JF Ptak Science Books Post 2703
- [The principles of light and color: including among other things the harmonic laws of the universe, the etherio-atomic philosophy of force, chromo chemistry, chromo therapeutics, and the general philosophy of the fine forces, together with numerous discoveries and practical applications, by Edwin Dwight Babbitt (1828-1905) chromopathologist and psychophysician, and published 1896.]
I must admit to only knowing this book by two dart throws--one that landed on page 495 (with its remarkable image) and then the other on page 56-0, very nearly the end of the book--and sometimes that is all you need, especially in this case, where all you really need is the title. The author of this mega-themed title and the book that wrapped around its axle seems to promise something having to do with color/light therapeutics, or something, and I was pulled in for perhaps some entertaining pre-non-representational artwork, but I never got that far, stabbing away as I did in the copy on the Internet Archives, finding myself with a light-filled neuroanatomy drawing, and it s explanation. Whatever the creative light that was reputedly displayed in this image had its existence and purpose proved by clairvoyants, which I don't often see too often in 19th century anatomies or physiologies. Anyway, they were there, consulted (either near or far), and the case made, and thus the curtains drawn. I did like the drawing, though.
When I went to see how the book closed out, I found an addendum on the "so-called Roentgen or X Rays", which the author says he discovered and wrote about in the first edition of this work back in 1878. He makes some complimentary remarks about the work of Crookes and Edison in this field (the x-ray being discovered in 1895), but then goes on to fuss about the unnecessary use of photography with the x-ray, finding it gratuitous and wasteful. Using your eyes in real time and not a photo was his choice, and that was that, the author ending by saying "I am done with the photographic end of it, entirely", which no doubt places him in a highly restricted group of people looking at the future of the x-ray.
[Image source: Full text: https://archive.org/details/principlesofligh00babb]
The explanation of the image of brain light:
And the last page of text of the supplement, with a reminder at the bottom of how many more pages there were to the book, which is the first time in all of these years that I have seen such a notice:
Comments