Excerpt from The New Wonderful Museum, and Extraordinary Magazine, Vol. 1: Being a Complete Repository of All the Wonders, Curiosities, and Rarities of Nature and Art, From the Beginning of the World to the Present Year 1802; Comprehending a Valuable Collection (All Well Attested, and From the Respectable Authorities) Truth being our chief iect, and which alone can recom mend a Work of this Nature, we trust that Readers in general wil' be turaonn, as well as suapatssd.-yoorn will here find Information, will attain a Knowledge of the W'orld; and by. The Wonderful Providence: here related, obtain a full Conviction of the Omnipotent Being.' - thc learned will find ample Store for their Consideration - the curious a Magazine of authentic Prodigies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This fascinating volume tackles the history of the terms 'normal' and 'abnormal'. Originally meaning 'as occurring in nature', normality has taken on significant cultural gravitas and this book recognizes and explores that fact. The essays engage with the concepts of the normal and the abnormal from the perspectives of a variety of academic disciplines – ranging from art history to social history of medicine, literature, and science studies to sociology and cultural anthropology. The contributors use as their conceptual anchors the works of moral and political philosophers such as Canguilhem, Foucault and Hacking, as well as the ideas put forward by sociologists including Durkheim and Illich. With contributions from a range of scholars across differing disciplines, this book will have a broad appeal to students in many areas of history.

The untold story of the Victorian freak show and circus, and the remarkable cast of characters who performed in them.