Dr Spurzheim phrenology chart

What Skulls Told Us

The pseudoscience phrenology swept the popular imagination, and its practitioners made a mint preying on prejudices, gullibility, and misinformation.
An aged photo of the Leatherman wearing a thick leather coat and leather pants, looking at the camera while sitting and eating, circa June 9, 1885

The Legend of the Leatherman

From 1857 to 1889, he could be found walking a 365-mile loop in western Connecticut and eastern New York. Everybody recognized him, but no one knew his name.
Edward Jenner vaccinating a young child, held by its mother

The National Vaccine Institute and Vaccination For All

The early US fight against smallpox was helped by the establishment of the National Vaccine Institute, an agency that wouldn't survive government mistrust.
Parker Pillsbury

Parker Pillsbury, Nineteenth-Century Male Feminist

Abolitionists like the New Hampshire native believed that masculinity required self-control, setting them against violent enslavers.
Cover for A Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear, c. 1875

There Once Was a Poem Called a Limerick

Whose history, they say, isn't quick. It's all such a muddle, it can leave you befuddled, whether you like the clean or the sick.
An admission card to one of Anne Laura Clarke's lectures

This Forgotten Female Orator Broke Boundaries for Women

At a time when respectable women rarely spoke to the public, Anne Laura Clarke was a star lecturer.
First page of The Public Health

“The Public Health” in 1840

A pamphlet published in 1840 advocates a four-pronged approach to public healthcare that sounds remarkably like our own.
Phrenology head from The Household Physician, 1905

Walt Whitman, America’s Phrenologist

The pseudoscience of phrenology included a notion of body as text that Whitman loved. But the craze of "bumpology" also had a darker side.
Relics from the Franklin Search Expedition

When Clairvoyants Searched for a Lost Expedition

When Captain Sir John Franklin's Arctic expedition went awry, clairvoyants claimed to be able to contact the crew members. Why did people believe them?
mesmerism

The Mystical Practice That Preceded Medical Anesthesia

For a brief period of time in the 19th century, doctors used "mesmerism" for pain-free surgery.