In my bookWhy’d They Wear That? there’s a section about the history of athletic wear for both men and women. It was frustrating to narrow down the images to feature, as we only had two pages to devote to the subject (one for each gender), and I yearned for two dozen. But the beauty of a blog is I can post as many amazing images as I want, images I would love to have included in the book. So I’ll just post them here, in no particular order—just people being sporty, from back in the day.
1912 Olympic freestyle gold medal team
1917
Foot race, 1900
1900
1905
Picture credits: top, basketball: Library of Congress LC-USZC4-9676, boxers: LOC 95505173, golfer: LOC 2002709746, swimmers: LOC LC-USZ62-74630, football: LOC 3b38565r, skiers: Minnesota Historical Society MR2.9 SP9.1 1917 r47, footrace: Minnesota Historical Society ID Number: GV3.41 r19, batting: Minnesota Historical Society ID Number: GV3.11 r35, baseball player: LOC 18577r, swimmers: Minnesota Historical Society ID Number: GV3.62 r160, skaters: LOC LOC2004676513
I’m deep into image research for an upcoming book, and have been trawling old periodicals for advertisements. Here are some of my favorites–probably none of which I can use in my book, but I felt they deserved honorable mention here.
I love her come hither look.
From 1928, during Prohibition. Implied here is that whiskey was the go-to medication for colds and flu
From 1892: Look at the suggestions for who might need a loud whistle: ladies in the country, gold diggers, emigrants, cyclists
This and the next one remind me of that carnival scene in Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang
Well, no-duh that Coca-Cola is marketed to the weary and despondent and people with mental exhaustion–it used to contain cocaine (which was legal)
In 1863 a French chemist and patent medicine maker named Angelo Mariani combined wine and coca and called it Vin Mariani. The combination of cocaine and alcohol must have packed a powerful wallop. The “tonic wine” became extremely popular for “overworked men, delicate women,” and even “sickly children.”
Ulysses S. Grant drank the cocaine-enhanced tonic. So did President William McKinley and Queen Victoria.
Mariani sent cases of his health tonic to celebrities, asking in return only that they send him a picture of themselves along with a note telling him what they thought of it. Evidently a lot of them liked it, as Mariani’s product was advertised with some pretty famous celebrity endorsements.
Here’s one from the Pope:A couple other celebs you might have heard of:
Coca Cola was created as a competitor of Vin Mariani. Because alcohol was banned in the state of Georgia, the creator, John Pemberton, created an alcohol-free version of Vin Mariani in 1886 that included coca leaves and Kola nuts.
Cocaine was legal in the United States until 1914.
Last week while I was watching the PBS miniseries Wolf Hall, my son happened to wander in during a particularly sad scene and, immediately intrigued, asked me what was going on. Without spoiling it for you if you haven’t seen it, or read the book, I’ll just say that I explained to him that someone had died of sweating sickness. He had never heard of it. I thought I’d re-post this blog that I wrote four years ago, in case there are others who might be interested in learning more about this awful and mysterious disease.
English physician John Caius
Two nights ago, I had one of those shivery, low-grade fevers. I’ve certainly felt way worse, but I didn’t feel up to anything more than lying on the couch and watching NBA playoffs. I happen not to be someone who sweats a lot—not to give you TMI, but please bear with me, as it’s relevant—and yet in the middle of the night I woke up drenched in sweat, the fever having broken. Which led me to the subject of today’s blog—that dreadful disease that swept through the sixteenth century for just about a hundred years, and then vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared: The Sweating Sickness, or The Sweats, as it was called.
As I lay there in the middle of the night, I knew I was fine. But I thought about how terrifying such symptoms would have been for people of the sixteenth century, and how many of them would have been dead within hours.
Henry, Duke of Suffolk, who died of the Sweats
His brother, Charles, who also got it–they died hours apart
Henry VIII’s older brother died of it. Thomas Cromwell’s wife and daughters all died of it. Ann Boleyn had it, but survived it. It wasn’t a disease of poverty and filth, as so many others seemed to be. The Duchess of Suffolk’s sons, Henry and Charles, died of it (see pictures–I find them especially poignant, perhaps because they were painted by the masterful Hans Holbein). During especially bad outbreaks, whole towns succumbed to the disease (according to some accounts, in places where it struck, 80 to 90% of the local population died of it). Thousands upon thousands of people died of this mysterious and highly contagious disease. Its cause continues to mystify medical historians.
The brief but terrifying visitation of the disease first occurred in 1485, then reappeared in four subsequent outbreaks, the last of which was 1551, after which it never reappeared. It seemed to favor the young and healthy. The last outbreak was witnessed and written about by the English physician, John Caius (or Kaye), whose pamphlet “The Sweate” was published in 1552.
The disease struck without warning, beginning with a chill and tremors, followed by a fever and profuse sweating. His description of symptoms included abdominal pains, headache, delirium, “passion of the heart” (some form of tachycardia), and “a marveilous heavinesse and a desire to sleape.”
The disease moved with frightening speed, killing many people within two or three hours. As one chronicler put it, there were “some merry at dinner and dedde at supper.”
Source: Hans Zinsser, Rats, Lice, and History, 1947
In my last couple of posts, I discussed how the Christian church used to forbid physicians from cutting into bodies, which left them with few diagnostic tools besides examining urine and feeling pulses. Traditional Chinese medicine took it a step further. From about the 1700s to the 1950s, aristocratic ladies (or their servants) remained hidden behind a curtain. The doctor would hand over a “diagnostic doll” and the woman, revealing just her hands through the curtain, would point to the place on the doll that corresponded to the place on her own body that hurt.
In my last post, I discussed the limited diagnostic options that were available to physicians, who spent a lot of time examining urine and taking pulses. As a follow up to the examining urine series, here is a series showing patients having their pulses taken. Part of me wishes doctors still dressed like this.
Medieval and Renaissance-era physicians were forbidden by the Church to cut into a body, living or dead. That distasteful work was left to the barber surgeons. So in order to diagnose a patient’s problem, physicians couldn’t do much besides checking the patient’s pulse and examining the person’s “output,” i.e., his urine (and, occasionally, poop).
I’ve been doing image research for a book, and it’s extraordinary how many pictures you stumble across of physicians examining urine. Have a look:A
In the course of my research for my next book, which is about poison, I did some reading about Catherine the Great. I’d come across a reference that mentioned that her violent, sulky, deeply reviled husband, Peter III, had been poisoned.
Turns out, he probably wasn’t, but the story of their marriage is still pretty fascinating.
Catherine (née Sophia) was a young German princess who married Peter III in 1745, when she was 16 years old. He was 17, the proclaimed heir to the Russian throne, and the nephew of the empress Elizabeth (who was the daughter of Peter the Great). He would eventually become emperor, but would reign for just six months.
Their wedding was delayed when he contracted smallpox. Where before he had been blandly inoffensive looking, the first look Catherine got of him after his illness revealed that his face was horribly disfigured–swollen and pitted with pockmarks. His head had been shaved and he was wearing an enormous wig. She reacted with horror, which didn’t go over very well with him. Their marriage was loveless. Although they slept in the same bed for nine years, he did nothing but play with his huge collection of toy soldiers on top of the covers. During the day he spent most of his time dressing his servants in Prussian uniforms (Prussia was Russia’s enemy at the time) and leading them through military drills, playing screechily on his violin, and training his dogs inside the royal bedroom, which became a smelly kennel. He also drank a lot. He grew increasingly hostile toward his wife, and publicly threatened to banish her (or kill her) so that he could marry his mistress. He managed to alienate most of the clergy, guards, and nobles.
Catherine had garnered a lot of sympathetic friends at the court. In 1762, she staged a coup to overthrow him. He was “persuaded” to abdicate and did so. Years later, Frederick the Great said, “He allowed himself to be dethroned like a child being sent to bed.” Ouch.
He was made a state prisoner and housed in a summer estate, but no one really knew what to do with the deposed emperor, who still remained a threat. Catherine probably didn’t overtly declare to her close advisors how convenient Peter’s death might be to her political survival, but they may have read her mind.
On July 17, 1762, several close associates of Catherine’s invited the prisoner to dine with them. Everyone drank heavily. Then, whether planned or because a quarrel broke out, they fell on Peter and tried to smother him with a mattress. When he broke free, they caught him and strangled him with a scarf. It may have been a drunken brawl, or a premeditated act.
Catherine, eight years after Peter’s death
Catherine, horrified if not completely surprised, declared that the death was a medical tragedy. She ordered the body dissected to check for traces of poison. None was found. The doctors declared he had died of natural causes, probably an acute hemorrhoidal attack.
The toy is inside the plastic container, which is inside the chocolate egg. Come on, is this not the coolest toy/treat ever?
I don’t usually do obituaries on this blog, but I couldn’t let the recent passing of Michelle Ferrero go unacknowledged, as he made history in his own right.
He was the candy maker who invented Tic Tacs, Nutella, and the chocolates called Ferrero Rocher. He died, one might say appropriately, this past Valentine’s day. With his vast riches and reclusive lifestyle, he was sort of a real-life version of Willy Wonka.
I remember when I was studying Italian in school, the first dialogue in my book was as follows:
Hai fame?
–Si! Ho fame.
Ecco Nutella!
He also invented Kinder eggs, which aren’t as familiar to Americans because they’re not sold in this country. They’re hollow chocolate eggs that contain an assemble-yourself toy inside, sort of like Cracker Jacks except that the toy is way more complicated and cool, or at least, it used to be. The toys have a zillion tiny parts to them, and they pose a choking hazard, which is why they’re not allowed to be sold here. Europeans appear to be less litigious.
I used to bring my kids Kinder eggs when I traveled to the Bologna book fair every year.
Forks were not widely used in mid-16th century Europe. Most people ate with their fingers or speared their meat with a knife. It wasn't until around 1600 that a traveller presented Elizabeth I with a two-pronged fork. She was so delighted with it she had replicas made in gold, coral, and crystal.
