Poisonous Words: The Fallout in the Early Twentieth Century

In the course of doing some JSTOR research, I stumbled across this absolute gem from the British Medical Journal (1900). It's from an article called "Speech as a Septic Influence":

"Not long ago Hubener raised his voice in warning as to the infective possibilities of the surgeon's beard, and recommended that ornamental appendage to be enclosed in what may be called a bacterium net. One may conjure up a prophetic vision of the twentieth-century surgeon with antiseptic mask, beard-bag, gloves, and sterilised robe, operating within a glass sanctuary into which no one is admitted except after the fullest disinfectant lustration. But Fluegge's doctine [that speech puts forth germs into the world] has a much wider application... If speech has these hitherto undreamt-of dangers for the audience, Parliamentary and pulpit orators will have to wear germ-catching muzzles; this, besides protecting their hearers, will doubtless have the further advantage of making their eloquence less copious as well as more sanitary. Society would find in the same sanitary appliance an effective safeguard against bores." (Feb. 17, pg 401)

I love this passage for a number of reasons (principal among them, the idea of a "beard-bag," which I'm trying to imagine appearing on a show like ER or Grey's Anatomy.) I think the most interesting (and the most terrifying) thing about the piece, though, is the way that it couples light sarcasm with the idea of sanitary measures. After all, nobody understands the extent to which germs can be verbally transmitted yet: preventative measures like antiseptic masks (for doctors) and "germ-catching muzzles" (for preachers!) are spoken of as equally possible necessities. At the same time, delightfully, the author is implying that both measures are also equally ludicrous. I'm tempted to pull this out in a classroom setting, ask what the author is doing rhetorically, and then ask the students what we're saying today that will look equally hilarious (and terrifying) in a hundred years...

Almonds, Onions, and Lettuce

What do these foods have in common, you may ask? Well, according to Sir Thomas Elyot (writing in The Castle of Health, in 1539), they're the early modern equivalent of Lunesta. Here are a few excerpts from Elyot's useful self-help guide, which tells users how to balance their humors by eating particular foods:

Almonds "do... clense without any byndynge, wherfore they purge the breste and lunges, specially bytter almondes. Also they do mollifye the bealy, prouoke sleape, and causeth to pysse well, fyue or syx of theym eaten afore meate, kepe a manne from beynge drunke, they be hot and moyst in the fyrst degre." (22v)

Lettuce: "AMonge all herbes, none hath soo good iuyce as letise: for somemen do suppose, that it maketh aboundance of bloude, al be it not very pure or perfyte. It doth set a hote stomake in a very good temper, & maketh good appetite, and eaten in the euennynge, it prouoketh slepe, albe it, it neither doth lowse nor bynd the bealye of his owne propertie. It increaseth mylke in a womans breastes, but it abateth carnall appetite, and moche vsynge therof, hurteth the eye syghte. It is colde and moyst temperatly." (23v)

Onions "styre appetite to meate, and put awaye lothsomnesse, and lowse the bealy, they quycken syght: and beynge eaten in great abundance with meate, they cause one to sleape soundely." (26v--theoretically. The printer had a bit of a mix-up, and labeled page 26 '29' by mistake.) (all italics mine)

So: if you're hoping to fall asleep after your Thanksgiving feast, maybe eat salad with your turkey? (Or just rely on the turkey itself. Which, as we all know, not only contains tryptophans, but is also "hot and moist.")

Sleep Advice from the Elizabethan Era

In 1636, a book called The Haven of Health was republished in London, in its sixth edition. This book, quite frankly, is a gem. After 240 chapters of recipes and helpful hints about improving your health through food (tip: "raw Creame well boiled with a little Sugar, is a good nourishing meate, and good for a weake student"), Thomas Cogan turns his attention to sleep:

"...it is most wholesome to sleepe first on the right side, that the meat may the better descend to the bottome of the stomacke, and be nearer to the liver. Which is to the stomacke as fire to the pot, and after to turne to the left side. For this change doth greatly ease the body, and helpeth concoction. But to lie upon the backe, causeth flegme and other humours to fall into the hinder part of the head, where is the originall of the sinewes, and by that meane the spirits being stopped, the nightmare (as they call it) and palsie, and such like maladies be engendred. Again to lie on the belly, draweth the humours to the eyes, and so hurteth the sight. Yet it helpeth them that have feeble digestion. And we must not onely regard that wee lie on the... side, but also that wee lie with our heads somewhat high, well bolstered up, having sufficient clothes upon us, least that while naturall heate is within about digestion, the outward parts be grieved with cold. It is good also to weare a kerchiffe, or some such like thing in the night on our heads. But to have the feet covered with shoes or otherwise, is very hurtfull to the sight and memory, and distempereth the whole body with heate..." (274).

Clearly, I should not be asking for those fuzzy socks for Christmas.

Sleeping on Stage

Hi again! I took a month-long hiatus from blogging to concentrate on my teaching and my dissertation, but I wanted to mention a really interesting staging of sleep that I saw at a conference recently.

A few weekends ago, I went to Grand Valley State University to take part in their Shakespeare Festival Conference, and I saw a performance of Richard III. Set in a half-modern world of gangs and graffiti, the performance featured a large tarp mounted on the left side of the stage, where a running tally of the dead bodies was kept in hot pinks, blacks, and greens.

Here's where sleep comes in. During the portion when Clarence dies (a death caused by a chainsaw, incidentally, and not a butt of malmsey), the murderers approach from stage right--and Clarence's bed is behind the tarp on the left. The audience can see Clarence's outlined shadow, breathing quietly, but not his features, clothes, or expression. As the murderers do their brutally comic routine, Clarence sleeps, and the audience watches--but only halfway, because the actual body has been replaced in our sight by a simulacrum, and that simulacrum is characterized by the graffitied death count that literally overwrites it. It's a fascinating and rich tableau (complicated even further when the chainsaw-wielding murderer does his thing, and the tarp gets splattered with hot pink 'blood.')

There are a few importance consequences of this staging. First, it literalizes the early modern connection between sleep and death--and the correspondence between the sleeper and the already-dead, codified in language and numbers (and record-keeping). Second, it puts distance between the audience and the (doomed) sleeper, by interspersing a written record of deaths to separate them. Third, it extends the possibility of never quite knowing the identity of a sleeping body, because its features, expression, and even clothing are not distinctly visible--even though the outline can be seen.

I'll have to think more about this production, and its consequences for the portrayal of Clarence's body, but I wanted to jot down some notes, and to update the blog!

Petrarch's Rime Sparse 65: Saturday Sonnet-in-Translation

For this week, here's something slightly different: a prose translation (by Robert Durling) of the famous moment when Petrarch sees Laura for the first time. Enjoy the poem!

Rime Sparse 65

Alas, I was little wary at first, the day when Love came to wound me, who step by step has become lord of my life and sits and the summit!

I did not believe that by the power of his file any bit of strength or worthiness would fail in my hardened heart, but so he goes who esteems himself too highly.

Form now on any defense is too late, except to test whether Love looks on mortal prayers much or little.

I do not pray--nor can it be--that my heart burn moderately, but that she have her part of the fire. 

Mingle Mangle Invective (Saturday Not-quite-Sonnet)

This week, we have a prefatory poem to Rachel Speght's 1617 polemic A Mouzell for Melastomus. Writing in response to an antifeminist tract by Joseph Swetnam, Speght castigates the tract's disorganized rhetoric (or "mingle mangle invective") in her letter before the work. Perhaps to continue this theme, the prefatory poem stresses Speght's education, and shows off Speght's own organizational and rhetorical skills (if, in fact, Speght is the author).

If he that for his Countrie doth expose
himselfe unto the furie of his foe,
doth merit praise and due respect of those,
for whom he did that perill undergoe:
Then let the Author of this Mouzell true
receive the like, of right it is her due.

For she to shield her Sex from Slaunders Dart
and from invective obtrectation,
hath ventured by force of Learnings Art
(in which she hath had education)
to combate with him, which doth shame his Sex,
By offring feeble women to perplex.

Dorothy Sayers: Saturday Sonnet

In honor of the start of the school year, here's a sonnet from Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night, about the still harbor (and the concomitant vibrant motion) offered by the academy. Within the setting of the novel, Harriet Vane writes the opening octave, and Peter Wimsey writes the closing sestina. (As an added bonus, the whole thing weighs in on the sleep trope that resonates throughout the work.)

Here, then, at home, by no more storms distrest,
Folding laborious hands we sit, wings furled;
Here in close perfume lies the rose-leaf curled,
Here the sun stands and knows not east nor west,
Here no tide runs; we have come, last and best,
From the wide zone through dizzying circles hurled,
To that still centre where the spinning world
Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest.

Lay on thy whips, O Love, that we upright,
Poised on the perilous point, in no lax bed
May sleep, as tension at the verberant core
Of music sleeps; for, if thou spare to smite,
Staggering, we stoop, stooping, fall dumb and dead,
And, dying, so, sleep our sweet sleep no more.

For a probing discussion of this sonnet, see the comments on this entry in the blog Commonplaces.