Distant Reader - author-pecheyJohn-freebo

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 2021-05-24 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these 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

There are 24 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 630,219 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 26,259 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 charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

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 86. 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 charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

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, must, take, may, half, two, water, ounce, ounces, make, three, also, blood, good, used, much, use, four, time, dram, womb, taken, drams, disease, sometimes, like, made, great, will, pain, little, leaves, let, white, first, wine, child, quantity, oyl, parts, following, part, syrup, flowers, many, body, latin, small, things, diseases

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The store-house of physical practice being a general treatise of the causes and signs of all diseases afflicting human bodies : together with the shortest, plainest and safest way of curing them, by method, medicine and diet : to which is added, for the benefit of young practicers, several choice forms of medicines used by the London physicians / by John Pechey ..., The compleat midwife''s practice enlarged in the most weighty and high concernments of the birth of man containing a perfect directory or rules for midwives and nurses : as also a guide for women in their conception, bearing and nursing of children from the experience of our English authors, viz., Sir Theodore Mayern, Dr. Chamberlain, Mr. Nich. Culpeper ... : with instructions of the Queen of France''s midwife to her daughter ... / by John Pechey ... ; the whole illustrated with copper plates., and A general treatise of the diseases of maids, bigbellied women, child-bed-women, and widows together with the best methods of preventing or curing the same / by J. Pechey ....

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

one ounce, one dram, two ounces, two drams, sufficient quantity, four ounces, three ounces, three drams, following manner, one scruple, one handful, red roses, six drams, six ounces, two scruples, whole body, sweet almonds, english books, early english, one drachm, strained liquor, books online, must take, foot high, one pint, taken inwardly, white sugar, one pound, three days, great quantity, must use, two drachms, page images, creation partnership, text creation, one pugil, part affected, two handfuls, eight ounces, chiefly used, taken away, four hours, observations made, twenty four, four times, sick must, care must, third part, roses solutive, many times

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are Some observations made upon the wood called lignum nephriticum imported from Hispaniola shewing its admirable virtues in dissolving the stone in the reins and bladder, helping the strangury and stoppings in the water and easing all pains proceeding from thence, &c. / written by a doctor of physick in the countrey to the president of the Colledge of Physicians in London. Some observations made upon the Virginian nutts, imported from the Indies shewing their admirable virtue against the scurvy / written by a doctor of physick in the countrey to Dr. Croon, one of the Royal Society in London, 1681., and Some observations made upon the serpent stones imported from India shewing their admirable virtues in curing malignant spotted feavers / written by a countrey physitian to Dr. Burwell, president of the Colledge of Physitians in London..

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

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 carrel include:

tcp, early, roses, disease, belly, oyl, blood, womb, water, stomach, child, body, woman, syrup, sugar, stone, root, powder, humours, decoction, cure, courses, wine, vessels, symptoms, sick, seed, patient, pain, ounce, medicines, matter, liquor, juice, infant, head, foot, flowers, eyes, dram, children, yard, wormwood, worms, wax, vinegar, veins, ulcers, ulcer, turpentine

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

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 half, and Some observations made upon the serpent stones imported from India shewing their admirable virtues in curing malignant spotted feavers / written by a countrey physitian to Dr. Burwell, president of the Colledge of Physitians in London. 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:

If the 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:

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

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your 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?":

ounce, water, blood, ounces, time, child, half, quantity, part, drams, things, t, roots, parts, use, leaves, dram, body, day, reason, days, pain, milk, manner, woman, flowers, women, virtues, wine, bed, seed, self, grains, p., cause, diseases, way, ▪, pills, eyes, handful, times, seeds, pains, syrup, place, children, morning, ulcers, pound

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, are, take, make, have, being, used, taken, made, was, let, has, do, been, following, were, put, give, add, use, given, applied, mingle, had, does, come, cured, called, according, grows, keep, boil, known, happens, having, said, apply, boyl, cut, comes, occasioned, done, proceed, strain, infuse, cures, mix, prepared, affected

Proper Nouns

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

disease, womb, water, oyl, latin, roses, syrup, wine, dram, pain, medicines, sugar, humours, ounces, powder, head, stomach, ounce, sick, diseases, seeds, belly, dose, juice, cure, liquor, urine, t, courses, root, patient, decoction, flowers, chap, tcp, matter, ●, drams, spirit, stone, white, leaves, foot, remedies, cinnamon, spirits, saffron, children, london, wormwood

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, them, they, her, i, their, you, he, she, his, its, we, him, themselves, my, your, me, our, himself, us, one, us''d, thy, thee, shou''d, whereof, em, ay, whey, hers, ●, u, theirs, rhey, ours, mine, join''d, infus''d, hlm, hey, herself, grip''d, felf, ee, dayly, ''s, ''em

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal 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 my study carrel positive or negative?"

other, good, great, little, many, small, same, such, white, hot, sufficient, like, much, cold, long, proper, first, violent, red, more, whole, large, best, sweet, hard, gentle, fresh, excellent, common, strong, ill, greater, dry, most, thick, full, sharp, green, third, old, following, yellow, warm, certain, clear, several, black, better, thin, frequent

not, so, very, also, then, sometimes, much, more, often, as, up, only, well, out, most, off, first, too, therefore, especially, commonly, together, afterwards, now, presently, frequently, easily, away, forth, before, down, soon, chiefly, again, in, almost, long, gently, outwardly, always, above, yet, never, once, moreover, inwardly, somewhat, twice, all, over

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.

Thank you for using the Distant Reader.