Edward B. Foote’s *Plain Home Talk* (1896 edition) – The Public Domain Review

If his social messages were prescient, Foote’s scholarship reflects the limitations of his time. His medical account is united by a theory of “animal electricity,” a force that energizes the human body and leaks from the pores. Electricity provides a useful metaphor for its lay reader’s understanding of physiology: “the nerves telegraphic wires / how the mind sends its telegrams… the brain a reservoir of electricity / the stomach a galvanic battery.” But Foote also firmly believed in the power of hypnosis and mesmerism, and in the healing power of ‘magnetism’. His belief in the vital force of animal electricity is also the reason for his particular disapproval of bed-sharing, whether between husband and wife or between old and young. “Children, compared to adults, are electrically in a positive state,” Foote explains. “But when, through prolonged contact with older and negative people, the vitalizing electricity of their tender organization is given off, they quickly wither away, become pale, languid, and dull, while their bedfellows feel a corresponding vigor.” Electricity is apparently a zero-sum game for Foote.