This book I found among the many bizarre treasures at my favorite antique and dusty junk shop in Brattleboro, Vermont. It came sealed in a plastic sleeve, like a comic and the top left corner has this cool rusted, extra long staple that pulls in and out like a... little hook, so you can hang it somplace convenient. I have never seen that feature anywhere else. That is just the starting point. As a writer and artist, I picked this up for picture reference and ideas, in particular, life in the early 20th century, but I did not expect to be utterly repulsed, quezened and made afraid by what I found inside the musty pages. The illustrations have that sickly, diseased quality that reflects the poor health and overall stinky nature of life during that time in America. The names of the ailments and treatments are very old fashioned and many of the remedies and tools used to administer medicines and techniques seem brutal.
This is a list of some of the categories within:
- Industrial Emergencies
- Mining Accidents
- Machinery and Railroad Accidents
- The Sick Room
- Disinfection by Formaldehyde Vapours
- Toilet Hints: The Daily Care of the Teeth,
A list of the scarier diseases and ailments within:
- Hysterics
-Lime in the Eye
- Burns From Gun Powder
- Croup
- Scarlet Fever
- Diptheria
- Typhoid Fever
- Consumption
- Whooping Cough
- Lumbago
- Phlegmon
- Pleursy
- Brain Trouble
- Lame Back
- Quinsy Sore Throat
First Aid Kit Supplies:
- 'Zonas' Adhesive Plaster
- 'Lister's' Tooth Soap
- Zonas Corn Leaf
- Synol Soap
- Johnson's Belladona Plaster
- Mustard Plasters
- Sputum Cup (The most disgusting)
- Camphenol
- Sulphur Fumigator
- Absorbent Lint
- Carbolized Petrolatum
- Whooping Cough
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