An Epitome of the Homeopathic Healing Art: Now Available!

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Benjamin Hills exhaustive work on homeopathy is effectively meant to be a guide to the actual usage of the medicines involved with the practice- a list of different materials of note (herbal and mineral), and various conditions and their treatments. This system departs somewhat from older medical traditions which were more drastic, while retaining a focus on using many substances known to be dangerous to human health, such as ipecac and arsenic. It speaks briefly on the preparation of medicinal compounds and pills as well.

Some of the treatments proposed are also innocuous- a departure from older medicine, while retaining some of the same basic premises of Galenism.

103 pages.

Taylors Herbal: Now Available!

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Taylors Domestic Herbal is a good (and extremely early) example of the kind of medical literature sold by apothecaries and other figures at the dawn of the era of semi-standardized organic medicine. It deviates from the greater rigor in dosage and measurement from works beginning a few decades later (not to mention the wider variety of species available due to colonial importation), and from the often religiously or superstitiously-informed content in such works in the previous century.

It lists a wide variety of species both domestic and wild, and their usages- some are innocuous (like chamomile or turnips), while some are now generally regarded as highly toxic (like foxglove and datura.)

50 pages.

Medical Fashions of the Nineteenth Century: Now Available!

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This little text is an interesting look at both superstition and science, both orthodox and unorthodox medical practice, as analyzed at the end of the 19th century. Skepticism of germ theory mixes with very valid criticism of the over-prescription of anesthetics. The miasmatic theory clings on even as sanitation takes hold. Perhaps out current era, with its own debate and medical meanderings, is less separate from talismans, leeches, and the four humors, than we might wish to think.

50 pages.

The Old Root and Herb Doctor: Now Available!

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This fine little work is rather unique as far as 19th century herbals go; it contains the normal materia medica and preparations for various ailments, but also includes a short section on the caloric nutritional value of certain common foodstuffs, even including the digestion time of the same. In another odd inclusion, it compiles a list of commonly encountered poisons and their antidotes- normally warm water for vomiting, a stomach pump, and various counteracting agents. That section is almost surely geared mainly towards parents of small children.

While the work was, by and large, well made, it included numerous typographical mistakes which I had to correct, and its non-alphabetical content at the end indicates to me that it was either hastily edited or not edited at all prior to being printed.

It should be noted that the work contains contemporary Euro-American Thompsonian simples and has nothing to do with "Natives." This was a marketing gimmick.

73 pages.

The Law of Natural Healing: Now Available!

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This fine work is essentially about autosuggestion and its various uses. Since it dates to the dawn of the 1900s, these were profuse in number- it is worth noting that a few of the usages of the same therapeutic means are still accepted even to this day by some, including in some cases, mainstream medicine. Hypnosis after a fashion is still utilized to some degree of success within the scope of trauma healing and addiction treatment.

Less accepted uses of suggestion from this work include curing goiters and lead poisoning. A very interesting piece of medical history!

132 pages.

The Remedial Uses of Hypnotism: Now Available!

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While extremely short this work needed to be released in a modern edition because it is perhaps one of the best examples of claims made by proponents of hypnotism in its era; its efficacy at treating certain disorders is now beyond question but claims here that it works almost invariably and can cure everything from tuberculosis to asthma of course are now rendered into the same family as bloodletting and electroshock.

The arguments made against the comic use of mesmerism as entertainment, and its words about the use of hypnotism in crimes are both quite a good read.

24 pages.

The Secrets of Animal Magnetism: Now Available!

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This work is quite interesting; and at this point it takes quite a bit to trip my interest since I read and edit similar works all day. Written at the dawn of the 20th century, it is partly about how to mesmerize (theory and action both) and partly about mind reading and similar topics, but it meanders into the realm of sociology and begins, about two thirds of the way through, to give advice on society and civics in a general sense, as works of the era sometimes did.

It should be noted that mesmerism is indeed real; however some of the claims then accepted about it were overblown; it remains medically accepted for a limited number of uses to this day.

61 pages.

Hypnotism: Magnetism, Mesmerism, Suggestive Therapeutics: Now Available!

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This work is one of the better things that LW DeLaurence wrote. Containing fewer self-advertizements and a lot more how-to content, it dispels some myths about mesmerism and hypnotism, and proposes about a dozen methods by which various suggestive states can be induced- including the famous trick of hypnotizing a chicken using a chalk line or a finger (it apparently does indeed work.)

While some of the methods are now known not to function (at the time this was written- and it alludes to it explicitly!- the French were experimenting with spinning wheels and lights to induce anesthesia- one of the earliest- maybe THE earliest literary reference to this trope!) others are accepted even today. Some of its content would later be adapted into the 20s and 30s era "how to hypnotize your friends" style pulp works.

112 pages.

Three New Works I Acquired

I was unable to obtain one of the works I had in mind for the archive and release; a scrapbook and partly hand-written civil war era medical quack work with various recipes and letters and other miscellaneous inclusions; the price quickly surpassed my willingness to buy a work I was not able to physically examine for condition.

However I did obtain three quack-era works related to medicine, including two on homeopathy and a third on the usage of gunpowder as a remedy. I will release these works as free scans for the archive as soon as I figure out my new printer/scanner combo and will also craft them into new editions.

from the ebay listing