Repurposing content never gets old
The Morning News links this month to Futility Closet's reprinting of "Twelve Ways to Commit Suicide," which is from "the American Medical Journal, reprinted in the Manhattan and de la Salle Monthly, 1875."
It's a great read, not about suicide but how poor life choices lead to sickness and death. "Wearing insufficient clothing, and especially upon the limbs and extremities" is positioned near the top of the list, as is "Leading a life of enfeebling, stupid laziness, and keeping the mind in an unnatural state of excitement by reading trashy novels." Lower, we learn the grave danger of "Being irregular in all our habits of sleeping and eating, going to bed at midnight and getting up at noon."
What's also fun is Googling the article's history. Among the minimal results, several links are Futility Closet-related. But others are not.
We also find: a June 21, 1856 printing in the Quincy Patriot, excerpted in a 2006 Patriot-Ledger retrospective; a September 1856 printing in Presbyterian Magazine; a Dec. 18, 1856 printing in Australia's Hobart Town Daily Courier (map); a January 1858 reprinting in Presbyterian Magazine; a Dec. 5, 1872 printing from the Weekly Kansas; an 1874 appearance in Our Home Counselor, A Practical Cyclopedia for Daily Use, Containing Reliable Recipes, Legal Forms, Interest Tables, Etc., by one L.W. Yaggy; that Futility Closet-mentioned 1875 printing in Manhattan and de la Salle Monthly.; a Dec. 24, 1881 printing in Tit-Bits, "From all the most interesting books, periodicals and newspapers in the world," the On Deadline of its day; and an 1894 run in Hall's Journal of Health.
Beyond the Manhattan publication, only the Australian paper credits the American Medical and Surgical Journal. If only digital editions with copy controls had existed at the time, to stop this content madness.
