Homer’s Odyssey (Books XXI–XXIV) and Early‑20th‑Century German Homeopathic Case Studies Collection

Overview

This digital archive aggregates two distinct scholarly collections: (1) an English‑language transcription of Homer’s Odyssey Books XXI–XXIV with a machine‑readable entity index, and (2) a German‑language manuscript of circa 1900 homeopathic medical case notes, presented as high‑resolution JPEG scans, OCR transcriptions, and structured JSON metadata. The materials are organized into sub‑collections identified by the accompanying `childdescription*.md` files and linked through a common `relationships.json` mapping.

Background

The Odyssey texts represent the climactic portion of the ancient Greek epic traditionally attributed to Homer (late 8th century BCE). The four books detail Odysseus’s return to Ithaca, the contest of the bow, the slaughter of the suitors, and the final reconciliation. The medical manuscript reflects German‑speaking homeopathic practice at the turn of the twentieth century, likely compiled by a practitioner identified only as “Jahr.” Such case compendia were common for documenting symptom‑remedy correlations in homeopathy.

Contents

• Odyssey Sub‑collection
- Four plain‑text files (`book21.txt`–`book24.txt`) containing the complete English translations of Books XXI–XXIV. - `relationships.json` listing 71 extracted entities (characters, objects, locations) with unique identifiers for digital‑humanities analysis. - `reorganization-description.txt` summarizing the grouping of texts, illustrations (none present in this archive), and reference material. - `pinax.json` providing collection‑level metadata (creator = Homer, language = grc, subjects, access URL).
• Medical Case Studies Sub‑collection
- JPEG scan(s) of the original German manuscript (e.g., `scan_revenge1.jpg`). - Full OCR transcription of the scanned page, documenting cases 75–80 with detailed symptom descriptions and remedy outcomes. - JSON metadata mapping 38 extracted entities (remedies, symptoms, case numbers, author “Jahr”) to the manuscript. - Two descriptive markdown files (`childdescription1.md`, `childdescription2.md`) offering contextual information, provenance, and scope.

Scope

• Temporal coverage: Homeric epic composition c. 800–700 BCE; medical manuscript dated circa 1900.
• Geographic focus: Ancient Greece (Ithaca and mythic locales) and Central Europe (German‑language medical practice).
• Languages: English translation of the Greek epic; German original for the medical notes.
• Subjects: Classical epic narrative, heroism, divine intervention; homeopathic diagnosis, symptom‑remedy correlation, case‑based therapeutic documentation.
• Inclusions: Full texts of the four Odyssey books, entity index, and related metadata; scanned manuscript images, OCR text, and structured entity metadata for the medical cases.
• Exclusions: Earlier books of the Odyssey, later scholarly commentaries, audio/visual illustrations, and any modern diagnostic data beyond the 1900 case notes.

The archive provides researchers in classical studies, digital humanities, and the history of medicine with searchable, richly annotated primary sources from two widely separated cultural contexts.