Blog Archive for Sarah Albee, Writer of History and Science Books for Kids

Ruff Times

Posted February 26, 2015

In my new book I have a section about ruff collars—those accordion-like, cartwheel-shaped gizmos that were in style from about 1530 to 1630. That’s a long time to be in fashion, expecially considering how incredibly ungainly and impractical (not to say unattractive) these things were. The Dutch wore them for even longer—they seemed to prefer being intentionally out of style. Even working people wore them, although theirs tended to be a much smaller version–because they had to work for a living.

Making a ruff required huge skill and patience. The linen was pleated into folds in a figure eight pattern, using a “poking stick,” and creased with heated irons. By the 1560s, someone figured out how to make starch as a stiffener. Wheat was boiled to a goopy paste, spackled on, and brushed into every fold. The ruff was then dried in front of a fire, before the whole process was repeated. Then it had to be pinned onto a wire support (called an underpropper), which was in turn pinned to the neckline of the dress or other garment. This process could take hours. Even kids wore them.

This is a boy. Lord Arundel. You can tell by the shoes.

Ruffs were fragile. They drooped in wet weather. The bigger ones allowed the wearer virtually no freedom of movement. Members of the nobility wore huge ruffs to advertise their leisure status; the wearer was incapable of performing any physical labor. Spoons had to be made with longer handles to reach the person’s mouth.

Here’s Henry III of France. I’m pretty sure that’s a jewel, and not a botfly, on his head.

Just to see what it might have been like, I made a crude ruff out of cardboard and tried walking around with it. What a nightmare. You can’t see your feet—and I wasn’t wearing a floor-length farthingale. Here’s my husband, gamely modeling it for me. He’s a pretty good sport.

Sources: Liza Picard: Elizabeth’s London (125-6)

and Ewing, Dress and Undress (32)

Renaissance Selfies

Posted February 19, 2015

In my last post I discussed Steven Johnson’s book How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World, and I couldn’t resist another post about it. It’s such a cool book, if you haven’t read it.

In his chapter called “Glass,” Johnson describes how in the early fifteenth century, glassmakers in Murano figured out a way to combine their clear glass with an amalgam of tin and mercury to make a shiny, reflective surface: the mirror. Before mirrors were invented, few people had ever seen an accurate reflection of themselves. And with that advancement, another innovation co-evolved: self-portraits. Before 1400, Johnson points out, there were virtually none. But with the invention of mirrors, Renaissance artists suddenly began painting themselves, because for the first time, they could accurately capture the features of their own faces. Rembrandt painted forty self-portraits.

Here’s just a sampling:

Taddeo di Bartolo, 1401

Raphael, 1506

Tintoretto, 1547

Artemesia, 1615

Two of Rembrandt’s 40 selfies

Fashion Evolution

Posted February 17, 2015

Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley, widow of the author of the Pure Food Act, displaying the shocking bathing costume of 1895 while Marjorie Gunnels wears the sensible one of 1936.
(Library of Congress)

I’m reading a book by the always-fascinating Steven Johnson, called How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World. His premise is that certain key innovations, such as the discovery of glass and refrigeration, set in motion a whole array of changes in society, and that they eventually triggered changes that you might never have predicted. The history of ideas observes a co-evolutionary process, he says, much the way that living things have co-evolved. He calls it the “hummingbird effect:” the evolution of pollen led to the symbiotic alteration of the hummingbird’s wing, which enabled it to hover alongside a flower. The co-evolution of ideas, he suggests, can work the same way.

Being me, I turned straight to the chapter about sanitation (entitled “Clean”). He posits a fascinating theory: the adoption of widespread chlorination of drinking water led to a rapid co-evolution in women’s bathing suit fashions. The story in a nutshell—in the early twentieth century, a New Jersey doctor named John Leal took a huge risk. He unilaterally made the decision to add calcium hypochlorite, aka chlorine, to the public drinking water supply in New Jersey, in an effort to kill disease-causing bacteria. His theory was that although chlorine is a deadly poison in large doses, it could be extremely beneficial in smaller ones, but no one had ever tried to chlorinate drinking water before. His bold experiment worked, and epidemics of typhoid and dysentery, terrible killers especially of young children, dropped precipitously.

But another change co-evolved: After World War I, ten thousand chlorinated public baths and pools opened up across America, which, Johnson asserts, resulted in rapid evolution of women’s bathing costumes. They went from wearing long, heavy, woolen dresses with shoes and stockings in the late 19^th century, to—gasp–exposing their arms and legs, and lowering their necklines by the 1920s.

It’s a fascinating theory, and I think it’s valid. But I also think that railroads made a huge contribution to this co-evolutionary fashion. Rail travel made it possible for many more people to make a day trip to the seaside, which had once been the province of the super-wealthy.

(All images from Library of Congress.)

1897

1904

1906

1921

Book Trailer Debut

Posted February 11, 2015

Today on Mr. Schu’s blog (that would be Mr. John Schumacher), I unveil the trailer for my new book, Why’d They Wear That? Please click here to hop on over there to see it.

Portrait of a Portraitist

Posted January 26, 2015

Charles Willson Peale (1741 – 1827) was an American painter who might best be known for paintings like this one, of George Washington:And these, of Lewis and Clark: But what I love about him are his many paintings of children, including his own. Here’s a really poignant one of his first wife, Rachel Brewer, weeping over their small daughter Margaret, who died of smallpox.After bearing ten children, Rachel died, and Peale married Elizabeth dePeyster. She bore him seven more. Here are the names of his seventeen children. It’s heartbreaking how many of the children died so young, and some names appear twice (Margaret and Titian). Eleven of the children reached maturity. The final child, Elizabeth, is named after her mother, who died soon after giving birth. Once you hit child #5 (Raphaelle), all the kids are named after notable painters, including the girls, and naturalists and statesmen.

Margaret Jane, b. 1763 d. 1763
James Willson, b. 1765 d 1767
Eleanor, b. 1770 d 1770
Margaret Van Bordley, b. 1772 d 1772
Raphaelle, b. 1774 d. 1825
Angelica Kauffmann, b.1775 d 1853
Rembrandt, b. 1778 d. 1860
Titian Ramsay, b. 1780 d. 1798
Rubens, b. 1784 d. 1865
Sophonisba Augusciola, b. 1786 d. 1859
Rosalba Carriera, b. 1788 d. 1790
Vandyke, b. 1792 d. 1792
Charles Linnaeus, b. 1794 d. 1832
Benjamin Franklin, b. 1795 d. 1870
Sybilla Miriam, b. 1797 d. 1856
Titian Ramsay, b. 1799 d. 1885
Elizabeth DePeyster, b. 1802 d.?

Here’s a picture of many of the Peale children:Peale married again in 1805.

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/pdf/0300025769.pdf?winOpen=true
All images from Wikimedia

Someone Pinch Me

Posted January 8, 2015

via Wikimedia commons

For those of us old enough to have grown up with the original Star Trek series, Mr. Spock’s Vulcan nerve pinch is a familiar conceit. Here’s a short video compilation of his technique.

I’ve been researching the history of medicine, and according to this fascinating book by Victor Robinson, MD about the history of anesthesia, compression of a patient’s carotid artery to induce unconsciousness before surgery has been a time-tested, if flawed, technique since ancient Greece. In Greek, carotid means drowsiness. In his History of Animals, Aristotle says: “If these veins are pressed externally, men, though not actually choked, become insensible, shut their eyes, and fall flat on the ground.” (18)

And the technique was still being used a thousand years later. A Spanish physician of the Renaissance reports witnessing it:

The carotids or soporales, that is, sleep-producing arteries, are so named because when they are pressed upon or closed in any way we soon go to sleep. This experiment I saw performed by Realdo Colombo in 1544 in Pisa on a young man in the presence of a number of gentlemen, with no less fear on their part than amusement on ours, we giving them to understand that it was done by sorcery. (39)

The Vulcan nerve pinch seems to be more in the shoulder, but the principal does seem similar.

How Perfectly Offal

Posted December 18, 2014

In the midst of this season of overindulgence, I thought I would post about one of my favorite people from history, Catherine de Medici (1519 – 1589), Italian-born wife of Henry II, king of France, and one of her favorite meals: cibreo. This famous Renaissance Florentine dish was a stew made of gizzards, testicles, offal, and rooster coxcombs. Despite her ironclad constitution and robust health, more than once Catherine ate so much of it she nearly died of indigestion.

Here’s the recipe, adapted from this website:

Catherine’s Cibreo

Serves 4 (or 1 if your name is Catherine de Medici)

You will need (but don’t ask me where to get):

¾ pound of chicken livers

3 ounces of coxcombs

1 tablespoon butter

¼ cup of meat stock

4 cock testicles

2 egg yolks

juice of one lemon

1 tablespoon flour

salt and pepper to taste

Procedure:

Wash the coxcombs, then boil them until the outer membrane separates easily when rubbed. Drain and remove the membranes. Cut the coxcombs into pieces.
Clean and wash the livers.
Thoroughly wash the testicles.
Melt the butter, brown the coxcombs, reduce heat and cook until tender. Add some boiling stock if it gets dry. When the coxcombs are almost done, add the livers and testicles, salt and pepper, and cook for ten more minutes.
In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, lemon juice, and remaining broth. Pour over the offal, remove from pan and serve immediately.

Remember: don’t eat too much, no matter how delicious it is!

Motoring Gear

Posted December 15, 2014

Not long ago, as we were driving to New York, this guy passed us on the highway.

It reminded me of fashions people used to wear when autos first came out. I have blogged before about how the first models were open to the air, so passengers wore goggles and “dusters,” and women often wore big, sweeping, net veils over their hats and faces. Here’s one more picture that I came across in the Library of Congress archives, from around 1910:Pretty awesome, isn’t it?

You can read more about these fashions in my upcoming book, Why’d They Wear That? (National Geographic, February 2015.)

image: LOC LC-USZ62-74640

Banes of My Existence

Posted December 11, 2014

A very long time ago, when I was taking my SATs, I encountered a short, four letter word in the analogy section that I didn’t know: bane. Reader, if you are under the age of 17 and still have SATs to look forward to, by golly I want to teach you what the word means. It means a cause of harm, ruin, or death. In Anglo Saxon it means “murderer.” I guessed wrong on the test, and subsequently started seeing or reading that word every time I opened a book.

As I research poisons (the subject of my next book), I have found that the common names of many poisonous plants include the word “bane.” They got their names either because they poisoned grazing animals, or because they were used by humans to poison “pest” animals (like wolves and wild dogs). They all contain powerful alkaloids, but have also been used as medicines, and humans have known about them for centuries. Also, it’s amazing how often Shakespeare mentions the “bane” poisons. Here are a few:

Monkshood or Wolfsbane
David Baird [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Wolfsbane (Aconitium napellus), also known as monkshood. Some literary-minded toxicologists have speculated that it’s what killed Romeo– Shakespeare definitely knew about aconite.

Henbane

Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) It may be the poison Hamlet’s ghostly father mentions (“hebenon” is henbane):

Sleeping within mine orchard,

My custom always of the afternoon

Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,

With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,

And in the porches of mine ear did pour

The leprous distillment.

cowbane
By Anneli Salo (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Cowbane (Cicuta virosa) also known as water hemlock, is mentioned by the witches in Macbeth:

Root of hemlock, digg’d in the dark

The Mill, The Din

Posted December 8, 2014

Last week, while driving back from Maine, I realized I was passing right through Lowell, Massachusetts, so I stopped by to visit the Boott Cotton Mills Museum.

It’s a pretty awe-inspiring structure, which looms over the town. You approach it by walking across a canal, and then you’re in the enormous courtyard.

The mill workers’ stories have been memorialized in the images of Lewis Hine, and in fictional retellings such as Lyddie by Katherine Paterson and Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop. I include this part of history in my upcoming nonfiction book, Why’d They Wear That?

And yet, no amount of reading about how loud the machines were quite prepares you for how loud the machines are. Here’s just a snippet; and this was with just about 20% of the machines in operation. Nearly every account and oral history of mill workers references the noise. Have a listen (I hope this link works):IMG_3583

image by Lewis Hine LOC