Distant Reader - subject-mineralWaters-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 20 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 281,026 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 14,051 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:

water, may, waters, salt, will, much, nature, one, yet, also, well, heat, mineral, earth, many, great, cold, made, use, shall, first, good, body, time, make, must, two, like, found, without, reason, common, parts, hot, now, either, part, little, air, spirit, fire, text, tcp, take, bath, therefore, minerals, stone, doth, spring

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The natural history of the chalybeat and purging waters of England with their particular essays and uses : among which are treated at large, the apoplexy & hypochondriacism : to which are added some observations on the bath waters in Somersetshire ... / by Benjamin Allen ..., A discourse of natural bathes, and mineral waters wherein, the original of fountains in general is declared, the nature and difference of minerals with examples of particular bathes, the generation of minerals in the earth, from whence both the actual heat of bathes, and their virtues proceed, by what means mineral waters are to be discover''d, and lastly, of the nature and uses of bathes, but especially of our bathes at Bathe, in Someerset-shire / by Edw. Jorden, Doctor in Physick., and The York-shire spaw, or, A treatise of foure famous medicinal wells viz. the spaw, or vitrioline-well, the stinking, or sulphur-well, the dropping, or petrifying-well, and S. Mugnus-well, near Knare borow in York-shire : together with the causes, vertues and use thereof : for farther information read the contents / composed by J. French, Dr. of Physick..

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

mineral waters, early english, english books, common water, common salt, mineral water, books online, purging salt, text creation, creation partnership, page images, purging waters, actual heat, bitter purging, tcp schema, image sets, characters represented, represented either, roman non, lignum nephriticum, chalybeat waters, will remain, take notice, large quantities, will never, acid spirit, spaw water, kings bath, true nature, first edition, aqua fortis, german spaw, whole body, asking permission, financial support, work described, providing financial, make use, encoded text, water will, iv tiff, images scanned, markup reviewed, may make, online text, commercial purposes, without asking, tcp assigned, esurine salt, image set

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are A discourse of natural bathes, and mineral waters wherein, the original of fountains in general is declared, the nature and difference of minerals with examples of particular bathes, the generation of minerals in the earth, from whence both the actual heat of bathes, and their virtues proceed, by what means mineral waters are to be discover''d, and lastly, of the nature and uses of bathes, but especially of our bathes at Bathe, in Someerset-shire / by Edw. Jorden, Doctor in Physick. A short and plain account of the late-found Balsamick Wells at Hoxdon, and of their excellent virtues above other mineral waters, which make ''em effectually cure most diseases, both inward and outward with directions how to use ''em / by T. Byfield, M.D., and Short memoirs for the natural experimental history of mineral waters addressed by way of letter to a friend / by Robert Boyle..

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, water, waters, spring, salt, spaw, nature, spirit, springs, mineral, haue, body, vitriol, sun, sulphur, stomach, sea, roman, purging, physitian, physician, nitre, minerals, iron, english, earth, cure, copper, city, church, chap, bathes, bath, wells, vitrial, tryals, tincture, tin, stone, species, son, solution, rock, river, puech, physicke, patient, ounce, mines, medicine

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 water, and Latham Spaw in Lancashire with some remarkable cases and cures effected by it : together with a farther account of it as may conduce to the publick advantage with ease and little expence. 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?":

water, waters, heat, time, nature, body, reason, parts, earth, part, use, fire, air, others, self, place, quantity, way, salt, colour, text, thing, matter, things, t, blood, years, bodies, minerals, cause, substance, quality, qualities, diseases, hath, manner, man, opinion, mineral, texts, work, kind, spring, account, doth, one, places, p., men, times

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, have, was, being, were, do, made, make, been, found, had, take, taken, did, according, find, give, see, having, called, say, said, come, let, makes, hath, think, know, concerning, am, put, has, learned, encoded, proceed, drink, observed, used, given, appears, thought, known, use, impregnated, produce, done, observe, cured

Proper Nouns

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

salt, water, waters, mineral, c., 〉, tcp, bath, ◊, nature, 〈, spirit, spaw, sulphur, hath, de, purging, earth, vitriol, nitre, iron, springs, stone, sea, spring, ●, english, baths, minerals, salts, chap, liquor, text, eebo, tei, sun, stomach, diseases, disease, physick, lib, city, acid, haue, bathes, tincture, bitumen, oxford, copper, brain

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, i, they, their, them, his, we, he, its, our, my, you, me, your, him, her, themselves, us, ''em, himself, she, one, mine, em, thy, ours, whereof, vp, l, ●, ye, us''d, unfigur''d, thee, ''s, á, yeere, vnto, theirs, ne, lye, hic, fundamentis, elias, discover''d

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, such, many, great, same, more, good, cold, common, much, hot, little, first, most, natural, own, true, like, greater, general, small, particular, better, proper, last, fit, several, few, early, best, clear, necessary, second, least, certain, dry, full, former, able, new, english, large, sufficient, white, long, whole, less, due, light, strong

not, so, then, more, also, very, well, as, only, now, much, most, therefore, here, yet, especially, up, thereof, too, sometimes, first, out, there, thus, rather, never, together, far, before, onely, in, even, perhaps, somewhat, usually, likewise, almost, thereby, long, off, indeed, otherwise, again, often, easily, all, less, else, away, forth

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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