I haven't had a lot of time to look into the authors of the book of medicine. One of the side projects I'd like to tackle with this book is identifying, who these people were that authored and edited the book, identify where they lived and worked and where they came from. Fortunately utilizing the powers of sites such as ancestry.com I can actually trace and get access to public records such as census records that might indicate who they were where they lived and what their lives were like. If they were recent immigrants to the United States or if they lived in the United Kingdom or whether they were from Germany or Ireland, etc.

I'd like to also determine where they went to school to learn medicine, I will admit that I have no idea how to go about the second part but I'm hoping that the first inquiry provides more background information that might lead to information on the second part.

Who knows it could even be possible that I will be able to find some people that knew them, maybe some relatives that will be able provides a personal perspective on the authors of this book. Who knows I might even come across these people running a Pigeon Forge vacation rentals company, or teaching at a university today or maybe they're even somebody I know I just haven't made the connection.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• The Ovaries
  
  

  The Ovaries.– The organs are situated contiguously to the womb. They signify eggs from their shape, and they are the parts which the male semen acts upon to produce the phenomenon of pregnancy. They are in large eye inflammation in their passage down the fallopian tubes, once a month during the middle. A female life, produces the condition familiarly known as menstruation. The plate also affords another view of the vagina.

  And that is a pretty short paragraph to describe the process of reproduction. I believe it would be difficult to describe this process any more succinctly or with any less detail especially a medical textbook. It’s with short descriptions like this, that I wonder how on the world the author ever manage to squeeze 1700 pages out of a medical textbook.

  Sometimes I wonder if the short nondescriptive descriptions might have been more prevalent a hundred years ago and possibly super prevalent even further back. Maybe there was something lingering in the human psyche from the days when monks transcribed books by hand that led authors to avoiding words. If it wasn’t for this author’s ability to spot on with a lot of gibberish whenever he feels like it, I might suspect such a thing. The fact that the author did not use a lot of language here leads me to believe that the author was avoiding the topic.

  If ancient authors and written descriptions about to sail from Europe to India across the ocean in a similar style, it is no wonder that Columbus ended up only making it half way there suffering through a number of endless caribbean cruises before making landfall.

  My point is that as you go back in time and read writing that was written years and years and years ago different things seem important. Different subjective requirements come in to play in the writing and in the reading. The lack of objectivity leaves future readers at a loss for the detail that they need to make heads or tails out of text and information. It’s an important example of why the objectivity is important in writing scientific information. The subject of writing is also important in the two can be balanced what they need to be labeled such that future readers will understand those items that were understood to be fact as opposed to those items that were still under speculation.

• THE LEG; ITS MECHANISM AND ITS WONDERFUL ENDOWMENTS
  
  

  Leg Muscle.- In every part of the human brain there is witnessed ample evidence of design, beauty of architecture, great skill, Finnish workmanship, and a perfect adaptability to the duties he performed.  This fact is strikingly illustrated in the beautifully executed color plates to which attention is now drawn, join as it does, at a glance, a thick, strong, muscular instruments employed in the manifold intricacies involved in the act of human locomotion.  This exquisitely artistic anatomical plate represents a front view of the pie, leg and foot, and of the 54 fleshy lovers which give form, shape, symmetry, strength and mobility to this useful member of the body.  Quite a number of the most important are seen exposed to view, after the scan and fatty tissues have been removed.  We are deeply impressed with their large size and great strength, both of which correspond with the requirements demanded the very work which the lake is called onto the form.

  In many ways this initial section of the book seems to read less like a medical book and more like a sales pitch trying to convince people to like the human body and accept the ‘beauty’ of the anatomy of the body.  This sales pitch like style is reminiscent of reading a sales catalog for floor tile or a flyer on the latest model of Fords or something.  Its more like copy writing than medical text.

• Sea-Water
  
  

  Sea-Water.-Sea-water varies considerably in composition, being, of course, more concentrated, as a rule, in the tropical regions, where evaporation is most active, such, for example, as in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean near the equator. According to analysis, the water in the English Channel contains in 1000 parts‑

  Chloride of Sodium 28.05

  Chloride of Magnesium…………………….. 3.66

  Sulphate of Magnesia 2.29

  Sulphate of Lime ……………………………. 1.40

  Other Saline Materials ……………………….. .76

  Total Solid Matter…………………….. 36. 16

  Besides these, and perhaps contributing largely to the healthful qualities of sea-water, there exist in the ocean small quantities of iodine and bromide, and extremely minute amounts of some of the common metals. It has been found that, by dissolving a little common salt and carbonate of soda, lime and magnesia in distilled sea-water, its taste is rendered much more agreeable; and this plan, it is said, is adopted in the Russian navy.

  – - –

  As in the last section where they talk about distilling sea water for drinking on ships, this talks about some of the other materials that can be extracted during the distillation process.  With the exception of salt extraction some of these other materials don’t seem terribly practical.  Times do change however, and if water is extracted every bit of material that comes with it has to go somewhere whether it can be sold in bulk for mass production of vitamins or horse supplements or what ever.