In 19th century Germany, all princes had a prugelknaben: a boy who was brought up alongside the prince and spanked whenever the prince misbehaved.
Don’t Get Too Attached
I would have loved to have included a section on leeches in my Poop book, or in my upcoming book about insects, but they just didn’t quite fit into either subject. That’s the beauty of blogging! I can talk about my leeches here!
Leeches are bloodsucking annelids that have been used by doctors for over two thousand years. In ancient and medieval times they were used to help balance the body fluids (called humors). Leeches were used to cure everything from headaches to mental disorders. The ancients weren’t far wrong about the worms’ medical benefits. They secrete an anticoagulant called hirudin that stops the blood from clotting; they were approved by the FDA a few years ago for medicinal use.
My sister, who lives in Russia, tells me the use of leeches is very common there.
Leeches live in fresh water. They attach themselves to you with three rows of tiny teeth that create a Y-shaped incision. They suck until they’re full, which can take as long as forty minutes. Supposedly they inject you with an anesthetic, which numbs the area so you don’t feel any pain outside of the initial bite, but that seems to be a myth. From what I’ve read, leeches hurt. And you can’t just yank them off you; their teeth would remain embedded. You have to either wait for them to get full and fall off on their own, or apply heat or alcohol to get them to loosen their hold.
The job of leech collecting back in medieval times can’t have been much fun. Usually it was done by women, who hiked up their skirts and waded bare-legged into ponds, waiting for the leeches to attach themselves.
Even well into the twentieth century, leeches were a standard dental treatment, according to The Excruciating History of Dentistry. They were applied to ease a toothache, after an extraction, and after root canal. To get the leech to the right place, it had to be coaxed into a “leech tube,” which was an open-at-both-ends glass tube. The end was placed over the problem area and the leech was expected to emerge from its tube and attach itself to the afflicted area. But the leech didn’t always cooperate. Sometimes it could take as much as half an hour for the leech to poke its head out and attach itself. Or it might emerge too quickly, in which case there was a real danger of its going down the patient’s throat.
Weighing In
Why do many women in medieval paintings look pregnant? Fat Queen Isabella made it fashionable to be plump. Thin women strapped pillows around their middles.
Ye Scurvy Dog!
Not so much with the vegetables.
Scurvy is a horrific disease. For centuries it was the bane of pirates and mariners. We now know it is caused by vitamin deficiencies, mainly C and B. It came with a host of gruesome symptoms, including blackened skin, joint pain, muscle softening, difficulty breathing, rotting gums, and the loss of teeth. To add to this cheery list, sufferers emitted an intolerable smell (because they were literally rotting to death).
Scurvy sufferers also exhibited some bizarre personality disorders. The disease seems to have caused a person’s sensory mechanisms to go haywire. According to this BBC website, the smell of flower blossoms could make a person cry out in agony, and just the sound of a gunshot was enough to kill a man with advanced scurvy.
A variation on the maritime disease was known as “land scurvy.” It could be a progressive disease, flaring up seasonally over the course of thirty years or more. English people of means reviled fruits and vegetables of all kinds, and as a result, almost everyone suffered from a chronic vitamin C deficiency. According to Lacey Baldwin Smith in his book, Treason in Tudor England, scurvy may have been the reason for “the sheer stupidity of some of the treason plots” hatched by sixteenth-century Englishmen.
To Die For
The 1600s were a foppish time for male fashion–men of rank wore make-up, high heels, and elaborate curls. In 1625, poisoner Signora Toffana invented a makeup made of liquid arsenic. Her Aqua Toffana was used to dispatch as many as 600 husbands.
Sad but True
Forty percent of the world’s people have no access to clean water. A family of five requires at minimum 26 gallons– that’s 220 pounds–per day. In places without adequate plumbing, that water has to be lugged home in buckets.
Doctor Sawdust
Ever wonder why they’re called Graham crackers?
According to a really cool book called Terrors of the Table, Sylvester Graham was a Presbyterian clergyman born in Boston in 1795. Although not a doctor, he called himself an MD. He was a big believer in eating like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden—in other words, a pretty strict form of vegetarianism. This was not a popular idea at the time. But his movement gained traction. Besides advocating a diet based on fruits, nuts, and seeds, he recommended hard mattresses, cold baths, and chastity. His insistence that bread be baked in the home and made from wholemeal, unsieved flour gained him the nickname Dr. Sawdust. Graham was a popular lecturer up and down the east coast, promising his followers good health and a long life. His name lives on in the crackers we all know and love.
Sylvester Graham died at 57 after a life of ill health.
Unsuit-able
Queen Victoria’s portly son, Edward VII, wore his vest unbuttoned at the bottom because it wouldn’t close over his girth. To this day, men still leave the bottom button undone.
You’re All Wet
A person who weighs 150 pounds is 90 pounds water. (That’s eleven gallons.)
Sweet
In AD 996, cane sugar arrived in Venice from Alexandria. Before that, honey was the only known sweetener for most of the world.