Distant Reader - subject-quacksAndQuackery-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 8 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 158,938 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 19,867 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 89. 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:

vnto, may, will, disease, one, good, many, de, man, yet, men, now, haue, therefore, doth, diseases, nature, time, things, great, must, much, shall, without, learned, first, reason, also, knowledge, selfe, water, make, owne, common, true, body, god, like, though, est, well, physician, life, onely, galen, lib, either, themselues, vse, part

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are A short discouerie of the vnobserued dangers of seuerall sorts of ignorant and vnconsiderate practisers of physicke in England profitable not onely for the deceiued multitude, and easie for their meane capacities, but raising reformed and more aduised thoughts in the best vnderstandings: with direction for the safest election of a physition in necessitie: by Iohn Cotta of Northampton Doctor in Physicke., The copy of a letter written by E.D. Doctour of Physicke to a gentleman, by whom it was published The former part conteineth rules for the preseruation of health, and preuenting of all diseases vntill extreme olde age. Herein is inserted the authours opinion of tabacco. The latter is a discourse of emperiks or vnlearned physitians, wherein is plainly prooued that the practise of all those which haue not beene brought vp in the grammar and vniuersity, is alwayes confused, commonly dangerous, and often deadly., and The pisse-prophet, or, Certaine pisse-pot lectures Wherein are newly discovered the old fallacies, deceit, and jugling of the pisse-pot science, used by all those (whether quacks and empiricks, or other methodicall physicians) who pretend knowledge of diseases, by the urine, in giving judgement of the same. By Tho. Brian, M.P. lately in the citie of London, and now in Colchester in Essex. Never heretofore published by any man in the English tongue..

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

english books, early english, must needs, books online, oft times, creation partnership, text creation, page images, set downe, early works, many things, giving judgement, bring forth, violent disease, de sanit, de subt, euery one, de morb, tcp schema, characters represented, learned physician, de loc, image sets, represented either, master doctour, de meth, whose water, vnto themselues, probatum est, will make, man may, common people, violent diseases, learned physicians, euery man, sharpe disease, good hap, many diseases, make use, will never, whole body, mine owne, haue beene, may easily, late censors, chronicall diseases, sicke party, naturall heat, now take, may see

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Wonders no miracles, or, Mr. Valentine Greatrates gift of healing examined upon occasion of a sad effect of his stroaking, March the 7, 1665, at one Mr. Cressets house in Charter-house-yard : in a letter to a reverend divine, living near that place. The late censors deservedly censured; and their spurious litter of libels against Dr. Greenfield, and others, justly expos''d to contempt by the following answer to all, but especially the last, intituled, A reply to the reasons against the censors of the College of Physicians, &c. Humbly offer''d to the perusal of Dr. Thomas Burwell, Richard Torles, William Daws, Thomas Gill, the late censors. By Lysiponius Celer M.D.L., and A character of a true physician, or, A true chymist compared with a goose-quill pedant with a short view of the frauds and abuses in physick, committed by the confederate prescribing doctoral methodists, with their combinators the apothecaries ... : being a vindication of such physicians as follow not their method but make and administer their own medicines, being the honestest, safest, cheapest, and speediest way of practice, both for physician and patient / by R. Fletcher ....

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, man, physician, disease, thing, haue, god, galen, cure, water, vse, vpon, voice, vnderstanding, urine, urinall, true, time, themselue, symptomes, stone, selfe, right, religion, reason, pisse, physition, physicke, people, patient, owne, oft, non, nature, mr., miracles, men, medicines, medicine, like, life, lib, law, knowledge, kings, justice, hippoc, hath, greenfield, greatrates

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 vnto, and The copy of a letter written by E.D. Doctour of Physicke to a gentleman, by whom it was published The former part conteineth rules for the preseruation of health, and preuenting of all diseases vntill extreme olde age. Herein is inserted the authours opinion of tabacco. The latter is a discourse of emperiks or vnlearned physitians, wherein is plainly prooued that the practise of all those which haue not beene brought vp in the grammar and vniuersity, is alwayes confused, commonly dangerous, and often deadly. 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?":

disease, man, men, time, things, diseases, nature, reason, knowledge, body, water, life, selfe, part, themselues, vse, doth, others, people, physician, health, hath, cause, thing, power, experience, child, nothing, messenger, medicines, art, danger, vrine, parts, causes, woman, practise, opinion, place, way, day, text, death, truth, times, judgement, blood, head, patient, farre

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, was, had, being, were, vnto, do, make, learned, been, take, say, know, tell, come, made, did, let, see, hath, said, according, done, set, haue, neuer, give, found, taken, shew, brought, thinke, am, sent, put, doe, called, told, bring, sicke, perceive, came, cure, affected, selfe, find, doth

Proper Nouns

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

〉, 〈, ◊, de, hath, god, c., lib, galen, haue, est, ●, urine, owne, tcp, physicians, physicke, dr., arte, d, doctour, g, e, b, doctor, empiriks, doe, f, physition, c, vrine, l., english, censors, qui, doth, physician, ex, physick, fever, vel, r., quae, beene, mr., aut, nature, eebo, cum, text

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, i, their, his, they, he, you, them, her, him, your, she, my, me, we, our, us, themselves, himself, thy, its, thee, vp, mine, vnto, one, yours, hers, ●, yourselves, wh, thēselues, theirs, par, nay, l, intuēs, impostorū, ib, e, c

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, many, such, good, great, same, more, common, true, much, most, first, former, little, ignorant, like, better, able, last, best, right, strange, greater, present, wise, dangerous, few, particular, own, full, violent, second, whole, ordinary, long, proper, necessary, old, english, worthy, perfect, early, honest, new, fit, false, doth, excellent, sufficient, strong

not, so, then, now, therefore, more, also, as, yet, very, onely, thus, well, most, too, out, sometimes, only, much, first, indeed, oft, here, up, there, thereby, thereof, therein, commonly, long, never, all, else, together, truly, at, easily, often, forth, away, still, likewise, sometime, before, almost, in, hence, further, once, rather

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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