The next Carnivalesque will be here, on Wednesday 2 March. But I need your help …

Submissions of blog posts on any early modern history subject under the sun should be sent to natalieben at journ.freeserve.co.uk as soon as possible. Don’t be shy – please nominate the favourites on your own blog, but also particularly any that you’ve come across off the routes of previous carnivals.

And if you’re thinking “Carnivalesque?”, there’s an explanation of this gathering of early modernists here.

If you’ve inexplicably missed out on the experience, visit Carnivalesque No 1, on the blog of the founder and carnival mistress extraordinaire Sharon, and then No 2.

For these purposes “early modern” is defined as covering the period between c.1450-1850. If you’ve just put up or read a brilliant post that doesn’t fit that criteria, well then why not send it to the next History Carnival, for which the deadline is February 25. Details here.

Remember Mademoiselle Rose Bertin (milliner to Marie Antoinette): “There is nothing new except what is forgotten”

Was reading that there’s nothing new about nefarious practices among drug “companies”.

In the early 16th-century a “wonder drug”, guaiacum, from the Americas, was discovered, and thought to cure syphillis. (The theory was the disease had come from there, which it hadn’t, so the cure must also.)

Ulrich von Hutton wrote a whole treatise on its virtues in 1519, dedicating it to the Archbishop with Mainz with the telling words: “I hope that Your Eminence has escaped the pox but should you catch it (Heaven forbid but you can never tell) I would be glad to treat and heal you.”

In 1530 the physician Girolamo Francastoro created the name still use today in a poem on extolling guaiacum’s powers, and the merchant house of Fugger, which had the import monopoly, had an extensive “PR” campaign for the chain of hospitals, the only places where it could be obtained.

Paracelsus, who doesn’t come off to well in other scientific respects, at least saw through this, denouncing the drug as a scam and recommending the mercury treatment that would continue for centuries. (For my previous posting on this see here – but be warned it is not for the squeamish.)

But, “the Fuggers responded by using their financial muscle to suppress Paracelsus’s publications and ridicule his scientific credibility. The ethically dubious world of patent medicines was born,” says Jerry Brotton, in The Renaissance Bazaar, pp. 192-3, from which this story is taken.

And not just patent, I’d say.

For Paracelsus see an excellent detailed account at the (US) National Library of Medicine or the short version on Wikipedia. And guaiacum, although the resin not the 16th-century choice of wood, is used by herbalists today.

Footnote: Trying to decide whether to use one or two Ls in the title, I learnt that the term skulduggery is thought to be from Scots sculduddery – “obscenity, fornication”. Language is a funny thing.

A tag: [history]

… for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses — he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.

… I could go on – I checked this morning on the Tube – I was the muttering woman between Farringdon and Euston Square at about 10.45 – and I can still recite the whole lot. It’s here if you’re interested.

(And if you’ve seen the movie you still have the read the poem – there’s only a faint relationship between the two.)

I’m no man from Snowy River, having fallen off more than enough horses to prove that, but I am deeply enmeshed in a likely move between flats at present, and the poem brings to mind rounding up estate agents, for which the phrase “mustering wild cats” might have been invented.

So blogging has been a bit quiet lately, but I was inspired today by an article on Banjo Paterson, which contains a full account of the origins of Waltzing Matilda, the unofficial national anthem. It has Scottish/German/left-wing union roots – don’t tell John Howard!

(That link will only work for a couple of days.)

I should be sleeping, but after a rough day have been distracted by the excellent meme, via Purple Pen …

Which authors have you read more than ten books by?

Mine are (or those I can remember thus far, roughly in the order in which I read them) …

Enid Blyton
Arthur Ransome
Elyne Mitchell (particularly her brumby books. (Brumbies are wild horses.)
Ruby Ferguson (of the “Jill” pony books – more here)
“Jean Blaidy”
Zane Grey (and probably several other writers of Westerners I’ve now forgotten)
Patrick O’Brian (and probably several writers of war novels of varying eras whose names I’ve forgotten)
George Macdonald (Yes the Flashman series; I’m bring brutally honest here – and I was only about 13)
Alastair MacLean
James Michener
Agatha Christie
James Herriot
Dick Francis
John Francome
Peter Corris
Sue Grafton
Colleen McCullough
Lindsey Davis
Anne Perry
Dorothy L Sayers
Elizabeth Peters
Kerry Greenwood (on whom I posted here
Marele Day (a rather good Australian writer of feminist detective stories))
Peter Ackroyd

Some more are sure to pop to mind now I’ve started this … but obviously the way to sell lots of books is to write long series of detective novels or thrillers, or at least that is what this list would suggest.

And if you haven’t got a dog from whom to get a good cuddle, for some Wednesday canine blog comfort check out this pic, from Living in Egypt, a brilliant blog.

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ticket, originally uploaded by natalieben.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I’m a cyclist. One of the banes of my existence is ridiculously large vehicles, particularly 4WDs. (SUVs in American parlance.)

Many of their drivers seem utterly unaware of the poor visibility of these hulks, or indeed even of their real size – near had my shoulder taken off by a Hummer – yes a HUMMER! — in central London in the early hours of one morning.

But now I’m fighting back!

Above is a “parking ticket”, to be put on 4WDs – and I’ll be out on the prowl soon …

You can get your own copies from Alliance Against Urban Four x Fours.

There’s more good news on other fronts. In Sydney, a local council will charge more for parking 4WDs.

For a further take on the issue, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Spike column is running a series of reader comments. The best I’ve seen:

“Bill Rayner – after noting that a 2.6-tonne 4WD travelling at the speed limit has the same momentum as a 1.3-tonne sedan travelling twice as fast – had a question: ‘If a LandCruiser doing 70 kmh in a 60 zone can do the same damage as a mid-sized car going 140, why isn’t [the driver] thrown in jail for it?'”

And you don’t want to think about the damage it would do to a cyclist. Susoz pointed out in the comments on my last post on cycling that the home page of the lovely funny article to which I pointed explains that the author had been killed by a drunk driver. As she says, it does make your blood run cold. Then again even if you are in a steel-sided vehicle it may well not offer much protection in those sort of circumstances.

* The Emperor’s Giraffe and other Stories of Cultures in Contact, by Samuel M Wilson.

You can read his giraffe story, in which one is shipped from Bengal and the other from Africa to China here. It deals with the way in which China, apparently having the military/economic power to conquer the world, instead decided to draw back into itself. (A story also fascinatingly, if controversially, explored in Gavin Menzies’s 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, which concludes the Chinese fleet completed a global circumnavigation.)

The blurb says the book overall examines 23 moments in history “when two cultures previously unknown to each other, first came into contact. Focusing on individuals caught by chance in pivotal times and places, Wilson explores the ways in which seemingly small decisions made during the initial contact period between two cultures have had a huge impact on the course of history.” … not quite the “Great Man” theory of history, more like the “bumbling man”.

* Young Medieval Women, Katherine J. Lewis, Noel James Menuge and Kim M Phillips, which contains the delightful quote from a York ordinance of 1301: “No one shall keep pigs which go in the streets by day or night, nor shall any prostitute stay in the city.” (p. 172)

* The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to 1870, Gerda Lerner

* The Diary of a Provincial Lady, E.M. Delafield, Virago, 2003, originally published in 1930, which is my current bedtime reading, a delightful text for that. Inevitably Delafield is billed as the “Bridget Jones” of the time, but she’s a much better writer, and very clearly feminist.

She is delightfully caustic about human behaviour (including her own) and the book is a wonderful lesson that you can write a great book about anything at all, even the most apparently dull, provincial life.

A sample:

“Receive a letter from Mary K. with postscript: Is it true that Barbara Blenkinsop is engaged to be married? and am also asked the same question by Lady B., who looks in on her way to some ducal function on the other side of the county.

Have no time to enjoy being in the superior position of bestowing information, as Lady B. at once adds that she always advises girls to marry, no matter what the man is like, as any husband is better than none, and there are not nearly enough to go round.

I immediately refer to Rose’s collection of distinguished Feminists, giving her to understand that I know that all well and intimately, and have frequently discussed the subject with them. Lady B. waves her hand – (in elegant white kid, new, not cleaned) and declares That may be all very well, but if they could have got husbands they wouldn’t be Feminists.

I instantly assert that all have had husbands, and some two or three. This may or may not be true, but have seldom known stronger homicidal impulse. Final straw is added when Lady B. amiably observes that I, at least, have nothing to complain of, as she always thinks Robert such a safe, respectable husband for any woman.

Give her briefly to understand that Robert is in reality a compound of Don Juan, the Marquis de Sade, and Dr Crippen, but that we do not care to let it be known locally.

Cannot say whether she is or is not impressed by this, as she declares herself obliged to go, because ducal function “cannot begin without her”. (p 56-57)

A tag: [books]