Distant Reader - subject-medicine-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 137 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 5,295,854 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 39,228 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 90. 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, one, take, also, will, water, two, much, first, things, body, blood, therefore, make, part, must, made, yet, shall, great, parts, like, let, little, time, nature, doth, many, good, put, without, three, reason, half, use, well, cause, together, every, disease, self, matter, man, either, now, thing, diseases, spirits, place, cure

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The workes of that famous chirurgion Ambrose Parey translated out of Latine and compared with the French. by Th: Johnson, Van Helmont's works containing his most excellent philosophy, physick, chirurgery, anatomy : wherein the philosophy of the schools is examined, their errors refuted, and the whole body of physick reformed and rectified : being a new rise and progresse of philosophy and medicine, for the cure of diseases, and lengthening of life / made English by J.C. ..., and Dr. Willis's practice of physick being the whole works of that renowned and famous physician wherein most of the diseases belonging to the body of man are treated of, with excellent methods and receipts for the cure of the same : fitted to the meanest capacity by an index for the explaining of all the hard and unusual words and terms of art derived from the Greek, Latine, or other languages for the benefit of the English reader : with forty copper plates..

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

one ounce, two ounces, whole body, animal spirits, two drams, four ounces, mean time, one dram, three ounces, white wine, taken away, take away, like manner, english books, early english, sufficient quantity, two drachms, one pound, every one, must needs, books online, roman non, three drams, every day, sensitive soul, every morning, one drachm, red roses, many times, colledg take, one scruple, long time, will make, two pound, next place, may take, aqua vitae, one handful, well together, page images, may bee, one part, let us, creation partnership, text creation, neither doth, argent vive, first place, six ounces, volatile salt

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Under God; humbly desiring his blessing to this famous and wonderful never-failing cordial drink of the world, the great preserver of mankind. A secret far beyond any thing yet known to the world. / Never published by any but by me Thomas Hinde G. in London, most approved and admirable for its excellent vertues and uses· To be satisfied of the truth, pray read this preface. Certaine philosophical preparations of foode and beverage for sea-men, in their long voyages: with some necessary, approoued, and hermeticall medicines and antidotes, fit to be had in readinesse at sea, for preuention or cure of diuers diseases., and The surgions directorie, for young practitioners, in anatomie, wounds, and cures, &c. shewing, the excellencie of divers secrets belonging to that noble art and mysterie. Very usefull in these times upon any sodaine accidents. And may well serve, as a noble exercise for gentle-women, and others; who desire science in medicine and surgery, for a generall good. Divided into X. parts. (Whose contents follow in the next page.) / Written by T. Vicary, Esquire, chyrurgion to Hen 8. Edw. 6. Q. Mary. Q. Eliz..

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:

tcp, body, disease, patient, water, nature, medicines, cure, medicine, blood, spirit, chap, art, sugar, man, oyl, roses, physick, heart, diseases, wine, god, stomach, physician, head, sun, remedies, liver, syrup, plague, life, world, thing, haue, good, fire, book, vinegar, spirits, liquor, great, earth, early, bodies, salt, powder, physicians, parts, matter, lord

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 water, and A new method of physick: or, A short view of Paracelsus and Galen''s practice; in 3. treatises. I. Opening the nature of physick and alchymy. II. Shewing what things are requisite to a physitian and alchymist. III. Containing an harmonical systeme of physick. Written in Latin by Simeon Partlicius, phylosopher, and physitian in Germany. Translated into English by Nicholas Culpeper, Gent. student in physick and astrologie, dwelling on the east-side of Spittle-fields, neer London. 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?":

things, blood, water, part, body, time, parts, reason, nature, thing, self, place, matter, man, doth, ounce, manner, cause, day, ounces, fire, heat, use, others, way, quantity, life, diseases, times, nothing, hath, heart, pound, men, bodies, head, disease, roots, wit, kind, spirits, art, wine, motion, half, substance, end, cure, side, pain

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, take, was, do, make, made, were, let, put, had, taken, been, according, called, give, come, said, did, say, know, done, used, use, hath, found, see, cured, having, given, set, concerning, following, brought, keep, cut, known, lay, seeing, bee, mix, boil, cause, wherefore, find, draw, drink

Proper Nouns

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

〉, ◊, 〈, hath, c., disease, god, water, chap, spirit, salt, spirits, medicines, nature, sugar, wine, oyl, ●, brain, diseases, ℥, sulphur, head, patient, i., thou, de, cure, physick, stone, liquor, medicine, roses, earth, liver, stomach, syrup, man, remedies, tcp, physicians, body, urine, soul, mercury, bloud, yea, powder, sun, nerves

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, them, i, their, he, his, you, its, we, him, her, my, our, your, she, me, themselves, us, himself, thy, one, thee, ''em, ours, mine, theirs, ℞, ii, ye, vp, itself, yours, whereof, ʒ, vnto, ''s, iv, us''d, em, herself, hers, ourselves, s, ●, whosoever, l, ts, ol, ay

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, such, same, great, many, little, good, first, much, more, hot, whole, own, cold, white, small, most, like, true, certain, long, common, proper, strong, greater, red, natural, new, least, second, former, dry, third, sufficient, old, best, better, full, last, able, sick, sweet, several, hard, next, excellent, doth, thick, large, fit

not, so, then, also, more, therefore, very, as, up, together, well, most, out, only, now, much, forth, first, sometimes, away, yet, too, thereof, often, indeed, thus, even, onely, again, easily, presently, here, in, off, never, there, especially, down, otherwise, rather, almost, long, before, afterwards, else, far, likewise, all, once, truly

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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