By 安娜J. 烹饪
欢迎来到蜂巢系列的第三部分, “读者og体育官网,” in which we bring you a variety of examples of the type of research being done here in the MHS library.
今天的嘉宾是凯瑟琳·塞塞, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto who visited the MHS in early January on an intensive research trip.
1. Can you briefly describe the research project that brought you to the 马萨诸塞州历史学会?
My research looks at abnormal eating in late eighteenth to early-nineteenth-century America and England. I’m focusing predominantly on medical texts that discuss the causes and nature of both prolonged abstinence from and over-indulgence in eating but I’m also interested in other genres of writing and uncovering personal experiences of such behaviors. I’m essentially trying to see if these eating patterns were conceptualized as more than just physiological, 如果有一种观点认为这些行为是一种选择的结果, 如果这些理论在两个地区在相似的时间框架内发展起来. 我最近才开始对美国档案进行研究. My visit to the MHS was at the start of this portion of my research and I planned to consult mainly manuscript sources.
2. What specific material in our collections made coming to the MHS important to your research? 有特定的收藏或材料类型吗 你咨询过的?
I knew that the MHS would be important for the early period I’m studying but there was no one collection I had in mind, 鉴于我主题的性质. 我本想把注意力集中在卫生部的日记上，但是, 尽管我参考了这些, 我找到了大量的医疗笔记, 我来之前不知道的记录和印刷材料. 医学手稿、缩微胶片和印刷材料都证明很有价值.
3. 当你在这里工作的时候，有没有什么东西让你感到惊讶? 它og体育平台，为什么令人惊讶?
的 diaries I consulted at the MHS were the first eighteenth-century American diaries I’d seen. I expected them to be rather more descriptive and instead found them to briefly record routine daily occurrences. 另一方面，我没有想到会找到这么多医学手稿, especially those that contained comprehensive comparisons of treatment methods and reworked notes on select cases. 有几份手稿有令人难以置信的详细描述. 例如, Edward Holyoke’s series of notes to the 质量achusetts Medical Society contain a wealth of information about the seasons and incidents of disease in 1780s Salem. 我以前从未见过如此本地化和一致的报道.
4. Is there a particular quote (or visual image) from the material 你咨询过的 that stands out for you? 引用(或图片)og体育平台?为什么它很重要?
有两个来源非常突出. 第一个是 费城精神病院的情况报告 (费城,1821). This source contains the earliest record I’ve found of an American asylum admitting someone for ‘a constant refusal of food previous to admission’. 第二个是本杰明·林德·奥利弗(Benjamin Lynde Oliver)的医学笔记，1760-1835年 奥利弗家族文件). In his notes on hydrophobia I found a very early description of the use of what was essentially electric-shock therapy to cure this ‘disease’ as well as separate classifications for ‘genuine’ and ‘hysterical’ hydrophobia. 的 fact that Oliver separated types of hydrophobia based upon principles of a mental impulse, 而不仅仅是身体反应, 对我的项目有鼓励作用吗.
5. If you brought a visitor to the MHS and you had a chance to show them ONE item from our collections, 会og体育平台项目呢?
Although this source did not prove fruitful for my particular research I really enjoyed reading 艾伦·怀特的日记 因为他为他的叙述画了插图. 的 drawings helped to immediately indicate the aspects of his life that he was most keen to record. 这些图片, 比如这个, 1773年3月, 使他的笔记成为我所见过的最吸引人、最生动的日记之一.
我们邀请Kathryn分享她的研究 蜂巢 读者可能会感兴趣. 她写道:
我是多伦多大学的一名博士研究生，这是我学习这个项目的第三年. I’m currently following a summer’s research in England with a term 旅行ling around the north-east American coast. I came to this topic via a previous interest in the institutional treatment as well as the popular use of the idea of insanity in eighteenth-century England. I have chosen to shape my thesis as a comparative analysis in part because there is a considerable degree of information exchange across the Atlantic and in part because discussions of pre-nineteenth-century disordered eating have tended to be Eurocentric. 的 research I have undertaken so far – both in England and America – suggests that my early theory, that there was an attempt to understand these patterns from a psychological perspective will hold, 也许这种理解的转变是相当试探性的.
