Notes From The Frontier

While war weapons during the Civil War had advanced in destructiveness, medical technology had not kept pace.

Rabies reached epidemic stages in some cities and territories in the 1800s and early 1900s and Americans were hysterical with fear.

Until recent history, mayhem was as much a part of crime forensics as it was of crime itself.

The tradition of foot-binding, also called “lotus feet,” was a thousand-year-old tradition in China that was brought to the United States.

You simply won’t believe this one. You’ll say this is just nuts and you’ll be right—goat nuts!

Recent archeological digs that started twenty years ago at Jamestown have revealed shocking facts about life at Jamestown.

The Victorians believed that hysteria in women could be relieved by massage—manual or mechanical—to the point of “paroxysm,”

The Victorian era (1837-1901) was a time of incredible contradictions—especially when it came to sex.

The nature of battle casualties and the job of collecting the wounded and the dead was overwhelming.

Although "freak" shows began to show up as entertainment in the mid-1500s in England, they reached their apex of popularity in the US.

In 1800s America, corsets took a strange turn toward the bizarre, even the fetishistic. The smaller the waist, the more feminine the woman.

The Oregon Trail has been called a 2,000-mile-long graveyard.

Life was hard on the frontier, especially for women.

Contrary to Hollywood, scalping has been practiced by warring people-especially whites- throughout human history.

In the 1800s, opium was very popular, introduced first by Chinese immigrants working on the railroads.