peggy sent me the magazine cabinet. i am great liking this. i'm only a fraction through, even so, i'd like to share some snippets.

from an index within the magazine:

habit, of always pondering something or another, of brooding one might say, 4

from a piece about the "Victorian water cure":

Priessnitz, however, was the Socrates of hydrotherapeutic theory: he wrote nothing himself – nor did he read, lest he damage his brain – and left the elaboration of his ideas to colleagues and successors.

it's refreshing. you don't see writing like this in blogs:

... that hotbed of absurdities, Austria, where the crushed minds of men that cannot bear the healthful fruits of free investigation run riot in the extravagances of fantastic credulity or ignorantly strive to breathe life into the dead superstitions and one-idea'd theories of the Middle Ages.

granted, that's an 1842 quote in a cabinet footnote, but still. a delight.