Download or read book Account of Miss Pastrana the Nondescript and the double bodied boy written by Julia Pastrana and published by . This book was released on 1860 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Spectacle of Deformity written by Nadja Durbach and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1847, during the great age of the freak show, the British periodical Punch bemoaned the public's "prevailing taste for deformity." This vividly detailed work argues that far from being purely exploitative, displays of anomalous bodies served a deeper social purpose as they generated popular and scientific debates over the meanings attached to bodily difference. Nadja Durbach examines freaks both well-known and obscure including the Elephant Man; "Lalloo, the Double-Bodied Hindoo Boy," a set of conjoined twins advertised as half male, half female; Krao, a seven-year-old hairy Laotian girl who was marketed as Darwin's "missing link"; the "Last of the Mysterious Aztecs" and African "Cannibal Kings," who were often merely Irishmen in blackface. Upending our tendency to read late twentieth-century conceptions of disability onto the bodies of freak show performers, Durbach shows that these spectacles helped to articulate the cultural meanings invested in otherness--and thus clarified what it meant to be British—at a key moment in the making of modern and imperial ideologies and identities.
Download or read book The Wonders written by John Woolf and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On March 23, 1844, General Tom Thumb, just 25 inches tall, entered the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace and bowed low to Queen Victoria. On both sides of the Atlantic, this meeting marked a tipping point in the nineteenth century, and the age of the freak was born.Bewitching all levels of society, it was a world of curiosities and astonishing spectacle—of dwarfs, giants, bearded ladies, Siamese twins, and swaggering showmen. But the real stories—human dramas that so often eclipsed the fantasy presented on the stage—of the performing men, women and children, have been forgotten or marginalized in the histories of the very people who exploited them. In this richly evocative account, John Woolf uses a wealth of recently discovered material to bring to life the sometimes tragic, sometimes triumphant, always extraordinary stories of people who used their (dis)abilities and difference to become some of the first international celebrities. Through their lives we discover afresh some of the great transformations of the age: the birth of show business, of celebrity, of advertising, and of “alternative facts” while also exploring the tensions between the power of fame, the impact of exploitation, and our fascination with “otherness.”
Download or read book Plucked written by Rebecca M. Herzig and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2015-01-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the clamshell razors and homemade lye depilatories used in colonial America to the diode lasers and prescription pharmaceuticals available today, Americans have used a staggering array of tools to remove hair deemed unsightly, unnatural, or excessive. This is true especially for women and girls. Herzig shows how, over time, dominant American beliefs about visible hair changed: where once elective hair removal was considered a "mutilation" practiced primarily by "savage" men, by the turn of the twentieth century, hair-free faces and limbs were expected for women. Visible hair growth-particularly on young, white women-came to be perceived as a sign of political extremism, sexual deviance, or mental illness.
Download or read book Freak Inheritance written by Michael M. Chemers and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-awaited follow-up to Garland-Thomson's field-defining book Freakery, Freak Inheritance illuminates the convergence of the freak show era with the eugenics era, explicating the cultural work of the freak show as a compelling range of performances of cultural and social Others that emerge as eugenic targets from the late 19th century into the 20th century and beyond. This book explores the wildly popular performances that told compelling stories about categories of people that scientific and social-scientific discourses increasingly described - and sometimes still describe - as biologically inferior. Although much work has emerged recently about the history of eugenics, this collection highlights the specific ways that modes of exaggerated commercial popular performances create a public conversation that mirrors pathological narratives of human difference that are now firmly established as the categories of normal and abnormal, healthy and diseased, beneficial and harmful. This connection between narratives of freakery and normalcy gesture towards a fuller understanding of how eugenic thinking has re-emerged strongly as a force in medical science and cultural thinking aimed at producing the supposed "best" and "most useful" kinds of people.
Download or read book Freak Inheritance written by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-08-27 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Freak Inheritance, both leading authors and emerging voices use cutting-edge disability and cultural theories to expose the operations of eugenicist thought in historical and contemporary culture. It is the follow-up to the field-defining Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (1996).
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic written by Clive Bloom and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-03 with total page 867 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the early 1830s the old school of Gothic literature was exhausted. Late Romanticism, emphasising as it did the uncertainties of personality and imagination, gave it a new lease of life. Gothic—the literature of disturbance and uncertainty—now produced works that reflected domestic fears, sexual crimes, drug filled hallucinations, the terrible secrets of middle class marriage, imperial horror at alien invasion, occult demonism and the insanity of psychopaths. It was from the 1830s onwards that the old gothic castle gave way to the country house drawing room, the dungeon was displaced by the sewers of the city and the villains of early novels became the familiar figures of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dracula, Dorian Grey and Jack the Ripper. After the death of Prince Albert (1861), the Gothic became darker, more morbid, obsessed with demonic lovers, blood sucking ghouls, blood stained murderers and deranged doctors. Whilst the gothic architecture of the Houses of Parliament and the new Puginesque churches upheld a Victorian ideal of sobriety, Christianity and imperial destiny, Gothic literature filed these new spaces with a dread that spread like a plague to America, France, Germany and even Russia. From 1830 to 1914, the period covered by this volume, we saw the emergence of the greats of Gothic literature and the supernatural from Edgar Allan Poe to Emily Bronte, from Sheridan Le Fanu to Bram Stoker and Robert Louis Stevenson. Contributors also examine the fin-de-siècle dreamers of decadence such as Arthur Machen, M P Shiel and Vernon Lee and their obsession with the occult, folklore, spiritualism, revenants, ghostly apparitions and cosmic annihilation. This volume explores the period through the prism of architectural history, urban studies, feminism, 'hauntology' and much more. 'Horror', as Poe teaches us, 'is the soul of the plot'.
Download or read book Ethnic Expositions in Italy 1880 to 1940 written by Guido Abbattista and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-03-22 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensively analyzing for the first time the phenomenon of ethnic living expositions in Italy between the 19th and 20th centuries, this book deals with the subject from a comparative European perspective and over the long term, studying analogies and differences in precedents as far back as the early modern age. The research, which seeks to go beyond the simplistic concept of "human zoos," intends to highlight the intentions, assumptions, and mechanisms of realization of the exhibitions of exotic living humans and the reactions from both the exhibited subjects and the public, exploiting a wide variety of heterogeneous sources capable of bringing out a kind of widespread popular ethno-anthropological ideas and the elements of racism contained in it. The book contributes to the understanding of Western mindsets and attitudes towards human diversity as they emerge from mass spectacular events that have over time become an international business. The present edition refers to the second Italian edition, containing an update discussing studies on the subject that have appeared between 2013 and 2021. Ethnic Expositions in Italy intends to fill a historiographical gap and to align Italian historiographies with European ones, which have long since come to terms with this legacy of the past and have explored its various historical manifestations in depth. This book is an excellent source for researchers and students alike, as well as those interested in the mechanisms that have helped shape European ideas and sensibilities on race and ethno-anthropological diversity.
Download or read book A Cultural History of Disability in the Long Nineteenth Century written by Joyce L. Huff and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-05-17 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long 19th century-stretching from the start of the American Revolution in 1776 to the end of World War I in 1918-was a pivotal period in the history of disability for the Western world and the cultures under its imperial sway. Industrialization was a major factor in the changing landscape of disability, providing new adaptive technologies and means of access while simultaneously contributing to the creation of a mass-produced environment hostile to bodies and minds that did not adhere to emerging norms. In defining disability, medical views, which framed disabilities as problems to be solved, competed with discourses from such diverse realms as religion, entertainment, education, and literature. Disabled writers and activists generated important counternarratives, made increasingly available through the spread of print culture. An essential resource for researchers, scholars and students of history, literature, culture and education, A Cultural History of Disability in the Long Nineteenth Century includes chapters on atypical bodies, mobility impairment, chronic pain and illness, blindness, deafness, speech dysfluencies, learning difficulties, and mental health, with 37 illustrations drawn from period sources.
Download or read book Circus and Allied Arts written by Raymond Toole-Stott and published by . This book was released on 1960 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Thinking the Limits of the Body written by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection maps the very best efforts to think the body at its limits. Because the body encompasses communities (social and political bodies), territories (geographical bodies), and historical texts and ideas (a body of literature, a body of work), Cohen and Weiss seek trans-disciplinary points of resonance and divergence to examine how disciplinary metaphors materialize specific bodies, and where these bodies break down and/or refuse prescribed paths. Whereas postmodern theorizations of the body often neglect its corporeality in favor of its cultural construction, this book demonstrates the inseparability of textuality, materiality, and history in any discussion of the body.
Download or read book Cutaneous Drug Eruptions written by John C. Hall and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-08-21 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The burden of cutaneous drug reactions is significant, in both outpatient and inpatient settings, and can result in morbidity and even mortality. This book is unique in its approach to this problem. This text is divided into basic principles, common drug reactions, skin conditions mimicked by drug reactions, drug reactions to the skin appendages, life-threatening drug reactions, less common drug reactions, and special groupings of drug reactions. For the clinician, the skin can only morphologically react in to many limited ways. This is also true for the pathologist. Combining these two forever linked specialties is a synergistic paradigm that greatly enhances diagnosis, and ultimately therapy, for these pernicious conditions. Drug reactions in the skin remain a common complication of therapy. True incidences of drug reactions are not available. For general discussion, the rule of 3% can be applied with reasonable assuredness. Approximately 3% of all hospitalized patients develop an adverse cutaneous drug reaction. Approximately 3% of these reactions are considered severe. Outpatient data is even more obscure, but at least 3% of dermatology clinic outpatient visits are due to a drug reaction. Cutaneous drug reactions compromise approximately 3% of all drug reactions. Even more challenging is the fact that the most vulnerable populations to drug reactions are increasing and include the elderly patients on prolonged drug therapy, and patients that use multiple drugs at the same time.
Download or read book The Examiner written by and published by . This book was released on 1857 with total page 846 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Julia Pastrana written by Christopher Hals Gylseth and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2021-10-18 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a dusty corner at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in norway lie the remains of Julia Pastrana, half hidden in a black plastic sack, all but forgotten. Yet in the middle of the nineteeth century, this 'ape woman' was renowed, visited by scientists of international repute, and drawing the populace of three continents to the freakshows in which she starred. just 4ft 6in tall, she was covered in hair, with a protruding jaw; but she also spoke several languages, married, had a child, made money. This is the compelling and strange story of how a woman born in the backwoods of Mexico came to be one of the most infamous women in Europe and America and how, nearly 150 years after she first set foot upon the stage, Julia is still being shown to others. The exhibition goes on.
Download or read book A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities written by Jan Bondeson and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long ago, curiosities were arranged in cabinets for display: a dried mermaid might be next to a giant's shinbone, the skeletons of conjoined twins beside an Egyptian mummy. In ten essays, Jan Bondeson brings a physician's diagnostic skills to various unexpected, gruesome, and extraordinary aspects of the history of medicine: spontaneous human combustion, colonies of snakes and frogs living in a person's stomach, kings and emperors devoured by lice, vicious tribes of tailed men, and the Two-Headed Boy of Bengal. Bondeson tells the story of Mary Toft, who gained notoriety in 1726 when she allegedly gave birth to seventeen rabbits. King George I, the Prince of Wales, and the court physicians attributed these monstrous births to a "maternal impression" because Mary had longed for a meal of rabbit while pregnant. Bondeson explains that the fallacy of maternal impressions, conspicuous in the novels of Goethe, Sir Walter Scott, and Charles Dickens, has ancient roots in Chinese and Babylonian manuscripts. Bondeson also presents the tragic case of Julia Pastrana, a Mexican Indian woman with thick hair growing over her body and a massive overgrowth of the gums that gave her a simian or ape-like appearance. Called the Ape Woman, she was exhibited all over the world. After her death in 1860, Julia's husband, who had also been her impresario, had her body mummified and continued to exhibit it throughout Europe. Bondeson tracked the mummy down and managed to diagnose Julia Pastrana's condition as the result of a rare genetic syndrome.
Download or read book Rest in Pieces written by Bess Lovejoy and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “marvelously macabre” (Kirkus Reviews) history of the bizarre afterlives of corpses of the celebrated and notorious dead. For some of the most influential figures in history, death marked the start of a new adventure. The famous deceased have been stolen, burned, sold, pickled, frozen, stuffed, impersonated, and even filed away in a lawyer’s office. Their fingers, teeth, toes, arms, legs, skulls, hearts, lungs, and nether regions have embarked on voyages that crisscross the globe and stretch the imagination. Counterfeiters tried to steal Lincoln’s corpse. Einstein’s brain went on a cross-country road trip. And after Lord Horatio Nelson perished at Trafalgar, his sailors submerged him in brandy—which they drank. From Alexander the Great to Elvis Presley, and from Beethoven to Dorothy Parker, Rest in Pieces connects the lives of the famous dead to the hilarious and horrifying adventures of their corpses, and traces the evolution of cultural attitudes toward death.
Download or read book Out of Captivity written by Marc Gonsalves and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "Out of Captivity, " Gonsalves, Stansell, and Howes recount for the first time their amazing tale of survival, friendship, and, ultimately, rescue, tracing their five and a half years as hostages of the FARC--a Colombian terrorist and Marxist rebel organization.
