin kyofusho, an intense fear that their bodies offend others. In Malaysia epidemics of koro, the symptoms of sudden and intense anxiety that onei sex organs will recede into the body and cause death. Each of these disorders are recognized by their respective medical communities as valid diagnosis. Every culture molds bodies; bodies adapt and respond with the appropriate symptoms."

The July Monarchy created centers that were required with special depositories called "tours" built to facilitate abandonment and thereby prevent infanticide.Tour was a kind of "Turner" a kind of cubbyhole built into the wall of the hospice, with a revolving platform that could be swiveled and opened up onto the outside as well as inside. The system was designed to assure the anonymity of those who abandoned their babies.

The Skoptzy are a fanatical Christian sect from Russia who practice castration on the men and amputation of the nipples (and sometimes the entire breast) on the women as an initiation rite.

Elsewhere in France there were outbreaks of women barking. The most famous incident occurred in Josselin, a small village in Brittany. The story about the aboyeuses or the barking women of Josselin made it across the Atlantic and appeared in the February 26th 1882 issue of the New York Times.

On December 6th 1893 Gilles de la Tourette was shot by an ex patient in his own home at 39 rue de la Université. Of the three shots fired, one hit him in the back of the head, but the resulting wound was a superficial one and the surgeon was able to remove it. Rose Kamper I've been a patient in the Salpêtrière and she claimed Gilles had hypnotized her against her will and had ruined her life. After she firing, she sat down and waited for the police to arrive. She was sent to St Anne's, but after trying to stab a nurse with a fork she was transferred to another asylum from which she managed to escape. When the police found her a year later she was working as a seamstress and appeared to be stable. She was thereforeallowed to continue living in freedom which she did until her death in 1955 at the age of 92.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading A Professor, a President, and a Meteor: The Birth of American Science by Cathryn J. Prince
Pages: 194
Words: verdure; aerolithe
Notes: "Edward Hitchcock published "The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences" in 1851. He used the work to argue that the Bible did in fact agree with the newest geological theories. The geologist believed that our planet was in fact far more ancient than the 6,000 years so many biblical scholars claimed. One way Hitchcock argued this point was to read the original Hebrew in a way that a single letter in Genesis, v, which meant afterward, could be interpreted as meaning hundreds of thousands of years."
Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Finished reading Dr. Mutter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
Pages: 384
Words: None.
Notes: Hopital des Enfants-Trouves: the tour d'abandon was merely a box attached to the hospital constructed with two sliding doors and a small, loud bell. An infant was unceremoniously placed in the box, the door firmly closed behind it, and the bell rung. Upon hearing the bell, the nurses on duty would go to le tour to remove the infant, replace the box to its original position and wait. Every night, a dozen or so infants were received in this way.

"Phossy Jaw": A condition resulting from matchstick factory workers (women) licking their fingers often to help in processing so many small slivers of wood. The active ingredient in matches at this time being phosphorous. The chemicals the workers ingested daily first caused a toothache, then painful swollen gums that would swiftly evolve into rotting tissue. Soon the girls' jaws were covered with large, deep, weeping abscesses and their wound would leak a foul-smelling discharge. The exposed jaw bones of deformed girls glowed greenish white in the dark and eventually would cause brain damage and inevitable organ failure.

Dr. Robert Liston once performed a leg amputation in less than three minutes that had the unfortunate result of killing three people: the patient who survived but died of gangrene, his young assistant who's fingers he accidentally sawed off during surgery who also succumbed to gangrene, and a "distinguished surgical spectator"w hose coattails Liston also slashed. The man, who found himself surrounded by blood was so convinced he had been cut that he "dropped dead from fright." It was later described as "the only operation in history with a 300% mortality rate."

Conservative vs Radical Surgery: earlier surgeons would define conservative surgery as operations that were absolutely necessary to perform mostly after a traumatic and often life endangering injury. But as medicine entered the 1850s, the concept of conservative surgery took on a new meaning. With the advent of anesthesia, "conservative surgery" was defined as for the purpose of improving the science, and not used indiscriminately on "anyone who would hold still."

Rating: 4 out of 5 (this book is going in the top favorites, I only wish more attention had been given to his wife and his abolitionist views)

Finished reading Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Medicine, Madness and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
Pages: 432
Words: None.
Notes: "In what became known as "front porch talks" Garfield would stand on his wide veranda, talking to enormous groups...When a group of Germans stood before him, he spoke to them in their native language, delivering the first speech by an American presidential candidate that was not in English."

Rating: 4 out of 5 (I had no idea James A. Garfield was such a progressive person, all for complete equality and constitutional protection for slaves then freedmen post-Civil War and apparently a great personality. His death was a real tragedy, even more so that he isn't talked about in history class!)