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
![a taxonomy of noses
so i was p90x-ing last night while reading one of my all-time favourite tracts on nose classifications systems. it’s called nasology by george jabet* (1848). the preface states:
We have a belief founded on long continued personal observation that there is more in a Nose than most owners of that appendage are generally aware. We believe that besides being an ornament to the face or a convenient handle by which to grasp an impudent fellow, it is an important index to its owner’s character… It will not be contended that all the faculties and properties of mind are revealed by the Nose, for instance we can read nothing of Temper or the Passions from it… The proposition which is sought to be established is this THE NOSE is AN IMPORTANT INDEX TO CHARACTER
here is a key to what jabet says your nose says about you:
the Roman nose: indicates great Decision, considerable Energy, Firmness, Absence of refinement, and Disregard for the bienséances of life
the Greek nose: indicates Refinement of character, Love for the fine arts and belles lettres, Astuteness of craft, and a preference for indirect rather than direct action
the Cogitative nose: indicates a Cogitative mind having strong powers of Thought and given to close and serious Meditation
the Jewish nose: indicates considerable Shrewdness in worldly matters, a deep Insight into character, and facility of turning that insight to profitable account
the Snub nose: indicates natural weakness, mean disagreeable disposition with petty insolence, and diverse other characteristics of conscious weakness
the Feminine nose: indicates refinement and purity of taste and the ability to excel in the minor domestic departments of life.
i should point out that this book is an absolute LAUGH FACTORY especially for all fans/h8ters of phrenology and m. alphonse bertillon. there is not a single paragraph of pseudoscientific quackery in this volume that will not cause you to belch with laughter. i highly recommend that you peruse it the next time that you are cranking out plyometrics or whatever it is that you like to multitask reading 19th century literature with.
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*a pseudonym of victorian prankster, eden warwick. [the small print: this nasology tract was actually a satire on phrenology and why it is totally stupid]. for a book in a similar vein, you can give this a looky-loo.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kx9wnqZvS81qzrip0o1_500.png)
