An Elizabethan scare-cure

A mouse rotted and given to children to eat remedieth pissing the bed.

The Widowes Treasure, 1595

Careful reading makes it clear that the children were given the mouse to eat, not actually directed to eat it. Presumably the intention was to provoke the response - 'No, I honestly won't wet the bed, ever again, Only don't make me eat the rotten mouse.'

However, given the nature of Elizabethan medicine we cannot be sure. People were regularly pouring down their throats water distilled from other people's body parts, oils derived from boiled frogs and toads, powdered snail-shells and fish-bones and glass, and goodness knows what else. It is not unlikely that some brave children took a deep breath and a courageous bite of rotten mouse, and no doubt were very, very ill. And were treated appropriately.

Hiccups, folk etymology, and a treatment for the plague

It was while looking at Walker’s Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1823 edition) during a workshop on change in English that we found ourselves discussing hiccups (we being myself and students and staff from Redborne Upper School).

Walker gives two pronunciations for the word spelt as ‘hiccough’ – hik-kup and hik-kof (his spellings, but without the stress marks or vowel sound indicators). Given that the previous usual words for this were ‘yexing’ and ‘hickit’, which were clearly onomatopoeic, it looks likely that ‘hiccup’ was also onomatopoeic, but given a folk-etymology spelling; this would be on the basis that ‘hiccup’ did not mean anything, but could be thought of as fairly close to ‘hiccough’; and as the phenomenon happened more or less in the throat, ‘cough’ was an extremely plausible word to bring together physical location, sound and spelling. Keep the spelling ‘cough’ and the pronunciation ‘cup’ and all requirements are satisfied.

This seems to be the way that folk etymology works. Generally you have a spoken word to describe something, and the linguistic signifier has no integral connection to the signified thing/action/feeling/whatever. But in some cases there appears some sort of magnetic urge to bring together the received sound and some known word or words to try to make sense of the thing in your hand.

For example, you have something looking like a nut that comes from Spain or France, where it is called castaña or châtaigne, both of which sound vaguely similar to the English words ‘chest’ + ‘nut’; the thing looks enough like a nut (though it is not), to justify creating a word made up from perfectly good English components that we can all understand, though the combination is meaningless, even misleading. The fact that the combined meanings may have little or no sense does not matter at all – asparagus used to be called sparrow-grass, despite there being no basis for any connection between the plant and sparrows; and it is not a grass. Occasionally there occurs a made-up word or phrase in which the vague similarity of sound is reinforced by some other similarity – avocado pears were for some time ‘alligator pears’, the similarity of the skin between animal and fruit urging the usage of ‘alligator’. Its phonic distance from ‘avocado’ isn't so far - two similar vowel sounds in the right place, and the same number of syllables.

My most alarming recent folk-etymology find has been a medical one, in a treatment for the plague. A Joyfull Jewel, T Hill’s translation of Leonardo Fioravanti (1579), recommends dealing with plague buboes thus:

Also you shall open the sores quickly that the matter may come forth, and when they are broken you shall put therein our caustic once only, because it purgeth it divinely.

I have updated the spelling, but the original of ‘caustic’ was ‘cow-stick’. I imagine a printer for whom this was an unknown word (and of course spelling at this time was a free–for-all), working from a mysterious spelling and getting the pronunciation, and from this building a word made from known components. What this led to in terms of possible actual treatment is very scary. I assumed that a cowstick would be a long, pointed stick used for prodding and guiding cows. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cows were not uncommon in city streets, and would need to be guided and herded around – with cow-sticks.

What stopped me at first seeing the folk etymology was the possible scenario in which it would be advisable, when dealing with a bursting bubo, to use a long stick. A bursting bubo sometimes would visibly spray outwards, so it would be natural to want to keep your distance to avoid infection – or at least unpleasantness. Given that most physicians at this time wore long black gowns, broad hats and beaked masks, the use of a cow-stick would have been by no means the most disturbing aspect of treatment. Once again, it’s good to be alive in the twenty-first century.

By the way:

Take thy finger ends, and stop both thine Ears very hard, and the Hickop will surcease immediately.

A Rich Storehouse or Treasurie for the Diseased, 1607

I tried it and it works. Don’t be tempted to use a cow-stick.

Public administration in the time of pestilence

Hereafter I will wright what Magistrats and their officers should doo in time of pestilence, to preserve the people from great ruin.

All Magistrates and their officers when the pestilence doth reign should with all diligence govern and rule their subjects, unto the which there appertaineth five things.

The first is not to put them in such feare, as now a dayes the most parte do, taking them from their houses feafully carrying them unto the Hospitalls, where a number sick of the pestilence are, for the which cause if they were not infected, that terror were enough to kil them, and this is the first thing to be considered.

The second thing is to cause the Phisitions to helpe them, for there is no such cruel disease, but that the Phisitions in short times may finde remedy for it.
The third is to visit them often times and to comfort them with good words and not to let them lack victuals, least that the necessities and feare might cause the infirmitie and death.

The fourth is to let them remaine in their houses and to give them those things that are necessary for them so that they may be cheerful and wel willing.

The fifth and last thing that should be done is to leave their goods, and not to take and burn them, but to preserve them from the other people, and this doing they shall not be afraid, for this is the best way that can be found in the worlde; and therefore happy shall that Cittie be and those people where the Magistrats and officers do use these orders that I have heer prescribed.

From A Joyfull Jewell, Leonardo Fioravanti, trans John Hester, 1579

Fioravanti was working in Bologna in the mid-sixteenth century. What is noteworthy is the need to state these points, with the implication that on occasions they were ignored; so that plague-affected cities must have been left without administration, doctors, and with looting and forcible removal. He has a perhaps naive trust in doctors’ ability to find a cure, but this is an early example of a public health administration programme in a time of crisis.  

Dear Doctor, please, don't

If some remedies from about two hundred years ago are mildly amusing or faintly worrying, this one is wholly terrifying:

Swelling in the generative parts: First the patient should be bled in the arm, or leeches may be applied to the inflamed parts, afterwards take a handful of green rue, bruise it, and put it tp the part affected; or take marshmallows a handful, camomile a handful, make a decocotion in a pint of water, pour the liquor from the herbs, add two drams of the tincture of opium, bathe the part, afterwards apply the herbs as a poultice, or make a poultice of oatmeal and vinegar with a little sweet oil in it. Warts and chancres may be destroyed, by touching the warts with a  blue stone vitriol, or a caustic; the other by washing them with a solution of corrosive sublimate.

The Family Physician, Edward Bullman, 1789

How simple it is to write ‘leeches may be applied to the inflamed parts’. Did he know what he was writing? Honestly? I wince whenever I write these words; I’ve copied them in pencil from the original, I’ve transcribed them to computer, and I’ve written them again in this paragraph. I’m still wincing.

Blue stone vitriol was a solution of copper sulphate, effective as an antiseptic, but can burn skin, especially in sensitive areas. Whether it would be preferable to leeches is a difficult call. And 'a solution of corrosive sublimate'? It's mercuric chloride; when you thought things couldn't get any worse, you'll be pleased to know this was formerly used to dissolve corns. 

A seventeenth-century sticking plaster

I rather like this recipe for a plaster, from Nicholas Culpeper’s A Physical Directory, 1651.

Emplastrum nigrumTake of Colophonia Rozin, Ship-pitch, white Wax, Roman Vitriol, Ceruss, Olibanum, Mirrh, of each eight ounces; Oyl of Juniper berries three ounces; Oyl of roses seven ounces; Oyl of Egs two ounces; Oyl of Spike one ounce; white Vitriol, red Corral, Mummy, of each two ounces; earth of Lemnos, Mastich, Dragons blood of each an ounce; the Fat of an Heron one ounce; the Fat of Timullus (a kind of Fish) three ounces; Loadstone prepared two ounces; Earthworms prepared, Camphire, of each one ounce; make them into a plaister, according to art.

It is very good (say they) in green wounds and pricks.

Dragons blood was the resin from a palm, Calamus draco, which was imported from South America and the East Indies; loadstone was magnetic iron oxide; and Roman Vitriol was copper sulphate. None of these would have done much good, as Culpeper implies in his dismissive aside. Perhaps he was aware of a curious recipe in Langham’s The Garden of Health, 1578, which ascribed to earthworms an extraordinary power:

‘Stampe earthwormes, and put thereto the juyce of radish rootes, and quench therein any knife, sworde, or other toole to make it cut Iron as it were Lead.’

Snails and earthworms appear in many medicinal remedies of the time; were people fascinated by their shapeshifting abilities and the muxture of slime and hardness in the snail’s shell?

In 1778 William Lewis’s The New Dispensatory proposed that

'Both these [worms and snails] are supposed to cool and cleanse the viscera. The latter, from their abounding with a viscid glutinous juice, are recommended as a restorative in consumptions; for this purpose they are directed to be boiled in milk [a longstanding recipe]; and thus managed they may possibly be of some service.'

There is a definite doubt expressed here, and Lewis has in any case nothing to say about earthworms. Current research in the west and medical applications in the east suggest that earthworms may have interesting antibacterial properties, and may help in the treatment of thrombosis. Snail mucus may have an application in antispasmodic treatment of the bronchial tree.

Nobody seems to have had a good word for slugs. I have not come across a single medical use for them, though Isaac Walton (The Compleat Angler, 1654) reckoned black slugs were good bait for catching chub. 

Status and source in sporting terms

I'm reposting this, because I enjoy the theme so much, but mainly for the groups I've recently been working with at the British Library. For those who are tired of football - sorry it's about football.

What is the difference in status between the language the football manager uses, and that used by the footballers he manages (still ‘he’, despite everything)?  I have never heard a manager call himself anything but a ‘manager’, while I have often heard interviewed footballers call their manager ‘the gaffer’.  ‘Manager’ is a word which arrived in English in the sixteenth century from Latin, as a term to describe handling or directing a horse (it is still used, as ‘manege’, for this), while ‘gaffer’ is an abbreviation of ‘godfather’, both of the constituents of that word being derived from Old English words.

In a sense this directs some questioning towards the ‘etymological fallacy’, which states that despite the attractions of the idea, the etymological root of a word is not its ‘deep’ or ‘real’ meaning. But the difference in usage between ‘manager’ and ‘gaffer’ indicates that the etymological root of a word may give clear indicators of its sociolinguistic status, usage, and thus part of what it ‘means’. 

The status between the two words, ‘manager’ and ‘gaffer’, is directly related to their historical origins.  In this case status differentials derive from the different statuses of Latin, Anglo-Norman French, and Old English, in the post-Norman Conquest period, where Latin was the language of government and church, Anglo-Norman French was the language of the wealthy and powerful, and Old English was the language of the dispossessed.  Thus Latin- or French-based words sound to us still more formal, more serious, more authoritative than old English-based words.

To push it a little further: popular ‘football’ comes from Old English fot, and bal, almost definitely Germanic, while rather more posh ‘soccer’ comes from Association Football, ‘association’ being adopted from Latin in the fifteenth century.  The title of the ‘referee’ comes from Old French or directly from Latin, while his or her ‘linesman’, rather lower in status but still with a position of authority, developed from line, from Middle English via a mix of Old English, Old French and Latin, and from the Old English man.  The ‘players’, at the bottom of this linguistic ladder, and with the least authority, derive their name from Old English plega, meaning ‘play’, though their intermediary with authority is their ‘captain’, from Late Latin capitaneus via Old French capitain (though in conversation they might call him 'skipper', from Middle-Dutch scipper) .  Their roles are: ‘strikers’, from Old English strican; ‘forwards’, from Old English foreweard; ‘halves’, from Old English halb; and ‘backs’, from Old English bæc; with behind them a reassuring ‘goalkeeper’, from Old English gælan (probably) and cepan. 

To raise their statuses they may wish to be called ‘attack’, from French attaquer, and ‘defence’, from Old French defens.  Both of these are abstract nouns, while the corresponding term for the middle area, ‘midfield’, describing a place, is from Old English mid  and feld.  I would be wary of pushing this much further; but then it’s only a ‘game’, from Old English gamen (‘sport’, far more serious, comes from Old French desport).

Trench Art but not Trench Art

I recently acquired from my (very) friendly local antiques dealer this curious object, which looked immediately like a piece of First World War trench art. All the parts were there – the brass cylinder shape of the shell, the rim round the base, with what appeared to be notches milled by hand, and most of all the lid made from a penny with the head of King George V, which opened to reveal the date 1915. But why was the penny so worn? Why did the decorative crest not have any apparent military reference? And what would the patent numbers on the base reveal?

 

USA patent 2146896 can be found easily on http://www.google.com/patents?id=RH5DAAAAEBAJ&pg=PA1&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1#v=onepage&q&f=false The patent for the Gas Burner Igniter was issued to J H G Horstmann on 14 February 1939, for a hand-held tool to light a gas fire or cooker, with a brass casing at the base to hold a battery which gives a charge to ignite gas fed in through a nozzle. John Hermann Gustav Horstmann was one of the family of Horstmanns whose engineering company based in Bath developed from a clock-making business in the mid-nineteenth century into a major engineering concern producing cars, gas-flow controllers and central heating systems.

So, not First World War trench art, and a clear explanation for the worn condition of the penny. But then, more intriguing, why such a strong visual reference to trench art? Could this be Second World War trench art, with a knowing reference to the earlier conflict in the selection of a 1915 penny? But what of the crest, not as far as I have been able to find out, having any military reference? All rather mystifying, unless it is thought of as an example of how trench art became embraced within the general culture of folk-art, with skills acquired during the First World War being maintained and practised until after the Second World War, in much the same way that new words and words shared between classes of people in the First World War became common usage, and were adapted, retained or abandoned during and after the Second World War.