Distant Reader - subject-diet-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-24 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 6 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 510,049 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 85,008 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 95. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

may, good, yet, will, use, many, also, much, body, time, great, now, one, best, water, like, hot, made, flesh, therefore, nature, first, man, wee, especially, well, used, de, lib, little, make, without, reason, often, either, diseases, blood, cold, us, others, let, meat, food, wine, must, called, shall, bread, two, things

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Klinike, or The diet of the diseased· Divided into three bookes. VVherein is set downe at length the whole matter and nature of diet for those in health, but especially for the sicke; the aire, and other elements; meat and drinke, with divers other things; various controversies concerning this subject are discussed: besides many pleasant practicall and historicall relations, both of the authours owne and other mens, &c. as by the argument of each booke, the contents of the chapters, and a large table, may easily appeare. Colellected [sic] as well out of the writings of ancient philosophers, Greeke, Latine, and Arabian, and other moderne writers; as out of divers other authours. Newly published by Iames Hart, Doctor in Physicke., Healths improvement: or, Rules comprizing and discovering the nature, method, and manner of preparing all sorts of food used in this nation. Written by that ever famous Thomas Muffett, Doctor in Physick: corrected and enlarged by Christopher Bennet, Doctor in Physick, and fellow of the Colledg of Physitians in London., and The good house-wife made a doctor, or, Health''s choice and sure friend being a plain way of nature''s own prescribing to prevent and cure most diseases incident to men, women, and children by diet and kitchin-physick only : with some remarks on the practice of physick and chymistry / by Thomas Tryon..

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

many times, good nourishment, whole body, severall sorts, acute diseases, may safely, set downe, first place, old age, will make, use thereof, may easily, let us, may bee, natural heat, late writer, frequent use, two sorts, say something, divers sorts, nothing else, wee must, must needs, best way, every one, de alim, wee may, ordinary use, long time, learned physitian, many places, farre better, commonly call, cold water, every man, commonly called, many others, minerall waters, wee see, something concerning, right use, ambient aire, may appeare, make use, much used, strong drinke, english books, early english, antient times, naturall heat

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Healths improvement: or, Rules comprizing and discovering the nature, method, and manner of preparing all sorts of food used in this nation. Written by that ever famous Thomas Muffett, Doctor in Physick: corrected and enlarged by Christopher Bennet, Doctor in Physick, and fellow of the Colledg of Physitians in London. A pocket-companion, containing things necessary to be known by all that values their health and happiness being a plain way of nature''s own prescribing, to cure most diseases in men, women and children, by kitchen-physick only : to which is added, an account how a man may live well and plentifully for two-pence a day / collected from The good housewife made a doctor, by Tho. Tryon., and The good house-wife made a doctor, or, Health''s choice and sure friend being a plain way of nature''s own prescribing to prevent and cure most diseases incident to men, women, and children by diet and kitchin-physick only : with some remarks on the practice of physick and chymistry / by Thomas Tryon..

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

blood, tcp, like, water, sea, nature, good, god, food, english, diet, chap, bread, body, winter, sugar, stomacke, stomach, romans, physitians, physick, people, hot, hippocrates, health, great, galen, flesh, cold, church, yeere, writer, world, woman, wine, west, wee, vertues, time, thy, thing, thereof, sweet, sunne, sun, spring, spirits, south, soule, sort

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be good, and The Newlanders cure Aswell of those violent sicknesses which distemper most minds in these latter dayes: as also by a cheape and newfound dyet, to preserue the body sound and free from all diseases, vntill the last date of life, through extreamity of age. Wherein are inserted generall and speciall remedies against the scuruy. Coughes. Feauers. Goute. Collicke. Sea-sicknesses, and other grieuous infirmities. Published for the weale of Great Brittaine, by Sir William Vaughan, Knight. is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

time, body, use, water, man, flesh, reason, nature, blood, others, diseases, meat, things, nourishment, part, people, men, wine, sorts, divers, food, parts, place, health, times, manner, fish, cap, way, aire, sicke, life, quantity, bread, day, nothing, drinke, bodies, substance, heat, meanes, age, againe, milk, disease, sort, cause, salt, meats, diet

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

is, be, are, have, being, was, were, made, used, make, let, do, called, had, eat, use, take, eaten, concerning, see, did, according, say, said, set, taken, been, give, feed, come, put, observed, call, having, bee, prove, learned, live, know, found, proceed, hath, thinke, appeare, passe, does, find, consider, brought, done

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

●, 〉, 〈, ◊, lib, de, wee, c., hath, chap, physitians, god, bee, physitian, doe, galen, diet, yea, bread, est, nature, thou, l., water, beene, c, hee, salt, ibid, e, hippocrates, owne, againe, food, sugar, ex, d, flesh, spirits, sea, ▪, wine, lesse, health, whereof, mans, downe, drinks, qui, cum

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

it, they, i, their, them, his, our, we, he, you, us, my, him, your, her, themselves, its, me, thy, she, himself, thee, one, ours, theirs, mine, vp, whereof, tart, severall, l, em, boyl, ●, yours, thinne, s, o, gh, whosoever, vvith, ve, us''d, trye, treateth, totas, tollit, s''d, lye, ii

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

other, good, such, many, great, same, best, hot, little, more, much, cold, most, old, strong, sweet, first, like, small, better, dry, young, former, ordinary, particular, whole, true, common, long, new, full, wholesome, able, hard, white, bad, least, dangerous, pleasant, ignorant, last, greater, noble, moist, own, pure, saith, frequent, proper, late

not, so, then, also, more, now, yet, very, therefore, most, too, especially, as, well, much, often, up, sometimes, here, onely, thereof, first, never, commonly, even, out, likewise, only, rather, else, thus, long, ever, already, together, easily, away, there, better, in, all, indeed, still, besides, once, thereby, afterwards, somewhat, perhaps, far

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

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