 |
Register Subscribe Login |
| 1. |  | Unidentified photographer / artist 2008 Publicity flyer for John Wood "Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century" (Galerie Vervais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] Publicity flyer Private collection of John Wood |
| 2. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) A. C., age 19, U.S.: Elephantiasis Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood THE LOWER LIMBS have been enlarged since childhood. Patient had Scarlatina at eight years of age, which was followed by general oedema. From about that time the limbs have been increasing in size. Has been subject to attacks of chills followed by high fever, lasting three or four days. These have occurred at intervals of three or four months and have been followed by a marked increase in the size of the limbs. On the anterior aspect of the legs there are now (Dec. '78) several patches of thickened and roughened epidermis. On the posterior surface of the right leg ulceration began about eighteen months ago. Sloughing occurred about a month ago, and there is now an excavation four inches in diameter and four and a half inches in depth. There are one or two patches of superficial ulceration, oozing a large quantity of clear serous fluid. Since this oozing began the legs have diminished in circumference. The general health is failing. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem Do not say to me that she is not beautiful, that her body does not sing out in choirs of honeyed promise unfulfilled and that, though so exposed, she is not more modest than you, that no matter what your life's hard crest, hers has been more breakered and stinging. Could she have had any dream that did not plunge and foam to nothing? Think on her this day. She could not have known what would have been asked of her, having once again, as she had since scarlatina, done as a doctor said do, but this day having agreed to allow a stranger to witness, to photograph the secret widths and folds, the tumbling flesh of her legs and feet, knowing even the kindest eye would think the huge word, see the lumbering animal, not a young girl who dreamed no more of dancing. But he would demand even more. Notice how hastily she's tossed her dress over her head, to make a veil, to veil him out and blind the event. Notice her arms' quick covering of those Biblical breasts whose sway any Herod or Solomon, merely to watch, might trade mountains of myrrh, calamus, and cinnamon, gold or the very neck of prophecy. Notice the timid finger, how, childlike, she's put it to her lips, standing there as she never before had been. Who then could not have said, "Ask of me whatever you will." For such modesty and grace who would not have granted her temples of wishes, all smelling of cedar, of myrrh and covenants? And then you begin to see, from her belly's ripe curve and the abundant, waiting mystery, that with the power of such thighs and the will of such legs she could dance with the thunder of the Mother, could bring forth all risings and ripenings, the splitting seed, pomegranates spilling into fortunes, and all earthly mothers their progress and delivery; that she as well could dance the moon's cold turns, their chills and fevers, the sloughings off and diminishments, excavations and the final failings. But do not turn away from her. Lift off her veil. See the three of them mother, lover, daughter move, slowly as seasons, slowly as a lifetime, into your arms. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 3. |  | Unidentified photographer / artist 1880-1885 (ca) Unknown Boy: Leprosy Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood PATIENT OF DR. SHERWELL. Born in the West Indies. Improved under treatment but died of an intercurrent disease. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem My mother tells me prayer will help. I think it won't, but try again: "Look hard; their wings are white as milk, and if you smile, they'll sometimes grin." I looked so hard it hurt my eyes. But she was right. I saw blue lips and baby teeth, heard milky cries floating toward me like small ships. You're healed. Go unknown boy; go home. Your herd awaits the winter hay. But I was being nibbled down and soon would be as real as they. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 4. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Ellen Collins, age 37: Skin Graft Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood WAS ADMITTED to Bellevue Hospital, October 1871, for a burn from kerosene oil. After five months' treatment the wound assumed the appearance seen in the illustration. The nipple had been renewed and the wound of the left breast almost covered by grafts from her own person and those of her friends. On March 10, 1872, I immersed an amputated leg in hot water and began grafting from it within three minutes after immersion. Thirty grafts were applied on the right side and covering a vertical space five by four and a-half inches, and almost all succeeded. March 23. Being unable to take the amputated limb immediately to my patient, I wrapped it in flannel and placed it behind a coil of steam pipes; beginning grafting one hour and thirty-five minutes after the operation. About one hundred grafts were applied, and on April 1, I counted eighty-nine successful ones. On April 19, this photograph was taken to show the grafts of March 23. Another taken three months later, showed the breast nearly healed, and the arm much improved. An acute pleurisy with effusion of the left side then set in and caused her death on June 22, when everything promised success. A post-mortem showed that death was not directly due to the burn. She had received in all over 1500 grafts in less than a year; a large proportion of which were successful. (Dr. Geo. A. Van Wagenen, M.D., Late House Surgeon Bellevue Hospital). [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem I tried to rhyme her breasts with bits of skin and patch her broken meters back to song. But pain stitched on and on. No art that I'd enjoin could lyric back her breasts from fire or mend such loss or make her husband kind: he'd "never love a chest of scars." So I was left to wooing with scalpels and grafts, salves and sutures, and the legs I'd warmed from cadavers. Soon I'd learned her body like a lover. But after the months of grafting, so much intimacy without romance, her life blistered with grief and grievance. She'd take no more of my artless crafting, and all my love and and all my skill flamed to nothing. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 5. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Unknown Man: Syphiloderma Papulosum Circinatum Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood SYPHILIS IS by no means a disease which invariably acknowledges a venereal origin. . . . This patient had a very severe type of disease. There were present nearly all of the usual symptoms, and treatment had little effect. . . . October 22d Syphilitic papules; a few on the forehead, and a number of small crusts on the scalp. Closer examination revealed a dark-red patch on the gum, which, according to the patient had been swollen and hard for two months or more. The patient's little daughter, eight years old, had also come to the dispensary with an eruption on her body. She had a large ulcerated patch on the inside of her lower lip. Her health was impaired, and, according to her father's statement, she did not look or act as she had done before. Here evidently was a second case of syphilis resulting from an oral chancre. I now made a prying examination into the affairs of the family for the preceding year, and learned that about eight months before they had a boarder, a woman, who had whitish sores on her lips. She was accustomed to play with and fondle the patient's little son, two years old, who soon got a sore on his tongue, with lumps in the neck, and afterwards had a copious eruption on the body. Next, the wife and mother, who was pregnant at the time, acquired a sore mouth, with submaxillary swelling, followed in a month or so by spots over the body. Then the daughter became infected, as already described, and lastly the father. November 21st--To-day the mother came to the dispensary. The baby, five weeks old, was covered with papular eruption, which had appeared suddenly four days before, and had spread rapidly from the head over the whole body. The infant soon died, and what this family suffered, through no fault of their own, but merely from the unfortunate circumstance of having kept a syphilitic boarder, the reader can readily imagine. Scores of such instances doubtless are occurring of which no record is made, no history written. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem In solemn outbreaks of the face the twisting spirochetes move at blood-speed microscopic and silent at their driven, predestined labors. And soon their swarm will be elsewhere, and he will begin to soften into bits of failing flesh. But they are not thinking, "We will soon bring him down." They move without mind, blind, oblivious to their purpose. But soon he will be brought down, as will the rest of them. The headaches have already begun, the pains in the joints; his wife, his son now have fevers, weight loss, the pustules; the baby is buried; his daughter's progress is slower; who will care for her? He remembers how glad they'd been for the rent money, the things they'd promised her and planned. There could be no frenzy like this, no sorrow the equal, or consolation worth the speaking. Look at him and tell me anything benevolent chained us in nature's links. The Making only cared for life itself. He and his pain have been gone a hundred years now. Yet in that dust once the marrow of his bones, glowing like tiny, distant galaxies, the dormant spirochetes sleep, dreaming of lymph, blood, the long journeys without meaning. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 6. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Unknown Girl: Scabies Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood SCABIES IS an affection of the skin, resulting primarily from the burrowing of minute insects called "acari." The Acarus Scabiei, or itch mite, is a minute and almost microscopic insect. It can be readily seen with the naked eye when extracted from its burrow or cuniculus. If a female, she becomes speedily impregnated by the male, who roams at night upon the free surface of the skin. She then proceeds to burrow, and deposit her ova to the number of a dozen or more beneath the epidermis. At the end of this burrow she dies, unless prematurely removed by the finger nail of her unwilling host. The ova are hatched within fourteen days, and find their way to the surface. Here the maiden acari are wooed, become impregnated, and the borrowing and hatching process is repeated. The burrows are generally found where the skin is thin and warm, as between the fingers, upon the penis in the male, and the nipple in the female. The disease is usually contracted at night, from some affected bedfellow. The itching is almost intolerable. Ordinary cases can be cured in from five to ten days. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem Forget medical history. Imagine she was stung While robbing a hive of honey. Such beauty should be sung Into pastoral poetry. Is she nymph, maid, or shepherdess? Oh who could ever care, But that she stands and hides her breasts Which we would have her bare. Such gentleness is best undressed. In verdant grass she now reclines And breaks the honeyed combs. She lets us bring her cold white wines And pillow down with lambs, And sing her in to antique rhymes. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 7. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Syphiloderma Tuberculosum Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood Poem: The Passionate Shepherdess to her Love Come live with me and be my love, And we will all love's pleasures prove That valleys, hills, my stubbly fields, Or any warm and moist spot yields. I have for you now sweetly posed, My face blossoming like a rose, And worn my shepherdess's cloak. Oh come and see my wooly flock. I swear to love no one but you, Whom I will lick like morning dew Or honey from the fig's ripe seat, Those golden drops I love to eat. Lie down on me, my body's silk. You're my honey; I'll be your milk. I'll bring you warm and bubbling jugs, And you will purr and lick my dugs. I seep, I run, I ooze desire. My open legs are smeared with fire. Oh come and kiss my pepper-skin. My taste sets testicles a-spin. Love's capsicum will kill regret And make our perineums sweat. If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me and be my love. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 8. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) G.W., age 30: Lupus Vulgaris Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood PATIENT AT the clinic of the University Medical College. The disease had existed for twenty-one years. It began, according to the patient, in the form of a small scaly pimple midway between right eye and ear. It spread very gradually, in spite of the endeavors of several physicians, who employed both internal remedies and caustics. Four years before the photograph was taken a patch appeared on the scalp near the vertex. The patient now being transferred to my care, I endeavored to check the spread of the patch, and particularly to prevent its further extension upon the eyelid. Caustic potassa in solid stick was applied successively to portions of the edge of the patch. Absorbent cotton wrapped about a probe and dipped in the liquefied potassa was used when working upon the eyelids. By means of these applications, frequently repeated, the elevated margin of the patch was soon reduced to a level with the adjacent healthy skin. The patch was then covered with adhesive mercurial plaster for a few weeks. It is now quite smooth, of a dull reddish hue, looking at a distance like a faint port-wine mark. There are neither tubercles, pustules nor scales at present. The lower portion of the patch, to which the thermo-cautery was applied, is remarkably smooth, and the edge of the patch can hardly be made out, as the redness of the burn shades off into the surrounding healthy skin. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem A face of embers, thirty, handsome, whole years melted, so long at the kindling point, wifeless, aroused, virginal, smoldering in his prowling combustion like a patch of flame ready to break and howl out, desires in packs, rovings that went no where but to the wash, but always outward, outward pushing, far fields and horizons, to trash-faced whores "Not on your life, Mister," poxed, dangerous, "Keep it in your pocket," flowing with bone rot no, a pure clean marrow but knotted in frenzy, and waking with ideas he'd fall asleep with dreaming of doing things he didn't know the words for or if there were words, huge hammers sledging in a hail of blood-storm pure as corposant fire, caught breath and risings and thoughts of the West, the bad lands, where he'd heard there were possible allowances honed allowances, whetted, stropped and brought to an edge's edge, having now by prayers been blanketed for years, self, mother, father and grandmother, having wanted for half a life to be dead, and men of God advising swathes and wires, those night-cages tied to touching boys, and all medicine useless before the vulgarity of his face. And then George Fox, in white, and smelling clean as sunfire and purifying in communion. And it was no more than a birthmark, a splash of spilled wine. And G. W., whose life had been reborn, must have taken Fox's hand, held it and searched uselessly the hymnals of his thought for adequate song. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 9. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Unknown and Angry Man: Psoriasis Annulata Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood THIS CASE shows both the scaly rings and the gyrate bands of scales which are frequently seen at the margin of a large pigmented area from which the active eruption has disappeared. The treatment is simple as far as regards the removal of the eruption. It is a much more difficult matter to prevent its return. The scales of psoriasis have been compared to silver and to mother of pearl. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem Sad, angry, bar-bender and dumbbell lifter, out of work Strongman unable anymore to wear the leopard skin, but still dreaming of the crowds who'd once paid a nickel to see iron twisted the way boys would twist their fathers' pipe cleaners easy into light shapes birds, alphabets, and even men now photographed at last but for what had brought him down, he sat barely holding his pose and fury as he remembered a field in Kansas where once a hundred farmers and their families watched as metal yielded to him as if he were as pure as wind, the wind of their worst dreams, the dreams that tore away barns and arms, that hammered harvesters down to their teeth. And the farmers watched and wished for such a hired hand, for the silos he could build them, corn cribs and sheds and new barns big as their wishes. In San Francisco a ship's captain told him, "If you ever tire of the circus, think about the sea. You've got the strength for it." In New Orleans a black man at the docks told him, "You wouldn't have no trouble with bales o' cotton, liftin' all day." Children in every town loved him, wished their fathers his strength and mustaches. And he smiled at them and at their mothers, for he well knew and had long known the now near-forgotten looks of women, where they stared and what they wished; and the looks of old men whose eyes teared as they watched, as they thought they remembered how they too had been and the things they thought or wished they'd done. But now with as much strength as ever yet fired even from the cheapest fun houses, with no way to hide his gyrating silver scales, he blindly broods and thinks how he has been wronged a hand that had shaken his? a woman? bad meat? a barber's careless nick? but thinks how out of the lion can come forth sweetness and of all the things he can smash, claw, and pull down, of bone to be crushed. His rage, inarticulate and abstract, oozes forth from the crushed comb of his anger. It glistens bright as the swirling scales of his chest and rises like the things he plans to do. John Wood Note "But thinks how out of the lion / can come forth sweetness" (Judges 14: 8-9, 14). Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 10. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Margaret K., age 45, Ireland: Rosacea Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood PATIENT AT the Skin Clinic of the Women's Medical College. Rosacea is a chronic disease of the middle period of life. These "rosy drops" sometimes present a central point of a somewhat darker hue. In severe cases a fiery triangle may be seen on either cheek. In the most remarkable form of the disease the nose may attain the size of the fist. The eruption had troubled her more or less for six years and had been much worse than usual during the last month. She complained greatly of discomfort after eating and often vomited her food. The gastric irritability having subsided under a restricted diet, she was ordered Aug. 6, 1878, a mixture containing sulphate of iron and sulphate of magnesia, and for local application an ointment of sulphur, four parts, cosmoline, ninety-two parts. This was followed by rapid improvement, and when seen again on Sept. 17, all trace of the eruption had disappeared, and she felt much stronger and better. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem 1. Your rosy drops are gone, Mother Kelley, Mother Kelley. The golden age has dawned. This coming century sores and chancres, wars and bankers will be but memory. For every heart concurs life is richer, life is kinder. And science, too, avers. 2. O Mother Mother Kelley O, life is richer for wars and bankers. Piggly piggly belly O. Life is kinder on sores and chancres. Gooey dewy jelly O. Mother Kelley, Mother Kelley. The heart concurs Science avers: The golden rose is gone; a bloody horn is spawned. The age of thorns has dawned! John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 11. |  | Unidentified photographer / artist 1880-1885 (ca) E.H.C., age 58: Cornua Cutanea Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood PATIENT OF Dr. Geo. F. French, of Minneapolis, Minn. In medical literature we find many accounts of human horns springing from various portions of the body. These cases create surprise and wonder at first thought, but when we consider the outer layer of the epidermis, together with the nails, is a natural growth of horny character, we become far less surprised by these unnatural horny growths. About three years ago a lesion appeared on the edge of the lower lip, near the angle of the mouth. In three months it had assumed a horny consistency and at the end of a year was one-half an inch in length. About this time two more horns appeared on the opposite side of the lip, and in six months attained the size of the first. Six months later these three horns were cut off close to the lip, but in a year they grew to three of four times their former dimensions. Two months ago, while in the woods, and pushing his way through the brush, the horns were torn apart, and the lacerated wound, which has never healed, discharges, at the present time, a foul, unhealthy pus. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem No one there did not know of him, the blue-eyed man with a mouth of horns. His lips spittled years into nightmare and seeded the dreams of children for decades. They'd see him into middle age and on, still there, back in a slumbered corner of sleep, rousing, then moving toward them mumbling and chewing, or merely waiting, as if he were some ordinary anybody crossing their dream's tide. He could not walk the streets of Minneapolis without hearing the sound of rodents and the constant opening of bellows the high squeaks of certain women, the sucked-air-gasps of the startled. And he wished for strong cheese and steel traps, for big bellows to flame the carbon of their fears and burn their windpipes to the husks of stops and slow, groaning vowels. He grew as hard as horn toward his neighbors. The doctor had explained, explained carefully to his wife that the springing of human horns, most often to the head, though rare, was not unknown, that we all carry horn's potential and any part might horn: a heel, a follicle, the genitals of either sex, that six inches was often seen, that ten had been recorded. But science did not stanch her revulsion, and it discharged like a slow and constant suppuration. He could smell it on the furniture, the dinner plates, the pages of his Bible, and all about her body. And she, too, like the children, dreamed, dreamed of crabs climbing out of his mouth, dreamed them walking their bed at night, crawling the length of her, under her gown, burrowing as his mouth would still attempt his needs and humors, his sinew and inwards, having not changed. But her issue rebuked his authority for he had grown enamored of his horns, and he felt a sour softening in his bones, for a wife that maketh her husband ashamed is as a rottenness in his bones. A man shall eat good by the fruit of his mouth: but the soul of the transgressor shall eat violence. And the fruit of his mouth was horn, and he would not crawl on all fours to eat dirt like whimpering Job, who wept that he had sewed sackcloth upon his skin and defiled his horn in the dust. For God loved the world and blest man's horn, for God, too, was horned. And Habakkuk had said, God's brightness was the light, and He had horns coming out of His hand and had psalmed He would bud the horn of David and exalt it like the horn of an unicorn. And he read his wife the horned scriptures and the scriptures of his authority and the scriptures of pollution, and grunting and squealing as his horns stirred and his marrow thickened to sweetness, and the calluses of his hands hardened, throbbed, and began to split, he told her she would banquet on the violence of his brightness. And he was upon her, and she was like corn. John Wood Notes "a wife that maketh her husband ashamed" (Proverbs 12:14); "A man shall eat good by the fruit of his mouth: / but the soul of the transgressor shall eat violence" (Proverbs 13:2); "he had sewed sackcloth, / upon his skin and defiled his horn in the dust" (Job 16:15}; "God's brightness was the light, and He had horns / coming out of His hand" (Habakkuk 3:4); "bud the horn of David" (Psalms 132:17); "exalt it like the horn" (Psalms 92:10). Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 12. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Onychia Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood Poem: Questions for the Viewer Can you clear your mind of disease, approach this image with the ease of having just opened a book on Man Ray and taken a look? Is this the hand you know from dreams, the one that does the sexual crimes, that lifts a wrought iron rod against the screaming heads, the breaking breasts? And could those fingers' stunning red be on a hand of pure hatred, an intense grip you dream and plan for the necks of haughty women? And is that rag around the bar not just to make your prints obscure and hide your face from fist-black dreams but gag her cries and choke her screams? Or do you love to hear her beg, to hear her sob, to finally gag and puke at a cock's dumb power to break her down, make her cower? Oh, Mr. Sinister, just say what it is you've put away within that box. Something pretty? A photograph's worst memory? John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 13. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Dermatitis Calorica Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood A young man had his fingers frost-bitten, and soon after applied to an apothecary who gave him tincture of Arnica to apply. Within fifteen minutes his fingers began to swell and large bullae formed. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem: Mr. Sinister Dreams of New Hands If I could will my hands to change, I'd have them ooze and swell to these. Oh how there's necks they'd love to seize and little bones they'd rearrange. It's not just women I would cleanse, their stinking tides I'd stanch fox, ferret, civet, all whose stench the menstrual moon offends. You know the monthly things they do to drop and lay their egg, then splay and rut till they can drag you down to fertilize them through. With hands like these I'd teach them fear. I'd let them linger here and there. There's nothing I would let them spare. There's nothing I'd not let them tear. Then when they begged, "I want to die," I'd say, "Oh no; I'm done; goodbye." John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 14. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Syphilis Hereditaria Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood Poem: Mr. Sinister Smiles Mr. Sinister smiles At you Lady, and drools And drips a bit from where You'd guess, but would most fear. He has made many plans: Little trips for his hands. And they all involve you. Oh there's nothing to do But wait for him. He's there You know, and he's like air: He's everywhere you'd go. He's got something to show Just you. You won't like it. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 15. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Syphiloderma Ulcerativum Perforans Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood Poem Overwhelmed by her days, her neighbors' talk and her son's shame, she goes about her house as she has always done, doing the things that she has always done the usual things women do: turning melon rinds and plums into preserves, canning peppers and peas, and hanging laundry on the lines, dusting, and in the evening sitting down to read, often on the porch when the weather was porch-weather and the light lingered longer. Her son seldom writes anymore, but knows that she must have gotten it from Papa, who left last year, saying her "cold, bleak ways" had burst his heart. Of course, that wasn't it, but she knew nothing of other women. And so sadness tumbled into her eyes, balked and stranded there. The headaches began, then ulcerations, the decay. Her lips pulled down with the weight of her thought. She quit the church: too many whispers and too quick the silence when she entered any room; no one could talk to her without staring into the center of her face. And some would even ask, "Oh, Mrs. So and So, have you heard from that nice husband of yours lately? He's still on that job; where was it? Ohio? And such a good man. Pity he hasn't come home yet." Blame everywhere. And nothing she could say to anyone. She's kept his picture, a rose he gave her she pressed into a book of Tennyson's, a closet of his clothes and pairs of shoes. She recalls what she thought were glittering days: a son in her arms, a husband smiling, the talk of all they would do together, all the yesterdays they swore would sustain every tomorrow through the calendars' slow, relentless erosion of the world. Now, here at its quiet limits, she withers slowly, a shadow roaming like a dream. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 16. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) P.D., age 73: Epithelioma Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood THIS PATIENT had always been a strong, healthy, hard-working man before the development of the epithelioma, and had worked generally with a pipe in his mouth. Two and a half years before the picture was taken, a small lump began to be felt on the left side of the lower lip. This became hard, superficially eroded, and covered with a scab. Gradually the growth invaded the greater portion of the lip, although it was over two years before destructive ulceration began. In the central portion of the lip there had been loss of tissue, and there was such a continual dribbling of saliva that the patient usually kept a handkerchief pressed upon his chin, and in sitting for his photograph it was necessary to put a rubber cloth over his breast to protect his clothing. The treatment of epithelioma usually demands prompt and active measures. The earlier the patch can be destroyed the better. When progress is very rapid, the immediate removal of the diseased part, or its complete destruction by means of a powerful caustic, is the only treatment worthy of being considered. In cases where the disease is not progressive, and especially where the patient objects to the knife or cautery, I would advise arsenic in small and long-continued doses. In the use of caustics failure and even harm often results from an insufficient application of the caustic, through fear of going too deeply, or causing too much pain. The growth, instead of being totally destroyed, merely becomes inflamed, and is stimulated to further increase in extent. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem I've asked and asked why God afflicted me. I'm sure it's not for something I have done for I've always done as I'd be done by perhaps something I neglected to do. But could it have merited such rebuke? No blasphemy ever fell from where once my lips were only praise and thanksgiving for my lot. Now I'm reduced to drooling, and must turn from my wife of fifty years, whose lips I'd still be kissing had I still lips. I've sometimes thought I am some modern Job being tested, but no other tests have come: my wife and children are all well; my wealth has not diminished; boils have not appeared; and I'm not even taunted by street boys: they doff their caps, say "Morning, Sir," as if nothing had changed at all. Quite clearly then I am no Job, but I'm left more perplexed, left without irony's odd benefit, for I'm no blind poet no mute preacher whose justifying iambics, whose prayers set to do wonders, went undelivered. I am an ordinary husband, father, businessman, never stole from anyone and had so many friends note the past tense. Is there any meaning to this at all? Perhaps it's in how I carry the pain. I know that better men have suffered worse, but that's a fact that little comforts me. All suffering is singular. My pain is not assuaged by pains which outreach mine, and I find nothing in a neighbor's plight, regardless how much worse it is than mine, to take some sickening solace in. Of course I'm glad I am not he, but just as glad not to be some younger, unafflicted, richer anyone, for he would not be me, who's husband to an old wife, father to children whose memory in my life is worth more to me than my whole life's worth. I most fear there's no meaning here at all, no more than if I'd stumbled on a rock and tripped: rock and stumble and trip: that's all. But can caprice so drive our happiness, shape our disgusts and failures, be the lures that catch and pulley us, but not perhaps to God but toward the alien banks, there where all sense of stream collapses in air that takes our breath away and leaves our eyes shocked and milky, blinking at a world turned too clear for previous vision. The brain then reels, bolts, and goes out in brilliant, deep, shimmering disasters of air and light. Thoughts like these erode the heart. Don't listen, Love; I'm a foolish old man, and these times are bothersome, and I, occasionally, melancholy, but Dr. Fox will help. I'm sure, and think I'm sure we will kiss again for surely there must be some meaning here. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 17. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) H., Age 27: Keloid Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood ABOUT EIGHTEEN MONTHS before the photograph was taken this patient had a severe attack of variola, which left considerable pitting of the face. About the time of leaving the hospital tumors appeared on either cheek, which have slowly increased in size. A small one was excised, but the growth reappeared almost as soon as the wound had healed. The lobe of the ear, which is sometimes the seat of cicatricial keloid, is unaffected in this case, although it has been pierced to hold a ring. The cause of keloid is unknown. Observation teaches that in the vast majority of cases it develops at some point where cutaneous injury has taken place. Negroes appear to be more frequently affected by keloid than white persons. Whether this is due to a peculiarity of the race or to the fact that their skins are more frequently pitted with variola, scarred by strumous abscesses, and disfigured by the lash, may be a question. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem Transparent that's what they are, white people. You can tell from the way they look at you they think you've been in brick or razor fights, think old Africa just flares out on hot nights, flaps her lips and calls you home, as once again our thick and wooly blood takes hold, while we, helpless before it, dream of jungles, nose-bones, and human flesh. They stare but see you for what you're not. Were I piebald, had claw hands, a club foot, looked like the Turtle Boy, or were anything like the usual, cute Negro freaks at Barnam's or Worth's on the Bowery, tumbling and laughing, trying to eat with knife and fork, had I about me anything they could have dreamed might ever have befallen them or fear could befall theirs, though unborn, I'd at least had their useless sympathy, unwanted but more tolerable than being seen naked, grunting and jumping around a roasting man. You did notice, I trust, that even Dr. Fox good enough to tell me he did not believe the phrenological myths, and that what defined was not the shape or size but what was in the head and I added, "Yes, and in the heart, too," which made him smile you did notice that apart from "Mrs. B., Scotch, widow," I am the only one in his whole book identified by a single initial, as if I had but a Christian name, no family, no surname, as if I, were some old heathen's boy, I, who'd never known the lash, never been a slave, having been born here in New York, where emancipation came in 1827! But even Dr. Fox, trained in careful and dermatological sight, did not see me clear. He did notice one thing, though, besides keloid and skin color; they all do, and it stops them, holds them a moment, leaves them unsure, unnerved by their lack of certainty, troubled insecure, even disturbed by what so ordinary, so simple a thing as a small gold earring could possibly mean. John Wood Note Nineteenth century America's morbid fascination with deformed Black children as entertainers is well illustrated in Michael Mitchell's Monster of the Gilded Age: Photographs by Chas. Eisenmann (Gage Pub., 1979). Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 18. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) C.R., age 20, U.S.: Acne Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood THE PATIENT was of fair complexion, with a naturally delicate skin. A marked flushing of the face ensued upon mental excitement or slight external irritation. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem If you would understand this classic face, forget youth's clumsy angers, its acne and fears. Then you will see the sculpted grace of ancient days, austere in its beauty. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 19. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) William R.,age 22, American, driver: Sarcoma Pigmentosum Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood [THIS IS FOX'S longest case study (nearly 1500 words) and his strangest entry for it involves no discussion of treatment or conclusions as to the cause.] Six years before the photographs were taken he received a blow on the outer side of the right eye-ball. Shortly after a minute black speck appeared on the site of the bruise, which steadily, though slowly, increased in size. Small tumors appeared later on various portions of the body. In June, 1874, there were about forty or fifty tumors, varying from a slight nodosity to a large horse-chestnut in size. One of hazel-nut size on the right temple was excised to relieve the deformity. The tumor was friable in structure, and almost black in color. Microscopically a great excess of pigment matter was found, and many large cells, with two or even three nuclei. The urine was of a smoky color. The prognosis which had been made in his case rendered him despondent. From this time forward the development of the tumors was pretty rapid, new ones being discovered almost daily. The general surface of the skin grew darker. All of the tumors are decidedly hard and firm to the feel. Some of them are colored, of various shades, from a greenish brown to a deep blue-black. After having attained a certain size, or rather height, they become first of a purplish color, which deepens until of a deep black. The subsequent history of the case can be told in a few words. The patient rapidly lost in strength and flesh, and the tumors continued to develop anew and reappeared in the site of those excised. In six weeks he was in a greatly depressed state. He remained in the hospital about three weeks, and died there on May 16. He failed rapidly, becoming more and more bronzed, until, at the time of death, the general melasmic state of the skin was very striking. Autopsy, May 17, 1875. The entire skin is of a dark color. The substance of the brain is not pigmented and appears normal, but black nodules are found in the liver. On the right eye close to the outer edge of the cornea, is a small black nodule, the size of half a grape seed. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem What happened here? What had William, despondent American driver, seen at the age of sixteen that so rebuked his eye, struck it and set so Stygian a sty that his whole body rocked and began to knot, to harden, to clot and burl like wood, grow brown as bark, then begin to bronze in a frenzy of small and briaring fists? Where had you driven then, William? And what did you see? Tell us; be shriven. What turned you like some male Daphne to a tree, broke your body in galls and made your liver as black as ill augury? Some Olympian spied in Brooklyn? A ritual intruded? A passion curtailed? Were you the man who was changed because he saw what he should not see? But surely there's no myth here, no Attic bit, to make this tragic consequence of accident more than mere anomaly. What deity in a scientific century could so consume a man, knot and bark his body, light fires within to smoke his urine and set his skin to a martyr's bubble as in days when gods ate with untroubled appetite? He myths no order undone, serves no blind or twisted eye, for if he did, such a presence would unjoint the sky, snap the world's rivets to break our purposeless spin about the sun, and give meaning to a whirling monotony where there is none. Or so we like to think unless Nature be imped or be Badland where the only law is that there is no law; some random rolling Loki-cell or particle that might bit by bit, and habit by habit with perfect resonance negate it all. For example, if the first man sprang, as some have said, from an ash tree in the earth's first spring, and if William R's "R" might be for rowan, the mountain ash, cousin to Yggdrasil, that holder of all in harmony, joint of hell, earth and sky, horse of Yggr or Uggr, fear, the word ugly's briared and knotty root, would not William R's body be the picture of negated harmony? But, of course, it was all caprice, ill fortune and bad luck, pure chance that struck the eye of William R. and set into motion a scientific sarcomatosis that turned him tree and felled him down. All pointless and plotless, absurd and meaningless . . . as a grape seed or shard of sharpened mistletoe speeding toward a bright and opened eye. John Wood Note This conclusion makes a reference to the death of the near-invulnerable Norse god Balder, who could only be harmed by mistletoe. He was brought down by Loki, a trickster who fathered the goddess of death and other assorted evils and who tricked a blind god into hurling a small dart of mistletoe at Baldur. Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 20. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Mrs. B., age 68, Scotch, widow: Leucoderma Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood THE AFFECTION began two years ago, in the form of white spots on the hands. Has always been healthy, and is in good condition now. The skin of face, neck, and arms is, for the most part, of a decidedly darker hue than normal, looking as though tanned from out-door exposure. It is marked by irregular, sharply-defined, patches which, appear bleached, and are most noticeable on the nape of the neck, backs of hands, along the frontal border of the hair, on the lower eyelids, beneath the ears, and upon the arms. Patient thinks a brother was similarly affected. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem I had no time for such silliness picture-making of my face and arms, and for a book! I'm spotted, splotchy; my brother was splotchy; lots of people are; it runs in the family I kept telling them. I've never been sick and I've worked every day of my life. What a waste of time. I should never agreed to come to this hospital's photographic "studio" even the word sounds bad, lots more off-color than my skin. I kept telling Mr. Mason I thought it a waste of his paper and light. Finally he said, "Mrs. B., please settle down and stop talking and gesticulating so much." "Gesticulating," I said, "Now just what does gesticulating mean?" And he said, "Please be still; just be still." Well now, you can imagine how I took all that! And so I told him exactly how I took all that. He whispered something to his assistant, a sickly-looking fellow, probably a patient, who then came over and just grabbed my head like it was a turnip, turned it and held it tight; then click and that was it, the picture taken and me with no time to compose myself. I told Mr. Mason and his assistant more than a thing or two when I left. He just said, "Thank you, Mrs. B.; you will make an excellent illustration." Ha! I saw the picture later. I look like a fool. Looks like a hand growing on my head. Now I am fit for a medical book: unfortunate, malformed woman with finger-sprouting head. I didn't even go back to complain to Mr. Mason. I was, but there was always serious things to do canning or sewing or visiting those who really were sick, and it would have been just another waste of time. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 21. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Syphiloderma Tuberculosum Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood THE CRESCENTIC and circular arrangement of the lesions left no doubt as to the nature of the affection. There is scarcely a more unmistakable eruption figured in the whole series. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem: Lady in a Hat Well, then, you can just kiss my arse; I'm not taking the hat off. A lady without a hat is no lady. I'm not one of your old whores here to have her ailing privates looked at. I assume you're familiar with quality: note the eardrops, real jet, worth tidy sums. Like my bonnet, they come from Paree. And this is pure Belgium lace on my bosoms. I have several French admirers. I talk French to them . . . at the opera . . . drinking mugs of champagne. They buy me furs and whole hams and look at me and just ooh and ah. I'm only here to visit Dr. Fox and get another dose of mercury. It's more like a rash than the pox, and I really don't give a damn about photography. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 22. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Syphiloderma Gummatosum Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood Poem: Little Lady Lena My tight little boots can kick so hard Big bully boys have to cry. You fubbs, you pugg, you little puss, Kick, kick again, they sweetly hiss. Purree purree wuzzey tuzzey, they purr. This is love, sweet muzzey love, you stir. Little Lena, O Nicky, my Nacky, My Naquilena, my Acky, my sweet sweet Nookie, Kick, kick harder yet and let me lick Your nacky knee and liqualena neck. It burns, it churns, it sickens my bones, But I return to suck your runs. Your knee's sugared crust is pure, jerking joy Though the pain it bring may me destroy. John Wood Note The suggestive language is in part taken from a well-known scene in Thomas Otway's play Venice Preserved (1682), a scene in which Aquilina, a dominatrix prostitute, is being begged by her client to kick and humiliate him. Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 23. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Syphiloderma Papulosum et Pustulosum Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood [FOX'S MINUSCULE comment reads:] A newsboy with a severe type of the disease. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem The headlines are filled with bad news: Love again has done its mess. But who couldn't read a face for free with so much yet to lose. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 24. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) Syphiloderma Pustulosum Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood Poem On the galaxy of her headless back the pustules glow like stars burning out. Death's dark, consuming night surrounds her quick but failing light. The curcuit's come about. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 25. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) C.T., age 35: Lichen Ruber Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood THE ERUPTION first appeared at the age of seven. When photograph was taken the patient was in a poorly nourished condition. The itching of the eruption was generally slight, though at times of an intense character. When the disease has existed for some time, the patient tends to become emaciated, and in time the strength fails, and death ensues. The patient has been under intermittent treatment by tonics, alteratives, and soothing applications for two years. The improvement has been slow but decided. She had previously taken arsenic, with little or no effect. Has seemed to improve the most under inunctions of oleum lini, with the crushed seed and milk taken internally. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem What does she say to you, this enigmatic Miss C.T. with the lichens!? I hear little, yet I still return to her again and again to stare, I guess, at the way her head is wrapped, bound up so completely it seems sculpture or sculpture's ruin some statue's bashed head whose plaster filling remains or is it the woven tip of some larval thing she's been shedding but for the sticky silk of her head and ovipositor, that white triangularity below the belly. To stare at how she seems haltingly propped between the table and the fancy tassel of the bench or chair such wrinkled knees? To stare at her breasts, which for some reason the lichens did not colonize, breasts many a man might gladly woo were they on another's body, and any lady might esteem were the head a head, the stance not a hobble, and the lichens scrubbed away. There's no voice here for my ear to find, no residue of pain, though I know it there. Is it that the face is too hidden, too sculpted into anonymity? She stands like an address on the other side of the tracks, factless, informal and resigned, alone and without meaning. What postcard could I send there: "Dear C., I hope you were cured, wooed, and well-fed. I wish I'd heard your voice, cared more for your pain." But I see you only as object, an odd composition, an old nightmare too surreal for hunger, lichen and pain. And I know I mis-see, misjudge, and misunderstand. John Wood Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |
| 26. |  | O.G. Mason 1880-1885 (ca) M.K., age 48, Ireland: Fibroma Collotype, hand-coloured Private collection of John Wood THE PENDULOUS GROWTHS upon the right side of this patient's head, and a number of small and soft tumors on various parts of the body, were congenital. During childhood, and even until thirty years of age, the tumor of the scalp steadily increased in size, from year to year. Since coming to this country, sixteen years ago, patient thinks there has been no permanent change. Patient suffers more inconvenience from the weight of the tumor in summer than in winter. When exposed to a low temperature in winter, the lax tissue becomes icy cold, but have never been at all benumbed. About five years ago, while at work, a shovelful of gravel was accidentally thrown against the right side of his head, on account of which accident he entered Bellevue Hospital, April 1874. The growth was injured, several slight wounds continued to discharge, and an attack of erysipelas (St. Anthony's fire) supervened. Since then he has been employed in hospital and has suffered again from erysipelas, to which affection he seems unusually prone. The treatment of fibroma is not imperative, as the affection occasions no discomfort. [George Henry Fox (1846-1937), American pioneer in dermatology] Poem After Papa saw him, he said, "You think I'm gonna let you marry that! My God, he's a freak; you want your kids to look like him? You'd mark them lookin' at that nine months. It'd turn your baby's head to a mess like his." "But if you only look at half his face, I said, "it don't look bad at all." You can guess the things that didn't happen in their lives or wish them generous biographies they could never have known, perfect and plummet-measured in chiseled proportions. The facts, however, are these: the objects he would never have: drawers filled with linens and small bags of cedar shavings, aprons on kitchen nails, rolling pins, boxes of Mason jars, tops and string: and all the bile that she would wash upon the life she got, her father's, husband's perhaps her son's. But does such guessing chronicle a true history? Can fact be in what would not be, or data discerned in silver salts and visage alone? Little more, I'd guess, than truth in the random dictates of our naked flesh. What then does the eye but the lures of attraction, the centuries of swollen sentiment, the mudden layers and all their wiggling fossils of culture and prejudice see? Consider what she said, and with your hand or a bit of paper bisect his face, cover the growth, imagine you never saw it. Then consider who you see. Could this not be and be as true were we again making histories and crystaling with conjecture a face, Michael Knightly, Victorian essayist, Carlyle's friend and rival, whose Fumus Fugiens is still read to remind our vanity how close sits the skull, how grand grows the worm; or Matthew King, American poet, who with Whitman shaped our visions and voices, whose "Brown Pindarics" would not elegize but stood him only at the gallows but like youthful Aristokleidas: O Columbia! It is your blood in him. He merits songs' jubilation, and so I send him honey, white milk, the music of forest flutes. Live now, John Brown, superior and in glory, forever in Kleo's grace; or even yet, Maurice-Gustave Kahn, the "Enigmatic Impressionist" and in his famed smock, as well! Cézanne's dearest friend, whose money helped them all, who said of art, "It's dilemma and delusion. I paint impressions, guesses nothing the eye can see." So what do all these fictions of a small fact, a few fading inches by a few fading inches, mean? It is a false validity alone George Fox's words and my lines give to the first. Can I be so certain where fibroma took him or into what cedared and richly scented, what top-spinning warmth, he was already accustomed? Kahn said, Forget truth. And Knightly said, Reality is as shifting as smoke in a dream. King said, Whatever the heart reads is real. Michael Keane looked out with his single eye and said, It could have been a different life. John Wood Notes Fumus fugiens (Transient Smoke) from the Latin proverb "Vita quid est? Fumus fugiens et bulla caduca" ("What is life? A transient smoke and a fragile bubble"). The lines: O Columbia! It is your blood in him, He merits songs' jubilation, and so I send him honey, white milk, the music of forest flutes. Live now, John Brown, superior and in glory, forever in Kleo's grace; are a variation on a passage from Pindar's Nemean 3: 64-84: Kleo, muse of history. "O Zeus, it is your blood in their veins. . . . Aristokleidas (literally aristo [superiority], kleidas [glory]) deserves jubilant reception of song. . . . I send you this glass of honey and white milk . . . a foaming drink of song with breath of Aeolian flutes . . . . through the grace of throned Kleo." Michael Knightly, Matthew King, and Maurice-Gustave Kahn are, of course, all fictitious, though they and their stories seem plausible. And Michael Keane is the name I assign to the actual M.K. of the photograph and Fox's case study. Is the life I imagine for him any more or any less real, any more or any less fictitious than the lives I create for the other three M.K.s? As I ask in the poem, "does such guessing chronicle a true history?" Source John Wood Endurance and Suffering: Narratives of Disease in the 19th Century (Edition Galerie Vevais, 2009) [Note: First edition is dated March 2007 but was published in October 2008.] |