Weird Finds from Project Gutenberg - post yours here

[Sailor_Jupiter]

Project Gutenberg began as a free online archive of Western classics, but its original lofty goal hasn't stopped the site- which has now progressed well beyond its original classic books- from hosting some increasingly strange works in the public domain. Post some of your best finds here!


The Toxicity of Caffein: An experimental study on different species of animals
William Salant and J. B. Rieger
11 downloads


Premature Burial and How it may be Prevented
William Tebb and Col. Edward Perry Vollum
9 downloads


A Treatise on the Diseases Produced By Onanism, Masturbation, Self-Pollution, and other excesses.
Léopold Deslandes
31 downloads


Bill Nye's Cordwood
Bill Nye
195 downloads


The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks
Frank Pierrepont Graves
13 downloads

Diseases of the Horse's Foot
H. Caulton Reeks
54 downloads

 

[KM 749]

Fissure of the Anus and Fistula in Ano by Jr. Lewis H. Adler
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47387
8 downloads

Your Negro Neighbor by Benjamin Griffith Brawley
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35256
6 downloads

The Idiot: His Place in Creation, and His Claims on Society by Bateman
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39670
11 downloads

K. K. K. Sketches, Humorous and Didactic by James Melville Beard
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33324
11 downloads

 

[AnOminous]

Premature Burial and How it may be Prevented
William Tebb and Col. Edward Perry Vollum
9 downloads

This used to be a really common obsession in the 19th Century, even though to the extent it happened at all, it was a very rare occurrence. There were dozens of inventions like "safety coffins" where you could ring a bell from inside it or otherwise alert people if you woke up buried in it. Poe wrote "The Premature Burial" largely taking advantage of the hysteria on the subject.

 

[Gym Leader Elesa]

The Idiot: His Place in Creation, and His Claims on Society by Bateman
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39670
11 downloads

Oh cool, they have Kiwi Farm's founding documents.

 

[AnOminous]

The Idiot: His Place in Creation, and His Claims on Society by Bateman
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39670
11 downloads

This book contains words of wisdom.

The wear and tear of an excitable idiot child has wrecked many a family and reduced it to pauperism, for not only is such child a dead weight on the material prosperity of the family, but the hands of those who have to work for their livelihood, are sadly tied and hampered, when such an inmate has to be constantly looked after in the home; the labour by which the household is supported is often interrupted by one who can contribute nothing to the common stock, and the time which is so precious to hard-working people must, in part at all events, be occupied in caring for the one, who, if uncared for and neglected, must sink lower[ 117] in the social scale and fall into a still more degraded condition. The care and treatment of the idiot, therefore, becomes a vital question of Political Economy; for by relieving a household of the burden and anxiety incident to the care of the afflicted child, the parents are enabled to devote all their energies to the support of their family. Moreover, there is often a moral aspect corresponding with the mental aspect of this question, and the presence of an idiot often becomes a source of real danger. Our able superintendent, Mr. Turner, in his interesting report for the year 1895, has illustrated the terrible anxiety caused by the presence of an idiot child in the homes of the poor, by the history of an inmate of our Asylum, who, when at home, being left to mind the baby, blacked its face all over with soot, so that when his mother returned, she might think she had a black baby. On another occasion, his little sister wanted some water, and he told her to drink out of the kettle on the fire, by which she[ 118] nearly lost her life. This boy, who was evidently a type of the mischievous class of idiots, was once turned out of the Parish Church during service, for pricking another boy with a pin, so that he yelled out and disturbed the whole congregation. Two cases of murder by idiots have been recorded in a report of the Commissioners on Idiocy to the General Assembly of Connecticut; an idiot girl, being left alone with an infant, killed it by striking it on the head with a flat iron; and another vicious idiot killed a man who was working with him, by striking him on the head with a shovel. Esquirol also records the case of an idiot in the Salzburg Hospital, who killed a man by severing his head from his body with a hatchet, and then calmly seated himself by the side of the dead body.

 

[Asa_Spades60]

Oh cool, they have Kiwi Farm's founding documents.

Can we adopt that as the site's Constitution? Please? We'll treat it better than the real one.

Anyway, when it comes to weird findings on Project Gutenberg, this one always sticks out to me: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30254/30254-h/30254-h.htm (pretty much a Victorian-era 50 Shades of Grey)

 

[AF 802]

I could go for some cocaine right about now.

Coca and its Therapeutic Application, Third Edition by Angelo Mariani
Angelo Mariani