You would get a book similar to the "Oxford Dictionary of Quotations". I'm not sure which specific book existed back then with that content, but books that hand

You would get a book similar to the "Oxford Dictionary of Quotations". I'm not sure which specific book existed back then with that content, but books that handled these types of very specific deep dives into a subject were very common. Read some very old stories and you might get a flavor for how life worked back then - people didn't just throw their hands up and give up, there were usable options to find this stuff out - the reference section of your local library was very important. The types of books don't exist much these days for obvious reasons.