High Frequency Electric Currents in Medicine and Dentistry From the Early 20th Century

A selection of images from High Frequency Electric Currents in Medicine and Dentistry (1910) by champion of electro-therapeutics Samuel Howard Monell, a physician who the American X-Ray Journal cite, rather wonderfully, as having “done more for static electricity than any other living man”.

Although the use of electricity to treat physical ailments could be seen to stretch back to the when the ancient Greeks first used live electric fish to numb the body in pain, it wasn’t until the 18th and 19th centuries – through the work of Luigi Galvani and Guillaume Duchenne – that the idea really took hold. Monell claims that his high frequency currents of electricity could treat a variety of ailments, including acne, lesions, insomnia, abnormal blood pressure, depression, and hysteria.

Although not explicitly delved into in this volume, the treatment of this latter condition in women was frequently achieved at this time through the use of an early form of the vibrator (to save the physician from the manual effort), through bringing the patient to “hysterical paroxysm” (in other words, an orgasm).

These days electrotherapy has been widely accepted in the field of physical rehabilitation, and also made the news recently in its use to keep soldiers awake (the treatment of fatigue also being one of Monell’s applications).

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Rare Pictures of Kurt Cobain’s Family and His Childhood From the Late 1960s and 1970s

Kurt Donald Cobain was born on February 20, 1967, in Hoquiam, Washington, and grew up in the working-class logging town of Aberdeen. His father, Donald, was an auto mechanic and his mother, Wendy, a housewife.

He came from a musical family: an uncle played in a band and a great uncle was an Irish tenor who appeared in the 1930 film King of Jazz. At four, Cobain began singing and playing piano, and gravitated to the music of bands ranging from the Beatles to the Ramones. When he was eight, his parents divorced and Cobain was shuttled among various family members, developing a rebellious attitude he would later express in his music.

At fourteen he got his first guitar and learned to play rudimentary rock & roll songs like "Louie Louie" and the Cars' "My Best Friend's Girl." But he was bullied at school for choosing art and music over sports, and by his senior year of high school decided to drop out. Around that time he began hanging out at rehearsals of local band the Melvins, where he met and befriended bass player Krist Novoselic. The two formed Nirvana and by 1987 the band was playing shows at Evergreen State College in nearby Olympia.

Here, below is a collection of rare pictures of Kurt Cobain's family and his childhood from the late 1960s and 1970s.

Kurt Cobain as infant

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The Upper West Side, New York, 1882

The Upper west side, New York, 1882. Looking from Mr George Ehret’s home at Park Ave and 94th St.

The Beatles Are Great!

c.1964

Beautiful Black and White Photographs of Marilyn Monroe in 1947

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Humans of London: Amazing Vintage Portraits of Londoners on the Streets From the 1920s

Thomas Donald McLeish was born in London on March 11th 1879. In 1893 he joined the photographic firm of Eliot and Fry as negative clerk. In 1900 he began teaching photography at the Regent Street Polytechnic. He joined the firm of Cowe Whelan & Co to make cigarette cards and in 1910 became a freelance photographer supplying photographs to journals such as the Illustrated London News and National Geographic.

In 1916 he joined the RNVR and was sent as a photographer to Port Said. He took some of the earliest aerial war pictures. After the war he lived in Canonbury, London, and developed his library of some 3000 photographs, mostly of Europe and the Middle East. In 1939 he moved to Wimbledon. He died in 1950.

McLeish made his own camera which took 5x4 glass plates.This was exhibited in the Science Museum, and is now at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford. His prints were in the 10x8 format, giving exceptionally fine detail.

Here, McLeish approached and documented these moments of people on London streets in the 1920s.

Old woman who inhabited the alleys off Fleet St

Knife Grinder

Gramophone Man

Telescope Man on Westminster Bridge

Breton Onion Seller

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Full Face Swimming Mask, 1928

Designed to protect the wearers face from the harmful effects of the sun.