Martin Fone's Blog, page 295
May 22, 2017
Motivated By Curiosity And A Desire For The Truth – Part Twenty Nine
The vomit-drinking doctor, Stubbins Ffirth (1784 – 1820)
One of the problems of having an enquiring mind and natural curiosity is that at times you have to temper it. The risk is that your passion becomes all-consuming and it takes you down routes that most sane people would not contemplate. The advance of science and human knowledge requires researchers with undaunted courage and perseverance. But some can take it too far as the curious tale of an American doctor, Stubbins Ffirth, shows.
Yellow fever was a major problem in the United States in the late 18th century – an outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793 had killed several thousand people – and understanding the disease and, more importantly, finding a cure for it was the number one priority. The popular theory around at the time was that the disease was spread by what was known at the time as miasma or bad air. Ffirth was having none of it. The bee in his bonnet – or perhaps it should be mosquito as the cause of yellow fever was eventually attributed to the pesky insect in 1900 – was to prove his theory that the fever was not contagious and he went to extraordinary lengths to demonstrate the veracity of his thesis.
As with most scientists, the starting point was to experiment on animals. Ffirth’s first experiment involved some black vomit collected from some poor yellow fever patients, some bread and a small dog. The latter was confined to a room and fed bread soaked in the vomit. Alas for the scientist but, perhaps fortunately for the dog, it took a shine to the unusual repast and after three days became so fond of it that it would eat the vomit without the accompanying bread. Abandoning that experiment, Ffirth injected vomit into the jugular veins of assorted dogs and cats. The results were inconclusive – one dog died within ten minutes while others remained perfectly healthy.
Undaunted, Ffirth decided that the only thing for it was to dispense with the lower orders of the animal kingdom and experiment on Homo sapiens – and who better than himself? He wrote of his first experiment, “On October 4th 1802 I made an incision in my left arm, midway between the elbow and wrist, so as to draw a few drops of blood. Into the incision I introduced some fresh black vomit…a slight degree of inflammation ensued, which entirely subsided in three days, and the wound healed up very readily”. He injected the vomit of yellow fever patients into various parts of his body with no real effect.
Thinking he was really on to something he devised even more extreme experiments, including frying three ounces of vomit in a pan and inhaling the steam and sitting in a small, enclosed closet inhaling six ounces of steaming vomit. Still no real effect. So the next stage in the experiments was to “take half an ounce of the black vomit immediately after it was ejected from a patient and diluting it with an ounce and a half of water, swallowed it”. The concoction tasted slightly acidic but it neither caused nausea or pain. Undaunted, he pressed on drinking several doses of vomit, often undiluted. But still there was no effect.
The lengths that Ffirth had gone to convinced him that his thesis was correct. His inability to contract the disease even after ingesting copious amounts of body fluids from fever patients was proof enough. He published his findings in A Treatise on Malignant Fever; with an attempt to prove its non-contagious non-malignant Nature in 1804. But he was wrong. It was also subsequently demonstrated that the vomit and other bodily fluids he ingested were from victims who had passed their contagious state. Who’d have thought that? Instead of being a medical, great Ffirth had to make do with being known as the vomit-drinking doctor.
Filed under: History, Science Tagged: A Treatise on Malignant Fever, cause of yellow fever, Stubbins Ffirth, the experiments of Stubbins Ffirth, the vomit-drinking doctor, yellow fever
May 21, 2017
Verdict Of The Week (2)
One of the attributes you would expect an aspiring surgeon to possess is being handy with a knife. Lavinia Woodward, a medical student from Oxford University, amply demonstrated her proficiency when she stabbed her then-boyfriend in the leg during what was termed “a drug and alcohol fuelled row” at Christ Church College last year.
The judge, Ian Pringle QC, I learned this week, has taken a rather lenient view of the events, deferring sentence for four months and indicating that a custodial sentence would damage what would otherwise have been a glittering career.
Surely this is an example of one law for geniuses and one law for the lumpen prole, if there ever was one. Still, it is a useful argument to keep in the back pocket, if the need arises.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Christ Church College Oxford, Judge Ian Pringle QC, Lavinia Woodward, student likely to avoid jail to save her glittering career
May 20, 2017
Old Codgers Of The Week (6)
“Ye’ll tak the high road and I’ll tak the low road/ And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.”
Valerie Johnson, 83, set out in her car to attend a hospital appointment at the Royal Hospital in Worcester, some six miles from her home in Peopleton, I learned this week. She missed her turning because of road works and found herself on the M5 and then the M6.
Instead of turning round, she kept on going before eventually running out of petrol in Larkhall, some twenty miles outside of Glasgow and three hundred miles out of her way. She was taken in by some kind souls and was eventually reunited with her daughter who flew up to collect her.
A sat nav for her birthday, methinks.
Someone who definitely knew where he was going is Bryson “Verdun” Hayes who at 101 years and 34 days old has just set the world record for the oldest tandem sky diver. Accompanied by eight members of his family, including his son, grandson and two great-grandsons, Verdun jumped out of a plane some 15,000 feet above the ground. On landing he declared he was “over the moon” so perhaps he didn’t quite know where he was.
Still, he raised over £2,400 for the Royal British Legion and has shown that there is some life left in Britain’s old codgers yet.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Bryson "Verdun" Hayes, chorus to Loch Lomond, pensioner misses turning and runs out of petrol 300 miles later, Valerie Johnson, world's oldest tandem skydiver
May 19, 2017
What Is The Origin Of (128)?…
Up the spout
When I was a young lad, I remember being fascinated by even by the standards of the time an old fashioned grocery store at the top of Pride Hill in Shrewsbury called Morris’. Entering the emporium your olfactory senses were assaulted by the aromas of fresh coffee, cheese and spice. I was particularly taken by the tubular system along which canisters of money and change shuttled back and forth between, presumably, the cashier and the sales counters. I could have watched it for hours.
Our phrase when used with the verb to go in all its tenses conveys the sense that something has been ruined or has failed. It also has a secondary meaning, when associated with the verb to be – that of being pregnant. In the days before credit cards and payday loan companies, often the only way to generate some readies to tide you over – other than larceny or pick pocketing – was to visit your local pawnbroker. You handed over some of your worldly possessions and in return you would get a few coppers. If you failed to redeem your goods by paying back the amount you had borrowed plus usurious interest, you lost the goods you had pledged.
Pawnbrokers needed a lot of space to store the tat against which money had pledged and often deployed the upper storey of their premises for the purpose. This arrangement, satisfactory, for sure, in keeping the premises in some kind of order, meant that they needed a way of conveying goods up and, occasionally, down again which involved the minimum of effort. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they used a chute, perhaps more like what we now know as a dumb-waiter rather than Heath Robinson-like chutes at Morris’ to accomplish the task.
Pierce Egan on page 366 of his Real Life in London, published in 1821, provided a useful explanation. “Up the spout or up the five are synonymous in their import and mean the act of pledging property with a Pawnbroker for the loan of money – most probably derived from the practice of having a long spout, which reaches from the top of the house of the Pawnbroker (where the goods are deposited for safety until redeemed or sold) to the shop, where they are first received; through which a small bag is dropped upon the ringing of a bell, which conveys the tickets or duplicates to a person above stairs, who, upon finding them (unless too bulky) saves himself the trouble and loss of time of coming down stairs, by more readily conveying them down”.
For the pledger, the sight of some of their more precious possessions disappearing up the spout must have been distressing as there was no certainty that they would ever have the brass to reclaim them. So, naturally, what started as a prosaic description of the pawnbroker’s art developed the more figurative sense of disaster, doom and failure.
Pedants bemoan the modern trend of turning nouns into verbs – the most egregious example, to mind, is the verb to medal which litters sporting commentaries. But it was ever thus and it is perhaps no surprise to find that the verb to spout, usually as a present participle, meant the act of pawning an object. Charles Manby Smith in his Curiosities of London Life of 1853 recorded a tailor going into a pawnbroker and saying “here..I’ve got six waistcoats to make, and I must spout one to buy the trimmings; let’s have three shillings”.
Not all pregnancies are wanted or happy events and so it is easy to see how the expression was used as a slang expression, possibly Scottish in origin, to describe an unwanted pregnancy which may have ruined the mother’s life.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Curiosities of London Life by Charles Manby Smith, Morris' in Pride Hill in Shrewsbury, origin of up the five, origin of up the spout, pawnbroker's chute, Real Life in London by Pierce Egan, up the spout as pregnant
May 18, 2017
I Predict A Riot – Part Twenty Three
The Old Price Riots, 1809
We tend to think of consumerism and direct consumer action to rectify a perceived wrong as being fairly recent phenomena but the Old Price Riots which engulfed the new theatre at London’s Covent Garden in 1809 show that it was nothing new. At the turn of the 19th century theatre was extremely popular and audiences would be made up from a cross-section of all the classes. Tickets were priced to suit all purses, although the cheaper tickets often afforded the theatre goer a restricted view.
In London there were only two theatres at the time – Covent Garden and Drury Lane – that were licensed to perform plays; the other London theatres could only put on performances involving song, dance and acrobatics. On 20th September 1808 the Covent Garden theatre burnt down – 30 people lost their lives and Handel’s organ together with much of the scenery and costumes were destroyed. A public subscription was raised to fund the building of a new theatre but the reconstruction was so opulent, modelled on the Acropolis with four fluted columns which were the second tallest in Europe, that the monies raised were insufficient to meet the total cost.
John Kemble, the manager, had only one option – to raise the admission prices. The price of admission to the boxes rose from 6 shillings to 7, for the pit from 3s 6d to 4 shillings and worse still, the third tier, which had previously been reserved for the hoi polloi, had been converted into private boxes, available to rent at £300 per annum. The only prices which remained unchanged were for the gallery but if you sat there, all you could see were the actors’ legs.
The theatre reopened on 18th September 1809 with a performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, by which time the theatre at Drury Lane had burnt leaving Kemble’s show as the only authorised play in town. A large crowd of theatregoers had assembled, only around a quarter of whom could gain admission. Kemble appeared on stage initially to some applause but this soon turned to boos, hisses and hoots. The play was drowned out and magistrates were called to read the Riot Act. This had little effect – only a few of the audience left, the rest entertaining themselves with renditions of Rule Britannia and God Save The King.
On following nights the disturbances continued with the protesters, who by this time had begun calling themselves the Old Price, drowning out the thespians by banging frying pans and tongs and ringing a dustman’s bell. At one performance they paraded a coffin bearing the legend “here lies the body of the new price, which died of the whooping cough on 23rd September 1809, aged 6 days”.
Kemble closed the theatre for six days, trying to work out what to do. He decided not to reduce the prices but, as an extra security measure, to employ some boxers to eject miscreants. But the protesters returned, carrying banners and placards, chanting, singing songs and using a watchman’s rattle which became known as the OP rattle. They staged races along the seats and staged mock fights. The boxers ejected a few but chose to feel the collar of a radical lawyer, Henry Clifford. He took Kemble and the boxer to court and secured a conviction for false arrest.
Seeing the writing on the wall, Kemble caved in and on 14th December 1809 agreed peace terms. Boxers would no longer be employed, prices would return to their old level and all charges against the rioters would be dropped. It was not until 1843, however, that the patents of the major theatres were abolished and the other London theatres were free to perform what they wanted.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Covent Garden theatre, Drury Lane theatre, Henry Clifford, John Kemble, Old Price Riots, the Old Price
May 17, 2017
A New Day Yesterday – Part Twenty Two
How quickly we become yesterday’s men and how soon does the world with which we were so familiar change. Some pretty deep thoughts prompted by the realisation that I have been retired now for eighteen months. Fugit inreparabile tempus, as Vergil said – how irretrievable time flies.
I had to go up to London a little while ago to attend a meeting which was held at my old place of employment. What a shock to the system! My office had been consigned to the scrapheap and in its stead were serried rows of earnest young things beavering away at something or the other. The subject of the meeting was a dry as dust concerning regulatory matters, the sort of agenda that had me fleeing for the hills a couple of years ago. It struck me how young and, dare I say it, inexperienced everyone was, a sure sign that you are getting old.
My antennae detected a change in atmosphere in the City. It wasn’t Brexit fears, although everyone seemed to have contingency plans of some sort. No, it was more of a puritanical nature aimed at that City tradition of a good hearty lunch. If you are tucking into some good food in the company of some clients or prospects, it would be churlish, I always thought, not to enjoy a glass or two of vino. But it seems those days are fast disappearing. The Corporation of Lloyd’s a little while back announced that their staff were banned from consuming alcohol between the hours of 9 and 5 and this rather puritanical approach seems to be gathering momentum in the Square Mile. The popular misconception, of course, is that the underwriters and brokers who trade in Lloyd’s are employees of the Corporation – they are not and so fall outside of the ban – but we are clearly on a slippery slope.
And getting some decent tucker seems to be more problematic. I had arranged a pre-meeting lunch with a dear broker friend of mine. We had decided to mark my rare appearance in the Smoke with a trip down memory lane to my favourite fish restaurant, the Orpheus. It was located underneath one of the railway arches leading up to Fenchurch Street station and every now and again the gaff would shake as a train rattled overhead. But the fish was wonderful. There was a sense of occasion to the whole experience. The Maitre d’ would wander from table to table with a platter of fish, explaining the different types and cuts on offer that day. I had my heart set on Skate Wings but when I got to the restaurant I found it boarded up. A sad sight.
I don’t know whether I’m becoming a bit of a Jonah with restaurants but it has happened to me before. When I worked in the West End I had a favourite restaurant, PJ’s, which honoured regular clients by putting a plaque bearing their name on the wall. Mine was positioned between Liberace and Sue Pollard – a rather uncomfortable position to be in, for sure. Shortly after I relocated to another part of town it closed down. Is there a correlation between losing my custom and closing down? It is rather worrying, if there is. And I wonder whatever happened to my plaque.
Filed under: Culture Tagged: Corporation of Lloyd's bans alcohol, Fugit inreparabile tempus, Orpeus Fish restaurant, PJ's restaurant in Covent Garden, retirement, Vergil
May 16, 2017
A Better Life – Part Nine
The Ephrata Cloister
We have already seen how the religious oppression in Central Europe and the haven of religious tolerance offered by Pennsylvania encouraged groups of pietists to cross the Atlantic. The Ephrata Cloister was another such group, founded in 1732 by Johann Conrad Beissel at Ephrata on the banks of Cocalico Creek in what is now Lancaster County in Pennsylvania.
The only way to achieve the highest form of spiritual attainment was through the practice of celibacy, Beissel thought, and so the community, called the Camp of the Solitary, was split into two with a convent called the Sister House and a monastery called the Brother House. Adherents wore a habit styled on that of the Capuchins. Clearly, celibacy poses a threat to the long-term viability of any community but Beissel had worked that one out. Close by there was another community consisting of families, a married order of householders. As well as new celibate recruits these families provided the lifeblood of the community.
The whole Ephrata community abstained from eating meat which they regarded as being spiritually undesirable, other than when they celebrated communion when they tasted the flesh of lamb. Life was simple and austere, spent working, principally tending crops and light industrial work, particularly carpentry and papermaking, and praying and contemplating. Beissel conducted religious services every Saturday and they would last for many hours.
Those in the Sister and Brother houses slept on wooden benches no more than 15 inches wide – a passion killer if there ever was one – and with a wooden block for a pillow. They went to bed at 9 o’clock and slept for three hours before spending a couple of hours on the lookout for the Second Coming before retiring to bed for another three hours, rising at five. They ate just one small meal a day.
At its height the Ephrata community consisted of some 80 celibate men and women and a further 200 in the married congregation and it occupied some 250 acres of land. The community had a positive outlook on life and treated their neighbours, the land and the environment with respect. Music, as often was the way with these communities, played an important part in their life and Beissel developed his own system of composition, using a predetermined sequence of master notes and servant notes to develop harmony, a forerunner of serialism. A glass trumpet was found on the site in 1998, minus a mouthpiece, so it is not clear whether it had ever been blown.
The community boasted the second German printing press in the American colonies and the quality of their printed documents with stunning hand illuminations, called Fraktur, was widely acclaimed. They also published the largest American book at the time, the whopping Martyrs Mirror which charted the deaths of Christian martyrs from the time of Christ until 1660. They were also famed for the quality of their calligraphy.
Alas, Beissel shuffled off this mortal coil in 1768 and the loss of their charismatic leader coupled with the disruption caused by the Revolutionary War – there is archaeological evidence that the Cloisters were used as a hospital – meant that numbers took a dive and the monastic side of the community was quietly shelved. The last celibate member died in 1813 and in the following year the Society was incorporated as the German Seventh Day Baptist Church. The last surviving resident of the Ephrata Cloister, Marie Kachel Bucher, died on 27th July 2008 at the grand old age of 98. The cloisters are now a museum.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Camp of the Solitary, Cocalico Creek, Fraktur, German American utopian communities, glass trumpet of the Ephrata community, Johann Conrad Beissel, Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, Martyrs Mirror, the Ephrata Cloister, utopian communities
May 15, 2017
Quacks Pretend To Cure Other Men’s Disorders But Rarely Find A Cure For Their Own – Part Fifty Four
Every Woman’s Flesh Reducer
Obsession with body image isn’t just a modern fad, it seems, and where there is a concern, there is an opportunity for the unscrupulous practitioner of quackery to operate. Today we are awash with diets – it is a multi-billion dollar business – and it is hard to make sense of which one to adopt. Often it comes down to personal recommendation or how much effort the diet involves. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the pounds would fall off with the minimum of effort?
Well, that was the claim of the wonderfully named Every Woman’s Flesh Reducer, manufactured in Chicago. It was, according to the adverts that plugged the product, an “easy, wonderful, external method for men and women”. All you had to do was pour the reducer into your bath and step into the warm water. The results would be astonishing; “your superfluous fat will fade away, easily, surely and without any bad effects. Day by day your figure will become more and more as it should be – graceful, trim and beautiful”.
What was more, that is all you had to do. “No need to starve yourself, dose with harmful, drastic drugs or go through exhausting and ridiculous exercises”. It sold for $1 or for $2 you would get three times the amount together with a money-back guarantee. In the days when advertising standards were somewhat laxer than they are now, there was nothing like a bit of fat shaming to ram home the message, “you cannot be happy while you carry around with you that load of useless, energy-using fat. Rid yourself of the burden”. Where do I sign up?
So what was in the white powder and did it work? The American Medical Association carried out a chemical analysis of the Reducer and published their findings in their 1914 Annual Report. They found that it consisted of Epsom salts, alum, citric acid, camphor and sodium bicarbonate. Their conclusion – “like every other bath salt sold as a cure for obesity, Every Woman’s Flesh Reducer is a fraud”.
An even more egregious example of fat shaming appeared in the adverts for Korein.” I Was a Tub of Fat”, screamed the headline. These words were attributed to a Lillian Ianchuck who, before taking the red gelatine capsules that were Korein, weighed in at 190 lbs. After a course of the capsules she lost 40 lbs. “Now my weight is just right for my height”, she claimed. “I have no more excess fat on me”. Other lard buckets testified to its efficacy. You could even send off for a free trial before committing to purchasing it. The adverts claimed that it consisted of bladderwrack, a seaweed which was popular at the turn of the 20th century as a weight loss supplement.
So what was in it and was it any good? Well, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Association carried out a full analysis in 1915. They discovered that it consisted of 40% sassafras oil and 60% petrolatum. Sassafras oil has subsequently been banned by the American Food and Drug Administration because of its carcinogenic properties and because of its toxicity it may have had some effect on people’s digestive systems. The booklet that accompanied the capsules recommended a restrictive diet that may have helped but on the whole it was probably best left alone.
Alas, weight loss requires some effort on your part, it would seem.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: American Medical Association, bladderwrack, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Association, Every Woman's Flesh Reducer, Korein, sassafras oil
May 14, 2017
Leaves Of The Week
Isn’t it annoying when you pick up a book and find a couple of pages missing? I don’t know what the owner of a book called the Sarum Ordinal or Sarum Pye – a manual designed to help priests prioritise religious feast days for saints – thought when thy discovered that two pages had gone astray but at least they have turned up now, I read this week.
Printed by William Caxton and dating from around 1476 or 1477, they were found in a box of papers by a librarian at Reading University, Erika Delbeque. The text features a black letter typeface and red paragraph markings and is one of the earliest examples of western European printing. The leaves are thought to have a market value of £100,000.
That’s all very well but she needs to find the rest of the book, I think.
Let’s hope it hasn’t got into the hands of Australia’s diligent biosecurity officers. It emerged this week that they had incinerated in March a collection of rare (and now even rarer) flowering plants sent by a French herbarium which dated from the early 19th century. They were binned because their accompanying documentation didn’t comply with Australia’s import requirements. There is now a bit of a stushie and herbaria around the world are threatening to stop sending their collections down under.
A case of ying and yang, for sure.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Australian custom officials destroy historic plant collection, Erika Delbeque, librarian finds pages printed by Caxton, Reading University, Sarum Ordinal, William Caxton
May 13, 2017
Beach Of The Week
Here’s an example of taking away with one hand and giving with the other. I learned this week that the gloriously named Dooagh sands are back, having been swept into the wilds of the Atlantic Ocean in 1984. The loss of the sands – Grahame Greene wrote Heart of the Matter there and Angela Lansbury holidayed at the resort as a child – was catastrophic for the local community, causing its hotels and, more recently, its local shop to close.
Unusually strong northerly winds have deposited hundreds of thousands of tons of sand on to what was previously a rocky stretch of coast line on Achill Island in County Mayo in Ireland. The beach has previous for disappearing and returning, vanishing in the 1890s only to be restored to its full glory forty years later.
How long this incarnation will hang around is anyone’ guess but the 2,500 residents of Achill Island hope it will be there in time to be awarded blue-flag beach status.
If you want to visit it, get there quick is my advice!
Filed under: News Tagged: Achill Island in County Mayo, Angela Lansbury, blue-flag status beach, Graham Greene, return of Dooagh sands, The Heart of the Matter
