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1824 IN RETROSPECT By Angus Trumble “A wonderful instrument called the Stethoscope…,” reported The Times newspaper in London, “is now in complete vogue at Paris. … It is quite a fashion if a person complains of a cough to have recourse to the miraculous tube which, however, cannot effect a cure but should you unfortunately perceive in the countenance of the doctor that he fancies certain symptoms exist it is very likely that a nervous person might become seriously indisposed and convert the supposition to reality.” Shipwrecks, dinosaurs, duels, natural disasters, revolutions, spoiled princesses, philandering popes and messy presidential elections made the news, and history, in Angus Trumble’s 1824-- the inaugural year of the first daily newspaper. A regular feature. Angus Trumble is Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, CT. His book, A Brief History of the Smile, was published by Basic Books in 2004. The Finger: A Handbook will be published next year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This is the fifth year that he has contributed his “Year in Retrospect” column to the magazine.
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Esopus 9 (Fall 2007)
CONTENTS:
CONTENTS:
