Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.
Shepherds with Picnic, by Jacob Wothly and Emile Mangel du Mesnil, c. 1864. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2016.
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Miscellany
Amphetamine salts became popular among soldiers during World War II as a stimulant to counteract fatigue. One study estimates that up to sixteen million Americans had been exposed to Benzedrine by the end of the war. Civilian use increased rapidly after that, especially among upper-middle-class women, who used the drug for appetite suppression and as an antidepressant. In 1962 the pharmaceutical company Smith, Kline & French ran an advertisement targeted toward physicians and featuring a photograph of a female patient. “With your encouragement and Dexedrine Spansule,” the ad proclaims, “she’s losing weight.”
To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
—Walter Pater, 1873Lapham’sDaily
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Roundtable
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