19th century

Today, scales are plain, but in the 19th century, they were garbed in polished wood and semi-precious stones.Stepping onto a scale after a calorie-filled holiday season isn’t an activity many 21st-century Americans relish. But in the late 19th century, scales were all the rage at festive gatherings — the 1800s’ answer to Guitar Hero. “A family would think it fun to weigh themselves before and after a big holiday dinner to see how much they had gained,” said Deborah I. Levine, Ph.D. “Knowing your weight was a novelty, a kind of parlor trick, before scales became widely available through mass production.”

Valencius unearths a common theme among early settlers in *The Health of the Country*.Poring over stacks of yellowed aging letters and other documents from the 19th century while researching American western expansion, Conevery Bolton Valencius, Ph.D., an environmental historian at Washington University in St. Louis, noted a common theme. Assessments of the “sickliness” or “health” of land pervade settlers’ letters, journals, newspapers and literature from that time. Valencius says that the numerous references throughout 19th-century writings to “healthy country,” “sickly” countryside, or “salubrious” valleys reveal the importance settlers placed on the connections between their bodies and their land. One of the main criteria for choosing where to farm and where to raise a family for the early settlers was whether or not the area would be a healthy place to live.