The 1893 the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago had its serial killer, H.H. Holmes, made famous as “The Devil in the White City.” The actual extent of Holmes’s crime spree is probably far smaller than the legend and the book suggest, but popular imagination keeps the legend alive. Most people Continue Reading
Medical History
The Dentist in the Park
You can picture the faces. Visitors to Lincoln Park walk up to a statue, look at it and walk away saying, “Who?” Many of Chicago’s parks contain monuments that are like that. Humboldt. Schiller. Altgeld, not to name just Germans. Schiller. A sculpture that stands in a lovely, very prominent Continue Reading
The Day My Great Uncles Died
This blog entry has received minor edits since its first publication. On one day in the summer of 1873, two of my great uncles died in Holyoke, Massachusetts. John Knightley, age 8 ½, and his brother Patrick, age 10 months, died of whooping cough on July 15. John had been Continue Reading