Homer’s Odyssey and Spigelia Medical Case Studies Digital Collection

Overview

This digital repository aggregates two distinct scholarly corpora: (1) a curated set of text excerpts, illustrations, and reference metadata drawn from Homer's Odyssey (books V–XII), and (2) a series of early‑20th‑century German‑language medical case notes documenting homeopathic treatments with the plant genus Spigelia. The materials are organized by content type—text, image, and reference files—and are accessible via the Arke Institute’s online platform.

Background

The Odyssey material reflects the ancient Greek epic (c. 8th century BCE) and has been transcribed into modern English prose for contemporary literary and digital‑humanities research. Accompanying illustrations depict scenes from Odysseus’s wanderings, while a JSON entity list and a PINAX catalog record provide structured metadata.

The Spigelia case‑study collection originates from German physicians around 1900 who investigated the therapeutic use of Spigelia antillensis and Spigelia marylandica for headaches, toothaches, and related pains. The original handwritten notes were scanned, OCR‑processed, and linked to an entity index and a separate PINAX record. Both sub‑collections were reorganized according to the “Reorganization Summary” to keep related items together.

Contents

• OdysseyBookTexts – Plain‑text transcriptions of Books V–XII, each preserving the episode structure of the epic.
• Odyssey_Illustrations – Image files illustrating key moments such as Calypso’s island, the Phaeacian banquet, and the Underworld journey.
• OdysseyReferenceMaterials – `relationships.json` (73 entity codes linking characters, places, and objects) and a PINAX JSON record (author = Homer, language = grc, subjects = Epic poetry, Greek literature, etc.).
• SpigeliaMedicalCaseStudies – Scanned JPEG pages (cases 66–74) with OCR transcriptions describing symptoms, treatment regimens (Spigelia Xoo, mercurial pills), and outcomes; an entity index JSON linking 19 identifiers (e.g., spigelia, surinam, germandoctors); and a PINAX record summarizing provenance, language (German), and subjects (homeopathy, medical history).

Scope

The Odyssey component covers the latter half of the hero’s return voyage, excluding the opening four books and the final homecoming episodes. Geographic references span Ithaca, Ogygia, Phaeacia, Aeaea, and the Underworld.

The Spigelia component is limited to nine case files (cases 66–74) documenting clinical observations made in Surinam and reported to German colleagues. Temporal coverage is confined to the turn of the 20th century (c. 1900).

Together, the collection serves classicists, digital‑humanities scholars, and historians of medicine seeking primary textual, visual, and metadata resources for comparative analysis.