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Good News, If True

About This Item

  • Title: Good News, If True
  • Date: 16 January 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00733
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 16 January 1857: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Noelle Bates Thara Michaelis Samantha Gilmore Kevin McMullen Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Good News, If True." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00733.xml (TEI)
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GOOD NEWS, IF TRUE.—

The Water Cure Journal, one of the numerous periodicals issued by Messrs. Fowler & Wells,1 the phrenologists, predicts that the country will soon be well supplied with female physicians, and that within ten years from the time that the country is so supplied, nine-tenths of the prevalent fatal diseases will disappear altogether, or become mild and trivial ailments.

Notes:

1. Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1811–1896) and his brother-in-law Samuel R. Wells (1809–1887) were practitioners of phrenology, a pseudoscience popular in the nineteenth century. They owned and operated the Phrenological Depot on Broadway, which contained phrenological materials and books and offered phrenological readings. They also operated a printing business and were responsible for printing the expanded second edition of Leaves of Grass (1856). In addition, they published Life Illustrated, The American Phrenological Journal, and The Water Cure Journal. Whitman contributed to both Life Illustrated and The Phrenological Journal. [back]

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