Category: Health

Made for Walking

On By Sarah AngletonIn Health, History, Sports14 Comments

On March 4th, 1861, Abraham Lincoln shook hands at his inaugural ball with a man who had bet against him winning the office of the presidency. Edward Payson Weston had made the bet, agreeing that should he be the loser, he would walk from Boston to Washington DC for the presidential inauguration. He started out on February 22 and walked 478 miles in ten days and ten hours. He didn’t make it in time for the inauguration itself, but because of the press attention he got along the journey, he received an invitation to the ball.

Weston, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Now, I’m a walker. I have one of those fitness trackers and I try to get to at least 13,000 steps a day, though of course I’m not successful every day. Some are definitely easier than others. I’ve also participated in challenges to walk the year, for example 2018 miles walked in 2018. I’ve completed lengthy day hikes, including the twenty-six-mile trek around Lake Geneva in Southern Wisconsin. Because it’s fun, and good for me, and it’s better than running, which is stupid.

But I am truly amazed by the accomplishments of Edward Payson Watson, whose inauguration walk kicked off not only a presidency, but also a pedestrian career. By that, I don’t mean that his career was boring. I mean that he was a professional pedestrian, once walking 2,600 miles from Portland, Maine to Chicago, Illinois in twenty-six days, winning a prize of $10,000 for the effort.

Payson would go on to complete a number of long-distance walks throughout his life, including a 51-day, 1546- mile from New York to Minneapolis when he was seventy-four years old. It was a feat that broke his previous record for the same walk by more than a day—a record set when he was a mere sixty-eight years old.

I rarely look so stylish when I’m walking. And those boots don’t look to me like they’re made for it. Edward Payson Weston. Spooner & Wells, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Both walks were impressive, but his most famous was in 1909 when he set off to cross the North American continent from New York to San Francisco in one hundred days, excepting Sundays. He experienced a number of delays and complications on this journey and wound up completing the challenge in 104 days and five hours.

Personally, I find that pretty amazing, but Payson was disappointed enough to try a transcontinental journey again the next year, this time leaving from Los Angeles and hoofing it to New York. He accomplished the trip in just seventy-eight walking days, a record that fell shortly after as a man by the name of Paul Lange soon completed the same trek in a little under 77 days.

Because the world of competitive long-distance walking is brutal. Apparently.

I know I have recently found that to be true. At the beginning of this summer vacation, I gave each of my teenage sons fitness trackers of their own, the same kind I have, with the goal of making them more aware of their activity, or lack thereof through the summer months.

Image by Mike Ljung from Pixabay

The idea was that they would need to at least record a set number of steps before sitting down to play video games, which aren’t limited as much in the summer months as they are during the school year. I was pretty proud of this arrangement. What I hadn’t counted on, though, was the fact that my fourteen-year-old, who this spring took up distance running for his school track team, is incredibly competitive.

So now I can’t sit down to say, write a blog post, without my son asking me how many steps I have and bragging about his own total. Turns out, he may get his competitive streak from his mother, and now each night sees us pacing through the house, trying to outdo one another by at least a few steps.

I guess that’s a good thing. Edward Payson Weston claimed he engaged in competitive distance walking for his health and to encourage others to resist the evils of the automobile, which made them lazy and sedentary. I don’t know about that, but with the current price of gas, I certainly don’t mind walking a little more and driving a little less. And if I can encourage my children to walk more and play less Mario Kart, then it’s well worth the effort.

‘Cause I Eats Me Spinach

On By Sarah AngletonIn Food, Health19 Comments

As I sit here at the end of January it is stupid cold in my corner of the world. But the sun is shining and the days are starting to get ever so slightly noticeably longer. We’re now less than a week away from letting a rodent who can’t even chuck wood tell us whether winter will last another six weeks or if it will be closer to another month and a half.

All this means is that I am starting to realize that the extra weight I packed on through the holiday season (and the months of pandemic-induced inactivity), isn’t going to be covered by a bulky sweater forever. It has occurred to me that if I would rather not try to squish the extra bulge into a swimsuit when the weather actually does warm up, that I probably need to start eating less cake and more spinach now.

So much iron. Except maybe not that much. But there’s some. nad_dyagileva, via Pixabay.

I guess that’s ok. I do like spinach, at least the fresh kind, and I know that it’s good for me because Popeye once said it’s what “makes hoomans strong an’ helty,” and then his forearms ballooned to three times their normal size.

Rumor has long held that spinach is a great source of iron, though not probably as much as originally thought. The story, or at least a version of it, goes that while German researcher E. von Wolff was studying the iron content of spinach in 1870, he misplaced a decimal point, leading to the conclusion that spinach had ten times the amount of iron it really does possess. So, Popeye creator Elzie Sager chose spinach as the superfood to fuel his hero because of a then sixty-year-old math error.

I encountered this story on a daily calendar that features quirky historical tidbits that I got as a Christmas gift. The accidental overcalculation of spinach iron sure does make for a great story, complete with a lesson in the importance of peer review. But like so many great stories, it’s not really true.

We know that now because of the solid investigative work of Dr. Mike Sutton, who also liked the story a lot before he stopped and thought about it and realized it wasn’t exactly well researched. He explained this in great detail in a 2010 article published in the Internet Journal of Criminology. It’s a pretty good read if you have the time and inclination.

In case you don’t want to read Sutton’s thoughtful work, and you’d rather take the word of a blogger who regularly engages in the type of shoddy research that leads to 150 years’ worth of great stories without much truth to them, I’ll sum it up:

  1. Although there hasn’t been an entirely exhaustive study of the work of E. von Wolff in order to evaluate every decimal point placement, no obvious error of this kind has been found.
  2. There is procedural sloppiness present in the work of some American researchers studying spinach around 1930, which may have contributed to a misunderstanding, and later clarification, of the iron content of spinach.
  3. Popeye claimed to eat healthful spinach because it had so much vitamin A, and under the direction of his original creator, never mumbled a single somewhat incoherent word about iron.
  4. You shouldn’t believe every story you read, even if it comes from a generally reputable source, unless it is supported by a reliable primary source, because everyone loves a good story and sometimes researchers are lazy. Quirky calendar makers and bloggers, on the other hand, are almost always lazy.
  5. Forearm bulge measurement may not be the most useful way to evaluate good health.

Actually, Sutton didn’t make that last point, but I think you can trust me on that one. I’m a blogger and I know what I’m talking about.

I mean, it’s no cake, but that looks pretty tasty. kaboompics, via Pixabay.

So, I will tell you that in my quest for a better swimsuit body, I’ll be including spinach in my diet, because I like it. It makes a great salad and it has some good stuff in it like vitamin K and beta-carotene, which as Popeye almost explains, does provide your massive forearms with vitamin A. It’s also a good source of folate, is low in calories, and high in fiber. And yes, even though it will probably not give you super sailor arms as soon as you eat it, it has some iron, too.

Most importantly, if you replace some of your cake with spinach, you stand a chance of fitting into your swimsuit in a few months.

The Practical Historian Has No Taste

On By Sarah AngletonIn Food, Health, History23 Comments

If you had happened to live in 430 BC and you had developed a taste for cinnamon, you’d have to have been awfully wealthy and also pretty lucky, because in 430 BC, the process of obtaining cinnamon was pretty complicated.

According to that great ancient historian Herodotus, the only source of this most flavorful spice was an unknown land where the cinnamalogus bird harvested sticks from the cinnamon tree to build its nest high atop the sheer cliffs of Arabia.

Herodotus, the world’s first practical historian. Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

That’s where the Arabian cinnamon traders got their hands on it by luring the birds away from their cinnamon nests with tasty meaty morsels and knocking down the sticks with weighted arrows.

Now, I know you might think this sounds a little far-fetched, or perhaps you are skeptical because you’ve read my book Launching Sheep & Other Stories, which introduces Herodotus as history’s biggest liar, liar, pants on fire. But consider that the cinnamalogus bird and this curious harvesting method are also documented in the writings of Aristotle, Isidore of Seville, and Pliny the Elder, which, I think, clearly demonstrates that the human tendency to copy and share ridiculous rumors indiscriminately on the internet shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

In defense of Pliny the Elder, he did at least express a little skepticism, suggesting that tall tales may sometimes evolve as a way to corner the market on some commodities. Cinnamon would probably have been worth the effort because it is among those sought-after spices that helped shape the modern world. Spice encouraged trade, which led to cultural exchange (and sometimes conflict), and eventually resulted in greater diversity in every corner of the earth. Because no matter what our differences may be, pretty much all humans like to experience flavor in their food.

For some reason I was picturing this bird as a lot more red and spicy and maybe with flames coming out of its wings or something. At least that’s how I would have drawn it if I’d made it up. Unknown artist, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And that is something I have been made very aware of this past week when in the midst of surging numbers of Covid cases in my corner of the world, “the ‘Rona,” as it’s not so affectionately known around here, caught up with me. Fortunately, it wasn’t a bad case. I had a brief fight with fever followed by muscle aches, fatigue, and a runny nose. By day three, it had morphed into mostly congestion and as that cleared, I suddenly realized I still couldn’t taste and smell so well.

In the grand scheme of things, this is not a terrible symptom, but it is a little frustrating when some of your favorite foods just stop tasting the way you want them to. In fact, if my senses of taste and smell weren’t already improving a little bit, it probably wouldn’t be long before I found myself willing to coax a mythical bird from its nest, to then destroy that nest with weighted arrows. Or at least if I found someone who said that’s what they had to do in order to bring some spice back into my life, I might just believe it was worth it.

My New Favorite Tee Shirt and the Camaraderie of Misery

On By Sarah AngletonIn Health, Sports16 Comments

On September 25, 1974 fellow members of a local track club Jack Johnstone and Don Shanahan hosted an event at Mission Bay in San Diego unlike any they believed the world had ever seen. They assumed that because neither had been present when a similar event took place near Paris in 1902.

There are some triathlon events that include different combinations of sports, like the Running Rivers Flyathlon, which includes running, fly fishing, and beer drinking. True story. Asþont, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In each case the event consisted of three separate sports mashed together into one race. The Paris event was cleverly called Les Trois Sports, which roughly translates as “race event for impressive athletes who are also mildly insane.” Trust me on this. French is a highly efficient language.

In San Diego, the newfangled race was called a triathlon, because Greek is an even more efficient language and Johnstone, unsatisfied with his fitness level after running and running and running, was just insane enough suggest that the San Diego Track Club throw some other challenges into the mix.

Les Trois Sports initially included run, bicycle, and canoe components, all completed consecutively without a break outside of the time it takes to exchange some equipment and chow down some quick sugar, like a power bar or maybe a baguette or something. I don’t really know that much about turn of the century French culture.

My super cool sharpie tattoo also included my age on my calf, so that every time I got passed by a 65-year-old, I would be sure to know, which was helpful.

The Mission Bay Triathlon consisted of running, biking, and swimming. In that order. Fortunately, the distances for this first triathlon were relatively short since it had not yet occurred to the organizers that an exhausted swimmer is more likely to accidentally drown than one who has a lot more exercise still to look forward to.

Forty-six athletes participated in this first triathlon event in the US, which is a lot more mildly insane people than Johnstone and Shanahan expected. Two of those participants were Judy and John Collins, who only four years later, proved they were not so much on the mild side of insane when they began the Ironman event in Hawaii, consisting of a 2.4 mile swim, 112-mile bike, and 26 mile run. At least it was in that order because by then, triathletes had figured out that collapsing from exhaustion on the road, while dangerous, is usually not as immediately deadly as collapsing in the ocean.

As insane as I believe the Ironman to be, I do admire and appreciate the extreme dedication of the athletes who train for and participate in it. In concept, and on a much smaller scale, I am even drawn to the idea of a triathlon.

As long as you’re doing it for the right reasons (a tee shirt and a medal), it’s not that insane.

I’ve mentioned on this blog before, but it always bears repeating, that I believe with my whole heart that running is stupid. I do, however, love to swim and I’m also a big fan of biking and of participating in race events in general. There’s just something about the camaraderie of misery that really sizzles my bacon.

So, when a friend recently asked if anyone would like to join her for the sprint course of the TriathLou in Litchfield, Illinois, I readily volunteered. I participated in a similar event ten or twelve years ago with my sister and I remember it being tough but fun. Then, to my surprise and delight, my slightly insane fourteen-year-old son said he wanted to give it a try this time, so I was definitely stuck.

It wasn’t a terribly long event. We swam 0.3 miles, biked 12 miles, and ran 3.1 miles, done consecutively with only enough break between to exchange some equipment and chow some quick sugar, like an energy bar or a Snickers because I am pretty familiar with early twenty-first century American culture.

Yes, I did finish, and I did run every step. As I easily predicted, the swim and bike went just fine and I was slow and miserable-ish on the stupid run, but I did it. For my efforts I got improved satisfaction with my fitness level, a tee shirt, and a finishers medal so I can prove to anyone who questions me that I am mildly insane.

Taking a Crack at It

On By Sarah AngletonIn Health, History9 Comments

One day in September of 1895 (or thereabouts), janitor Harvey Lillard was hard at work in the Ryan Building on Brady Street in Davenport, Iowa. He was also hard of hearing, and had been for about seventeen years. In this building was the office of a grocer-turned-magnetic healer by the name of Daniel David Palmer, who decided that he might be able to take a crack at curing Lillard’s partial deafness.

Lillard agreed to an examination. What Palmer found was a bulging disk in the man’s spine. Figuring that may be the root of the problem, Palmer performed what is rumored to be the first ever chiropractic manipulation and birthed a controversial profession that will soon celebrate its 126th anniversary. It also allegedly restored Lillard’s hearing and set right an old, troublesome injury.

In one version of the story, the original injury occurred when Palmer slapped Lillard in the back with a book after a funny joke, and then cured him with an adjustment. That sounds pretty legit to me. Image by Gerhard G. from Pixabay

Like all great origin stories, there are a few different versions of this one and really, it might be kind of suspect, but then so is the profession it spawned. Or at least it has been throughout much of its history. Rising at the end of the century that brought the world a plethora of dangerous patent medicines, magnetic healing, and early medical colleges that were only beginning to coalesce into something resembling standardization, while still grandfathering medical licenses of those who favored feeding mercury to their patients, chiropractic probably seemed like a light in the darkness.

Then with the twentieth century came the rise of antibiotics and the growing habit of medical professionals using the scientific method to study and treat and cure. Trained, tested, and licensed medical doctors began to know what they were talking about, and attributing all medical maladies to misalignment of the spine began to sound just a little bit nutters.

My 14-year-old son has apologized, as he believes he perhaps stepped on a crack and broke his mother’s back. Because he’s funny. Image by Jean-Pierre Pellissier from Pixabay

Despite the controversy, and decades of almost straight-up warring with the American Medical Association, chiropractic practitioners have persevered. With their natural approach to health that, in addition to frequent spinal manipulation, focuses on nutrition and healthy lifestyle choices, they have probably done a lot of good for some patients. 

I am not one of those patients. But I did, for the first time ever, seek out chiropractic care this past week. I am, in general, a pretty active person, but ever since becoming a mommy quite a few years ago, I occasionally suffer with acute low back pain. I usually muddle through for a few days to about a week or so, and recover fairly well. This time, I haven’t been quite as fortunate.

Is it just me? This is a little weird, right? Internet Archive Book Images, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s been a little shy of two weeks since the onset of my latest struggle with back pain. It’s one of those annoying ones that I can’t totally attribute to any specific moment of injury, which makes it all the more frustrating. So, desperate for some relief, I went to a chiropractor, because my husband who is a healthcare professional of the more scientific method variety, and who has had some experience with sports medicine in which athletes will often use a more combined approach to nursing injuries, said, “Eh, maybe give it a try.”

I did. And what I can say is this: It helped. Maybe. Or maybe it didn’t. Actually, I’m really not sure. I know that following adjustment, I could probably stand up a little straighter for a few minutes and maybe got a little bit of pain relief that allowed slightly more flexibility as I worked through some physical therapy, in which, frankly, I have a lot more faith.

It was also weird. If you are an enthusiastic patient of chiropractic care (and if you love it and it works for you, then that’s great) then having a stranger pull on your arms and basically sit on top of you while you snap crackle and pop might seem totally normal. But if you’re not accustomed to it, well, it’s weird.

My back still hurts, but I am on the mend. Physical therapy and I are getting along much better and I can see past the discomfort now to a near future in which I feel fine again and can do all the things I want. I do, however, think I will probably not be seeking chiropractic adjustment again.

It’s definitely more mainstream than it used to be. It’s regulated and requires training and licensing and all that. A lot of people swear by it. It’s just not for me. But, like its first patient Harvey Lillard and its first practitioner D. D. Palmer, I took a crack at it.

The Overheard Musings of a Milkmaid

On By Sarah AngletonIn Current Events, Health, History13 Comments

It was in the middle of the 18th century when, as a boy, English physician Edward Jenner overheard a conversation that would one day save countless lives. What he overheard was a milkmaid explaining to someone that she would never have to worry about the disfigurement of the dreaded smallpox because she’d had a case of the much milder disease cowpox.

Surely it struck the young man as strange that this probably fairly uneducated woman believed her life, and her beauty, may have been saved by a cow, but the notion stuck with him as he grew. On May 14, 1796, Jenner inoculated an eight-year-old with cowpox laced pus. The boy ended up with a short-lived mild fever and some temporary general malaise, but was otherwise fine. Then two months later, Jenner exposed the boy to smallpox, and he developed no symptoms at all.

This woman will not be getting smallpox. Paulus Potter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Dr. Jenner called his discovery “vaccinia,” derived from the Latin word for cow. He wrote up his findings, published them as An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, presented them to the Royal Society, and faced ridicule from renowned naturalist Sir Joseph Banks and other very important men.

But some listened and experimented and discovered the same result. Edward Jenner, on the overheard musings of a milkmaid, had discovered a way to prevent smallpox infection that proved significantly safer than inoculation with the smallpox virus itself, which was a practice frequently undertaken by those who wanted to reduce their chance of dying from smallpox to one in forty from twelve in forty.

Edward Jenner, no longer a child, and still eavesdropping on milkmaids. John Raphael Smith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

One physician thought the newfangled vaccine promising enough, that he sent Jenner’s work to an American colleague by the name of Benjamin Waterhouse, who served as Professor of Theory and Practice of Physic at Harvard Medical School. The American physician was so impressed by the research that on July 8, 1802, he vaccinated both a household servant and Waterhouse’s own five-year-old son, fortunately with great success. He would later go on to vaccinate his entire household and quite a few relatives in order to, according to him, “convince the faithless and silence the mischievous.”

Excited, Waterhouse next set up Board of Health trials in which vaccination by the cowpox-causing virus proved overwhelmingly preventative of smallpox infection. He faced as much resistance and ridicule as Jenner had, but he did have a powerful ally in then president Thomas Jefferson who sent him a fan letter in which he wrote: “Future nations will know by history only that the loathsome smallpox has existed and by you has been extirpated.”

Benjamin Waterhouse, a man who thankfully wasn’t too concerned about the ethical questions surrounding experimenting on one’s own 5-year-old son. Rembrandt Peale, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Jefferson may have been a little bit premature in his statement, but through the continued efforts of Waterhouse and Jenner a skeptical population both in the US and England, and eventually throughout the world, increasingly sought vaccination. Then in 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox officially eradicated.

Gone. A disease that some historians estimate killed as many as two billion people throughout history is gone because of a gossiping milkmaid, an eavesdropping boy, and the influence of a committed community of medical professionals and those who trusted them.

I’m not a vaccine expert, though I’m glad to say I have more education than the average 18th century milkmaid. What I do know is that the more opportunity viruses have to thrive, the more opportunity there is for variations to occur, and the more opportunity there is that one of those variations may not be thwarted by the vaccines we currently have. I also have many medical professionals in my life, all of whom are fans of vaccination in general, and right now, of the Covid-19 vaccines specifically.

United States Census, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I wouldn’t pretend that I could dispense medical advice, and I am well aware that every individual has a unique medical history and set of concerns that can produce a whole host of questions I might not even think to ask. And I know there’s a lot of confusing information out there. I also believe that how my fellow Americans want to live their lives is how they should live their lives. I get all of that.

So, I will not dispense advice or debate with you about whether or not you should get vaccinated against Covid-19. I won’t even consider you faithless or try to silence your mischief if you decide not to. All I will say, for whatever it may be worth, is that the members of my household, consisting of me, two teenage sons, and my husband who is a medical professional, have been vaccinated against Covid-19.

I’m grateful we had the opportunity and that we took advantage of it. I’m grateful that most of my extended family are vaccinated as well. I’m grateful for all those around me who have also done so. I’m grateful for cows and milkmaids, for Edward Jenner and Benjamin Waterhouse, and for the medical professionals who have made our most recent miraculous vaccines possible.

And if you have the opportunity to get vaccinated against Covid-19, I am so very grateful for that, too.

Follow the Bigwigs

On By Sarah AngletonIn Fashion, Health, History17 Comments

Between the years of 1673 and 1765, the city of Paris saw more than a 400% increase in its number of wig makers. Largely that is because King Louis XIV, standing in heels at the pinnacle of fashion, had started to go a little bit bald and decided to take a page from his father’s book.

Previously, Louis XIII had dealt with hair problems of his own. Probably suffering from syphilis, which was all the rage in Europe at the time, Louis XIII lost his hair in patches and suffered with sores on his scalp. And so, he donned a wig.

Yes, there were also many prominent Americans who wore wigs, but George Washington was not among them. I cannot tell a lie, these powdered curls are his own luscious locks. Gilbert Stuart, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Wearing a wig wasn’t exactly a brand-new fashion trend. Ancient Egyptians had worn them. Later, some powerful Romans, too. And bald Europeans or those unfortunate enough to be cursed with red hair occasionally wore wigs. Of course, when the king decides to do it, people tend to sit up and notice. Also, a lot of them had syphilis, too.

Wearing a wig became a pretty sensible thing to do. It protected your dome from the air while irritating your festering sores, added a couple pounds to your already cumbersome attire, and made your scalp sweat profusely. It also harbored grime and lice and layers and layers of scented powders that made you smell…well…actually that’s it. They just made you smell. I suppose maybe that kept people from wanting to get within six feet of you, and so it may actually have offered pretty effective protection from syphilis.

I mean, there’s wearing a wig. And then there’s this. Philip Dawe, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

But wigs really took off in France, and soon all across Europe, when the next generation of French royalty started to wear them. Louis XIV allegedly owned a thousand wigs that he could coordinate with each of his outfits for any occasion, whether an intimate family dinner at home, a sparsely attended press conference, a private walk alone in his gardens, or a jolly Zoom call with foreign dignitaries.

No one would have ever questioned the king’s dedication to wearing wigs, and by his example, probably preventing the spread of syphilis. In fact, because of such noble dedication to looking ridiculous, a hundred years after the end of the reign of Louis XIV, there were still incredibly health-conscious people dedicated to wearing wigs, some of them so elaborate and so big they could have been layers of two or even three wigs stacked on top of one another.  

Of course, in late 18th century France, it became somewhat less healthful to associate oneself with the aristocracy, and wig-wearing finally fell out of fashion there. This development was followed closely by a fairly hefty English tax on wig powder, which convinced the British population that it, too, didn’t care that much for wigs.

I guess maybe there’s an alarming rate of syphilis among English barristers? Someone ought to look into that. Sounds like a public health crisis. Image by Michael Dodd from Pixabay

Today we know a lot more about syphilis, both how it can be avoided and how it can be treated. It’s still a dangerous disease that needs to be taken seriously, and cases have actually been on the rise in recent years, particularly in Europe. It’s also true that wig-makers have gotten better at making natural-looking, more hygienic hair-pieces for those who need them because they have red hair or something.

But I think today everyone, with the exception of English barristers, has come to accept that wearing a poofy wig isn’t often really all that necessary. Still, it sure is funny to look back at the fashion trends of the past and the lengths people would go to imitate and demonstrate support for a particular leader or set of ideas. Thank goodness we know better now.

A Surefire Cure for the Hiccups

On By Sarah AngletonIn Health, History16 Comments

This week I received a note of thanks from WordPress. Apparently, I have been blogging along in this little space for nine years. In that time, I have averaged around forty-seven posts per year, once a week, except for the weeks I miss. It’s been a little higher in recent years because as my children have gotten older, they’ve become easier to ignore.

The internet actually attributes several “successful” hiccup cures to Pliny the Elder, but in my cursory attempt to chase down the references (yes, sometimes I look stuff up), I couldn’t find them. I fear this means that people believe Pliny the Elder is some kind of reliable medical authority. Clearly they have never read his work. Library of Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Each post averages about eight hundred words or so, in addition to the occasionally ridiculously long picture caption. I figure I have vomited approximately 350,000 words onto this blog over the last nine years. I’m grateful to WordPress for the acknowledgement, because that seems worth acknowledging, and I am especially grateful for the accompanying encouragement to: “Keep up the good blogging.”

Or at least I am thankful for the presumption that what I have been doing for the last nine years has been good blogging worth keeping up. But if I think about it, it’s also a lot of pressure to put on a person. Because blogging regularly can occasionally be a difficult thing to do. It requires coming up with ideas again and again that readers might actually want to read about.

I’ve been pretty lucky with topics these past nine years. History is the gift that keeps on giving. Stories of individuals in history doing smart or interesting or silly or stupid things are abundant. Still, some weeks, I sit down to do some good blogging and I’ve got nothing. I encounter a hiccup.

This week has been one of those. After 350, 000 words, I have developed a case of the hiccups. I blame WordPress.

Fortunately, there are lot of cures for hiccups. I could hold my breath or suck on a lemon, or gulp water, or stand on my head. Actually, I probably couldn’t do that last one. But I might use an Ancient Chinese cure by chewing slowly on ginger and swallowing the juice, or try the old Viking remedy of grasping my tongue with a handkerchief and tugging on it while I count to 100. I could give the advice of Pliny the Elder a chance by drinking small amounts of raw cabbage mixed into vinegar with a hint of dill or chervil.

D–n this hiccup, by Henry Alken, 1837. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Or maybe I should take a page out of John Mytton’s book. Born in 1796, John “Mad Jack” Mytton, wealthy British playboy who definitely earned his nickname, was most known for horseracing, gambling, naked hunting, and intentionally getting into carriage accidents. He also earned a bit of fame by attempting to cure a case of the hiccups by setting himself on fire. This according to an account written by his friend Charles James Apperley (aka Nimrod) who was present at the time.

The cure worked, though I’m not sure it was worth it. Mytton continued on, presumably hiccup-free, for another year or so of fast living before dying of alcohol poisoning in 1834, leaving behind an estranged second wife, four children, an enormous amount of debt, and a surefire hiccup cure.

Hiccups can be awfully frustrating, but they usually go away after a while. I know that after nine years, that still seems to be the case in my little corner of the blogosphere, where history continues to be the gift that keeps on giving, and there are plenty of Mad Jack Myttons out there with stories worth exploring. I don’t know if that really makes for good blogging, but it sure is a lot of fun.

A Brush with Normalcy

On By Sarah AngletonIn Health13 Comments

This week marks the seventh week straight that the numbers of new Covid cases and Covid-related hospitalizations have been down in my little corner of the world. That’s great news. Vaccines are rolling out, never as quickly as everyone would like, but we’re making progress. And we are beginning to see hints that bits of normalcy are slowly, cautiously returning.

Also this week I went to the dentist for a regular cleaning and checkup, which is pretty normal, but it was especially, wonderfully normal this time, because I got a purple a toothbrush.

I should explain that though I regularly see my dentist every six months, I had been just a few weeks out from an appointment when the pandemic changed everyone’s everything around these parts. My appointment was indefinitely postponed while my dentist office figured out how to keep themselves and their patients safe while also putting their hands inside people’s mouths.

I mean, how exactly does social distancing fit into something like this? photo credit: electricteeth Dental Floss/Flossing via photopin (license)

I didn’t like missing that appointment. I have pretty good teeth and I do my best to take care of my smile, but missing that checkup felt wrong. I imagine it’s a little bit how William Addis felt when he went to jail in 1770 and began to think his oral hygiene routine was insufficient.

Entrepreneur, rag trader, and apparent rabble-rouser William Addis went to prison for inciting a riot in the Spitalfields district of London. It’s not entirely clear what Addis was rioting about. There was a great deal of unrest in the area at the time, primarily among silk weavers who were demanding better pay and generally not getting along very well with one another. A handful of men were hanged for their alleged part in inciting such riots, but Addis, or course, was not among them. Perhaps he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time as so many people are when rioting is involved.

But regardless of why it happened, Addis found himself in prison, contemplating his grimy teeth. As he did so, his attention was caught by a broom being swept across the floor outside his cell and he was struck with sudden inspiration. Instead of wiping his teeth with a cloth and a bit of soot, or crushed shell, or coal dust, or salt, or whatever, he wondered if a mouth-sized broom might be more effective.

The story goes that the next night he set to work drilling small holes into a bone he’d saved from his dinner. Then he obtained a few bits of broom bristle, stuck them in the holes, and secured them to the bone with some kind of wire or glue. And the first tooth brush was born.

Because nothing screams “oral hygiene” quite like a dirty old broom. Image by Manfred Richter from Pixabay

Okay, that’s not exactly true. The first toothbrush, or something like it, was probably invented more than five hundred years earlier in a Chinese prison. Or possibly not in a prison at all. But most likely in China. Addis didn’t even coin the word toothbrush, which first showed up in print in 1690.

Such a clever device hadn’t really caught on in Europe, though. Addis saw an opening in the market and as soon as he’d served his time, he set up his operation becoming the first man to mass-produce tooth brushes, made with bone handles and hair from a boar.

The company he started eventually became Wisdom Toothbrushes, which is still going strong, producing about 70 million toothbrushes per year. They did trade in the bone and boar hair design for a synthetic nylon version when that became a better option.

I’m pretty serious about toothbrushes. I dutifully replace mine every few months, and every six months, I bring a new one home from the dentist. It’s not a Wisdom toothbrush, which I understand markets primarily in England. It’s a boring Oral-B, which was invented in the fifties by a periodontist who I don’t believe ever went to prison. But it is always purple.

I might actually be a crazy lady, but this is what normal looks like to me.

The first time, about eight years ago now, I visited my current dental office, the hygienist asked me what color toothbrush I wanted. I’m almost as serious about dental hygienists as I am about toothbrushes, and it meant a lot that in addition to being gentle and fast and really good at not asking direct questions when her hands are actively in my mouth, this one took the time to figure out my toothbrush color preference.

In eight years, she’s never asked again, yet after every visit, there is a purple Oral-B in my paper sack of dental floss, toothpaste sample, and return appointment reminder. It’s become part of my normal.

So, when the office finally began offering appointments again and I got squeezed into a spot on a different hygienist’s schedule, it felt wrong. The new hygienist was also good. She was gentle and fast and seemed very nice. She didn’t ask me any direct questions while her fingers were actively in my mouth.

Just try me. Image by Daniel Albany from Pixabay

But she gave me a green toothbrush. She didn’t ask, and I didn’t realize her mistake until I was in the parking lot. What could I do? I wasn’t going to be the crazy lady who walked back in to demand a purple toothbrush.

That’s why it was such a relief this week when I walked into the office and was greeted by my regular hygienist and walked back out after my appointment with a brand-new purple Oral-B. It felt like emerging from prison with a better way of doing things. Probably. I’ve never actually emerged from prison. Or been there in the first place. I’m not much of rabble-rouser. But try to give me another green toothbrush and I might just carve it into a shiv.

The Week’s Not Over Yet

On By Sarah AngletonIn Health, literature29 Comments

Between the years 1350 and 1353, Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio wrote a collection of one hundred tales published as The Decameron. I’d never read them, and in the interest of full disclosure, I admit that other than a few translated excerpts while writing this post, I still haven’t. But I am intrigued by the premise.

Written in the common man’s Italian (at the time), the collection is set against the backdrop of a 1348 outbreak of the Black Death. The stories are presented as though they are shared among ten friends holed up in a villa outside of Florence, responsibly minding their social distance and avoiding the plague like . . . well, the plague.

Thanks to this guy and Project Gutenberg, you can spend your time stuck at home with nothing to do reading about a bunch of people stuck at home with nothing to do. Raffaello Sanzio Morghen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Seven women and three men during a fourteen-day period are tasked with entertaining the others with a story each night. Two days are reserved for chores and two for worship, leaving ten evenings of ten stories, one hundred stories in all.

If you’re familiar with the Canterbury Tales you may realize that Boccaccio’s work probably had a pretty big influence on Chaucer who pretty much did the same thing several decades later except in the common man’s English (at the time) and with more religious pilgrimaging and less plagueyness.

I have read the Canterbury Tales, both in modern translation and in Middle English, and discussed them pretentiously, and written academic papers about them. But I’ve never been on a religious pilgrimage.

I have, however, been in quarantine, holed up for two weeks at a time in my house during a plague. If the last time I read the Canterbury Tales, you’d asked me which of those I was more likely to experience, I’d have guessed wrong.

I can see why isolation and storytelling might have been a pretty good idea. Spread of the Black Death in Europe Flappiefh, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I’ve been thinking about Boccaccio and The Decameron because I’ve had a lot of time on my hands. This has been quite a week here in the household of practical history. I know that by now most of us have had those weeks at one point or another since early this year when the world went sideways, but this has definitely been one of ours.

It actually began a little bit before this week when my husband who works in healthcare was informed that his hospital system plans to close the department in which he works. His job as he knows it will apparently be gone at an occasionally determined time in the near future. Except we recently learned that might not really be true, except that it definitely is sort of true. Probably. We’re confused, too.

And then there’s our fifteen-year-old who was told two weeks ago that he’d been potentially exposed to Covid-19 in school. That meant he had to remain home in quarantine for 14 days, or for 10 days after developing any symptoms if he tested positive and took a couple days off for chores and two for worship. Or something like that. It’s also kind of confusing.

It was bound to happen at some point. Tistip, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

So that’s some of the background. Then this past weekend, our 13-year-old, who had been doing his thing with mask and appropriate social distancing while more or less keeping away from his brother as much as possible, developed a fever and tested positive for Covid-19. Apparently, the wrong kid was quarantined.

Now he’s isolated and the rest of us are homebound, including the 15-year-old who proved negative for Covid-19 when tested after his brother’s positive result. Originally, he would have been released from quarantine yesterday, but since he has presumably been exposed to his brother, the 14 days begins again. From what point, we’re not entirely sure, as the answer to that questions seems to depend primarily on who you ask and what they had for breakfast that day.

Of course, that no longer matters anyway. On Tuesday of this week, after a painfully long publicly broadcasted meeting in which the elected members of our school board proved they don’t read emails or listen, it was decided that our district’s high schools and middle schools would move to virtual learning due to staffing difficulties caused by rolling quarantines.  

Virtual school isn’t ideal, but I think it’s much better than 45% percent attendance and constant staff shortages. Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

So, we’re at home. And that’s fine. There are a lot of people all over the world in similar predicaments, and we’re fairly well set. Symptoms have so far fallen into the short-lived and mild range, and we have the supplies we need, or the ability to have delivered whatever we don’t. We just have to figure out how to fill our abundance of extra time.

I’m thinking we may start requiring family story time each evening. There are only four of us and I haven’t done the math, but as we might all be in quarantine for fourteen days after each of us develops any symptoms, I think we could make it to a hundred.

We probably have the material. Boccaccio’s narrator Dioneo offers some guidance to his tale-tellers on eight of the ten days, demanding examples of power and fortune, examples of the power of human will, tragic love stories, happy love stories, clever stories that save the storyteller, tricks women play on men, tricks any person plays on anyone else, and examples of virtue. I bet we have it all covered.

And the week’s not over yet.