With the end of net neutrality imminent, the fate of the internet hangs in the balance. Whether it is sooner or later digital information is going to lost recklessly and potentially rapidly. Digital information highly ephemeral, and it is mostly all going to be lost as the age of cheap energy grinds to a halt.
It is easy to make many lists detailing how the internet is bad and wrong, and I think that these lists have some merit. To a large degree it is true, "the medium is the message," and one can make the point that the internet is, to some tastes, a crummy medium. It really encourages less critical thinking for the most part, and a much more superficial way of surveying information.
We forget at our peril the beautiful aspect of the internet. It is a 24/7 open library of Alexandria. It is filled with old and rare books that don't have copyrights. Some of these books are still in print, and easy enough to buy. In my library sit Nicholas Culpeper's The English Physician Enlarged (1652), Maude Grieve's A Modern Herbal (1931), and Finely Ellingwood's The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy (1919).
All three of these volumes are excellent. All three I have sat over, poured over, copying out huge amounts of text, over and over again, filling notebooks, trying to memorize passages by heart.
And luckily, all three of these wonderful books are still in print. Or at least it's easy to go to amazon.com and buy them, no problem. With them you have a choice; you can read them as a book or you could read them online for free. If you wanted to you could print out parts you liked, or copy the entire book from the screen. Or you can buy it from amazon.com and put it on your shelf.
But amazon.com doesn't have everything. In fact, it's hard to find many old herbal that are out of print as books on amazon. What if you want to read William Salmons 1710 Botanologia or William Cook's 1869 Physiomedicalist Dispensatory? Well, if you want to read those you don't have a choice to read them as books already printed by someone who isn't you unless you are willing to spend a pretty penny on the rare book market. Fortunately, however, these herbals are still online.
We are in grave danger of losing this information. If we were in a parallel reality I may have spent my many hours coping Salmon and Cook rather than Culpeper and Ellingwood. As it stands I have very little familiarity with either of their masterpieces. That disturbs me. It disturbs me how easy it is to imagine this priceless knowledge disappearing into the ethers, lost forever.
I'm planning on printing out Cook's entire book and figuring out how to bind it on acid free paper. I've made zines before and watched some videos on how monks made medieval manuscripts. A printer would just make that way easier and go way faster, right?
Seriously though, I don't know what I'm doing, but do know that I can't just sit on my hands and do nothing.
As a treat an excerpt from The Physiomedicalist Dispensatory:
"LIRIODENDRON TULIPIFERA
TULIP TREE, YELLOW POPLAR, WHITE WOOD
Description: Natural Order, Magnoliaceae. This tree is one of the noblest in America, growing
with a perfectly straight trunk of from eighty to one hundred and fifty feet, old trees without a
branch till within twenty feet of the top, young trees low-branched and of a conical outline. The
wood, under the name of poplar, is extensively used in the Western States as a substitute for
pine. Leaves three to five inches long, and two-thirds as broad; the sides lobed much in the
form of great ears, and the end abruptly cut off about two inches beyond the apex of the side
lobes; smooth, somewhat leathery, on long petioles, margins entire; sheathed with membranous
stipules, which soon fall off. Flowers very large, somewhat bell-shaped, solitary, erect;
sepals three, colored like the petals, reflexed, caducous; petals six, erect, greenish yellow
without, orange within, smaller and less brilliant than the tulip of the gardens, but of much the
same general form. Fruit a series of imbricated capsules, forming a short cone, each one to two
seeded. Blooming in May and June.
The inner bark of the trunk, and also that of the root, is medicinal. It is pale yellowish, sparingly
tinted reddish, light, a little fibrous, and of a pleasant aromatic, somewhat spicy camphorous
odor. It imparts its virtues readily to water and diluted alcohol, but is easily injured
by heat. Its taste is mildly bitter and somewhat aromatic.
Properties and Uses: Many physicians, and most writers, confound this bark with populus
tremuloides, and others of that genus, because of the similarity of the common name, poplar; but
the two articles bear no resemblance to each other, either in botanical or medical properties.
The bark of the liriodendron is one of the mildest and least bitter of the tonics, chiefly relaxant
and only moderately stimulant, but with no astringency whatever. While it improves the appetite
and digestion to a fair extent, and for this purpose is unsurpassed in convalescence, its most
valuable action is upon the nervous system and uterus. In nervousness, nervous irritability,
hysteria, and chronic pains through the womb, it is an agent of the greatest efficacy–both
soothing and sustaining. The menses are not influenced by it; but it proves valuable in chronic
dysmenorrhea as well as in leucorrhea, prolapsus of a mild grade, and the uterine suffering
incident to pregnancy. By its influence on the nervous system it sometimes promotes the flow of
urine; and it favors greater freedom of the bowels, without being in any sense cathartic. If
combined with spikenard, boneset, or other agents influencing the lungs, its virtues will be
directed largely to these organs; and then is of peculiar service in old coughs and pulmonary
weakness. The mildness of its action sometimes suggests inertness, but this is quite an error; for
its gentleness increases its value as a peculiar nervine tonic, and makes it very acceptable to the
stomach; though it is not an agent fitted to languid or sluggish conditions, or states of depression.
It is rarely used in powder, but a scruple or more may be used as a dose. If infused, half an
ounce may be digested for an hour, in a covered vessel, with a pint of water not above a blood
warmth; of which a fluid ounce may be given every six or four hours. It is variously
compounded with hydrastis, sabbatia, or calumba, with orange peel, for a stronger tonic
influence; and with caulophyllum, leonurus, viburnum, or senecio, when the uterine organs are
particularly to be impressed. Some value it for worms, and others apply the leaves on ulcers"
The only way to save this and other priceless books is take responsibility for their continued survival. Are you with me!
