| Green hides: | Uncured animal skins | ||
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| Horace Greeley: | The famous editor of the New York Tribune. The newspaper offices were located on Chatham Street (Park Row), not far from where the two boys are shopping. |  |
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| Immured: | Confined within walls |
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| Inestimable boon: | Incalculable benefit |
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| Intermittent and remittent fever: | Malaria, a disease now known to be spread by mosquitos. At the time, people believed it was spread by harmful vapors. |
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| Interstices: | Narrow spaces between objects; in this case, the cracks between stones. | ||
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| Jack: | A name for a sailor | ||
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| Kindred morbid affections: | Similar diseases. |
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| Lassitude: | Lethargy, weariness | ||
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| "'long-shore lobscouse" | A meal for sailors, usually a stew | ||
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| Marasmus: | A wasting away of flesh, often (but not always) as a result of extreme malnutrition |
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| Mephitic: | Foul smelling (said of a gas emanating from the earth) |
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| Morbid: | Disease-related, unhealthy | ||
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| New York Dispensary | A charitable institution providing medical assistance for the poor | ||
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| Noisome exhalations: | Offensive fumes |
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| Ochlesis: | An unhealthy condition caused by the crowding of too many people in one building |
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| Opthalmia: | Conjunctivitis; "pink-eye" | ||
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| Paludal designation: | Designation as a swamp | ||
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| Paludal miasma: | Swamp vapors, which at this time were thought to cause malaria | ||
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| Pandora's box | Another reference to classical myth. Pandora, a curious but foolish woman, had opened a forbidden box, thus releasing a host of problems to plague mankind. | ||
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| Pecuniary: | Related to money |
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| Phthisis pulmonalis | Tuberculosis |
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| Policy shops | Shops from which illegal private lotteries were conducted. | ||
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| Privies | Outhouses containing toilets that did not flush. The waste went directly into a holding tank |
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| Professional brethren: | Pulling's fellow doctors |
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| Pro rata: | Proportion | ||
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| Prostrating agencies: | Influences that cause physical incapacitation | ||
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| Protruberant: | Sticking out, protruding | ||
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| Providence: | God | ||
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| Pulmonary
phthisis/ pulmonary consumption: |
Tuberculosis | ||
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| Putrescent: | Rotting |
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