someone get me a root of radish
i don’t know how you like to party. perhaps it involves an ironic brand of beer that gets less ironic the more it’s consumed. perhaps your party soundtrack is inclusive of thumping bass and grievous distortion effects and the twin mantras of carpe diem and getting some. perhaps the climax of your social gathering is when everyone interweaves themselves into a human monkey-knot, a farrago of sweat-drenched designer wife-beaters, rave beads, tiger balm, and limbs thrusting freely like tentacles of the id.
the long and short of it is that i really don’t know how you like to party, but i do know how raynor ganan likes to. and as you probably guessed, it involves a thousand year-old book, a pulpit from which i can read aloud long passages, and a roomful of party guests that can endure this.
friday’s revelation about crushed pearls as a medicine for the ailing rich tickled me in a way that i shan’t elaborate and so i went hunting for other old-timey medicine recipes for more laughs. it turns out that collections of this nature were quite common in mediæval europe and were called leechbooks. here is a good one. but the best one, and the one that i took with me to a recent dinner party is: leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early england (1865) which is a translation of a 9th century tract (known as bald’s leechbook) written in the oldest version of english going*.
i read a few preposterous remedies to my group and the yucks were so free-flowing that others grabbed this marvelous tome out of my well-manicured hands and starting finding their own ridiculous elixirs. here are a few of our favourites†:
for joint pain; take dove’s dung and a goat’s turd, dry them thoroughly and rub to dust, mingle with honey and with butter, smear the joints therewith.
against elf disease; take fennel, nightshade, moss or lichen from the hallowed sign of christ, bind in a cloth, dip it thrice in hallowed font water. reek the man with this before 9 in the morning, sing the pater noster, and write christ’s mark on each of his limbs; it will soon be will with him.
against a tumor; burn a fresh hound’s head to ashes, apply to the wound. if the wound will not give way to that, take a man’s dung, dry it thoroughly, rub to dust, apply it. if this thou art not able to cure him, thou mayest never do it by any means.
in case a man be a lunatic; take skin of porpoise, work it into a whip, swinge the man therewith, soon he will be well. amen.
in case of a cut that will not heal; take a new horse’s turd, dry it in the sun, rub it to dust thoroughly well, lay the dust very thick on a linen cloth; wrap up the wound with that.
work a salve against nocturnal goblin visitors; boil in butter lupins, hedgerife, bisopwort, red maythe, cropleek, salt; smear the man therewith, it will soon be well with him.
against a woman’s chatter; taste at night a root of radish, that day the chatter cannot harm thee.
i could keep going. i could keep going like we did on saturday, belching laughs into the predawn haze and resolving that if we ever hot-tub-timemachined ourselves back to the 9th century a.d. to never, ever, under any circumstances seek medical attention—even if we came down with a case of nocturnal goblin visitors.
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*in fact, reading through this book is highly reminiscent of poul anderson’s uncleftish beholding.
†paraphrased
![how to bookworm-proof your books (hint: poison)
i woke up early on saturday morning with the rational fear that a bunch of idiot bookworms might somehow infiltrate my edwardian-era study and make a smörgåsbord of all my best books.
so to keep my books safe, i dialed up an 1884 book pesticide recipe. the article suggests rubbing your books down with an extremely toxic chemical, and not just any toxic chemical, one that used to be used to treat syphilis and preserve severed body parts.
materials needed: clean rain water (1 imperial pint), feather (1), sponge tied to a stick (1), and some poisonous mercury chloride (1 ounce)
Keeping books in a damp room, and moving them but seldom, will render them particularly liable to attack. For many years I have employed a solution of corrosive sublimate of mercury in clean rain-water, applied with a pen or feather, to destroy the grubs, both in books and furniture, and have applied it generally on book-covers, as well as on articles of furniture, by means of a sponge tied on the end of a short stick, to avoid wetting the fingers.
I have employed [this solution]… in consequence of reading in Thenard’s “Traité de Chemie,” of a method first used by Dr. Chaussier of preserving dead bodies, by putting them into a saturated solution of this salt. Thenard says there that he has seen a human head thus preserved, which had been exposed to the sun and rain for a great many years, without having undergone the slightest alteration.
until monsanto invents a variety of paper that is resistant to bookworms, mercury chloride may be your best bet.](http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lif9f6jdyC1qzrip0o1_500.png)
![aspirations
for all the young people out there who are wishing to one day wed a fine set of upper lip hair—like yours truly—this book from 1872 by a certain mrs. t. narcisse doutney may* very well be the guidebook that we have been searching for.
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*[cocktease alert] i say may because—quite oddly—the word moustache does not seem to exist anywhere in the book apart from the title
also: get a load of the chapter titles: 1) i am born, 2) i am a baby, 3) i am a child, 4) my girlhood, 5) the circus, 7) i am a wife, & 9) i am a widow.](http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lcr95hgtbF1qzrip0o1_500.png)
![how to make an edwardian-era study [full plans]
when i woke up this morning, i realised that my favourite pair of bespoke socks (angora rabbit hair with an argyle design in the colours of trinity college) had been used as a smörgåsbord by a family of ugly moths. so it goes without saying that i started this particular tee-gee-eye-eff in a pretty sour state.
BUT! then i came across a 1905 article called the study: its building and equipment which gives highly detailed instructions on how to make your own edwardian-era book den. here is what you need to know about me: it’s my older brother ranulph who stands to inherit ganan manor (and along with it, my grandfather’s throbbingly masculine, oak-paneled study). therefore, these detailed plans will be highly useful when the time comes for me to erect my own ganan manor and an even more throbbingly masculine study to plot my revenge.
at any rate, here is how the article starts:
If, as is so often said, the Englishman’s home is his castle…the study is, of all places, the keep of that castle…Therein the lord of the domain was wont to lay mighty plans, perchance for the development of his estate, perchance for the overthrow of his enemies. Therein he contemplated his adversities and the cruelty of fate and therein he thought good thoughts for the welfare of his kindred, his friends and his people. The very word “study” produces a whole train of terms—thought, contemplation, patience, faith, hope, charity, progress, development,—and the room itself should assist these ideas, stimulating the brain to higher ideals and nobler aspirations.
it only gets better from there. here are some bulleted items to keep in mind when you and i are designing private library rooms of our own:
Quietness and repose are essentials, and no sound of pianos, of removal and washing of crockery, of the romping of children, or any noise likely to distract, should be allowed to reach the study.
In most cases the study should be upon the ground floor so that when necessity arises, interviews can take place without callers having to travel half over the house.
It is well known that the early hours of the day are those in which the brain is clearest and most active.
A study facing south and southwest becomes so hot, so unbearably stuffy that the brain is overpowered, fatigued, and quite powerless to act.
Such a room must not be too exciting [but also] every precaution must be taken to keep it from becoming damp and doleful.
Rooms with windows on two walls can be better aired, and vitiated air more quickly removed.
All cement should be up to the British standard specification and should be scientifically tested.
Locks should be good and come from one of the best firms.
Should an untidy maid put her hand upon [your hand-made glazed tiles] the marks can easily be removed without damage being done.
Electric lighting if it can be obtained has much to recommend it on the score of cleanliness.
my takeaway: a study facing south with closed windows and vitiated air is an early 1900s dutch oven.](http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lc51rlmPP01qzrip0o1_500.png)
![medici medicine
i’ve been popping a lotta medicines lately: benzocaine for my meth teeth, blackmarket “kraken bile” which helps reduce the discolouration of my armpits, piperonyl butoxide to exterminate my pubic fleas, and reversitol for my prolapsed belly button. but none of my medications rivals the luxuriously idiotic remedy prescribed for the ailing lorenzo “il magnifico” de’ medici:
[His] end, in 1492, was certainly hastened by his medical treatment. [A] famous Milanese specialist…was called into consultation by [his] resident physician…but the case was hopeless. As though to mark the high human value of the patient’s life they lavishly prescribed a potion of crushed pearls and rubies!
gag! can you imagine convalescing all day in a puddle of your own humours riding a nauseous wave of feverish chills and abdominal pain and your doctor is like, “look bro, because you are like the biggest i-banker in all of europe, i’m gonna prescribe you something befitting your stature. what i’m gonna do is crush up some rubies, pulverize some pearls, mix ‘em together with the dopest chianti in all of florence and you are going to chug-a-lug until everything is rad again. capisce?”
i suppose that if i knew that my death was imminent, i would most likely skull the gritty concoction just for the thrills that it would give my coroner. he would be yanking out my entrails and weighing my gallbladder when all these bits of jewels would clangle to the floor like the payout from a slot machine. and my coroner would be like, “cha-ching” and dollar signs would roll into his eyes (euro signs if he is originally from europe) and he would cash in my organs and buy property in (the non-panhandle part of) florida and live the good life until one day when a swat team from the internal revenue service comes a’ knockin’.
sorry for moralizing, but if some idiot coroner ever sells my ruby-studded viscera, HE WILL GET WHAT IS COMING TO HIM.
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sauce: the guilds of florence by edgecumbe staley (1906).](http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lbf31iLXmI1qzrip0o1_500.jpg)
