The Public Domain Review

A collection of more than 60 sundial inscriptions, exploring various themes relating to the passing of time.

From cabbage green to coarse meal, medieval manuscripts exhibit a spectrum of colours and consistencies when describing urine. Katherine Harvey examines the complex practices of uroscopy: how physicians could divine sexual history, disease, and impending death by studying the body's liquid excretions.

In this “personal guidance” film, Phil the shy guy learns a valuable lesson: to fit in, you need to “think about the other guy”.

In these illustrations, Emerson's words are interpreted literally, repurposed for cheeky, teasing, and toothless ends.

A sprawling eighty-page poem about teeth, written by an eminent dentist, with fifty pages of erudite endnotes.

These watercolour images depict a lost 19th-century Manhattan of grand country estates and vast private gardens.

Beneath the waves, off the Suffolk Coast, lies a city taken by the sea through centuries of erosion. Matthew Green revisits Dunwich, a once lively port transfigured into a symbol of loss, both eerie and profound, for generations of artists, poets, and historians drawn to its ruinous shores.

This form of folk art from 17th- and 18th-century Pennsylvania was designed for private, domestic pleasures.

In this essay on the ailments of sedentary lifestyles, reading and scholarly study have tragic and sometimes fatal consequences.

During the late 1660s in Paris, transfusing the blood of calves and lambs into human veins held the promise of renewed youth and vigour. Peter Sahlins explores Jean Denis’ controversial experiments driven by his belief in the moral superiority of animal blood: a substance that could help redeem the fallen state of humanity.