alienistAndNeurologistJournal-from-haithi


Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-04-23 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader trust process, and the input was a HaithTrust metadata (TSV) file locally cached with the name metadata.tsv. Given the metadata file, associated PDF documents where saved to a a cache and a second set of documents were saved to a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against the plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

The study carrel is 7,916,664 words long. Each item in the study carrel is, on average, 219,907 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following illustrate the overall size of the study carrel.

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histogram of sizes
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box plot of sizes

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 63. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following illustrate the overall readability of the study carrel.

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histogram of readability
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box plot of readability

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

one, may, cases, dr, will, medical, case, mental, disease, time, insane, insanity, two, well, years, brain, patient, first, state, nervous, new, many, also, great, man, treatment, made, much, found, life, general, without, must, hospital, often, now, every, even, mind, patients, diseases, work, symptoms, men, present, part, condition, right, fact, good

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are: 1) Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.13 (1892), 2) Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.9 1888, and 3) Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.5 1884.

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

new york, nervous system, per cent, book notices, spinal cord, mental diseases, years ago, united states, mental disease, nervous diseases, american medical, medical journal, two years, medical profession, many cases, medical association, medical college, right side, left side, general paralysis, well known, medical men, years old, two cases, one case, state hospital, medical society, moral insanity, five years, many years, three years, york city, let us, one hundred, large number, mental condition, long time, medical congress, paretic dementia, de la, insane hospital, short time, one side, uric acid, four years, american journal, young man, general practitioner, mental state, ten years

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are: 1) Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.18 1897, 2) Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.13 (1892), and 3) Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.6 1885.

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

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unigrams
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bigrams

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the study carrel include:

c. h. hughes, york medical journal, state medical society, new york medical, new york city, american medical association, new york state, m. d., british medical journal, york medical record, st. louis medical, p. m., d. c., t. d. crothers, new york academy, dr. s., dr. hughes, american journal, international medical congress, h. m., a. m., state medical association, new york neurological, louis medical society, journal a. m., e. c. spitzka, dr. l., dr. g., dr. c. h. hughes, american medical congress, york state medical, medical college, m. r. c., illinois state medical, edinburgh medical journal, dr. l. c. gray, dr. john b., dr. e., dr. c. h., dr. c. b. burr, chicago medical society, c. m., british medical association, american neurological association, a. m. a., new york post, j. g. kiernan, h. m. bannister, f. w. langdon, f. r. c.

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

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keywords

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be dr, and Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.9 1888 is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

  1. medical - Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.34 1913
  2. dr - Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.2 1881
  3. fascicle - Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.27 1906

If your study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

  1. dr, cases, case - Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.3 1882
  2. medical, cases, mental - Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.33 1912
  3. medical, cases, mental - Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.28 1907
  4. redoubtable, restrainable, exchanges - Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.35 1914
  5. redoubtable, restrainable, exchanges - Alienist and neurologist : A quarterly journal of scientific, clinical and forensic psychiatry and neurology v.35 1914

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

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topic model

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of the study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

cases, case, time, disease, years, insanity, patient, brain, man, life, treatment, mind, patients, symptoms, state, fact, part, condition, men, day, work, nerve, number, subject, tion, system, blood, diseases, body, form, con-, others, action, side, way, physician, cause, place, nature, conditions, year, times, influence, death, cells, power, hospital, age, paralysis, use

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

is, be, was, are, have, has, had, been, were, made, found, do, being, said, does, given, called, did, having, make, see, become, following, says, known, give, take, seen, say, taken, know, became, find, used, observed, come, seems, read, ing, according, done, show, think, go, shown, died, appear, followed, am, produced

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nouns
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verbs

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in the study carrel.

Dr., M., D., Medical, C., New, H., York, St., ., W., Hospital, Journal, J., State, A., American, Association, Louis, Insane, S., G., E., B., F., Chicago, Mental, R., N., Society, P., Medicine, L., Mr., Asylum, Professor, T., de, Hughes, Nervous, President, States, Book, Diseases, John, Philadelphia, College, Congress, Notices, City

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

it, he, his, i, we, its, they, their, her, she, him, them, our, my, you, us, me, himself, itself, your, themselves, one, herself, myself, ourselves, yours, thy, yourself, mine, thee, ours, ex-, evi-, ye, be-, pos-, withal, theirs, gen-, him-, hers, des-, ourself, our-, 'em, cer-, can-, oneself, hor-, thyself

Below are words cloud of the study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

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proper nouns
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pronouns

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is this study carrel positive or negative?"

other, mental, such, many, same, great, medical, nervous, insane, general, first, more, certain, good, normal, -, present, large, little, few, own, new, much, right, sexual, spinal, true, physical, special, old, last, several, cerebral, different, moral, morbid, able, left, clinical, small, possible, due, various, second, best, common, acute, important, similar, latter

not, so, more, very, only, well, also, as, most, then, often, now, even, out, up, always, especially, much, thus, never, here, too, however, still, far, less, almost, sometimes, first, about, again, therefore, just, yet, usually, rather, once, quite, ever, long, frequently, generally, later, on, soon, down, ago, probably, all, there

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adjectives
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adverbs

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

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