A Blog With A Purpose? A Organ with meaning?

I just had my gallbladder reluctantly removed from my body so things have been a bit slow here at historyminion. It's weird how one little vestigial organ removal can decimate my bank account and my brain power all in the same week.

While I've been waiting to heal up, I decided to stick to schedules and features so people will know what the week will bring to their eyeballs courtesy of their inter-webiness viewing. Mondays I will muse on news reports with historical significance. Wednesdays I'll answer a strange history question from you, my reading public. If I have no questions, no blog! Fridays are Forgotten Stories Day, where I look at historical, world changing events that were front page news then, and everyone forgot about now.

You'd remember the history of the Seven Years War if it was this cute.

Now, back to my gallbladder.

Well, all of our gallbladders use to be viewed as being much more important than we view it now. The Roman anatomist Galen (200 CE) who made the liver the principal organ of the human body, not the brain or the heart. "The liver is the source of the veins and the principal instrument of sanguification," he observed in On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body. This means the liver's two buddies - the gall bladder and spleen - were two crucial subsidiary organs of the liver.  All three organs worked together to produce and store three of the four humors of the body:  blood (liver), yellow bile (gall bladder) and black bile (spleen).  Three-quarters of the substances which established the balance of a healthy body could be found in this region. 

Our organs as drawn in the middle ages look more like root vegs to me.

While the liver may have been the most importance organ to observe and describe in this sector of the body, the gall bladder and spleen also provided interesting material to contemplate. Humoral theory (where the body had four humours that affected our systems completely) suggested that each had a profound effect on the emotions. The gall bladder regulated the emotions by being a repository for gall.  "Its substance is slender," wrote 16th century physician Berengario, "because it does not digest anything and hard so that it may resist the sharpness of the gall." 

As the decline of the theory of humours int he 18th century, and medical sciences looked deeper into the functions of the gallbladder, gall stones were identified as causing pain and trouble for other organs, especially the tied to it pancreas. The first removals of stones and the gallbladder were recorded in the 1700s, but very few people survived. It was in the 1880s when the first successful Cholecystectomy or gallbladder removal - the person lived - were done in England and America.

What do you mean you can live without me?

Some cultures still place great emphasis on you keeping your gall inside you. In the Chinese language, the gallbladder is associated with courage and other related idioms including "a body completely [of] gall"  and "single gallbladder hero". In the ZangFu theory of Chinese medicine, the gallbladder is the centre of decision making. This puts me into a bit of trouble, as mine has now been taken out and disposes of. An excuse finally to act like a nut!

 For more on the history of removing your gallbladder, see the History of Gallbladder Surgery. Enjoy.
 

Lobster People! A Short History of Vacations

This week´s post comes from a question from Dan in Calgary, AB. He asked since I was on vacation, where did this concept come from? How and when did people start to take vacations? He cited the Romans get-away of Pompeii as a well known vacation town. Where they knew how to get down.

Apparently.

Let's follow Dan if he was alive and on vacation throughout history, sort of a Doctor Who of lazy days.He'll pack his shorts and make sure to wear his hikers.

The word vacation comes from the Latin vacare, meaning freedom or exemption. We use vacation and holiday as interchangeable terms now, but originally these are two completely different concepts. Dan in most countries around the world would celebrate a holy day - proclaimed for a saint or some battle commemoration. In a very Christian Europe, he'd head to mass on St. Joseph's day and think about how sucky it would have been for him as a step-dad. It also meant a day off of work for Dan from toiling in the fields to worship at his local church/temple, rest, or just sleep in.

Vacations could have holy days in them, but a lot of time there was no real reason for it other that rest and relaxation. In the Western world, the Romans were the first to go on vacations to get away from it all in a busy, crazy and often over-heated city. Dan, in his best straw hat, palanquin, and servants, would head for his villa in Sicily.

A little drafty now though

Roman Dan might have also taken the first actual tours. Scholars, Emperors, and other elite members of society would pack up their families and head to the Mediterranean and hit all over Italy, Greece, Turkey and Egypt hell bent on pleasure. One of the first guidebooks, called The Description of Greece, was written by Pausanias around 160 CE. He spent ten years travelling in Greece partying and seeing the sites.Dan would have travelled along with the P-man, working on poems, eating local cuisine, and making comments about how the locals were hot.

Pictured - a party animal

Not to be left out, we have tons of records of Chinese and Japanese people taking vacations, off to coastal regions or just going to see friends. Chinese scholars of the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE) wrote many travel notes and guides, detailing inns and places, sometimes women of pleasure. Dan - you dirty dog. But he could have taken a vacation as personal discovery was more the poet's path for Matsuo Basho, the famed Haiku master. For years he walked all over southern Japan in the late 1600s and chronicled his journeys in multiple poems and books. (On a personal note, I am a devote apostle of Basho and went to Ueno specifically to see the sights as well.) My favourite of his works remains the travel journal Record of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton. It's not really a modern guide to Japan. But he did have travel buddies, including the monk Sora.

More pilgrims than party animals - but Basho did drink a lot of wine

Back in Europe, the idea of taking a lot of time off just to bum around became in vogue with the young, rich elite. Grand tours all over Europe started in the late1600s and continues to this day with crusty backpackers. The tour would have been a must for a young, well-off Dan, usually with his tutors, as a tour would complete his already classical education. He'd hit France and Italy first, as they were the two biggest destinations for the Dutch gad-about. For a British travelling Dan, he'd hire horses, carts and supplies to take him to the Netherlands, then France, Italy, the Alps, the Rhine, Switzerland, Italy and a swing by Germany on his way home.On a great website The Grand Tour, you can really get into the spirit of their excursions. There are some female traveller's tales as well, such as Lady Hester Stanhope and Elizabeth Craven.

What you would have seen on the Grand Tour in the 1800s. Dan is sitting and trying to be a gentleman and not staring at all the naked chicks

However, these travel journals are cleaned up so much that a lot of what went on of a questionable nature, like a young man sowing his wild oats as it were, are left out. Where we get some gleams of what the rich did on vacation is from literature. I directed Dan to read A Sinner's Grand Tour for some meaty stuff, like the 1880s belle époque fantasy brothel Le Chabanais, the lost “sex chair” of King Edward VII.

Which leads Dan to his current vacation location, the beach.

The English and Welsh came up with the modern concept of going to a seaside resort to bathe, or take in the waters, stay overnight, and for Dan, eat entirely too much cheese. In the 19th century, a middle class was emerging and these people along with the upper class families would escape from the city heat and head to places like Blackpool, Brighton. There Dan could enjoy a music-hall with dances and variety shows, pleasure gardens and exhibitions. More informal seaside town would pick up in the summer months, such as Lyme (mentioned in Austen´s Persuasion as a seaside destination in the 1800s CE) where fishing and farming predominated and visitors entertained themselves. The reason? The modern industrial era was placing a huge strain on people, and doctors were actually prescribing time off for the rich to get away from it all.

Blackpool, not really getting away from anything.

Thanks to the invention of the train and creation of the railways,seaside vacations became possible for the middle and working class. Since the 1840s, cheap and affordable fares to fast growing resort towns in the UK and American made thousands of sun seekers head to the sands. Entrepreneurs (con-men) would build accommodation and create new attractions, leading to more visitors like Dan to cough up their money just to stay and get some sun on their white bodies. Hence the beginning of the Lobster People.

But it took a while.

Wear SPF 5000, Dan!

Creature Features: The history of real animals in horror films

I'm coming for you

In the news this week, a new crazy monster film is getting tons of press with the release of it's trailer. Beaver Zombies! Yes - Zombeaver the movie. Other than the furry beaver jokes, the internet media is happily slapping its tail over this horror film about undead beavers looking for furry vengeance against some campers. Using animals as instruments of horror and death in film - either creating real fear or laughter or both - is not a new concept as we all know: Who has not seen Jaws?

The first horror films made used the supernatural to create fear. The Lumiere brothers in 1895 used dancing skeletons in their spooky tales. Georges Melies created the first horror film we have evidence of in 1896 with a normal assortment of traditional fairy tale characters, devils and ghosts. This continued through to the talkies era of the 1930s with Frankenstein and Dracula. Through the 1930s and 40s, humans morphing into animals became a common trope. Films like the Wolfman and Cat People scared  audiences with makeup and early special effects.

King Kong (1933) was one of the first animal as perpetrator horror films, the giant ape made surreal. The real influx of animal based horror films came after World War Two. Many have argued that escapist film began because people wanted to escape the real horror story of war. Giant animals and bugs continued their creature feature prominence with THEM and The Wasp Woman. Evil squids then came onto the scene in 1955 with It Came From Beneath the Sea, and in the same year more arachnids with Tarantula. The scary animal and bug fetish culminated in The Fly in 1958.

How am I going to go to the bathroom...oh that's how flies do it

The reasons are covered well in many other sources - the atomic age made mutant animals cool. Nature was terrifying, and nature unbound by normal rules as science let it go mad was even more scary to the audiences of the time. So the release of more films with mutated animals, carnivorous insects, and normally harmless animals that turn on the humans continued. One of the best is Attack of the Crab Monster (1957) which John Tebbutt highlights in his great article for FFWD. I wonder though if they truly thought this was scary or just a bit of fun.

One 1960s horror film with really terrifying animals stands out - The Birds from 1963. The real terror of Tippi Hendren and the cast is felt in every scene with the blood-seeking birds. No other film before captured how innocent and beautiful birds could peck someone to death on screen. I dare you to watch this clip and laugh. Unless you like birds trying to kill you.

Why are we so fascinated and horrified over animals in horror films? One theory is that it's an ingrained fear in humans that have kept us alive - animals were trying to kill us for dinner as one of the many slow moving primates on this planet for ages. As mentioned earlier, Jaws in 1975 scared the bed-wetting pants off most people and still does, because none of us still want to be alive while being eaten.

I'm just fulfilling a evolutionary role here buddy.

We all know of many films that take themselves seriously to terrify the audience but end up being laughable. Most film experts blame Jaws for this, as the nature run amok film genre became a bankable idea to many. They rushed out to make their films only to realize they had no money and no idea on how to do anything. One example is Orca (1977), where a killer whale eats a whole Canadian fishing village, and you are rooting more for the Orca. The filmmakers really wanted to scare you with some seriously bloody scenes but end up making a comedy/weird ass film instead.

Excuse me sir, but have you seen your dog anywhere?

It was not until the 1990s that animals trying to eat you was made intentionally funny. Arachnophobia (1990) was one of the first animal as death-bringers comedy horror films. In the film, recently discovered spiders run amok in a small American town, with no intention except to make you laugh as they squeak and sigh along to killing people. The key part is these are not mutants, they are just real spiders fighting for their survival. (If you take their side.) The film was a huge success making over $54 million in its first release. It continued with the worms in Tremors (1990), and the classic Eight Legged Freaks of 2002. The list goes on with Slither, Snakes On A Plane and many more. So as we all wait for the release of the zombie beavers, I wonder if this will create more interest in killer animals again, both in horror and in humour?

Oh yes it did. God damn squirrels.

Sources and Further Reading:

FilmmakerIQ - a brilliant site on all things film, the best one of all of these!

Horror Film History - A decade by decade guide

Natural Horror Films - a long list of films by wikipedia

Best Horror Films - Wired's recommendations, with no animal films making it

Do you believe we are magic? Words and the history of Etymology

Marilyn Monroe casting spells

Bloody hell - I can't sleep. So I might as well write.

My friend Val asked me if I'd do a blog piece on word origin and idioms in English. I can - but there is so much out there already about the two that I feel like a squirrel re-burying my friend's nuts. I was more interested in the history of giving a crap about words - namely the study of the history of words, their appearance and usage through the ages. I'll put in a few examples to spice it up a bit.

People have always cared how they created their words, as words have power. The idea is that you can use them more effectively if you have power over them and know their origin and meaning. Sounds like a bit of magic to me....what my evil spells could do!

The ancient Greeks and Indians who really got nuts over discourse and word origins, were the first to seriously study the usage of words. The ancient Sanskrit linguists and grammarians of India believed it was sacred to know where your words came from. Isidore of Seville whose Etymologia was the first and best encyclopedia in Europe of first usage until the 16th century.

The 17th and 18th centuries saw the scientific study emerge with the advent of the Age of Enlightenment. The first known systematic attempt to prove the relationship between two languages on the basis of similarity was made in 1770 by Hungarian Janos Sajnovics, based on trying to find out where the hell did Hungarian come from because bugger if he knew. (Despite his great efforts, we're still not sure - might be Ugirc, maybe not?)

The modern study of linguistics and Etymology was Sir William Jones, who returned to the ancient Sanskrit studies and observed its relationship with Greek and Latin, creating the field of Indo-European linguistic studies, of which our current English relies on heavily. My favorite philosopher Nietzche also had a huge impact, saying that morals have historical and cultural origins which change over time. People like Derrida read that and thought it should apply to words as well.

There's an amazing website on the etymologies of lawyer speak. The whole study is devoted to the origin and use of property law terms. Example - accession originated from the Indo-European root word -sed which means walk or go. It first showing up in usage in the 1500s. For a lawyer I can imagine knowing this is pretty powerful stuff. I swear some of them cast spells on the judges and juries - why else would they win their cases and let criminals go free?

Now for a few fun words and their etymologies, taken from the online etymology dictionary!

One of my faves: bugger as in "bugger if he knew"

bugger (v.) to commit buggery," 1590s, from bugger (n.). Meaning "ruin, spoil" is from 1923. Related: Buggered; buggering. buggery (n.) mid-14c., "heresy," later "unnatural intercourse" with man or beast, "carnalis copula contra Naturam, & hoc vel per confusionem Specierum". See bugger (n.) + -y (1). bugger (n.) Next: Bloody hell I need to sleep, but instead I'm going to write."sodomite," 1550s, earlier "heretic" (mid-14c.), from Medieval Latin Bulgarus "a Bulgarian" (see Bulgaria), so called from bigoted notions of the sex lives of Eastern Orthodox Christians or of the sect of heretics that was prominent there 11c. Cf. Old French bougre "Bulgarian," also "heretic; sodomite." Softened secondary sense of "fellow, chap," is in British English from mid-19c. Related: Buggerly.

Another: Bloody, as in “Bloody hell I can’t sleep”

bloody (adj.) Old Engish blodig, adjective from blod (see blood). Common Germanic, cf. Old Frisian blodich, Old Saxon blôdag, Dutch bloedig, Old High German bluotag, German blutig.It has been a British intensive swear word since at least 1676. Weekley relates it to the purely intensive use of the cognate Dutch bloed, German Blut. But perhaps it ultimately is connected with bloods in the slang sense of "rowdy young aristocrats" (see blood (n.)) via expressions such as bloody drunk "as drunk as a blood."

Partridge reports that it was "respectable" before c.1750, and it was used by Fielding and Swift, but heavily tabooed c.1750-c.1920, perhaps from imagined association with menstruation; Johnson calls it "very vulgar," and OED writes of it, "now constantly in the mouths of the lowest classes, but by respectable people considered 'a horrid word', on par with obscene or profane language."The onset of the taboo against bloody coincides with the increase in linguistic prudery that presaged the Victorian Era but it is hard to say what the precise cause was in the case of this specific word. 

 

Bloody Hell, you buggers! That's my new spell to curse you!

Attempts have been made to explain the term's extraordinary shock power by invoking etymology. Theories that derive it from such oaths as "By our Lady" or "God's blood" seem farfetched, however. More likely, the taboo stemmed from the fear that many people have of blood and, in the minds of some, from an association with menstrual bleeding. The term was debarred from polite society during the whole of the nineteenth century.

For more word fun, may I also suggest a really cool map of similar words in Europe? Church and Bear really get around!

From Wood to Cyber: The American Civil War and the Advancement of Prosthetics

This week I read an article in the MIT Review (December 2013) on how a new prosthetic hand can now send signals to its wearer. The Cleveland Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University (big enough name!) has developed a hand that can sense touch and not squeeze things to mush by stimulating nerve bundles—which died or were lopped off—in the prostetic hand. 

A video shows a man who lost his right hand in an accident three years ago using the hand to pick up and remove stems from cherries. How it does it is the force detectors on the fingers of the hand convey touch information directly to three pea-sized nerve interfaces surgically implanted in his lower right arm. The wearer controls the hand through a technology called a myoelectric interface, which uses signals from the muscles in his lower arm.

Wow. Big departure from wearing a peg leg! How did we get here? Thank the Americans and their Civil War. (1861-1865) Before that...

 

Egyptian Fake Toe - and the foot still attached. Ummmm….

Prosthetic limbs have existed ever since people needed a helping hand or foot. Romans use to make limbs out of iron for soldiers who lost bits in battles. Further developments in movement, wearability and realism continued, but the biggest jump was during and after the Civil War. New advancements of technology in weapons, especially riffles which could now be loaded quicker and now used round balls that exploded on impact, which led to a huge level of shrapnel and disfiguring, not killing, wounds. Diseases as well such as gangrene also rotted away bodies but did not always kill. Estimates from records are that over 60,000 amputations were done.

Four years of death and dismemberment resulted in many men needing artificial limbs to go back to some normalcy. This created a rise in manufacturing of limbs. Hello capitalism!

About 150 patents were issued for artificial limb designs between 1861 and 1873. To be able to afford a new appendage, the Federal government allocated in 1862 Union veterans $75 to buy an artificial leg and $50 for an arm, and by 1864 the Confederacy was also providing financial assistance for such purchases. The payments usually covered the cost of the device and travel to a showroom for it to be fitted. Others refused to wear them however as a sign of their sacrifice and a reminder. The idea , however, that false limbs could be functional and look natural was born of this period.

Before wood and steel were the materials, but the discovery and commercial use of rubber with its resiliency, flexibility, and more natural appearance was more appealing to veterans. With fingers that could move under pressure, some had lifelike action to hold small objects like a fork or pencil. The odder adaptations were making the limb into a Swiss Army knife, where you could detach it and add hooks, brushes, sawing attachments, or other accessories. In this picture the mass manufacturing of limbs, which gives a new meaning to arms factory. (You know I was going to go there eventually)

Left, one of James Hanger’s early patents from 1891 shows his novel hinged mechanism. Image courtesy Hanger.com. Right, Samuel Decker was another veteran who developed his own mechanical arms, and later went on to become an official Doorkeeper at the U.S. House of Representatives.

 

There's more to the project as well. Kevin has hosted talks and historical walks as well. In January of 2014 he and Third Street Theatre organized a Cabaret to celebrate Club Carousel - the first formal gay social club in Calgary. It was sold out! The patch above was the Club's emblem.

The Other Blog In My Life

Calgary's Gay History Project is the other blog and history project in my life right now. Spearheaded by Kevin Allen, myself and Dale are his co-researchers. How did I get involved? I saw Kevin present at the library about a year ago and was hooked. I'm always for the local underdog history projects.

Calgary's GLBTQ history is short compared to some cities like San Fransisco but it is there. Since the 1950s the city’s gay community has existed as a underground culture. There has been little academic work done on the growth of this community which has spurned Kevin on. We're curious about what life was like for gay people in Calgary in the middle of the last century to the modern era. Though oral history interviews, primary source documents such as newspapers and magazines, we hope to record and present the stories of queer/gay seniors before they are gone.

The main office for the project is the Old Y Centre for Community Organizations. Please talk with us if you have a story to share!
Contact-
Kevin Allen
kevinallencharles (AT) gmail.com,
403-890-7278

Re-imagining Death: World War I With Martians 

A still from the tv movie The Great Martian War - History Channel UK

I've just watched The Great Martian War, on how the martians attacked earth in 1913. The film, produced by History Channel UK, is a combination of science fiction and alternative history of World War One. Using a convincing Specialist Factual Documentary style with interviews with 'experts, survivors and veterans', and making the film look archival in nature, the viewer is successfully pulled into the war with the martians.

While beautifully rendered, amazing technology of the martians, and a great story, I felt still very uncomfortable about watching this 90 minute re-imagining. I had to ask myself::  

Is it exploitation of the war? Or is it one way to bring their story to a wider audience and honour the dead?

In order to answer this question, I wanted to know more about the film maker's intentions and approaches to the material. I found a Q & A with the producers, they address the issue of World War One directly, saying:

"We all agreed it could only work and be worthwhile if the story we set out to tell honoured the experience of the people who really lived through the horrors of the WWI era and in some way used convincing science-fiction as the way to tell some truths about the nature of the war, the enslavement of mankind by the machinery of war and its terrible and lasting consequences."

Part of this was to do their homework, and become well versed in the events before, during and after the war. The placed these real events in their narrative, such as: The United States remains neutral for much of the war, women throw themselves into the construction of munitions, and have the final blow of the Spanish Flu at the end of the war.

The producers also state that they decided it was not proper to use real archival footage of fighting or the dead. They did, however, choose to use images of men in trenches, soldiers on the march or training. They re-created first person accounts with excellent actors. That was a smart decision: if they had many families of the men, as well as historians alike would cry exploitation.

Canadians wounded at the Battle of Amiens lying outside of the 10th Field Ambulance Dressing Station. George Metcalf Archival Collection, Canadian War Museum.

But, does The Great Martian War trivialize World War One? We have seen this argument before in reference to past historical events. In the 1980s and 1990s, many people found the influx of movies on the holocaust of World War II very wrong. One was Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Auschwitz, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He asked in his piece for the New York Times:

"Why this determination to show ''everything'' in pictures? A word, a glance, silence itself communicates more and better. How, after all, can one illustrate famine, terror, the solitude of old people deprived of strength and orphans robbed of their future? How can one ''stage'' a convoy of uprooted deportees being sent into the unknown, or the liquidation of thousands and thousands of men, women and children? How can one ''produce'' the machine-gunned, the gassed, the mutilated corpses, when the viewer knows that they are all actors, and that after the filming they will return to the hotel for a well-deserved bath and a meal?"

But World War I is not the holocaust. It has no veterans left alive to point out that they like or don't like film adaptations of 'their conflict'. Enough time, a hundred years, has passed. Our collective memory is not as raw as it is with World War II and the holocaust. Even then, we have tons of movies and video games set in both world wars such as Sergeant York and Stalingrad.

Personally, at no time did I feel like the intention of the film makers was to dishonour the dead, or minimize the impact of the real war. My answer then has to be The Great Martian War was done with a lot of sensitivity and understanding.

However, it did leave me cold.

I kept looking at the faces of the real men in the archival footage that had been alive, asking "I wonder if they made it? Did they end up dying in the mud?" I could not divorce myself from the real events long enough to be fascinated or appreciate the effort the film makers did. I did have to study it a great deal in my undergrad, and afterwards as well.

So is it too soon? Maybe it's not a matter of time. Maybe it's more that they used archival footage at all. That the release of the TV movie comes now at the anniversary might be too calculated? The use of the interviews as well: I could imagine real veterans talking about their horrors too well. I kept asking myself: how would the real veterans of the war see this film?

We can't ask them.