Extracting the spermaceti was almost as difficult as harpooning the whale itself. A hole would be carved in the side of the whale’s head, and men would crawl into the cavity above the brain—spending days inside the rotting carcass, scraping spermaceti out of the brain of the beast. It’s remarkable to think that only two hundred years ago, this was the reality of artificial light: if your great-great-great-grandfather wanted to read his book after dark, some poor soul had to crawl around in a whale’s head for an afternoon.
