Moore, John (1826-1907) [Collection of John B. Moore letters and a 37-page travel diary] [Decimalized .01- .06]

Covers the first few years of Moore's medical career before joining the army. Medical references, including a cholera epidemic in Laconia, Indiana (1) and diseases and medical treatments in England and Ireland (2, 5, 6). Written from Indiana, New York, and England and Ireland where he traveled as a tourist, with special interest in visiting hospitals. A travel diary describes his trip to England and Ireland in 1851, corresponding with some of his letters. He writes about sightseeing (museums, cathedrals, transportation systems, etc.), mentions Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, notes observing operations in Dublin hospitals, comments on the poverty in Ireland, gives his observations of the local people. The diary may be missing the last pages. A full inventory is available.

Excerpts:
Letters
18 July 1848: "I am still quite well notwithstanding I have for two or three weeks undergone much fatigue and have been broken of my regular sleeping hours. The health of the country does not seem to improve in the least. Cholera is still unabated, and seems rather on the increase."

"The affair of the seas seems to have excited a great deal of interest in the neighborhood. I learned the fact of their having left - with the exception of [Join ?] the Louisville Democrat of week before last, They have succeeded in getting their names in the papers at all events. It is no atall [sic] surprising they had to move when [Jeams ?] got after them with his monkey coat double barrelled pistol and other accoutrements peculiar to himself. No doubt he looked quite formidable. "

16 June 1851: "Soon after my arrival I visited the Crystal Palace. This is a miniature world, where you may see people of every nation; and their advancement in the arts may be learned from the specimens of workmanship which they are here exhibiting."

2 August 1852: "The county was generally beautiful; many parts of it exceedingly so - naturally fertile but many parts poorly cultivated and every part filled with wretchedness, starvation and beggary - owing in part to an unjust and tyrannical system of government, systematically pursued for the last hundred years, but perhaps mainly to the miserable system of letting lands, by which the tenant can be turned out at any moment, without a care of remuneration for any improvements he may have made on the Land. Another reason of the wretched condition of many of them is their own laziness and want of energy."

Diary entries
12 June 1852: "The Tower has been so often described that it is unnecessary to enter into any description of it. There is no place in the world, perhaps where one can see so many specimens of all the varieties of arms that have been used from the earliest ages, together with coats of mail and every description of defensive armor. The cell in which Sir Walter Raleigh was so long confined is shown and a gloomy looking dungeon it is. The block on which he was beheaded is still preserved. The crown jewels and regalia are also kept in an apartment of the Tower."

13 June 1852: "Soldiers are on sentry at all hours at the different entrances to the Palace yard. This however is a matter of form more than from any apprehended danger, for no sovereign was ever so universally popular as the Queen. She rides out daily when the weather is fine without guards of any kind in an open carriage. Prince Albert and herself are almost daily at the exhibition from 9 ½ am to 11 or 12.
The queen is small in size and only passably good looking. But Prince Albert is one of the finest looking men in England. He never troubles himself about politics but attends to his own business, is a liberal patron of the useful arts, and is highly popular among the people. He is the projector of the Great Industrial Exhibition."

17 June 1852: "Spent the day visiting St. Thomas and Guys Hospitals. Two noble institutions each containing between four and six hundred beds, extensive libraries and valuable museums. Saw at Guys two important and interesting operations by the celebrated [Branksby ?] Cooper and Mr. [Shilton ?] - surgeons are not styled doctors in England - and an interesting lecture by that well and favorable known author Dr. Golding Bird. Great facilities are afforded here to students but it costs about five times as much as in the states."

18 June 1852: "A gentleman who came over with me from N. York was more fortunate. He saw her [Queen Victoria] yesterday as she came out. He solemnly affirms that she actually stepped into the carriage as any other lady might be expected to do, and more over, she made such a high step that caught a distinct glimpse of her leg, and which he vows was a very good one. So that the long mooted question, as to whether or not, a queen has legs, may now be considered as settled."