Internet Archive Artifact - 0002

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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes


From:  New Amsterdam Book Company, 1899
Title page of an 1899 book printed in black ink on a white background. The page reads, “Dr. Neesen’s Book on Wheeling: Hints and Advice to Men and Women from the Physician’s Standpoint,” followed by the author’s name, “Victor Neesen, M.D.” Beneath his name is a dense list of professional credentials, including affiliations with gynecology, hospitals, and medical societies in New York and Berlin. The page notes that the book includes illustrations and an appendix. Centered near the bottom is an oval publisher’s emblem with decorative imagery. At the bottom of the page, the publisher is listed as “New Amsterdam Book Company, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York.”

What is it?
A book about riding bicycles that addresses the debate about whether bicycling is healthy, for whom, and under what conditions.  The author, Victor Neesen, M. D., was a gynecologist who decided to step into the debate of the times about the health concerns regarding bicycles.  He largely argues that there are great medical benefits from "wheeling" but it can cause problems if not done right. It may also aggravate other existing ailments. Still, he believes it is a virtue to "wheel" so long as a woman is of right moral character or as he puts it on page 90: "To sum up the morality of wheeling it may be tersely said that  'a lady is a lady wherever she is.'"  Chapters cover essential topics like: Hygiene, Diseases and Ailments, The Bicycle for Women, Morality of the Bicycle, and an Appendix. It clocks in at about 130 pages and yes, includes photos of people on bicycles with an almost equal pairing.

Thoughts
I feel like I struck gold with this one.  If you want a sense of what this book is writing against, take a look at the Pessimists Archive page on the bicycle. That it's written by a gynecologist means that I definitely had to look to see what was said about "hysteria."  For those who want to learn about hysteria and technology in the 19th century, please check out Rachel Maine's The Technology of the Orgasm, and you may be as amused by the role of bikes in the hysteria "health" issue.  Sure enough, bicycle riding can also benefit women diagnosed with hysteria (smirk).  There are a good deal of "diseases peculiar to women" that wheeling can benefit, in fact.  Neesen explains how here on page 75-76:

"Hysteria is this nerve manifestation accentuated. The name itself is derived from the Greek Hyster " meaning uterus, and applied by the ancients to that profound disturbance of the nervous equilibrium emanating from the uterus.

Wheeling helps these nervous disorders by relieving the nerve tension in much the same manner as a locomotive ''blows off " its accumulated steam, when it is at a standstill. If the steam was retained an explosion would result. Hysteria is an explosion of the nervous system and bicycling is a newly invented safety-valve."

There is, of course, this suggestive passage that I think would raise some eyebrows, maybe even today, about its subtext:

"The most grievous and lamentable charge that the anti-bicyclists make against the fair name of the female riders is unfortunately not advisable to take up for discussion in a book of this kind. It has been discussed and argued and refuted in the medical journals throughout the country, but in spite of the fact that it has been proven to be impossible, some people still think it a logical sequence to riding the wheel."

In exploring this text, my mind goes in two directions.  The first is seeing this text as a prime example of how social norms and conventions were woven into the medicalization of bodies that were taking place in the 1800s.  Neesen is tying together ailments, morality, and expertise, and through that, casting more control of women, even when he endorses the idea that women should ride bicycles. There's a particular context, and that context is not entirely medical as he says here on page 80:  

"The moral side of bicycling has almost as much to do with the physician as the physical side, for morality is closely related to health. But aside from this, a physician, by reason of his learning and favorable opportunities for observation, has a vantage ground from which he is a powerful factor in molding public opinion."

Just by wading into the debate with his credentials to claim that it's medically and morally sound, there's still a paternalistic reasoning that permeates the text.

The second direction reminds me so much of the health fads of the last 50 years, including self-help.  That also includes all the experts (some legit, some self-proclaimed) on Reels or TikTok that replicate these practices.  Mark Twain, alive at the time of this book, said it best (assuming it was him) that history doesn't repeat but it sure does rhyme.

About This Series: I started this because I love the random oddities of the Internet Archive. Read more about how and why I did this here. To view all the posts in the collection, select this link. You can also download this program from my GitHub page.

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