Early Modern Stuff – Jennifer Sherman Roberts

Much Ado About Doodles

One of the best things about being an independent scholar (whatever that term means) is that my enthusiasms are no longer policed by the academy.

Note: Which is not to say that academics are unenthusiastic about their topics. It’s a truism that academics have a proprietary relationship–well, really, they fall in love with–the subjects of their research. One need only go to an academic conference and watch people unabashedly nerding out about Chaucer or planetary rovers or chaos theory to know that’s true.

No, this is all a very long way of talking about how I saw some of John Dee’s books—and the doodles, notes, and marginalia within—and am unconstrained in saying that it was pretty freaking magical.

Portrait of John Dee. Sixteenth Century, artist unknown. Original in Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK.

***

The circumstances that led up to my sitting in the reading room of the Royal College of Physicians, quietly waiting to pay my respects to Dee’s books, were a perfect example of the kind of generosity of spirit and collegiality among many academics on Twitter. I had heard that the Royal College of Physicians would be doing an exhibit on John Dee, the 16th-century magus and mathematician who is widely thought to be the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Prospero (Scholar, courtier, magician: The lost library of John Dee). Unfortunately for me, the exhibit was ending in late July, and I wouldn’t be in England until late August. I was sure I would miss this chance of a lifetime. I bemoaned my luck on Twitter, tweeting out “Oh, to be in England, while John Dee is there…”

Within a day I was thrilled to have a response from R. Satterley (@rsatterley), tagging the curator of the exhibit, Katie Birkwood. Katie generously offered to show me some of the highlights of the exhibit when I was in London, a month after the official end of the show. Katie spent almost an hour with me, and we talked about a wide and fascinating array of topics: how the books were stolen from Dee’s library and found their way to the Royal College of Physicians; Dee’s wife, Jane Dee, and what her life might have been like (in a word–odd); and Dee’s mathematical interests and drive to codify and record everything from the weather to his wife’s menstrual periods. Katie was so very kind and immensely knowledgeable. Thanks, Katie! <waves>

The first thing Katie showed me was, she said, one of her favorite parts of the exhibition: a doodle Dee had drawn (probably in 1545 when he was a student at Cambridge, as Katie notes in the video below starting around 2:40). It was found in a compendium of Cicero’s work’s, tucked in a corner by a poem about the “foaming, frothing seas.” The drawing is of a ship that seems almost to glide off the page, the perspective foreshortened in such a way that it floats toward the viewer. I had viewed the digitized image before my trip, but seeing it in person had a much more visceral effect. I was embarrassed to say this to Katie, fearing it would be too fanciful, but it reminded me very much of the scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C. S. Lewis, in which Eustace, Lucy, and Edmund stare at a painting of a ship rolling on the sea, staring gape-mouthed as it materializes in front of them until they are drawn into the cold, salty ocean.

That idea—of a picture, a doodle, a painting that manifests itself in person, that jumps the dimension between concept and object, the materiality of that idea—captured my imagination. I started thinking about the differences in seeing a picture of an object and the object itself. Why did it seem different, somehow, to experience these books in person rather than to view them on my computer, 7,000 miles away? Do we know, at some deep, molecular level, that we are in the presence of the thing itself? Does that materiality connect us more intimately than an image separated by distance and time? Is it all in our imagination, and if so, is that any less real?

I’m reminded of one of the best stories I’ll ever be able to tell in my life.

Five years ago, the magnificent Ursula K. Le Guin came to my local library with photographer Roger Dorband to talk about their book Out Here: Poems and Images from Steens Mountain Country. At dinner after the presentation, the table talk drifted to how, let’s be honest, there’s something a little weird about wanting an author’s signature on a book. As Le Guin put it (paraphrasing here), “I’m happy to do it, of course, but I do think sometimes, ‘I’ve just given you my words—thousands of them!’” We talked about how the signature seemed like a material proof of connection, of experience. My husband nodded sagely and said, “Hmmm, maybe you could just lick the book instead?” (For the record: Le Guin laughed and laughed, and when it came time to leave, she gave my husband a little pretend air lick.)

It was all great fun, but really, I think there’s something there.

At the risk of sounding as esoteric as Dee, I think books and writing retain some residue of the people they’ve encountered. “Books speak to us,” we say, and sometimes I wonder if we’re being strictly metaphorical. Why else do we run our fingers over their spines, trace the lettering on their backs and covers, flip through pages as though visiting an old friend? There’s something profound about the physical manifestation of our most cherished ideas, thoughts, experiments, and emotions made solid and shared, a way for people to connect across time and space through the simple touch of a pen to paper.

Or you know what? Maybe this is just a flight of fancy of my own. Maybe this deep sense of connection we feel when seeing somebody’s actual writing, or doodling, or jotting of notes, the joy and connection people find when an author has signed their book, is all in our imaginations. But I ask you: If so, does that make it any less magical?

Laughing at History

By Netherlandish (possibly Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Yesterday the website The Mary Sue published a post of mine, a short, lighthearted little thing about the malady known as green sickness.

After it was published, I committed the cardinal internet sin of reading the comments. Normally I don’t do that, but The Mary Sue’s readers are savvy and smart, and I was curious what they said.

Most comments were written in the same vein as the post—funny, a little snarky, lighthearted. But one comment made me pause. In a nutshell, it asked “Why is this something to laugh at? Surely this was a real problem for some people.”

It’s a compelling point and one worth bearing in mind, always. When we laugh at things from the past, are we demeaning the lived experience of real people?

I hope I would never do that. I did, however, want to poke fun at a system of beliefs about women that reduced them to uterine function. The theory behind green sickness was that a virgin was vulnerable to all sorts of maladies because the ultimate function of the uterus was to be occupied, either by a man’s seed or by a child, and until that happened, it was a site of blocked humors and disease that made a maiden sick, weak, and listless.

It’s the same system that attributed a host of physical and mental disorders to a woman’s “wandering womb.”

It’s crucial we remember the role that set of beliefs played in the history of medicine, how it served as a foundation for the ways we think about and discuss women’s health.

It informs the social structure that allows Todd Aiken to mystify reproductive biology and argue the rarity of child conceived in a “legitimate rape” because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

That system still shapes the way we talk about menstruation and menopause, even about PMS.

Every day I read news stories that sound like they come right out of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale. Women’s reproductive rights are being eroded day by day, from mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds to the limits on abortion even in the cases of rape or health of the mother.

And for a chilling analysis of how the past seems to repeat itself when it comes to the regulation of women’s wombs, read this piercing analysis by Margaret Lewis of the similarities between 17th-century infanticide trials and the 20-year sentence given to Purvi Patel. (Especially shocking is the use of the “lung test,” which has been recognized as scientifically flawed for the last 200 years.)

We need to remind ourselves of that system that used biology to define women, by their very nature, as weak, helpless, and incapable of decision or action without a man’s help.

I deeply appreciate that commentor’s reminder that there are real people behind these stories and diagnoses and treatments. It’s something I hope never to forget.

But I don’t think I can stop laughing at the ridiculousness of a system that reduces women to one particular organ. Because if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.

The Spitting Image

Floram Marchand, a man who regurgitated water transformed into several colours and into separate vessels. Reproduction of a stipple engraving. Wellcome Library, London — Floram Marchand, a man who regurgitated water
transformed into several colours and into
separate vessels. Reproduction of a stipple
engraving. Wellcome Library, London

I came across this image while browsing in the online collection of the Wellcome Library (heaven only knows what my search terms were). Even in the often-bizarre world of the Wellcome’s collection, with wood engravings of eyes swollen shut by a witch’s curse and pictures of possessed men spitting up nails, this image stood out.

Regurgitating, spitting, expectorating—it all gets a pretty bad rap. About the only time it’s marginally socially acceptable is when done by cute babies. (Witness the time one of my daughters (in the interest of familial harmony, I won’t identify which one), age 12 months, spit up on her grandfather just as my camera was clicking to take their picture. I now have a permanent record of the look of satisfaction on her face and the blend of surprise, disgust, and great good humor on his.)

In the 16th and 17th centuries, however, some performers were able to take the act of regurgitation to a whole new level.

V0007186 Biagio di Manfrè, who regurgitated water transformed into ot — Though this image has Floram Marchand’s name, the Wellcome Library identifies this as Blaise Manfred (Biagio di Manfrè). Engraving after Wenceslaus Hollar. Wellcome Library, London.

Popular entertainer Blaise Manfrede was known for his ability to seemingly transform the vast amounts of water he swallowed into other liquids like milk or wine. His student, Floram Marchande, the subject of the above engraving, was known for turning water into a variety of wines, each in its own arc spit high above the crowds.

V0007188 Floram Marchand, a man who regurgitated — Floram Marchand, a man who regurgitated water transformed into several colours and into separate vessels. Reproduction of a stipple engraving. Wellcome Library, London

According to Joe Mitchell in Secrets of the Sideshows, Manfrede and Marchande employed special mouthpieces to help them spit the water in such dramatic fashion, and as for turning the water into wine—given that the “wine” got paler and paler the longer the act went on, it’s likely that Marchand ingested a red dye made from brazil nuts beforehand.

Though perhaps not as popular as it once was, the art of regurgitation has never really been abandoned. For example, in the 1920s and 30s, a Vaudeville performer named Hadji Ali was famous for swallowing and regurgitating water, nuts, smoke, handkerchiefs, and kerosene (which he would then spit out on a lit fire). You can see highlights of his act here:

Continuing the regurgitation tradition (if that can be said to be a thing), Glasgow-born Stevie Starr has made a career of regurgitating all sorts of items: broken glass, balloons, goldfish, and dry sugar. In 2010, he appeared on Britain’s Got Talent and flummoxed the audience by swallowing Amanda’s ring, a key, and a lock, and the regurgitating the ring—which was hooked onto the lock, presumably while in his stomach. Here it is (and oh my god, Amanda, are you really going to let the symbol of your enduring love be regurgitated by that man? Really, Amanda?):

Honestly, it’s enough to give a gal heartburn.

Scratching “The Itch Infalable” at The Recipes Project

I wrote this blog post for The Recipes Project: Food, Magic, Art, Science, and Medicine about a 17th-century anti-itching recipe: Scratching “The Itch Infalable”: Johanna St. John’s Anti-Itch Cure

On the downside, you may get psychosomatic itching after reading it, much like in 5th grade when you watched all those educational movies about lice. On the plus side, there is a largely gratuitous picture of an adorable scratching cat.

Hog-Faced Woman ISO Single Male for Love, Marriage, Transformation

Human culture is a strange and wonderful thing.

I’ve been reading about a genre of folk stories that have as a central character a “hog-faced woman,” and I’m left shaking my head at the uncanniness of human imagination.

These tales seem to have arisen in the early 17^th century concurrently in England, The Netherlands, and France. Most of the stories begin with a rich woman refusing charity to a beggar and her children, calling them “piggish” for asking for alms. The beggar turns out to be a witch who in revenge curses the child in the woman’s womb. The child is born perfectly healthy but with the face of a pig.

The first story of the pig-faced woman to have wide reach in England was circulated in a tract titled “A Certaine Relation of the Hog-faced Gentlewoman called Mistris Tannakin Skinker.”

ohn Haygarth. Line engraving by W. Cooke, 1827, after J. H. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org John Haygarth. Line engraving by W. Cooke, 1827, after J. H. Bell. Line engraving Gent's magazine Published: 1827 — “A certaine relation of the hog-faced gentlewoman called Mistris Tannakin Skinker … borne at Wirkham … on the river Rhyne. Who was bewitched in her mothers wombe in … 1618 … And can never recover her true shape, tell she be married …” Wellcome Library, London

(The story of Tannakin Skinker may or may not have had a basis in fact–the parallels to the pre-existing legends make me think it’s a fabrication.)

In keeping with earlier versions of the legend, Tannakin’s mother refuses to give alms to an elderly woman, who curses her, proclaiming, ‘As the Mother is Hoggish, so Swinish shall be the Child shee goeth withal.”

Tannakin is born healthy but with a snout and a preference for eating out of a silver trough.Tannakin’s father consults a famous scholar of magic, who tells them Tannakin will retain the snout while still a virgin, but that on her wedding night—provided she not be wed to “a Clowne, Bore or Pesant”—she will be cured. (Kathy Haas of the Rosenbach Collection points out that the story follows the traditional medieval trope of “the loathly lady.”)

The family moves to London and finds a likely prospect. On Tannakin’s wedding night, when her new husband reaches for her, he finds a beautiful young woman with a human’s nose. When he tries to kiss her, she tells him,

Sir, I am indeed no other than I now seeme unto you; and of these two things I give you free choice, whether I shall appeare to you thus as you now see me, young, faire, and lovely in your bed, and all the daytime, and abroad, of my former deformity: or thus beautifull in the day, to the sight of your friends, but in your armes every night of my former Age and Uglinesse: of these two things I give you free choice of, which till you have resolv’d me, there can be no other familiarity betwixt in: therefore without pause give me a speedy answer

Here’s where I fall in love with the story. Tannakin husband chooses not to choose, instead letting Tannakin decide. Tannakin is given the choice, agency in determining the contours of her face and her fate. She says,

Now Sir, you have given me that which all women most desire, my Will, and Soveraignty; and know I, was by a wicked and sorcerous step-dame inchanted, never to returne to my pristine shape, till I was first married, and after had received such power from my Husband · And now from henceforth I shall be the same to you night and day, of that youth and lively-hood which you now see mee; till Time and Age breed new alteration, even to the last period of my life.

“That which all women most desire, my Will, and Soveraignty”: isn’t that wonderful?

One thing I find fascinating about this story is that it doesn’t display the early modern period’s affinity for correspondences in physiognomy. As Laura Gowing argues in her book Common Bodies: Women, Touch, and Power in Seventeenth-Century England, “In the literature of monstrous births, women become the conduit by which bestial features of body parts–in some cases, whole animals–found their way into human reproduction. Seeing a hare could cause a hare-lip; a jockey’s wife might give birth to a child with a horse’s head.” Given the resemblance of the woman’s face to a pig, the reader might expect to hear Tannakin described as hungry, greedy, gluttonous, and bestial. Instead, she shows great patience, indulgence, and wisdom.

The trope of the hog-faced woman trope continued in popularity well into the 19th century, culminating in the strange episode of “The Pig-Faced Lady of Manchester Square.”

Today, the legend of Tannakin Skinker and the trope of the pig-faced woman is all but dead, but there are still echoes. Check out this video of “Mad Madam Mims” from the Disney animated film, The Sword in the Stone (especially around 1:03 and 1:19):

There is also the (IMO underrated) movie Penelope starring Cristina Ricci. There are too many similarities—the nose, the marriage, the curse—for it to be a fluke. Here’s the trailer.

As we’ve seen, in the tale of Tannakin Skinker, the “hog-faced woman” character is allowed to choose her own fate. She has agency and control. This theme is pushed even further in Penelope, in which the main character runs away after meeting cute with her potential husband. The plot is too complicated to get into, but suffice to say that Penelope breaks the curse by learning to love herself with the help of Reese Witherspoon in a fine turn as a Vespa-riding sub-category of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Is it cheesy? Yes. Do I love it anyway? Yes.

And do I think it’s a fascinating twist on a centuries-old tale that reveals much about 21^st-century American ideals of beauty, individualism, and self-actualization. You betcha.

Work cited:
Gowing, Laura. Common Bodies: Women, Touch, and Power in Seventeenth-Century England. New Haven: Yale UP, 2003.

Other reading:
Kathy Haas talks about “The Hog-faced Gentlewoman Called Mistris Tannakin Skinker” in The Rosenblog: From the Staff of the Rosenback at the Philadelphia Free Library.

Tassie Gniady discusses Tannakin Skinker in her chapter “Do You Take this Hog-Faced Woman to be Your Wedded Wife” in Ballads and Broadsides in Britain, 1500-1800 (London: Ashgate, 2010)

Great Globs of Glowing Urine

The Alchemist in Search of the Philosophers Stone (1771). Joseph Wright of Derby [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Many fields define themselves by specialties. Doctors are not just doctors—they are podiatrists or pediatricians or surgeons. Restaurant workers are baristas or pastry chefs or sommeliers. Writers are novelists or poets or “content providers.” So it is for academics, as well. When I’m wearing that hat, I define myself as an early modernist.

But even within narrow academic confines, we find ways to shrink our focus (for better and for worse). I trained in early modern English literature with an interest in the history of early modern science and medicine. Recently, because of a novel I’ve written, I’ve become a little obsessed with alchemy, as well.

By definition, such a narrow focus means few people are interested in (understatement) what makes my clock tick. So imagine my surprise when, on a long car trip last month, my teenage daughter turned to me, looked up from the book she was reading, and said, “Hey, Mom, this is cool. This is the sort of thing you like.”

And she was absolutely right. She was pointing to a picture of Hennig Brand, a 17th-century alchemist from Germany who spent his life searching for the philosopher’s stone, that elusive substance capable of turning lead into gold. Brand was a soldier with the valuable talent of marrying well—he burned through (pun intended) two wives’ handsome fortunes in his alchemical pursuits.

While Brand never did find/create/uncover the Philosopher’s Stone (that we know of…), he certainly hit the mother lode by successfully isolating phosphorous. To do so, he, ummm…well….let this video show you first:

Brand collected around 60 buckets of human urine, waited for it to ferment to the point of turning black, and then boiled it down into a syrup. That syrup was distilled and cooked over very high heat. He then took the cooked substance—minus the salts that had formed alongside—and submerged it in water. (Excellent descriptions of the process can be found here and here.) The substance he’d discovered–phosphorous–was chemiluminescent, emitting a soft light that at the time must have seemed magical indeed.

Brand, like most other alchemists, kept his discoveries to himself, but he was able to sell his secret later (and recoup at least some of his wife’s money). Other folks, including Robert Boyle, later discovered the process independent of Brand. (They were tipped off, most likely, that the phosphorous had been made from urine. Boyle made the process more effective by also using the salt that Brand threw away.)

And because I’m deficient in gravitas, I couldn’t resist adding this video. If you can’t get enough of pee puns (or if you love to see Anderson Cooper giggle):

Of Sloths, Demons, and Palindromic Numbers

When I hear the word “sloth,” I generally have a Kriston Bell moment. And I’m not alone. Sloths are enjoying a cultural surge, with sloth memes, sloth fan clubs, and even sloth socks (yes, I own a pair).

Culturally, though, we pay more attention to the cute little critter than we do to the other sloth, that of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The idea of sloth as a sin is complicated. Is sloth laziness? Sluggishness? Apathy? Is it a sin of omission rather than commission?

Scholars have pointed out that sloth has an antecedent in the medieval monastic term acedia,which referred to a sort of spiritual malaise. It was also termed the “noonday demon.” The nomenclature is perfect. We’ve all faced the noonday demon: that ennui that hits right around lunch, when our bellies are either rumbling with hunger or full and happy–either way, our thoughts go wandering and no work gets done. (For a modern take on the phenomenon, see this article from the New York Times, “Their Noonday Demons, and Ours,” ; and in this interview with Kathleen Norris, author of Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life,)

But whether sloth was characterized as spiritual torpor or a conscious decision to be a couch potato, the consensus was that sloth was A Very Bad Thing, worthy of its own demon. And, of course, the early modern period was happy to provide one.

According to the 16th-century German witch-hunter Peter Binsfeld, who classified the “Princes of Hell” according to the Seven Deadly Sins, the demon who best represented sloth was Belphegor (the name likely originates from the Moab god Baal-Peor).

(Note to readers about images of Belphegor:

The image above is actually from the 19th century, not the early modern period. Sorry, it was the only one I could find.
Belphegor is very big in anime and in the role-playing game Megami Tensei, where he appears in a modified version of the image above as a purple demon sitting on a toilet.
if you do a Google image search for “Belphegor,” you’re going to get a LOT of pictures of really kind of sad-looking death metal bands.)

Okay, so now here’s where things get a little weird. The demon Belphegor is also associated with a special kind of palindromic number called “Belphegor’s Prime”:

1000000000000066600000000000001

Note the “666” in the middle with 13 zeros on either side.

I have been unable to find any source explaining why this admittedly terrifying number would be associated with Belphegor. Obviously the number 13 and the 666 are considered to be “demonic,” but why that particular demon? Why not Satan, or Beezelbub, or Mammon? Does it have anything to do with the association between Belphegor and sloth, and if so, why?

*********
Couldn’t resist throwing in these tidbits:

Simon Singh, author of the brilliant The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, has quasi-nominated Belphegor’s prime for a future Simpson’s Halloween appearance.
Thanks to Mary Catherine for this gem of a meme and to the conversation between her and Kriston that prompted me to dust off this forgotten blog post.

New Post at The Recipes Project: “Little Shop of Horrors, Early Modern Style”

I have a new post up at The Recipes Project about a wickedly beautiful, carnivorous plant and the (mostly useless) cordial that’s made from it: Little Shop of Horrors, Early Modern Style.

Also contains this jaw-droppingly cool artwork by Allison Sommers (check out her other stuff at http://www.allisonsommers.com/)

Painted by Alison Sommers for Gallery 1988’s “Crazy 4 Cult 5.” Image used with permission of the artist.

A Cure for “The Kink”

Treatment for "chincough" or "the kink" might have included medicinals derived from works like this, an 11th-century copy of the “Herbarium of Pseudo-Apuleius” (4th century); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 130, fol. 50v: Lily and Spurge (via Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society — Treatment for “chincough” or “the kink” might have included medicinals derived from works like this, an 11th-century copy of the “Herbarium of Pseudo-Apuleius” (4th century); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 130, fol. 50v: Lily and Spurge (via Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society)

(Okay, right off the bat, I’m going to admit that the title of this blog post is link bait. But it worked, right? You’re here? Sorry, “the kink” is probably not what you think it is–keep reading to find out more!)

*****

I live in Southern Oregon, a region with the dubious distinction of having dangerously low rates of immunization against childhood diseases.

As a writer/researcher with an interest in the history of science and medicine, I have a hard time listening to anti-vaccination arguments. One only needs to skim the historical record to find gruesome descriptions of childhood diseases like diphtheria, smallpox, and measles to know that vaccinations are one of the great mercies of modern parenting.

One of the most horrific of the childhood diseases, whooping cough (pertussis), is a particular nemesis here in Southern Oregon. While the average rate of vaccination exemptions for kindergarteners in the state is 5%, there are population pockets in my region where the rate is closer to 25%, which effectively decimates any chance of herd immunity to pertussis.

This public health threat in my own region must be why, when one of the main characters in my novel-in-progress encounters a deathly pediatric disease, I thought of whooping cough rather than plague or smallpox. My protagonist’s husband,Will, the son of a non-University-trained doctor in the town of Colchester in the 17th century, sees a young mother seeking help for her infant, who has a distinctive, tortured coughing pattern (you can hear an example here). Will listens in horror as his father gives the dreaded diagnosis: chincough.

In the early modern period, whooping cough (pertussis) went by a variety of names: chincough, hooping cough, the kink, kinkcough, kingcough, and quinta were just a few.

An aside: The word “kinkcough” and its variations derive from the obsolete word “kink” (Middle English origins), which meant convulsive fits of laughing or coughing. Helpful hint: Do NOT wonder if this meaning of “kink” is the root of the word “kinky” and then Google it only to realize that your computer is still logged on to your daughter’s Google account—her SCHOOL Google account. Just don’t. (Although when I ‘fessed up to my middle-school daughter, she laughed and said, “Oh please, Mom, it’s just word origins. I see kids at middle school Google worse stuff than that every day.” Gulp.)

Okay, back to whooping cough.

As for almost every condition in the early modern period, cures for pertussis varied greatly by practitioner, from simply drinking cold water (p. 113), to (from folklore) “begging a piece of bread- and-butter from a married woman who had not changed her surname on marriage.” There are recipes that involve herbs to those involving unfortunate animals, such as this recipe from the recipe book of Jane Jackson (1642), in which the following helpful advice is given:

“Take mice flea them & cut them in halves take out the entrails and fry them in butter to eat them up.”

In the 18th century, some practitioners evidenced a laissez-faire attitude to whooping cough. In his “Animadversions on a late treatise on the kink-cough” Thomas Kirkland references one “Dr. Willis’s” observation that “old women are oftner consulted in this disorder than physicians,” since, as Kirkland explains, “people seldom apply to physicians, on account of the expence, as they do not apprehend danger, and they know the disease will commonly get well of itself in time.” (This does not, however, stop Kirkland recommending the use of hemlock in every single variation of whooping cough he lists.)

In my novel, we never find out what happens to that young child Will’s father treats, but based on primary sources, there was likely a treatment of purges and nasty medicinals followed by months of horrific fits of coughing like this (warning: upsetting):

http://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/pubs-tools/audio-video.html

And that, my friends, is why my children are vaccinated against pertussis. Now if I could only find a way to protect them from middle school Google searches…

******

Further sources:

Click here for downloadable pdf of Robert Weston’s excellent article on the history of pertussis, “Whooping Cough: A Brief History to the 19th Century.” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/ Bulletin canadien d’histoire de la médecine / Volume 29:2 2012 / p. 329-349

Of Hedgehogs, Whale Vomit, and Fire-Breathing Peacocks

Hello all!

I have a post up at the Recipes Project blog: “Of Hedgehogs, Whale Vomit, and Fire-Breathing Peacocks.”

The Recipes Project is a fascinating site to browse around in. Here’s the description:

“We are an international group of scholars interested in the history of recipes, ranging from magical charms to veterinary remedies. Old recipes can tell us a lot about the past, such as how medicines were prepared, when certain foods became popular, or why ingredients might be magical. Join us as we explore the weird and wonderful world of recipes!”