Illustrations from an early twentieth century manual on “social hygiene.”
Questions provoked by these images:
1. What’s the “bad literature” the young girl is reading?
2. Can you imagine sixty being a “venerable old age”? (In 1900, the life expectancy of a white male like me was forty-seven(!)—I’d be in my dotage now at the age of forty.)
3. Why do men get an extra eight years before their life falls apart?
4. Am I the only one that would love to see the return of “social hygiene” manuals?
(Via: Sociological Images )
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…