This week’s historical highlights feature medical history, technology, a new TV series, and police sketches of literary characters. Let’s get started!

Read this article if you want to learn about the eugenics movement in early 20th century Canada.

Have you heard of James Douglas? “He opened Lower Canada’s first asylum, and under his watch, for a brief period of time in the mid-nineteenth century, the treatment of the mentally ill was perhaps as humane, creative, dignified, personal, and healthy as it’s ever been before or since.”

A new TV show called Lost L.A. is “a collaboration with historians and the USC libraries, [that] digs into the city’s history with the help of the region’s rarely seen archives.” Here you can watch the promo for the first episode, which focuses on L.A.’s forgotten subway tunnels.

This is a fascinating article on the use of 3D scanning to preserve cultural artifacts. “The attempts to destroy some of the world’s heritage have had quite the opposite effect: an entirely new area of research and scientific practice that has transformed archaeology, heritage, paleontology, museum studies, architecture, and a suite of other disciplines.”

Isn’t this blog post title intriguing? “Where We Find New Old Books, Chapter 5, Part I, A Beginners’ Guide to Uncovering Rare Book Treasures: A 500-Year-Long Tale Between Parisian Pages” Read Part II here.

A blog post on the U.S. National Archives’ pioneering of microfilm, along with an online exhibit.

“Police Sketches of 5 Literary Characters Based on Their Book Descriptions” — I love this idea and want to check out the entire book.

 I hope you found some reading to entertain and/or educate yourself this weekend!

Update: I forgot to include this link from BBC News, “Beatrix Potter story Kitty-in-Boots discovered after 100 years”. (I don’t think Quentin Blake’s illustrations will be quite right, do you?)