Smile!

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Note the quivery lipline.

Have a look at the picture of George Washington on a dollar bill. Note his stiff, unsmiling lips. Doesn’t he look uncomfortable? Well, he was. He had a raging toothache.

The portraitist, Gilbert Stuart, was a charming guy and well known for getting his subjects in a good mood with his lively banter. But Washington turned out to be a tough nut. When he was elected President in 1789, he had just one tooth left in his whole mouth.

Gilbert "Funster" Stuart, Washington's portraitist

According to a fascinating book called The Excruciating History of Dentistry, Washington owned many types of false teeth, including sets made of lead, human teeth, and elephant and walrus tusks. The ones in his mouth in the dollar bill portrait were made of hippopotamus ivory. Not only did they ache, but they made his mouth jut out.

After his last tooth was pulled out, in 1796, Washington was no longer able to anchor his dentures to anything inside his mouth. It was probably impossible to chew anything. The poor man had to keep his lips tightly closed to prevent his dentures from popping out of his mouth.

The King’s Speech

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King Charles I was a stutterer. The only sentence he uttered without a stammer was his farewell message in 1649, just before he was beheaded.

The Bark and the Bite

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As part of my research for my new book about insects, I’ve been reading a lot about malaria prophylaxis (that is, preventing malaria). For centuries, cinchona powder was the only known successful treatment for malaria. It was made from the ground-up bark of a cinchona tree, which was discovered growing in the foothills of the Andes mountains. In the early 19th century, scientists figured out how to derive quinine from cinchona bark. After that breakthrough, quinine saved millions of lives and led to a lot of imperialist expansion into previously off-limits territories (like, for instance, Africa).

A few weeks ago, I actually bought some cinchona powder on Ebay. And also a bottle of old-fashioned quinine pills. They came from an old pharmacy, which I think was being demolished or something, and the seller put a bunch of the old medicine bottles up on Ebay for sale. I was a successful bidder for these products:

I thought I was bidding just on the bottles, which I was planning to bring for school visits, but they came in the mail nearly full of cinchona and quinine pills, which as I think about it, may not have been entirely legal to send through the mail.

Doctors don’t prescribe quinine much anymore unless they’re really desperate to help a patient who hasn’t responded to other treatments. Quinine has unpredictable and potentially serious side effects (among them, an unsteady gait and ringing ears). I was interviewing a specialist in infectious diseases some time ago, and I asked her if it would hurt me to take a tiny taste from my bottle of cinchona powder. Evidently it’s extremely bitter (British soldiers masked the bitter taste of their quinine water with gin–and created the gin and tonic). She said most likely it would not hurt me. I haven’t dared yet, but I’ll let you know if I do.

What Not to Wear: Pajamas

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Most men and women of the 14th and 15th centuries slept naked. If a traveler needed lodging for the night, he joined the throng in the bed.

Scratch That!

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About This Blog

I’m still learning my way around the art of blogging, but now that my new site has been up for a couple of weeks, I’m starting to get the hang of this. My goal is to blog about things kids will find interesting and that have to do with history, science, the history of science, or the science of history.

As some of you know, I have a book out about the history of toilets and sanitation. I have another one in progress, about the effect of insects on human civilization. And I’ve been working on a third, about the history of clothing and fashions and how they fit into the great sweep of human history.

So, I’m going to try to post about bugs, poop, and clothing on a fairly regular basis.

Flea Furs

Which brings me to flea furs, otherwise known as zibellini. They’re a favorite topic of mine, because they incorporate insects, fashion, and hygiene.

Let’s say you’re a person of high rank in the sixteenth century, living in Europe. Most likely, you are pestered by fleas, like everyone else. Here’s what to do: take a small dead animal—head, claws, tail and all—and drape it jauntily over one of your arms. Then wait for awhile.

An unknown lady by Segar

The strategy behind flea furs was that the fleas dining off you would decide that it was more fun to dine off the dead animal you were carrying instead. (Let’s not examine this logic too carefully. Fleas are attracted to warm-blooded animals, not dead stuffed ones.) After the fleas had leapt onto your flea fur, you could give it a periodic shake to dislodge the bugs. One hopes people shook their flea furs outside, but the records are hazy on this detail.

Flea furs were usually small animals such as sable or marten, and the stuffed creatures could be elaborately ornamented. Precious jewels often replaced eyes and claws. Flea furs were a pretty short-lived fad, which originated in Italy and quickly spread to other European courts. Henry VIII owned two flea furs. His daughter, Elizabeth had at least one.

The fad didn’t last very long, although the fashion for wearing a whole, stuffed animal (called a stole) or many small animals sewn together to make a larger wrap, made an unfortunate comeback in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Flushing Queens

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A godson of Queen Elizabeth I, Sir John Harington, designed a flush toilet in 1596. He actually built one for his godmother, but he was laughed out of court.

Splish Splash

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In medieval France, many wealthier families could afford bathtubs. It was polite to invite your guests to bathe with you before dining.

Reel Bugs: There’s a Fly in My Movie!

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A lot of people are freaked out by bugs. You may be one of these people. Hollywood has made a lot of movies that capitalize on people’s fears. I’m working on a book about insects and their effect on human history. And as part of my research, I’ve been watching a lot of insect fear films. During the heydey of these giant bug movies, the 1950s, Hollywood produced a whole bunch of horror films that depicted oversized insects (and other arthropods) terrorizing citizens.

If you’re interested in checking some of these out (Netflix has most of them), here are a few suggestions.

Them! (1954): This one features ants that grow to giant size after being exposed to radiation from atomic bomb tests.

The Fly (1958): This is the original version, which was remade in 1986. A scientist’s experiment goes horribly wrong. It features Vincent Price, who for a change doesn’t play a creepy bad guy. (Side note: I had no idea he was over 6’4.)

Tarantula! (1955): OK, I know they’re not insects. But this one is too fun not to include: a mutated giant spider stalks and kills unsuspecting citizens, leaving large pools of venom behind. Not to spoil it for you, but the bizarrely-abrupt ending is notable because it features a young Clint Eastwood as a fighter pilot who drops napalm on the beast and saves the day.

Is it possible for insects to get that big? The short answer is, duh!—no. If something—say, a large tarantula—were to get a lot larger, its surface area would decrease relative to its volume. And its demand for oxygen would increase out of proportion to the rate of oxygen supply in the atmosphere.

During the Carboniferous period (about 300 million years ago) insects and other creepy-crawlers were able to grow larger because many scientists now think there was extra oxygen in the air. There were giant cockroaches and dragonflies with 2 ½ foot wingspans. Millipede-like bugs reached lengths of six feet.

Next on my Netflix list? Beginning of the End (1957): It’s about another experiment gone awry—this time, adding chemicals to grow huge grain results in giant, man-eating grasshoppers.

Stand-up Routine

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Men’s “dress” breeches in the late 1700s were skin tight and made of leather (the only fabric that wouldn’t split at the seams). It was impossible to sit down in them.