My new pile of old books
Today I went to the library to pull stuff from the stacks to photocopy, and they were selling a big table of old textbooks for a couple dollars each. I ended up with an armload of 8 ~100 yr old medical textbooks, including 3 about how to perform an autopsy. I want to see a new CSI spinoff set in 1903. There is some really good material in these books.
But first, I decided to read the textbook written for school children, because it's easy:
Dulany's Standard Physiology
Adapted to intermediate classes and common schools
and contains
A statement of the facts
relative to the influence of alcohol, tobacco, opium, and other narcotics upon the human system
copyright 1884, 1885, and 1896
Property of Sally R. Grason and Sterett R. Grason of Towson, Baltimore County, Maryland, one of whom used the inside of the front cover decline Latin nouns.
It's a delightful mix of good information and strange (to me) advice. Get a reasonable amount of exercise. Whole wheat bread is better for you than white bread. Don't lace your corset too tight - it'll cause consumption. Another way to get consumption is to eat a fat-free diet, which can also cause scrofula. Using tobacco takes 10 years off your life. Watching a cook disembowel a chicken will help children understand what intestines are. Let bread cool before you eat it, or it'll be hard to digest. English people may become alcoholics very easily because their ancestors drank too much mead, and they therefore inherited a taste for liquor. Heavy drinking can make your children be born idiots. It's a bad idea to give opiates to babies to make them shut up. Sanitation is a good idea, so don't drink the stagnant water.
I like my new books.