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[The Scalpel for April is]

About This Item

  • Title: [The Scalpel for April is]
  • Date: 2 April 1859
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01072
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 2 April 1859: 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: Kaylen Michaelis Francesca Boston Jason Stacy Kevin McMullen Karie Cobb Stephanie Blalock
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "[The Scalpel for April is]." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01072.xml (TEI)
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THE SCALPEL1 for April is out, scalping and flaying quacks and humbugs in and out of the medical profession in Dr. Dixon's2 usual trenchant style. Brother Bonner,3 of the Ledger, comes in for a few pages, the perusal of which will be likely to irritate the not too carefully concealed self appreciation of that modest man. The Ledger is described as a big air bubble; "Cobb," the main sensation writer, as having least literary ability of the whole; and Everett as producing a melancholy effect by trying to "write down" to the level of his audience. The popularity of Cobb is attributed to his very ignorance and sentimentality—it is just the thing, the ill-educated reader feels, which he would write if he wrote a book—hence it is his beau ideal of a story. The Scapel thinks that Bonner needs to be told that there is a large and intelligent minority who despise him and his Ledger. Of that there is no doubt; but Dr. Dixon is just as vain as Bonner himself when he assumes that no other paper but his own has the honesty and courage to risk the loss of the Ledger advertising by saying it.

Notes:

1. The Scalpel was published quarterly in New York by editor and doctor Edward H. Dixon (1808—1880). [back]

2. Edward H. Dixon (1808—1880), a doctor, was a leading sexual health physician and editor of The Scalpel, a medical journal. [back]

3. Robert Edwin Bonner (1824—1899) was an Irish-born publisher, most well known for The New York Ledger. He bought The Merchant's Ledger in 1851, and renamed it The New York Ledger in 1855.  [back]

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