19th Century Periodicles

Searching through the library’s periodicals was a new experience for me. After finding some help, I found that there are many volumes of popular 19^th century periodicals that I could pick up and read. I was pleased that I could actually pick up the volumes and read through them rather than searching and reading them on the internet. One of the first periodicals I picked up was Vogue. This periodical had more pictures than the other periodicals I looked at. Vogue also had a primary emphasis on fashion in its articles that wasn’t particularly entertaining to me. However it was interesting to see how some aspects of fashion have dramatically changed over the course or time. It was also striking to see how some of the techniques used to promote fashion advertisement are still used today. 

After quickly looking through a volume of Vogue, I searched for some other periodicals and I found the Atlantic Monthly. The articles were bound in a book and the volume that I looked at was from July 30, 1872. The Atlantic had a wide range of articles pertaining to political science, the economy, foreign affairs, science, and the arts. I found that the language used in the Atlantic was not hard to read but the articles were much longer than articles I personally read. One of the Articles that I read was The Poet at the Breakfast Table. This article read like an essay to me and was a story about an old master and his student. The old master was always busy conducting experiments with bacteria. The old master was interested to see how long it takes to kill bacteria under boiling water. This seemed funny to me because I could not see someone taking time to conduct an experiment over something that I would deem as common knowledge today. This also made me think about how far science has come since the 1800’s. Technology and information has increased so much since that time and it makes me wonder what the medical field will be like fifty years from now. The student in the essay seemed to act like the narrator of the story explaining how busy the old master was and how important his work was to him. The student seemed fascinated by the master’s work and wanted to know more about it without disturbing the old master. I felt like I could relate to the student because often times I really want to know how people in the physical therapy world work with patients and asses injuries. However, I also don’t want to feel like I am getting in the way of their work. Either way, this was one of my favorite articles because it was something I could relate to instead of one of the informational articles like Jefferson Governor of Virginia.  This article talked primarily about Jefferson’s journey to become governor and the people that helped him along the way. This article definitely was relevant for the time and I’m sure I would have enjoyed this article much more if I would have been present when this history was taking place.  

Much of the arts and political science articles did not interest me much but the science ones did. I came across an article directly titled Science and read through what the scientific gossip was of June in 1872. The article talked about research done pertaining to solar spots, the aurora borealis, and the positions of several of the planets. The article talked about cholera epidemics having correlations with sun spots. The basic premise was that the progress of cholera may be influenced by effects wrought upon the earth’s atmosphere by sun’s changes. The article noted specific points of disease on the earth relative to the amount of sunlight they get (i.e. Africa). This was interesting to me because I like to read information pertaining to health and how we can protect or increase our health status. This article reminded me of an article I read about sunscreen and its effects on the skin a few weeks ago. Basically the article talked about how certain chemicals found in sunscreen can essentially cause cancer in the skin if applied too often. Even though the sunscreen article and the cholera article where not directly related, I enjoyed reading about how certain elements in our everyday life impact our health. I think it’s good to know up and coming information on health and how we can protect ourselves so that we can live high quality of life.

The next part of the science article talked about Alcohol and whether it is heat producing and whether or not it is really a food. The article defines a food as any substance which supports life by undergoing chemical transformation with the body and by becoming incorporated with the tissues. This immediately struck my attention because alcohol is relevant to college life and the activities students choose to participate in. Much of the articles in the Atlantic that I enjoyed reading had direct applicability or relevance to my own life. This also was interesting to me because I was curious to know what researches back then concluded about alcohol being a food or not. The article talks about experiments made on rabbits to see if alcohol leaves the body unchanged or if a significant amount of the alcohol stays in the system. Ultimately the researches were at conflict with their conclusions but significant amount of evidence showed that alcohol was eliminated from the rabbit in a changed form (i.e. Aldehyde) and the rest stayed inside the body. This article was once again interesting to me because I found its information worthwhile. I love to look up studies pertaining to sports science and I had just read an article about the effect of alcohol on endurance performance. The Atlantic article gave me an insight to how researchers conducted experiments back then and how research in science has evolved today.

I feel like the subscribers of the Atlantic were people looking to increase their knowledge of the world around them. I also feel like writers such as Mark Twain helped popularize the magazine and also used the magazine to launch their own careers. I found that the longer articles were the ones pertaining to political science and other literary works. These works seemed to be the topics of interest at the time because of their multiple occurrences in the magazine. I probably would not read the majority of the information in the Atlantic if I lived at the time because these are not my main topics of interest. However, there were some very interesting articles that made me think about how people lived and wrote in the nineteenth century. I don’t think it would be so bad to live in a print based world because reading would open up plenty of doors to new ideas and discoveries.