Homer’s Odyssey (Books 13‑20) and 19th‑Century Homœopathic Case Reports Collection

Overview

This digital collection unites two distinct corpora: (1) the full plain‑text transcriptions of Homer’s Odyssey books 13 through 20, accompanied by a JSON entity‑relationship file, and (2) a single issue of the German‑language homœopathic newspaper Correspondenzblatt der homöopathischen Aerzte (No. 6, 19 March 1836) presented as a scanned JPEG image with OCR text. The materials are catalogued in PINAX (ID 01KCJ7MWEW04H7AZASTZHWA86N) and were created or issued in 1900 (metadata) and 1836 (medical newspaper).

Background

The Odyssey is the second epic traditionally ascribed to the 8th‑century BCE poet Homer; books 13‑20 narrate the climax of Odysseus’s return to Ithaca, his secret arrival, the reunion with Telemachus, and the preparation for the suitors’ defeat. The texts were digitised from a scholarly edition and rendered in a transliterated ancient‑Greek (grc) plain‑text format.

The homœopathic newspaper was the official organ of the North‑American Academy of Homœopathic Healing Arts, headquartered in Allentau (Ohio/Pennsylvania). The March 1836 issue records two detailed case studies of eye‑related ailments treated with Spigelia X and Nux vomica, reflecting early American homœopathic diagnostic and therapeutic practice.

Contents

• Odyssey segment: eight plain‑text files (book13.txt – book20.txt) covering the narrative from Odysseus’s departure from Scheria to the suitors’ plotting in Ithaca; a relationships.json file listing 73 coded entities (characters, places, objects, motifs) for precise cross‑referencing; PINAX metadata describing the collection.
• Medical case reports: one scanned newspaper page (JPEG, 376 KB) with OCR transcription; the OCR includes two case narratives—(a) a 25‑year‑old patient with recurrent headaches and left‑eye inflammation treated with Spigelia X, and (b) a female patient with left‑eye pain treated with alternating Nux vomica and Spigelia X. Metadata capture dates (1833‑06 to 1836‑03) and treatment codes.

Scope

• Chronology: Epic composition ca. 800–700 BCE; medical material dated 19 March 1836 (with patient histories from 1833‑1836).
• Geography: Mythic locales of the Odyssey (Ithaca, Scheria, Pylos, Lacedaemon, etc.) and the American region of Allentau (Ohio/Pennsylvania).
• Subjects: Classical Greek epic literature, narrative structure, heroism, and 19th‑century homœopathic medicine (case documentation, symptom description, herbal remedies).
• Formats: Plain‑text UTF‑8 files, JSON data, JPEG image, OCR text.
• Inclusions/Exclusions: Includes only books 13‑20 of the Odyssey and a single homœopathic newspaper issue; excludes the remaining books of the epic, modern commentaries, and other medical journal issues.

The collection offers scholars a machine‑readable segment of a foundational literary work alongside a primary source for early American homœopathic practice, enabling interdisciplinary research across classical studies and the history of medicine.