Word Wenches

Arsenic and old wallpaper

Anne here. There I was, blithely writing a scene of my hero standing in his newly refurbished bedroom, and briefly describing what it looked like to set the scene. I'd already fallen down a general wallpaper rabbit hole — there are so many gorgeous wallpapers from that period. (Here's a National Trust site that has some beauties.)

But my hero is rather a plain man, and the gorgeous Chinese wallpapers I fancied were not the kind of thing he'd want in his bedchamber — perhaps in more public rooms in the house, but not where he slept.

So I gave him a nicely masculine room, with a green bamboo patterned wallpaper, and I had him pulling back his curtains — plain dark green with a kind of watermark pattern (which is male-speak for damask) — and looking down into the garden below. . . but as I continued writing, getting to the actual meat of the scene, a little voice started nagging at my brain.

Something about the color green and arsenic. So naturally I hit google . . . and fell down another research rabbit hole.

You see in the 18th and 19th century all kinds of experiments with chemicals and dyes were going on, and in 1771 a Swedish chemist called Carl Sheele used copper arsenite (which contains arsenic) to create a bright green dye. In 1814, Wilhelm Sattler, a German industrialist, improved on it by using arsenic and verdigris for a better green. The pigment could also be mixed to create bright yellows and rich blues.

Midwifery for Men

Pat here: I’m still in the process of moving from one side of town to the other and everything is still in boxes except my computer. Which is convenient since I have a new book coming out Tuesday—AURA OF MAGIC, the fourth in my Malcolm and Ives Unexpected Magic series—and I really need to tell people about it. There’s an excerpt and buy links on my website.

Since I like mixing things up, this time the scientific protagonist is the heroine, Brighid, the Countess of Carstairs. She comes from a long line of physicians and has been trained by her family to the same standards as the men who were allowed to attend university--except, of course, she was expected to marry. Devoted to the village where she grew up, she obediently wed the highest ranking aristocrat in town, then continued her family's medical practice—illegally.

History Repeats Itself--Science

Pat here:
Several of our wenches are researchers par none, digging into historical minutiae with zeal. While I admit to a fascination with these intriguing details, I am not a researcher of fine points. I like to see history as a big picture and reflect on how and why we so often repeat our mistakes. Naturally, much of this will never show up in a romance, but it often shapes the background of my stories.

One of the things that fascinated me with my magic stories is the way science developed. In my Georgian era  (1750s) series, science had only recently been defined as a body of observations or propositions concerning a subject of speculation and was more akin to philosophy than anything with which we’re familiar. Scientific methods were unheard of. My hero who grew mangelwurzels did so after talking with other farmers and learning that he might better feed his cattle with the rough land he owned. He learned to experiment with productivity by reading articles from other gentleman farmers. The word agronomist hadn’t yet been invented. Universities taught Latin and Greek, not agricultural science. (Must Be Magic)

 

The Return of the Skirret

Nicola here, and today I am talking about food, and in particular historic vegetables. If you look at old menus from hundreds of years ago – for a banquet at Hampton Court Palace for King Henry VIII, for example – there are plenty of dishes that might cause us to shudder. “Meat tile” anyone? It consists of chicken first simmered and then sautéed, served with a spicy sauce of crayfish tails, almonds and… toast.   Then there are pies with songbirds in them, lampreys in sauce… It’s all a matter of taste. One thing I had not realised, however, was that our ancestors ate vegetables that have completely disappeared from the menu today. I assumed that vegetables had evolved in that we eat the same things although they may look and taste different as a result of being grown commercially. However, I have never met anyone who has eaten a skirret.

A Feminine Lens

Susanna here, just back from the Surrey International Writers’ Conference in beautiful British Columbia, where I’ve been privileged to be a presenter the past several years.

It’s always difficult to choose a conference highlight because honestly, there are so many, but this year my highlight has to be the panel session that I shared with Mary Robinette Kowal and Elizabeth Boyle, moderated by our friend Nephele Tempest, in which we discussed viewing history “Through A Feminine Lens”.

Scientific Magic

Pat here:

Before I can put the first word to the page of a new book, I need research. The characters may be hopping up and down in my mind, shouting their ire, but they’re still too unformed for me to “see” them—and I don’t mean their appearance.

As a for instance—the heroine of the Magic book I’m currently plotting has already appeared in other volumes, so I know what she looks like, and I know something of her personality and background. I know what she wants. But I have utterly no clue how she can go after it because this is 1830, after all, and they don’t have the internet or Craigslist. I don’t want to give her away just yet, until I’m ready to write (yeah, I’m one of those authors who can’t talk about plot until after a book is written). 

But this time, I’m not writing one of my Ives heroes (pause for silent weeping). He’s scientific, yes, but I needed a titled nobleman and the Ives family has more bastards than titles. I had some odd idea that he might be a physician, or possibly someone who works with microscopes. Until I can “see” what he does, I can’t do anything. So I started by researching microscopes.

Yes, they had microscopes in 1830, but they were pretty crude. Even in the 2^nd century BC the Greeks knew that water bends light. By 100 AD, the Romans could create glass that was thick in the middle and thin on the edge and learned this lens could magnify an image. Although, since they called them burning glasses, I suspect they spent more time trying to create fire with them.

The microscope above is an old German monocular, probably from the early 1700s. The one below left is a solar microscope by Peter Dolland of London from about 1790, considered one of the finest makers of microscopes at the time. But think--solar...London. Does not compute, right?

It wasn’t until the 17^th century that Leeuwenhoek invented anything close to a microscope, and that was only a single lens. Low quality glass and lack of light created distortions that prevented microscopes from real usefulness until nearly 1870, unfortunate for my hero. Although several glass problems were resolved by 1830, lighting wasn’t, and that limits usage. So in my time period, the best use of microscopes was determining the existence of cells and their structures—interesting but not exactly hero material. My guy might be able to discover a bacterium if he uses glass manufactured by my fictional Ives experts, but how do I work that into the story in my head?

To tell the truth, I don’t know yet. I’m now researching arsenic and medicine and tuberculosis and my characters are about to pitch fits. Anyone want to make a story of all this? Or I could just make my hero a gambling lout who changes his spots... But then I’d have to research gambling! Anyone know any good books on any of these topics?

Mesmerism

Pat here:

The easier it is to read a novel, the harder it is to write, I’ve decided. And if I’m to spend twelve-hour days with a book, then the subject and characters need to be fun while I corral them into 90k words. That’s my excuse for writing my magical historical romances, anyway. Even the research tickles my funny bone.

In working on WHISPER OF MAGIC (May 31 release, $2.99 pre-order discount price), I somehow managed to create two people with dangerously compelling voices. In modern day terms, I suppose, you can imagine preachers and politicians who speak with such authority and persuasion that crowds of people will support anything they say. It seems unbelievable, but one need only listen to our current politicians and wonder what’s happening to common sense.

Science of the Stars

Pat here:

As those of you who follow my Magic series know, I like to take my scientific heroes and confront them with my more metaphysically-oriented heroines. Just confronting Ives logic with Malcolm illogical faith creates such fun that I probably shouldn’t be paid for enjoying myself so much.

But I do like to ground the fun in reality and history. I usually don’t have such excellent belief-conflict as I did with MAGIC IN THE STARS. In this first book of the Unexpected Magic series, Lord Theo, my astronomer hero, not only has to deal with my astrologer Lady Aster’s impossible beliefs in the zodiac, but must accept that her charts provide highly accurate predictions. I don’t make it any easier on my heroine, who receives her own comeuppance from my hero’s greater knowledge—because by 1830, astronomers knew a great deal more about the stars than astrologers.

By 1830, astronomy was just coming into its own. For centuries, there really wasn’t “astronomy” as we knew it. The study of the stars was actually left to astrologers like Aster, who could do all the mathematical calculations for the changing positions of the stars. As far back as 3000 BC men were studying the heavens to predict seasons, create calendars, and of  course, determine divine meanings. By the 1700s, astrologers had a pretty good record of all the planets through Jupiter and their mathematical calculations could predict with accuracy the placement of the planets in the sky at any given date. So Aster’s math and knowledge is quite equal to Lord Theo’s—except much to Ives dismay, she uses the firmament to predict the future of her family members.

Benjamin Banneker: A Tribute

by Mary Jo

February is Black History Month in the US and Canada.  I understand that the UK has a similar celebration in October.  February was chosen because both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were born this month, on the 12th and 14th respectively.

Until last fall, I had only the vaguest awareness of Benjamin Banneker--that he was an early African American scientist of some sort.  And that was the extent of my knowledge.

Then a friend visited and the Mayhem Consultant suggested I take her to see the Benjamin Banneker Museum , which I'd never heard of.  Situated in a very rural area of Baltimore County, I was surprised to find that the museum is a handsome building that is the centerpiece of the 142 acre Benjamin Banneker county park.  Moreover, the park is located on the site of Banneker's own farm.

Wood

Amongst all the best selling books of Christmas this last year was one called “Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Norwegian Way.” It’s not the first book you might anticipate hitting the bestseller charts though it does have a catchy title! I bought it for my husband for no better reason than he is interested in wood and we have two log burners in our home. He’s finding it engrossing: charmingly written, full of personal experience, showing how important timber is to different communities. Plus it is a beautifully presented book.

We Need to Talk - The Art of Conversation

I read last week that the art of conversation is dead. This is the era of the text and the tweet where we give and receive information in small doses. We communicate more but we talk less. Digital communication also lets you plan what you want to say whereas in real time we don’t know where a conversation is going to lead, and that makes us nervous.

Such claims are nothing new. Technology has often been blamed for having a detrimental effect on face-to-face communication. In 1889 a newspaper article suggested that telephones should not be allowed in private houses for fear of the damage they could do to “real” conversations. Way back in the 4th century BC Socrates was complaining that writing ideas down was not as good as talking about them one to one because the way to learn was through debate.

High Tech—Regency Style

Cara/Andrea here, I’ve recently been doing some research into scientific history, and among the many fascinating facts I’ve discovered is one that may surprise many Regency aficionados. We all know the era was a time of fancy balls, elegant soirees and country house parties . . . but did you know that it also saw the invention of the first computer!

What We're Reading in July

Nicola here, introducing the July What We're Reading. We all love this feature as we get so many wonderful book recommendations as a result. We hope you enjoy it too. If, like me, you're going away in a few weeks time and are looking for the next read to take with you, or if you have already been indulging in some holiday reading, this is the place to share!

Joanna:

Only one book to recommend this month. It's been a busy time altogether. The RWA National Conference was a mad, lovely, exciting week. The rest of July was spent madly writing.

Still, I did get to read Robin McKinley's, The Hero
 and the Crown. It's a YA that won the Newberry Medal a few years back. A princess despised and distrusted by her people steps outside their expectations and becomes a strong and magical warrior who saves the kingdom. The book is about choices and strength and what these cost.

McKinley has been a favorite of mine since I read Sunshine, her YA-vampire-not-quite-a-romance. A lovely book.

Pat:

I’ve been cruising the high seas and spending more time in the moment than reading, apparently. And I watched movies on the plane! But here’s a couple of books I can recall.

Axeman’s Jazz, Julie Smith—a mystery rich with gritty New Orleans atmosphere. The heroine is a very good, very determined cop which gives a nice spin on the usual types of humor found in hapless female detective stories. The story includes lovely layers of satire on New Orleans society— the killer is picking off attendants of 12-step programs, which to the detective’s dismay means that half the city is a potential victim.

Meredith Duran, Fool Me Twice—I went into this thinking “yawn, another book about a tortured, privileged duke.”  I have a real hard time being sympathetic to dukes who have everything and still manage to whine. But Duran pulls out ALL the stops. She beats this once-decent guy into a puling lump, then torments her innocent heroine beyond reason. Even though I was fully prepared to laugh at the preposterous setup, Duran made me root for both of them. Her emotional and descriptive writing twists the heart and keeps the pages turning.

Off the Reservation, Glen Merzer—if you want a novel that literally goes off the deep end on satirizing politics, try this one. The protag is a Congressman who grabs attention by saying just what he pleases and turns his lunacy into a campaign platform, while claiming over-population is the root of all problems and that there are no solutions. The way to bring honesty back to politics!

One Man's Legacy

Nicola here, talking today about the influence of Dr John Radcliffe on the beautiful city of Oxford. I’m fortunate enough to live only 20 miles from the “City of the dreaming spires” and I visit it as often as I can. The sense of history in Oxford is all pervasive and very inspiring and last month I had an extra-special treat; a tour of two of Oxford’s most iconic buildings, The Radcliffe Infirmary and the Radcliffe Observatory.

Dr John Radcliffe was an English physician, politician and academic. He was born in 1652 in Yorkshire and educated at Oxford University from the age of 13. He rose to become court physician to William and Mary and is buried in Oxford. When he died he left £40k in his will, which was used to endow a library and other academic projects in the city. Amongst the buildings constructed with funds from his estate was a new quadrangle for University College, and also the Radcliffe Camera, which housed the university’s science library.

The Whole Tooth and Nothing But the Tooth

In 1787, this painting made a sensation. She's Showing her Teeth

Joanna here. I've posted before with all my thoughts and beliefs and outright speculation that Regency folk of the middling and upper sorts were probably as cleanly and nice smelling as most folks nowadays. That is not an impeccable standard, as anyone who takes public transportation will testify. But it's also not the universal reek-to-heaven some folks think it must be.

So let's wander into the question of oral hygiene, shall we?
(And I promise not to go into anything even vaguely touching upon tooth-ache and tooth-drawers and suchlike horrors because some of you are sitting down with a nice croissant and café au lait and you do not deserve to be harrowed to your marrow.)

What did Regency folk use as toothbrushes?
Well ... They used toothbrushes.

Taking into account the sad fact that our Regency folk didn't have plastic and were therefore unable to make their dental implements in screaming magenta and electric green stripes, they still did pretty well. The business end of the toothbrush was of stiff boar bristles or —  like this one over on the right  —  horsehair. The handles were ivory, wood, or bone, carved for a firm yet graceful grip.

This belonged to Napoleon. Could be gold, I suppose

 

Simple Pleasures Then and Now

Nicola here! Today I’m musing on a few of our favourite things and whether our Regency heroes and heroines would have valued the same pleasures that we do.

A recent poll of 2000 people aimed to make a list of all the simple things in life that make us happy. At number 1 was one of my own favourites, a freshly made bed. I confess I iron all my bedding because I enjoy the lovely cool, smooth feel of freshly laundered bed linen so much. I don’t enjoy ironing at all but it’s worth it for that moment when you slide between the sheets (or between the sheet and duvet) and smile with pleasure.

In the past I suspect that the enjoyment of beautifully laundered bed linen must have been the privilege of the rich, those people who had a laundry and maids to deal with all their washing, drying and ironing. If you were the laundry maid you probably fell into your own bed at the end of the day so exhausted that you didn’t even notice the state of the bedclothes!

Jo Beverley: Too Dangerous for a Lady!

By Mary Jo

I  shamelessly begged for an advance reading copy of Jo Beverley's new book, Too Dangerous for a Lady.  It's a great read, with romance, suspense, and even medical matters of the time.  Not only is the story a Romantic Times Top Pick (along with new books from Wenches Patricia Rice and Cara Elliott), but it received a wonderful review in Publisher's Weekly:  "Beverley's brilliantly drawn protagonists shine in a  story that puts equal emphasis on intrigue and love."

Too Dangerous is set in Jo's long-running Regency Rogues World.  There's more about the Rogues here.

MJP: Jo, is it true that the Rogues are the longest-running series of Regency heroes?

JB: As best I can tell. The first book came out in 1991, which means 24 years. The characters have covered three years in fifteen books.

 MJP: How do Mark and Hermione fit into the Rogues World?

JB: I completed the stories of the 10 surviving members of the Company of Rogues in To Rescue a Rogue, but I've written spin-off characters along the way. Two years ago I was considering a few characters who are waiting in the wings, but then some of my readers asked  about the families of the two dead Rogues. When I wrote the first book, set in 1814, it seemed unlikely that out of twelve young men none had died in the ongoing war, so  I killed off two. We authors are so carelessly cruel.

Cue Lady Hermione Merryhew, sister of Lord Roger Merryhew. Roger joined the army and was killed in Spain. His older brother has since died so the family title,  Marquess of Carsheld, has gone to a distant relative.

 

Seed Catalogs

a season of catalogs

Joanna here, being topical.

My seed catalogs have arrived. This is the first sign of spring for me — not a sighting of the first robin — the sighting of the first seed catalogs. Now the truth of the matter is I don’t so much buy seeds and plant them. I live on stony, steep ground here and grow my plants in a few miserable little pots. But I dream with these catalogs. I meditate upon all the wondrous flowers and vegetables I’m growing in my mind rather than in reality.

Anyhow, this got me thinking about woman gardeners in 1800 or so. The eons’ old association of women and healing

our lady gardener is ANGRY

plants, edible garden herbs, and flowery borders made them natural gardeners. About at this time botany got an intellectual boots with the Linnaean system of plant classification. Thank heavens this was one ‘science’ considered suitable for genteel women. They began collecting plants and writing about them. We have pictures of these women carrying their watering cans — dressed in a way we’d consider problematic for gardening work — headed out to botanize.

I delight to imagine the glasshouses filled with interesting specimens and women tending and caring for them. Studying them. Learning how to grow the most troublesome of their charges. Describing the exotics. Writing, y’know, monographs and papers.

Not that it was easy for them to be taken seriously. I’m just going to mention here that the British Zoological Society and the British Entomological Society (—bugs, yipee —) admitted women in 1829 and 1833, respectively, the Linnaean Society didn't until 1904, which seems rather latish, doesn’t it?

The actual tilling of soil and sowing of seed, digging holes for the odd tree or bush, and pruning of ornamental shrubbery on an estate would fall to a band of hearty young men. The lady of the house would be in the enviable position of strolling through the aspen-studded woodland, past the ha-ha, and along the herbaceous border pointing out to Old Mr. Grim the Head Gardener where to put 250 yellow tulips. She wouldn’t so much do the work herself. It would be three or four generations past 1800 before kneeling down and weeding the bed of mangelwurzels would be considered a proper hobby for the well-to-do.

(Mangelwurzel, from German mangel ‘beet’ and wurzel ‘root’, moves into English along with the beets in about 1770. Now you know.) 

Now me, I like to get my hands in the soil and somewhat pity those distant forebearers who never had this pleasure. It's part of what I anticipate in the early days of spring. Like today.

What are you looking forward to with your plants this spring? Anything new and fun?

One lucky commenter will win a copy of one of my books — your choice    

Astrology vs Astronomy

Pat here: 

  Humans have been fascinated with the stars since we gathered around the campfire chowing down on mammoth meat. We simply didn’t have the ability to record that fascination before the third millennium BC. At that time, there was no practical difference between astrology and astronomy and the words used to describe this science were the same. Mostly, ancient astronomers correlated the position of the constellations with the seasons and attempted to predict the weather. If one associates a winter constellation with cold and snow, that’s a pretty accurate prediction.

The Romance of Spices Revisited

By Mary Jo

I'm in the crazed mode of finishing a book, so I'm invoking Wench Privilege by re-running an old blog, this one about the spice trade.  What gave me the idea was going out to my car after exercising at Curves, and smelling something sweet and tangy from the McCormick spice company headquarters about three miles to the north.  Inspiring!

++++Originally published August 3, 2007++++++

I’m sitting on my screened porch on  a summer morning, sipping coffee, watching birds, and enjoying the scent of pepper that floats through the summer air. This is unusual—more often, I would smell allspice, which carries well. 

No, I am not imaging the tantalizing fragrance in the air, despite having an over-active writer’s imagination.  The world’s largest spice company, McCormick’s, is headquartered a few miles north of my house.  My hometown of Baltimore has been one of America’s most important ports since its founding, so it’s not surprising that the city is home to several spice companies

Spices are something we take for granted, like being able to listen to music whenever we want.  We can stop in the baking aisle of any supermarket and have our choice of dozens of spices and herbs.  But once the spice trade was the most lucrative, and perhaps dangerous, in the world.  In many ways, spices are responsible for discovering the world we know. 

Regency Weather Lore

Joanna here:  The other day, we had a bit of a storm -- buckets of rain, impenetrable clouds walking up the hill and past my window, trees lashing back and forth like mad things, a march of roiling black thunderheads over the valley.  

This was our taste of Hurricane Arthur, and fairly mild it was when compared to other folks' experience.

It got me to thinking about weather in a historical sorta way. Before Arthur went strolling up the coast,  I had a week of weathermen showing me charts and maps and making dire predictions.

If I'd had a herd of sheep I would have moved them to the lower meadow or the upper hill or whatever. I would have made sure the roof of the hen house was tapped down tight and in good repair. I could have gone out to the fields and brought the corn in. (We do Indian corn -- maize -- in this section of the world and it's getting ripe on the southern slopes.) I would have worried about the little baby peaches on the trees -- not that I could do much about them.

But all that last week before the storm the days were warm and sunny. There wasn't any warning in the sky. Without the internet, I would have been taken by surprise.

In all the ages before 'a cold front moving in from the west carrying moisture' and 'polar vortexes' and 'the jet stream shifting eastward' and 'European computer models' there would have been no warning. For my folks in 1800, rich and poor, every day of the growing season was another day disaster might strike.

my view of modern weather forecasting

They didn't have our modern weather shamans, but folks had weather lore and generations of experience and a double handful of superstitions about the weather.
Maybe these worked about as well.

Our Georgian and Regency characters, from the highest to the most humble, would have known all the old jingles and folk sayings.

"Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning."

Shakespear said, "Like a red morn that ever yet betokened, wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field, sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds, gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.”

Matthew XVI 2-3:  "When in evening, ye say, it will be fair weather: For the sky is red. And in the morning, it will be foul weather today; for the sky is red and lowering.”

Which is just a whole lot of general agreement on this principle.

Now, when I see a brilliant red sunset on the horizon, I figger there's dust flying around in the upper atmosphere.  Maybe a volcanic explosion somewhere in the world.

attrib Alvesgaspar

After the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa in Indonesia, the ash caused "such vivid red sunsets that fire engines were called out in New York, Poughkeepsie, and New Haven to quench the apparent conflagration."  These blood-red sunsets continued for years.

But I digress.

When our Georgian and Regency people saw these red sunsets or sunrises, they had some reason to guess at the day's weather.

Sunsets and dawns are colorful because at those times light from the sun passes through a lot of atmosphere to get to us and picks up coloring on the way.  That's why we don't so much get that 'red sun at noon, expect dragons soon' sorta vibe.

In Europe, weather tends to move from west to east, so red light from the west means we're getting good illumination all that long way from the west. It's clear in that direction. That's nice stability in the weather that's coming.
 
On the other hand, the same reddish tinge to the east -- according to current meteorological lore -- means lots of moisture and clouds in the atmosphere above the observer and thus the likelihood of rain.
(I keep reading these explanations and they strike me as fairly 'the dog broke the lamp' specious.)

Or, possibly, since the weather moves west to east, maybe red sunrise in the east is telling everybody that the good weather has scuttled past them and off that way and they missed it. Tough luck.

Howsabout,
See a ring around the moon, a storm is sure to follow soon.

Here, meteorologists make the fairly simple and common-sense-ical explanation that the rainbow like ring that sometimes makes a halo around the moon is cause by ice crystals in the high atmosphere. These high altitude clouds are the early edge of a low pressure system moving in.

Logical enough. But yes, I do like the rhyme better than all that "low-pressure system front" guff.

St. Swithin, of course

Then there's St. Swithin's day, which is next week, July 15, and part of the reason I'm blogging this today.  If St. Swithin's day is dry, the the next forty days will be dry. Contrariwise, if it rains on that day, we got forty days of rain. Google boatbuilding.

There is a whole mass of folk belief that some people can predict the weather. Either they just 'know' or they 'feel it in their bones'.  Makes sense to me that changes in air pressure would be felt by the already-sensitive nerves around old wounds, healed bone breaks, and arthritic joints.

And there's lots of lore that says birds can sense a storm on the way and they take shelter. Or cows lie down in the field.

My dog, who is a great lump of a lazy hound most times, can feel thunderstorms coming long before the sky clouds over and the temperature drops and the air gets that crisp taste to it that tells even a human dolt like me that a storm's coming.  Mandy -- the dog -- goes searching frantically around the house for someplace safe to hide.  Behind the water pump. Under my desk. In the bedroom behind the bed where she cannot possibly fit.

 

Some lucky commenter will win of choice of any of Joanna Bourne's books.

So. Do you have an animal in your life who can sense bad storms approaching?
Can you predict the weather?

Water for London

Nicola here. On behalf of all the Wenches I’d like to wish all our US readers and friends a very Happy 4^th July and indeed a happy day to everyone, wherever you are in the world!

Wench reader Jeannette asks: “A question about the water supply in London. Was there a muncipal water supply for Mayfair back then? Surely they didn't have wells. Was the sanitation, even in the wealthy neighborhoods, quite bad? How did one dispose of "waste", for example? Did they have trash pickup?”

All great questions and I am going to try and answer a few of them at least. I’m sure the other wenches will have done some research on this as well so will chip in with some fascinating facts on water, waste and wells!

Off the grid!!!

by Mary Jo

It's a wired, wired world!  Communications have changed amazingly in a double handful of years.  

It started with e-mail as the "killer app" of the world wide web.  Then wireless communications came in.  Several years back, when Blackberries were state of the art, the satellites that carried them (I think that's what it was) went down, and a mighty howl of horror and anguish was heard from users across the land.

Star Gazing

Nicola here. As a star features strongly in the nativity story it felt quite Christmassy to be talking about celestial bodies today. I love stargazing. Every night when I take Angus out for his bedtime walk I stand in the field at the bottom of the road and look up at the night sky. Most nights it’s cloudy, the British weather being what it is, but on maybe one night in five I can see the Milky Way stretching overhead like a ribbon dusted with diamonds. Seeing it is a magical experience.

At the end of November we were told that one of the greatest celestial spectacles of the century was on the way, the arrival of Comet Ison. Ison was a sungrazing comet, originating from the fabulously named Oort Cloud out on the furthest edges of our galaxy. It was scheduled to pass so close to the sun that it would “graze” it’s surface. It was then supposed to develop a huge tail that would be visible in the night sky with the naked eye, making it one of the most spectacular astronomical sights of the century. Unfortunately Ison flew too close to the sun. It was too small to survive the experience and instead of blazing a trail across the sky, it disintegrated.

It's a Magic Lantern

Joanna here ...

Before moving pictures.  Before silent film.  Before black and white.  Before Clara Bow and Charlie Chaplin.  


There was the Magic Lantern.



Let's say you're a Regency thrillseeker, out to squeeze all possible enjoyment from an evening.  You might go to a Magic Lantern show at a friend's house. You might put one on yourself.



People had known more or less forever that light shining through colored glass carried that color to where the light fell.  Every stained glass window in Europe, even every translucent leaf in the sunlight, every light source shining through colored glass cast an image.


The beauty of that.  A picture painted in light.



Or it can be educational

Being the inventive species we are, we wanted to do that at will, casting the image we chose.  The earliest technology for doing this dates to the Seventeenth Century.  Shine candlelight through a demon or ghost thinly painted on glass; let your image fall onto a gauze screen or a column of smoke; and presto! 


You got magic in your magic show.

You're a hit with the locals whom you have just terrified. 



 In the Eighteenth Century, itinerant 'lanternists' travelled the countryside carrying the cabinet that held their slides and their lantern, giving shows at country inns and fairs.

A lanternist, looking disgruntled

One disgusted contemporary writer remarks,
"These showmen were not romantic troubadours, but often as unwholesome and grotesque in appearance as the images they cast onto the white sheet."

The Magic Lantern became sort of a parlor amusement and novelty.  Samuel Pepys bought one in 1666,"to make strange things on a wall."

You can think of it as a Georgian slide projector.  
(Though a slide projector is getting to be a n antiquated piece of technology itself.)  


How did it work?
(You can skip this bit if you want.)

The anatomy of the Magic Lantern is:

(a) An oil lamp making light.  It's inside the casing on the left of this picture where you can't see it, but it has that little stack for the heat to come out of. 

(b) A condensing lens — which you also can't see because it is inside that casing — sending all the lamp light through a slot, which you can see.

(c) Painted glass plates fit into that slot. The top picture is without a glass

attrib Lokilech and TimDrury

slide.  The lower picture has a glass slide.

(d) And then you have a barrel on the right end with a lens that enlarges the image as it emerges and heads toward whatever wall or sheet is being used as a screen. 


You see the limiting factor here, don't you?  It's the light source.  An oil lamp is just not very strong. The Argand lamp, after 1780, went a ways toward creating that powerful and beautiful image you wanted to project.

Argand lamp in use

The Argand produced a light of six or eight candlepower.

<sound of crickets>



Okay.  I can see you are bowled over by the blazing beacon of six or eight candlepower.  But this was a significant advance.  Trust me on this.


And just as a side note, oil lamps you see in Regency portraits are like as not Argand lamps.  They were the halogen bulbs of their day.


But let us leave mere apparatus.  The Magic Lantern was all about The Show.

four pictures painted on glass

Your traveling lanternist in the inn parlor or tent at the fair could be projecting "Ogres, grinning skulls, bloody battle scenes, shipwrecks" or pictures of distant lands, or scenes from folk tales and bible stories.
Often, he'd insert a long strip of glass with  four or five images painted on it and draw that through the slot in the magic lantern, changing scenes as he lay down his experienced patter.  His exciting story.  He might even have an assistant providing music. 
Then he'd pass the hat.  

here's your ship at sea image

Particularly skilled practitioners of the art of the Magic Lantern might have several slides in the slot at once, one in front of the other. 
Perhaps a sky with clouds and a sea.  The other slide would have boats.

A contemporary expert advises:
"You are then to pass the glass slowly through the groove; and when you come to that part where the storm begins, you are to move the glass gently up and down, which will give it the appearance of a sea that begins to be agitated: and so increase the motion till you come to the height of the storm.  At the same lime you are to introduce the other glass with the ships, and moving that in like manner, you will have a natural representation of the sea, and of ships in a calm and in a storm."

Wild times in Regency England.  It's a  Magic Lantern show in the Squire's drawing room.  Cummon, Regency dandy, grab some popcorn and hold your sweetie close.
(Okay.  Maybe not the anachronistic popcorn.)

But this Magic Lantern is the Olduvai ancestor of the Saturday Matinee, of Star Wars and The Avengers, of iMax 3D.  Look at it there, smack in the middle of Georgian and Regency times.

Our Regency characters would always remember going to a Magic Lantern show. 

Pulling on that thread ... What's your most treasured memory of going to the movies?

For me it's heading down to the Saturday morning early show in the summer,
because the movies were Air Conditioned! — and the house wasn't.
One lucky commenter, (US only, sorry,) can win their choice of one of my books.

A Celestial Bed

Anne here, back from the Australian Romance Readers Convention, where this picture was taken: it's the historical romance panel. Yes, very serious we all were.

The convention was followed by a week-long writing retreat. And as it sometimes does, when you're away and sleeping in strange rooms, my mind turned to... beds.

I confess I love my bed. I bought it some years back, after a stay in a fabulous hotel (for a conference) where the beds, for once, were amazingly comfortable — so comfortable in fact that I slept well every night I was there, an unusual thing for me at a conference because my mind is usually spinning from the stimulation of the company. So I bought the exact same bed. But I digress.

Beds are on the one hand, amazingly simple things, but increasingly they are becoming technological marvels. But whether it's scientifically designed coils and springs, adjustable beds, beds that sense and provide the right position for all your spinal (and other) needs, there is nothing available in the modern bed that is anywhere near the marvel that was The Celestial Bed that was invented and available for use in the eighteenth century.

It was the invention of one James Graham, a Scotsman born in 1745, the son of a saddler. An ambitious lad, Graham entered the world renowned Edinburgh Medical School at the tender age of sixteen. He left it three years later, unqualified (though this was not uncommon at the time) and set up shop as an apothecary (pharmacist,) though still craving fame and fortune.

It was a visit to America that gave him the inspiration he needed. It was a time of scientific marvels; electricity was in its infancy and all kinds of experiments were being made with it — including Benjamin Franklin's famous kite-flying-in-thunderstorm venture— and the whole notion of electricity fired the imaginations of many — including that of James Graham.

Graham decided that there might be parallels between electrical energy and sexual energy (he called them both fluids) and he theorized that 'the pleasure of the venereal act might be exalted if performed under the glowing, accelerating, and most genial influences of that heaven born, all animating element, the electrical or concocted fire.'

At the first rumblings of the American Revolution, he returned to England and took up work as a doctor in Bath — though he was not your everyday doctor. Bath was a fashionable city, a draw card for rich people of delicate health — real or imaginary. And Graham was an ambitious man with a charismatic personality.

Graham’s persuasive advertisements promoting cures using "Effluvia, Vapours and Applications ætherial, magnetic or electric" attracted his first celebrity patient, the famous bluestocking historian Catharine Macaulay. She became the subject of scandal in 1778 when she married James Graham’s 21-year-old brother William, who was less than half her age. Dr Graham was instantly propelled to national fame.

In 1779 Dr Graham acquired a new patron in Lady Spencer, mother of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and made plans for his great dream — a Temple of Health. In May 1780, Graham found suitable premises in an exciting new development between The Strand and the Thames River — the Adelphi Buildings — and  opened the first Temple of Health.

Graham's original intention was to use electricity to treat all sort of ailments and he borrowed money to set up all kinds of electro-magnetic machines for 'throwing by force of electricity ethereal essences, vivifying air and magnetic effluvium through the whole body, and which could draw visible sparks from any designated part of the body.' He treated patients with musical therapy, and pneumatic chemistry, published marriage guidance tracts gave medical lectures and sold medicines, such as “Electrical Aether” and “Nervous Aetherial Balsam.” People could even take "electrical baths" which produced a mild shock and a prickling sensation over the skin.

His Temple of Health was staffed with a succession of so-called Goddesses of Health, displayed as models of physical perfection and scantily clad in flimsy white robes. (The young Emma Hamilton, later to become the mistress of Admiral Nelson, is thought to have been one of them.) The Temple of Health was a huge success and Graham became the talk of London and the acquaintance of many famous people.

Several years later Graham moved premises and set up a new kind of temple, which he called the Temple of Hymen, after the Greek and Roman god of marriage, where the properties of electricity were to be devoted entirely to the enhancement of marriage and fertility. It featured his most famous invention yet — the Celestial Bed. (Finally, you say, she gets to the point!)

The bed was enormous —12 feet long and 9 feet wide (about 3.6 by 2.7 metres) — supported by 40 pillars of richly colored glass of exquisite workmanship together with brass pillars wrapped in purple satin. The mattress was stuffed with oats, flowers and the tails of fine English stallions and beneath it were about 15 hundredweight (about 680 kilograms) of magnetic fluid to give the necessary degree of strength and exertion to the nerves (ie to relieve male erectile dysfunction.) The bed had a specially designed frame to align its occupiers in the best position to conceive, and any movement caused stimulating oriental fragrances and "aethereal" gases to be released and "celestial sounds" to waft from concealed organ pipes. The more vigorous the mattress’ movements, the more energetic the music. 

My own bed has, sadly, none of these features.

Unfortunately there seems to be no contemporaneous illustrations of the Celestial Bed, but here's a modern interpretation of it. Of course, the Celestial Bed was not for naughty or prurient activities, no no — it was all for the sake of marriage and procreation. In the bedhead, chiselled into the woodwork and sparkling with electrical fire, were the words 'Be Fruitful, Multiply and replenish the Earth.' A night in the Celestial Bed would set you back fifty pounds, a huge sum in those days.

Extravagance found Graham's Temple of Hymen closed after a few years, and the man himself deep in debt. But he was a true eccentric, and if you're a lover of eccentricity (as I am) it's worth looking him up. Some gems of his career: he founded the The New Jerusalem Church; its membership never exceeded one. He became a passionate advocate of "earth bathing" and gave public exhibitions of it in Panton Street in London, lecturing while naked and buried up to the neck in earth. Graham's final book, How to Live for Many Weeks or Months or Years Without Eating Anything Whatsoever, surprisingly did not sell well and is, strangely, now out of print.

So what about you? Do you love your bed? Do you hanker after a wonderful, exotic bed? If you could magic up a bed, what would be your specifications? And have you tried any interesting, "alternative" treatments? How did they go?

 

Knight of the Pisse-Pot

The Wenches’ in-house medical wizard, Dr. Josh, is back again to talk a little about medieval medicine from a nephrologist’s point of view (recently he completed a fellowship in nephrology at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore). So here’s Dr. Josh, or as he might have been called in the 15^th century, the Knight of the Pisse-Pot . . .

Dr. Josh, if you could time-leap through history from 2012 to 1412, what treatments and methods would you use as a medieval physician? (And what exactly is nephrology – would medieval medical practitioners recognize it?)

As a nephrologist, a specialist in kidney medicine, I sometimes need to explain my field even to patients in my office! The word is derived from nephros, Greek for 'kidney,' and is also referred to as renal medicine, from the Latin renalis. Kidney medicine deals with medical disorders of the kidneys and their treatment (including dialysis and kidney transplants). It’s a small but important field of internal medicine. The function of the kidneys is to make urine, so interpretation of a patient’s urine in laboratories and examination under the microscope plays an important part in diagnosing patients and monitoring their kidney conditions.

In the Middle Ages, urine was truly regarded as the elixir of life, the unparalleled window into all disease. Medieval physicians even specialized in this -- "pisse prophet" was a medieval term for those who diagnosed by looking at urine -- color, cloudiness or clarity, and so on. They didn't have lab reports to rely on, but did have some basic ability, since color, cloudiness, etc. can be markers of some conditions. "Knight of the Pisse-Pot" was another term for these docs -- much more interesting than nephrologist!

Medieval pisse-prophets and pisse-pot knights sometimes divined more than health reports from the appearance and smell of the pee in the glass vial. They weren't exactly objective diagnosticians, and some were little better than scam artists – which I’ll explain shortly.

Uroscopy, the ancient art of examining the urine, is still a big part of a nephrologist's medical practice, although now we examine urine with the use of a centrifuge, microscope and various chemical reactions to detect and measure protein, blood, and other substances. In the Middle Ages, urine examination was done by sight, by odor, and, of course, by taste.

And sometimes urine was the only thing physicians examined—they might not even bother to see the patient, regarding urine as the more important source of information. Galen's four humours (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood, which determined the melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic and sanguine personalities or physical types) were key components of medicine from the 2nd century until the 18th and even 19th centuries. All could be ascertained by examining the urine, so it was believed.

But long ago, a more dramatic, mystical--and fraudulent--practice pervaded medieval medicine: uromancy, described as "the bastard brother of uroscopy" in the Journal of the American Medical Association four decades ago. Practitioners of uromancy claimed that urine could diagnose everything about a person -- not only their condition and afflictions, but their sex, age, and the future course of diseases. Uromancy was so popular that medieval physicians were expected to practice that in addition to more reliable methods – and it was less expensive and believed to be very reliable. Physicians could only diagnose and give the limited cures of the day – a uromancer could predict the patient’s future health, a sort of crystal ball-in-a-vial.

Propping up this system were "pisse-bearers" who would run the vials of urine from the patient to the doctor and return to the patient with the diagnosis. A pisse-bearer would extravagantly praise the doctor's diagnostic acumen (this was contingent on getting a cut of the examination fee). Thomas Brian, a Cambridge-trained physician, got so fed up with this system that he published his famous tome The Pisse-Prophet in 1637, a scathing tell-all about the pisse-pot scam, and how competition and patient demand trapped physicians into participating. The book did not manage to take down uromancy (likely because books were difficult to come by, as was literacy, so few read it), but it's now a fascinating historical reminder of how far we’ve come, how what we hope to hear from our doctors may not be what they are able to offer, and why it’s important to for medical practice to be based in reality.

What else might you do as a medieval urine specialist?

Today urine specialists are either nephrologists, who deal with metabolic consequences of kidney disease, or urologists, who deal with conditions involving the “plumbing” downstream from the kidneys. One area where the two overlap is in kidney stones: urologists break up and remove stones, while nephrologists recommend diets and medications to prevent formation of stones.

Medieval doctors who specialized in stones were lithotomists, literally “stone-cutters,” early surgeons who would cut open the bladder to remove painful stones. But without anesthesia and antiseptic technique, their procedures were not only painful but frequently fatal. Lithotomists would often travel from town to town advertising their profession and offering to cut stones from those who were suffering –- and these itinerant lithotomists would often beat feet before the post-operative infections set in.

It was not until modern surgical standards of anesthesia and hand-washing set in before matters improved to any great deal!

One last thought -- while I do enjoy being a 21^st century nephrologist -– it would be much more impressive to have “uromancer” on my business cards!

Thanks for another interesting trip through historical medicine! Dr. Josh, Uromancer, sounds pretty good, though Knight of the Pisse-Pot has a certain ring too! 

Dr. Josh is happy to address questions about historical medicine if you have any, and if he knows the answer!   

Susan

 

 

 

Regency Pyrotechnics

Joanna here.

What do Vauxhall, the court of Queen Elizabeth, Cuper's Gardens, (which is described intriguingly as "the scene of low dissipation . . . and the great resort of the profligate of both sexes" — rather like our local mall,) the celebration of the wedding of George III, and Kensington Gardens have in common?

Fireworks.  Big, bright rockets and Catherine wheels and crackers.  Fireworks were the sound and light show of the Eighteenth Century.  The extravaganza that marked all great and festive events.

Sometimes there was music.  You can listen to Handel's Fireworks Music, for instance, here.  I'll admit I was expecting something with more booms in it.

 

“.... fireworks had for her a direct and magical appeal. Their attraction was more complex than that of any other form of art. They had pattern and sequence, colour and sound, brilliance and mobility; they had suspense, surprise, and a faint hint of danger; above all, they had the supreme quality of transience, which puts the keenest edge on beauty.”
Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver

 

Fireworks came out of China, like printing, dim sum and Bruce Lee.  The original fireworks date back to the Ninth Century or so.  They, were firecrackers made of gunpowder, stuffed into thin bamboo shoots.  Oddly enough, the original use of pyrotechnics was not warfare.  All this gunpowder was set off at the new year to scare away evil spirits.  It probably worked.

Knowledge of gunpowder arrived in the Middle East and Europe in the 1200s.  Marco Polo sometimes gets the credit, and why shouldn't he? 

 

“You're much better than fireworks. They're all over in a moment, and you're going to stay for a fortnight. Besides, fireworks are noisy, and they make too much smoke.”
Kate Ross, Cut to the Quick

One of the first mentions of fireworks is in Roger Bacon's Opus Majus. 

"... that children's toy which is made in many diverse parts of the world, a device no bigger than one's thumb. From the violence of that salt called saltpetre, together with sulphur and willow charcoal, combined into a powder, so horrible a sound is made by the bursting of a thing so small, with no more than a bit of parchment containing it, that we find the ear assaulted by a noise exceeding the roar of strong thunder, and a flash brighter than the most brilliant lightning."
 
Early English fireworks specialists were — it's not surprising — military gunners.  The same men who used gunpowder to send an iron ball shooting out of a cannon, used that knowledge to create and explode fireworks.  They formed craft guilds across Europe, traveled, exchanged information, and wrote long treatises on the formulas and methods.    

This here is a vast fireworks display over the Thames in 1748 at the Duke of Richmond to celebrate the ending of the War of the Austrian Succession.  This is the shindig for which Handel wrote that music linked above.  

See there in the middle of the Thames?  Those rockets going up and letting off a globe and lights falling out were called 'stars'. 

To make falling stars —
"... the stuffe which is to be put into the Rocket for to flame and give crackes is made of twelve partes of Saltpeeter refind, of Citrine Brimstone nine partes, of grosse gunpowder five partes and 1/4 of a part mingled togeather with your hand."

That mixture was moistened and formed into small pieces, then packed into a ball and wound tightly round with packthread, given a fuse, and placed in the head of a rocket.  When the rocket exploded, the stars would stream down in the air.

One observer said it seemed "as if the sky has opened ... as if all the air in the world is filled with fireworks and all the stars in the heavens are falling to earth ...  a thing truly stupendous and marvelous to behold."

 

"We were ready for the apocalypse and when it didn't come we were very disappointed. So we drank more absinthe and set off fireworks."
Marilyn Manson

 

What our Regency folks would have called 'gun powder', what we might call 'black powder' today, was made from three main ingredients.  There were some other additives, but thee were the Big Three.

Ground charcoal.  The best charcoal, the sort used for fireworks — was made from willow, alder or black dogwood. 

Sulphur, which had to be perfectly clean and free from sulfuric acid. 

And saltpeter. Saltpeter is interesting stuff.  It's mainly potassium nitrate.  The name, sal petrae, 'salt of rock' is because it's found as an incrustation on rocks.  Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century folks mined it in dungheaps and farmyards and caves favored by bats for many years. Or they cultivated it deliberately by composting manure for a year, adding additional urine.  It was the urea in urine that bacteria broke down to the useful nitrates.

I haven't found any Regency reference to the idea that saltpeter suppresses sexual desire.  Either I just haven't found it or they hadn't thought that up yet.

Back to the ingredients for fireworks.
It's somewhat a matter of what they didn't have. Iron filings might be added to make a brighter and more intense flame, but fireworks were white and yellow.  They didn't have color.  It wasn't till the 1830s that folks started adding the metals that give color to fireworks.  All our red, blues and greens, the Regency folks never saw.

The rockets that launched all this display looked something like these Congreve rockets — military rockets — from 1805.
  Rockets for firework displays were made of paper, filled with powder.  The height of accent and the timing of the explosion was carefully controlled by the tightness of the packing, the size of the case and the length of the cotton fuse.  A long stick fixed the rocket to the ground, setting the flight at the proper angle.

And they had Catherine wheels.  As early as 1540, Florence and Siena in Italy erected huge wood and papier mache wheels set in motion by rockets and fire tubes. 

Fixed designs like modern fire fountains shot streams of lit powder into the air from rolls of pasteboard filled with gunpowder. I'm particularly impressed with this picture from the mid-Eighteenth Century that shows these fire fountains and the court ladies of Mohammad Shah playing with fireworks.  Brave ladies.

Another fixed display was a spherical 'sun'.

"In the centre of the block of the sun drive a spindle on which put a small hexagonal wheel whose cases must be  filled with the same charge as the cases of the sun…a sun thus made is called a Brilliant Sun because the wood work is intierly covered with fire from the wheel to the middle so there appears nothing but sparks of a brilliant fire."

For the entry of Louis XIII into Lyon in 1623, fireworkers constructed a huge artificial lion with fire bursting from its jaw.

Fireworks were spectacle, display, public celebration.  In 1814, in a jubilee in celebration of peace in London —


"The senses were next astonished and enchanted with a pacific exhibition of those tremendous instruments of destruction invented by colonel Congreve. Some notion even of their terrible power might be formed from the display of the night, and their exceeding beauty could be contemplated, divested of its usual awful associations. Each rocket contains in itself a world of smaller rockets: as soon as it is discharged from the gun it bursts, and flings aloft in the air innumerable parcels of flame, brilliant as the brightest stars: the whole atmosphere was illuminated by a delicate blue light, which threw an air of inchantment over the trees and lawns, and made even the motley groups of universal London become interesting as an assembly in romance."

 

What's the most memorable fireworks you've ever seen or participated in?  Anything from backyard sparklers to the aurora borealis or australis.  

One lucky commenter will win their choice of Black Hawk or Forbidden Rose.

 

 

Science vs Superstition

Pat stopping by today, to ponder how time changes our perceptions.

My Magic series begins in the mid 1750’s, at a time when science wasn’t clearly defined. Today’s Websters defines science as “the state of knowing: knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding.” At Dictionary.com it’s defined as “a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws.”  I believe in high school I learned science was based on observation and proof from repeated experimentation, or some such.

But in the first Encyclopedia Britannica from 1770, science was defined as “in philosophy, denotes any doctrine, deduced from self-evident and certain principles, by a regular demonstration.”

Self-evident? It’s evident there are white glittering objects in the night sky, and those objects change with the season, but does that make astrology a science? Sure, as a Leo, born under the late July stars, I dress flamboyantly and display leadership qualities like Mae West, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Napoleon, but does that serve as “regular demonstration” that astrology is knowledge?

How fine is the line between superstition and science, astrology and astronomy, alchemy and chemistry? We don’t teach phrenology today, but some of the Victorian precepts led to today’s medical science of neurology. It sounds like ridiculous superstition to believe light particles know what is ahead and will adjust their behavior accordingly—leading to speculation about the time/space continuum and time travel—but this is one of the basic principles behind quantum physics. Warping time and space might warp my mind, so the theory impresses me about as much as astrology. But Newton figured out gravity from a falling apple and no one believed him either.

Which, of course, brings us to my psychic Malcoms. Are telekinesis, telepathy, and other so-called parnormal phenomena really superstition or have we just been put off by the bad rep and not applied sufficient scientific study? It’s been proven that animals have a higher order of smell and dogs can sniff the odor of cancer, so why is it so impossible to believe that some humans might have a highly developed sense of smell? And the army and computer geeks are working with human brain waves to control computers, is it so far-fetched to take that another step and believe there are human minds that can detect those electron patterns and literally read minds? And we’ve already located the brain receptors that respond to the ‘love” hormone oxytocin and proven some people are more empathic than others. Who is to say some people can’t read far more of emotion than others? Empaths, anyone?

Of course, the number of people who might be able to perform these feats are so far outnumbered by charlatans and scam artists that incredulity is stretched, but that doesn’t mean psychic phenomena are impossible. It just means that like phrenology eventually led to neurology, and alchemy gave way to the proven scientific precepts of chemistry, we just need more time and study.

It’s a pity my Malcolms are fictional. I’d love to see more psychics step forward to be studied, in hopes that one day we’ll be able to use our brains for better purposes than watching television. If you had one psychic ability, what would you like it to be? I believe I might have a copy of THE LURE OF SONG AND MAGIC left to give away to any creative commenters.

And as a reminder, I have a complete list of my reissued backlist e-books at www.backlistebooks.com/ and if you want to support a lot of great authors in their effort to build a better on-line store, look for my new material at www.bookviewcafe.com/  Michael’s book will be there in July!

Bonesetting

Silly me, I thought bonesetting meant setting broken bones. Since I’ve just snapped one of mine and wondered how in the name of heaven anyone in past times could deal with the frustrating complications, I started researching—only to learn that bonesetters did far more than set bones. They were medieval chiropractors, acupuncturists, and more.

I can’t type well enough yet to sort through all the conflicting details. Samuel Homola claims one of the first written mentions of bonesetting was from Friar Moulton, of the order of St. Augustine. He wrote the Compleat Bonesetter, which was revised in 1656 by Robert Turner. Apparently Turner says the book was intended to be a guide for "the use of those Godly Ladies and Gentlewomen, who are industrious for their talent God has given them, in helping their poor sick neighbors." But the guide isn’t just about setting bones. It’s about “the use of manipulation as a method of setting fractures, reducing dislocations, and restoring mobility to an injured or diseased joint.” Homola concludes that bonesetting was a woman’s job, which doesn’t ring quite true to me, especially in the Middle Ages.

So I looked a little further and learned that in the European Middle Ages, there was an entire guild of bonesetters who worked closely with physicians. As I suspected, the guilds were all male. Perhaps Turner’s book was a kind of housewife’s manual for people too isolated or poor to call on a bona fide bonesetter. But the guild apprenticed only boys, keeping them for seven years. Training was “derived from the Roman and Greek ‘skeleton men,’ and the ancient Egyptian ‘men of the hands.’” They actually had university training four hundred years before medical practitioners. Again, this was as much massage and chiropractics as fixing broken bones. Need your spine popped? Call a bonesetter.

For many reasons, political and religious, Napoleon destroyed the bonesetter’s guilds. Today, only nine large volumes about the craft remain, most of them written in Greek, Latin, and Gaelic. Maybe the little emperor feared languages he couldn’t read—or people smart enough to read them. Or perhaps the guilds had become little more than superstitious cults that defied the growing interest in science.

In Eastern families and communities, bonesetting was also learned in conjunction with acupressure / acupuncture.

So naturally I had to check out Regency England, from which my prejudices evidently stem. Yes, they had women bonesetters in England in the 18th and 19th centuries. There was even one so skilled at reducing dislocations, setting fractures, and bandaging, that mobs would follow her to the theater. But she apparently specialized in fractures, as I assumed, and of course, true physicians—all male—disdained her abilities.

This is all fun to know but doesn’t tell me how people functioned with broken bones. (My cast is fiberglass and still seems to weigh a thousand pounds. My right hand is good for nothing except finger wiggling. Try buttering toast that way!)


I learned from Wikipedia that the earliest methods involved splints. The Ancient Egyptians used wooden splints made of bark wrapped in linen and stiff bandages that were probably derived from embalming techniques. A form of Plaster of Paris was available, but it wasn’t used for bandages. The ancient Greeks also used waxes and resins to create stiffened bandages and the Romans used starch. Arabian doctors used lime derived from sea shells and albumen from egg whites. “The Italian School of Salerno in the twelfth century recommended bandages hardened with a flour and egg mixture as did Medieval European bonesetters, who used casts made of egg white, flour, and animal fat.” But mostly, bed rest was the required treatment—months of bed rest, argghhh!


War, naturally, created the need for more mobile treatment. A surgeon in Napoleon’s army (here comes real science!) studied the effects of transportation on amputated limbs and concluded immobilizing the limb instead of the whole person was sufficient for healing. Yeah, science! Of course, he resorted to the tried and true camphorated alcohol, lead acetate and egg whites for immobilization.

Various surgeons operating at Waterloo and the continuing wars thereafter eventually developed a method that foreshadows modern Plaster of Paris casts. From Wikipedia: “The limb was initially wrapped in wool, especially over any bony prominences. Pasteboard was then cut into shape to provide a splint and dampened down in order that it could be molded to the limb. The limb was then wrapped in bandages before a starch coating was applied to the outer surface.” Better than total bed rest but that had to itch like the devil after a few weeks. And it still doesn’t tell me how women and children with their weaker limbs endured the weight. My bet is on bed rest, for the wealthy at least.

Unfortunately or not, I don’t have the luxury of lounging about while my cook prepares the meals, my maid cuts them into bite size pieces, and my man of business pays the bills. I’m on a 30-day blog tour for LURE OF SONG AND MAGIC and I’m typing revisions to my urban fantasy with one hand. Oh, and let’s not forget that I’m supposed to be promoting my new reissue of SMALL TOWN GIRL and putting together the final touches on next month’s reissue of SWEET HOME CAROLINA.  If I mention any more of my current projects, my head will ache as well as my hand. I think I shall hie me to the fainting couch. (That's my new svelte black cast--goes past the elbow. The Mexican original was hot pink and twice the size. I should have taken a picture!)

What experiences have you had with broken bones? Mine was set in a Mexican hospital, another blog all of its own. (which reminds me—I had to start a new Facebook Page. Stop by and Like me, please, and admire photos of my Mexican adventure!)

Looking at the World Through Regency Glasses

Joanna here, talking about eyeglasses in the Regency period.

The idea of eyeglasses isn't new.  Dipping into wayback history, folks were getting a close look at small stuff with a clear, curving crystal in ancient times.

Here's the Nimrud Stone, a piece of ground, polished rock crystal found in the excavation of a 3000-year-old Assyrian palace.  Lenses like this have turned up in Greek burial sites that are even older. 

These first magnifying glasses gave the users up to 10X enlargement, which is to say they compare favorably with the magnifying glass you have in your desk right now and use for reading the print in your OED or threading needles or staring in bemused enjoyment at the whorls and ridges of your thumbprint. 

Scholars figure these very early lenses were used by Greek and Sumerian craftsmen to produce the unbelievably fine detail in some of their art work.  Or gazing at the rings of Saturn.  Or, y'know, looking at their thumb.

What limited the number and quality of these first lenses — the reason Cleopatra didn't wear eyeglasses — was they hadn't got around to making cheap and clear glass yet.  High quality glass was precious. That's why Tutankhamun's hoard of jewels is made of gold, ivory, lapis lazuli, carnelian, turquoise, and . . . glass.  This must have come as a disappointment to the Victorian treasure-seekers in the Nile valley.  They'd open a tomb and pull out a fancy pectoral or amulet and it was brilliant, colorful glass, instead of, say, brilliant colorful emeralds.


Folks finally made reliably clear glass on a large scale in Italy. 

Thirteenth Century Italy was the hotbed of glass technology for its day.  Venice — the Medieval Silicon Valley of glasswork — turned out round, hand-held magnifiers on a regular basis.  About 1280 some bright lad, his name forever lost to history, mounted two of these glass disks in round frames and joined them together.  Presto.  Eyeglasses. 

And, lickety-split, as historical innovation goes, we get portraits of people with spectacles.  This 1352 portrait to the left may be the earliest representation of eyeglasses.



There were two kinds.  Perch-on-the-nose glasses, for one.  Pince-nez we'd call them now.  That's a circa 1700 example on the left.  This picture to the right is from 1466.

We also get a scissors-type eyeglasses that joined together at a hinge and could be adjusted to fit.  This kind of glasses could be held up as we see to the left, or held up from below.  The scissors glasses seem awkward, but they appear in portraits right along to the Regency so they must have had hidden charm and utility.

You can see the difficulty with both kinds.  They were always ready to fall off.  You had to tie a ribbon around your head or keep one hand on your glasses.  Tedious, to say the least. They'd be for reading and close work only.

In the early 1700s a London spectacles maker, Edward Scarlett, advertised a clever solution.  His glasses had folding hinged struts on the sides and two arms to hold the optics onto the head.  There were even loops, sometimes, to tie the glasses on.  Now your spectacles didn't fall off every time you incautiously reached for a new sheet of paper. 

It became practical to walk around wearing the things.  All this improvement in eyeglass technology meant people could pay intelligent attention to where they were going. This lasted till the invention of the ipod.
Benjamin Franklin, one of my favorite people — he's up at the top of the page — invented bifocals in 1784.
It was also in the Eighteenth Century that glasses met the masses.  They were no longer for scholars and artists.  This traveling glasses pedlar on the left argues that glasses were cheap enough that a country woman in a cottage was likely to buy a pair. This ragged tailor on the right can afford glasses to pursue his trade.
 
I haven't found examples of these Georgian and Regency glasses with a curve to fit neatly around the ear.  They seem to have hugged the head in a steely embrace, doubtless leading to many a Regency headache.  Some, intended to tuck into the fashionable wigs of the time, had fierce and sharpish-looking points.

Now, with all this development of practical eyeglasses that gripped the head and stayed on and didn't require constant fidgeting, you'd think the old, precarious sort without side pieces would disappear. 
Not so much.  As the new utilitarian eyeglasses spread through the hoi polloi, the inconvenient older optics were now considered spiffy and upper-crust.

So, you had your quizzing glass. 
This was a single, hand-held lens, like a magnifying glass. 

Single lenses that you held had long since been replaced by spectacles for everyday use.  Round about 1790 the French, as the French will, turned this passe object into a fashion accessory.  If you needed glasses, or even if you didn't, you could walk around with a quizzing glass handy, maybe hanging it on a long chain worn around the neck. The you whipped it out to inspect something.
Fashionably.

 
The double-barreled version of the quizzing glass was the lorgnette, which is sort of glasses-on-a-stick.  Like the quizzing glass, the lorgnette was a decorative social prop, capable of depressing pretension all the way across the ballroom. 

The word lorgnette, you will be pleased to know, comes from the French lorgner, 'to peer at', from Middle French lorgne, 'squint'.  The French, being contrary, call this instrument a face-a-main — a 'face-to-hand' — and then use the French word lorgnette to mean, not that, but a quizzing glass or small telescope.
The word English word 'lorgnette' appears in 1803 so you should probably not have your character raise her lorgnette to intimidate an encroaching mushroom before that.  Unless she is French.  In which case she is talking about a quizzing glass. 
Life is complex.

One thing you notice, when you're looking at paintings of Georgian and Regency crowd scenes, is how few people are wearing glasses.  When you do see glasses in a crowd, they're generally perched on the nose of a plump parson or peering, bent old woman.  I set aside the possibilities of Eighteenth Century Lasik surgery, contact lenses, and a general eagle-eyed-ness in the population and ask myself why.


Regency Romances portray glasses as a bit fuddy-duddy.  Our Regency heroines hide their spectacles in their reticules (and our Regency heroes have better eyesight than the average squad of fighter pilots.)  This is a Regency Romance convention that seems to have good evidence on its side. 

Nimrud stone and quizzling glass attrib British Museum. Scissor glasses and lorgnette attrib The Met. Pectoral of Senusret cc attrib John Compana. Glasses with wig points and glasses with loops Museum of Vision by permission. Spectacles and case attrib V&A.
 
 
So.  Thinking about the impact of eyeglasses on the world . . .  Imagine a life with no eyeglasses, and you with not-so-good eyes.  What would you miss most?
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