Since at least Aristotle scholars have sought to discover the connections between earthquakes and planetary motions. Aristotle noted in Book 2 of his Meteorology that there seemed to be coincidental link between eclipses and earthquakes. His coincidental link was transformed into a causal link, which could in principle be used to predict earthquakes, at least […]
In 1976 the NSF had to justify the money it had spent on educational projects during its first 20 years in existence. The previous year the U.S. congress had cut the funding for the creation, evaluation, and distribution of science education materials. In response, the NSF produced a report, the National Science Foundation – Supported […]
Raphael had a particular fondness for publishing little handbooks full of tables used for divination. In his Raphael’s Book of Fate: Whereby all Questions may be Answered Respecting the Present and Future he offered handful of different methods of divining the future, most of which used a standard playing deck, some reckoning, and some cross-referencing […]
Robert Cross Smith, better known as Raphael, The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century, was a rather prolific publisher. For a short time he published a journal with the autobiographical sounding title The Straggling Astrologer. After about six months of losing money, he ended that project. He followed it with a thick tome, The Astrologer of […]
The NY Times recently reported on “A New Tool in Treating Mental Illness: Building Design.”1 Looking at a couple of mental health facilities in California, one recently completed and one still under construction, the article highlights some of the building and design innovations found at these institutions: private rooms with nice views of the outside, […]
A short notice in the Phrenological Journal from April, 1879, reports on the self-luminous properties of calcium sulfide. A Prof. Morton from the Stevens Institute of Technology had analyzed the material painted onto the faces of self-luminous clocks and discovered that it was just a “sulfide of calcium.” The compound absorbs light when exposed to […]
I stumbled across a letter (ok, more accurately put: I stumbled across a scan of a letter) from 1911 sent to an R. A. Bell in Montana: Dear Sir:In response to your kind enquiry, we take pleasure in forwarding you particulars of the New Lessons in Physical Regeneration. If you are greatly interested in the […]
The June 1879 issue of The Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated contains the following brief notice: Lead – Poisoning. — The dangerous character of lead compounds is shown by the fact, that, in the years from 1838 to 1847, no fewer than 3,142 patients suffering from lead colic were admitted into the hospitals of Paris, […]
The standard geocentric model assumed that the planets were arranged out from the center, the earth, according to the period of revolution. On this assumption, the shorter the period, the closer the planet was to the stationary, central Earth.[1] Claudius Ptolemy ensconced the order in his Syntaxis (commonly know as his Almagest) sometime in the […]
A brief notice in the American Journal of Insanity from January 1856 highlights once again therapeutic importance of ambience especially for treating insanity: Gift to the Maryland Hospital A beautiful oil painting has been received at the Maryland Hospital for the Insane, with the following note addressed to the Medical Superintendent: Baltimore, 27th September, 1855 […]