correct taste: 1856

 from Harper's New Monthly Magazine, January 1856:

"Flounces are universally worn, the number resting entirely at the option of the wearer. Skirts are very full, and so long as to touch the ground, even when distended by the most ample under-dress. The hoops of our grandmothers certainly threaten to reappear, if we may not say that they have actually appeared again. We are confident, however, that the good taste of our countrywomen will prevent a fashion so opposed to correct taste from becoming at all prevalent."

Of course, the cage crinoline, e.g. the "hoopskirt" as we now know it, was patented and went into production in late 1856. Never say never, darlings.

Lombroso, Lie Detectors, and the Law According to Lidia Poët

In one episode of The Law According to Lidia Poët, our heroine mentions a device called a "volumetric glove." Because standard Googling is not going to get you far with this, I searched Google Books, 19th century, and found this treatise on Criminal Man, by Gina Limbroso. This business about the volumetric glove is interesting for several reasons: first, it was an early lie detector; second, it was a tool that grew out of early psychiatric testing to be used for criminal investigation, and demonstrates the close relationship of those two fields—not to mention how the tools of one can be used as weapons in the other.

Here is the transcribed text from the scanned book, edited slightly for length:

"It is well known that any emotion which causes the heart-beats to quicken or become slower makes us blush or turn pale, and these vaso-motor pheomena are entirely beyond our control. If we plunge one of our hands into the volumetric tank [...], the level of the liquid ... will rise and fall at every pulsation, [...] and variations may be observed which correspond to every stimulation of the senses, every thought and above all, every emotion. 

"The volumetric glove [...] is a still more practical and convenient apparatus. It consists of a large gutta-percha glove, which is put on the hand and hermetically sealed at the writes by a mixture of mastic and vaseline. The glove is filled with air as the tank was with water. The greater or smaller pressure exercised on the air by the pulsations of blood in the veins of the hands reacts on the aerial column of an india-rubber tube, and this in its turn on Marey's tympanum (a small chamber half metal and half gutta-percha). This chamber supports a lever carrying an indicator, which rises and falls with the greater or slighter flow of blood in the hand. This lever registered the oscillations on a moving cylinder covered with smoked paper. 

"If after talking to the patient on indifferent subjects, the examiner suddenly mentions persons, friends, or relatives, who interest him and cause him a certain amount of emotion, the curve registered on the revolving cylinder suddenly drops and rises rapidly, thus proving that he possesses natural affections. If, on the other hand, when alluding to relatives and their illnesses, or vice-versa, no corresponding movement is registered on the cylinder, it may be assumed that the patient does not possess much affection.

"My father sometimes made successful use of the plethysmograph to discover whether an accused person was guilty of the crim imputed to him, by mentioning it suddenly while his hands were in the plethysmograph or placing the photograph of the victim unexpectedly before his eyes." (Lombroso, 1887)

The "father" mentioned above was Cesare Lombroso, an Italian physician, criminologist, and phrenologist. As may be inferred from above, Cesare made a career out of attempting to determine the cause of criminal behavior. Cesare's theory was that criminality or lack of morals was inherent, which was influenced by common common racist assumptions of the day and heavily leaned on by lawmakers and monied persons who wanted to keep the hoi polloi in line. Proponents believed both criminals and "lower" races were less evolved and therefore closer to animals in nature. Lombroso made much of criminal activities running in families and published several works about the physical characteristics of criminals, such as the shape of their heads and other features. An early form of racial profiling, if you will.

An early lie-detecting glove, and what a criminal looks like, according to Lombroso. 

Our modern sensibilities aside, Lombroso's work was a little more advanced that the old way of thinking that criminals were just sinners who needed saving/punishment. His theories were disputed even at the time; phrenology and other mechanical explanations for psychiatric illness were not universally accepted even in the 1880s. Other researchers built on his work, which led to closer examinations of criminal behavior, leading psychiatry and criminology further away from simple assumptions of sin and wickedness, and toward advances in treatment of criminals and the insane.

There is a very good summation of Lombroso's work and the developing "science" of criminology (forgive the ironic quotes—it's hard to take these early efforts seriously by today's ethical standards) in the book 1877: America's Year of Living Violently by Michael A. Bellesiles.

so about that Indian blood-brother ritual

Today I saw this article pop up in my Facebook feed, reiterating the old chestnut about how American Indians practiced blood-binding, or the exchange of blood between unrelated men (in popular fiction it's usually an American native and a white guy) to make them sworn allies in battle. And while it is not usually my style to argue with people on the internet, I feel this is one of those beliefs that needs to die, along with the idea that vaccines cause autism and the notion that candy corn is food.

Now, caveat: earlier in the year there was a rumor going around that I was claiming to be an expert on "Native American culture" because I had read "five books" on the subject, which is horse shit; in the first place I have read a great many more than five books, and in the second place I am neither an idiot nor an asshole, so I certainly wouldn't claim to be an expert on anything based on a little book-learning.

However, two years ago I did do a fair amount of research on Apsaalooke (Crow) culture in the late 19th century, because I was writing The Romance of Certain Old Bones. Trace and Boz were headed to Montana as hired muscle for an archeological dig, and it stood to reason they would hire a Crow guide, because much of eastern Montana in 1875 was reserved for the Apsaalooke tribes. Ergo I wanted to get a broad idea of how 15-year-old Stanley Many Tongues might respond to the strange goings-on that tend to dog Trace's footsteps.

One of the questions I needed to answer (to my satisfaction at least) was whether the Plains tribes actually did that blood-brothers thing. I wanted Trace and Boz to do it, because reasons, and I had heard differing reports on the factuality of it. I wasn't having Trace and Boz to do it because it was an "Indian thing"—neither of those characters is NA anyway—but Stanley was going to be present and I wanted to know how he would interpret such an act.

If you do just a little bit of reading into the history and anthropology of magic you quickly notice there are a lot of rituals, across many cultures, that treat blood as a sacred fluid. Early peoples recognized blood's importance to life and thus ascribed mystical powers to it; that's why there are taboos against drinking it or playing with it. That's why so many magic rituals—particularly dark or evil magics—utilize it. 

Blood is life, lack-brain.

By the end of the 19th century microscopes had gotten strong enough that scientists were beginning to be able to discern the parts of blood—red and white cells, platelets—and see how they responded to injury or disease. Mendel's work on heredity was being published in the late 1860's, and Darwin's ideas about evolution had seized the public imagination. Whole new justifications for racism cropped up using twisted interpretations of these theories, which led directly or indirectly to the "one drop" laws of segregation—legal definitions of who was white and who wasn't, who could marry whom, or sell or buy or inherit.

The point is, people understood from antiquity that blood was powerful stuff, and the notion of being related "by blood" was also powerful. The idea of taking a friend's blood into your own body and thus making them a part of you seems to be very widespread. I have seen reports, and I believe there was even a court case in which a couple was accused of miscegenation, where the husband (white) claimed he had injected some of his (black) wife's blood into his own arm, thereby making himself black according to the one-drop rule.

But I have not been able to find accounts of any of the Plains Indians (or any other Native American) tribes using the ritual exchange of blood as part of their adoption or fealty rituals. 

Some of the most widely-available books about Crow culture in the late 19th century, by Lowie and Linderman, suggest that the Crow were not averse to spilling their own blood in the name of ritual. Two of the best-documented examples were cutting off fingers as a sign of grief, or bleeding their flesh as a gesture of sacrifice to get visions (done in conjunction with solitude and fasting—one source speculated that blood loss would bring on fainting and hallucinations). 

Crows and their neighbors did have myriad rituals for adopting tribesmen into their war clubs and/or religious societies; sometimes this involved handing down of sacred objects, e.g. medicine pouches and their inherent powers, which might include bones of animals or relatives. (I found one anthropologist's report that claimed some especially powerful medicine bags might contain the skulls of ancestors, which were used for divination and advice.) The Crow also learnt and modified rituals from other tribes, particularly the Hidatsa, with whom they were closely related and often intermingled. These rituals seem to have been largely abandoned around the start of the 20th century, when Christianity was widely adopted by or forced on the tribes.

However, for all the modern talk about maintaining traditions, the inconvenient truth is pre-twentieth century Native American religion was highly personal and fluid, so there’s almost no such thing as “authentic” rituals, any more than there is an "authentic" version of the Bible, or "authentic" martial arts forms. (See what I did there? Pissed off everybody in one fell sentence.)

As far as I can tell, the romantic pre-urban myth about Indian blood-brothers comes from a series of books about the American West by popular German novelist Karl May, which were published in the 1870-80s and featured an Apache "chief" named Winnetou. Karl May probably never visited North America and he certainly wasn't acquainted with any Apaches. 

So where did May get the idea?

Turns out I'm not the only one who had that question.

I found a thesis paper by a medieval historian who was looking into this very phenomenon. In every case where a ‘blood brothers’ ritual is mentioned—and there are many in medieval manuscripts—it seems to be used as a sort of backhanded compliment or self-aggrandizement i.e.: "Those savages over there were REAL badasses, but we wiped ‘em out anyway, because ours is the true civilization.”

The author of the paper concluded that NO ONE actually did this ritual except possibly the ancient Scythians, although in that case too, it seems that a Greek poet described the practice some 200 years after the fact, and again, may have made it up to illustrate what fierce, savage warriors the Scythians were.

The point is, the idea seems to have been well-worn even by the nineteenth century, and it seems to be ascribed to the romantic “other” more often than not, in a "Those guys are crazy!" kind of way. 

With that in mind, I tweaked the scene in such a way as to pay homage to the trope while hopefully injecting a nod toward factualism.

And for the record, I think my husband put it best when he said, "Why are tough guys in movies always cutting up their hands? That's the dumbest thing ever. A cut on the hand takes forever to heal because you're always bending your hand and breaking it open and then it gets infected."

--------------

Interesting side note #1: I consulted a college anthropology professor who *did* claim to be an expert in NA matters, and while he did take issue with several points in my manuscript, he didn't bat an eye at the blood-brothers ritual, which made me inclined to distrust everything else he said. 

Interesting side note #2: Deb Reece at American Indians in Children's Literature touches on the subject here, though does not offer any counter-examples or resources to refute the claim (though I admit it's pretty difficult to prove that somebody DIDN'T do something—it's the bane of historical research).

Interesting side note #3: I found a piece asserting that Chinese gang members and underworld types (again, fierce warriors of the foreign persuasion)  did this sort of thing in the late 19th century up through the 1940’s. My Chinese Kung fu teacher, who is a Hong Kong native, also insists it is so, but did not provide references.

fun with racial slurs

At my last writer's meeting somebody questioned my use of the racial slur "cracker," so I got curious and did some new digging; new resources crop up all the time. I knew 'cracker' was pre-Civil War but didn't know it was pre-Revolution.

From www.etymonline.com a/k/a the most wonderful writer's resource ever:

cracker (n.2)
Southern U.S. derogatory term for "poor, white trash" (1766), probably an agent noun from crack (v.) in the sense "to boast" (as in not what it's cracked up to be). Compare Latin crepare "to rattle, crack, creak," with a secondary figurative sense of "boast of, prattle, make ado about."

I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode. [1766, G. Cochrane]

But DARE compares corn-cracker "poor white farmer" (1835, U.S. Midwest colloquial). Especially of Georgians by 1808, though often extended to residents of northern Florida. Another name in mid-19c. use wassand-hiller "poor white in Georgia or South Carolina."

Not very essentially different is the condition of a class of people living in the pine-barrens nearest the coast [of South Carolina], as described to me by a rice-planter. They seldom have any meat, he said, except they steal hogs, which belong to the planters, or their negroes, and their chief diet is rice and milk. "They are small, gaunt, and cadaverous, and their skin is just the color of the sand-hills they live on. They are quite incapable of applying themselves steadily to any labor, and their habits are very much like those of the old Indians." [Frederick Law Olmsted, "A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States," 1856]

Also, the less well-known and southern-specific "buckra"

buckra (n.)
disparaging term among U.S. blacks for "white person," especially a poor one, 1790, apparently from an African language; compare mbakara "master" in Efik, a language of the Ibibio people of southern Nigeria.

Once again, I'm struck by how American slang has about a billion derogatory words for "not-white," and specifically, "black", but not many that specifically disparage whiteness. Another example of how history, and language, are written by the victors.

backstory

Trace could not remember exactly the conversation during which he’d told his family about his curse. They’d been sitting in the parlor that evening—the elder Aloysius Tracy and his younger, golden-haired wife, Rachel. Jacob’s own wife, Dorie, pretty and plump with pregnancy, her auburn hair gleaming in the firelight. Probably she had been making something for the baby, whose arrival lacked only a month or so. Probably Rachel had been doing her own mending; no one’s hands were idle in the evenings. Probably Jacob had been whittling or mending tack or braiding rope, while Aloysius read aloud to them from one of his Catholic-interest newspapers or political tracts.

Jacob was thirty that year, and finally felt like a man. He’d been married nearly eleven months. He’d mended fences with his father, been welcomed home like the prodigal son, and thrown himself willingingly into the family farm. The years he’d spent on cattle ranches out west had taught him a few things about the new breeds and ways to improve stock, and Aloysius—perhaps as eager as his son to smooth over the years of ugliness between them—had been surprisingly receptive to Jacob’s ideas.

In the past year, since meeting Dorie, he had not seen a single spirit. Not one. And while some deep intuitive part of him attributed the miracle to her bright and intoxicating presence—she kept his head so turned around he hardly noticed where his feet were, much less any sinister goings-on—with his rational mind he chose to believe that he had finally grown up, put away childish things, overcome the weakness of mind and spirit that had needed to see death and horror all around him. He had stopped clutching weakness around himself like a shield, in an effort to stave off adult responsibility and keep wandering, unsettled, unreconciled to his father’s expectations.

The old man had been right, the thirty-year-old Jacob Tracy told himself. He’d spent too many years with his head in the clouds, pursuing ideas of some grand calling instead of settling to mundane reality. At least there was no more talk of his becoming a priest. Being married had put paid to that idea. And his brother Warrick was nineteen and already a corporal in the army. The irony of Aloysius’ pride in his younger son’s career was not lost on Jacob.

That was what had prompted the confession, now that he thought about it. Aloysius had been reading one of Warrick’s letters, and boasting about the younger brother’s achievements. Jacob had felt compelled to remind them that he, too, had been in the army and there was nothing distinguished about it, from an enlisted man’s point of view. That had goaded Aloysius to declare that fighting in support of such wickedness as slavery and rebellion was bound to bring on God’s judgment.

And then the familiar litany, delivered not in a scold but in a rational, triumphant tone, as if Aloysius Tracy was imparting some higher wisdom that his son was finally old enough to grasp: that defying one’s elders and falling in with unGodly companions were the first steps on the road to vice, intemperance, and insanity. It was only through God’s grace, Aloysius reminded them all, that Jacob had recovered from possession by the demons morphine and madness.

Dorothea had gasped at that, her eyes darting from her father-in-law’s face to her husband’s. Jacob felt frozen with shame and fury; he had told her little about the two years after he’d been wounded.

Rachel, alone of them, had the detachment and grace to turn the moment. “Now Al,” she said firmly—the only person Jacob had ever heard chide his father and get away with it. “You know Jacob was badly wounded. Of course he spent time in hospital. We should thank God he survived at all. And let us not discount his own character in maintaining his temperate ways. Why, even you know Father Gilham has a greater fondness for the bottle than he ought. It’s the curse of the Irish, my grandmother always said.”

“I was never mad,” Jacob said, looking his father in the eye. “I was out of my head with pain and fever, and yes, with the medicine they gave me. But I know what was what. I saw things out there on the battlefield, and for years after.”

Aloysius looked stony. Rachel seemed poised, as if to grab for a knick-knack in harm’s way. Dorie stared at Jacob, big-eyed. “What things?” she whispered.

And so he told them. About lying there on the battlefield and seeing the tear in the sky, and watching his fallen comrades march up through it. About the hospital, later, and noticing how some of the dead seemed to linger, confused, and how they began to congregate around his bed, asking him for directions, for explanations, to carry messages to loved ones. How he had argued with them and then raved at them in his pain and fever, until the nurses, not knowing what else to do, loaded him up with more dope until he could hardly move, and the ghosts mingled with his opiate dreams and began to seem like demons.

By the time he was healed enough to be moved he was already known as a derangement case (Dorie’s eyes were growing bigger and bigger) and the dope had its hooks in him. They’d transferred him, along with a few other ravers and cataleptics, to the Sanitarium at Richmond, where he eventually came to the attention of Dr. Hardinger.

But he knew it would do no good to tell Aloysius Tracy that his saving physician had been a devout Spiritualist, who had tried to persuade the younger Jacob that he’d been favored by God to bridge the worlds of the living and the dead. So the thirty-year-old Jacob caught his breath and summed up lamely, “He helped me stop seein them so often.”

“But you still see them?” Dorie insisted, her eyes darting around the room, as if reconsidering all the shadowy corners.

“No,” Jacob said, taking her hand. She was a delicate little thing—afraid of horses and lightning and even overly-large dogs. It was one of the things he loved about her—that she made him feel brave and strong. “Not for some time now. Certainly not since I met you. You think I’d let anything evil near you?”

“But you did see spirits,” Aloysius persisted, “after leaving the hospital. I saw it in your eyes, when you came here. The Devil’s curse was on you, and his imps pursuing you.”

Anger boiled up in Jacob. “Yeah, Da, they were. And you gave me no respite from them. You threw me out of here like Cain—“

“Jacob,” Rachel interrupted. “Let it be. Your father has long regretted his treatment of you. Don’t undo the goodwill you’ve built between you. And this quarrelling isn’t good for the baby.”

Jacob glanced at Dorie, who had a hand spread over her belly and was looking rather white. Instantly contrite, he helped her out of the chair and to their room, where he spent another hour or more assuring her there were no ghosts in the house, no demons coming to harm her or their baby.

But three weeks later they were all dead.

lavender cookies with rosewater icing

This one is circulating the net lately. I, of course, tweaked it a little. Most versions of this call for 2 tsp of baking powder, which I thought was way too much for a batch this small. Also I used my beloved Fiori di Sicilia for the icing instead of straight rosewater, since my bottle is a little old.

I've had lavender in chocolate bonbons before, but never in baked goods, so I was a little concerned about the lavender being overpowering here. It wasn't, even though my dried lavender buds were very fresh and smelled perfumey as I was processing them. When combined with the butter and sugar they create a lovely almost-sharp flavor, rather like basil, or the sweet overtones of black pepper.

This is some of the best cookie dough I have ever tasted. I love me some vanilla, but it is much richer and stronger than the delicate flavors featured here. My writers group ate the whole two dozen I took; luckily for me I kept a few in reserve at home. :-)

Bake at 375 for 11-13 minutes.

Lavender cookies with rosewater icing

1/2 c unsalted butter, softened

1 c sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp lavender buds, crushed

1 1/2 c flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

*some recipes call for grapefruit zest to be added to the batter, which I think would be delightful but I haven’t tried it yet.

Preheat oven to 375º F. 

Crush lavender buds with a morter and pestle, and/or process them with the sugar for a few seconds until finely crushed. Cream butter & sugar together; add eggs. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl; beat into the butter mixture in 3-4 stages. This makes a very soft dough, almost a batter. I chilled mine for a half-hour or so to make it more manageable, but it’s not necessary.

I strongly recommend using parchment paper to line your baking sheets for these. They are quite delicate.

Drop small spoonfuls (1-inch diameter) on the cookie sheet, spaced well apart. Bake 11-13 minutes or until barely browning around the edges. Remove promptly and let cool before drizzling on the icing.

Makes about 30 cookies. I think they would be just fine without icing, but YMMV.

Icing

1 cup powdered sugar, more or less

2-3 drops rose water

2-3 drops Fiori di Sicilia (optional)

milk

Combine sugar, flavorings, and just enough milk to get a consistency that will drizzle off the end of a fork. Drizzle away, preferably over the parchment paper on which the cookies were baked. Store tightly covered.

Holly Oakley

I went shooting this weekend. First time ever. Got to handle a cowboy gun--a big Colt .45 six-shooter replica, the long-barrel model with a side-gate breach, just like I gave Trace. It's got some kick, but less than I expected, and different than I expected. The gun is balanced around the trigger, and it's long and flat--your hand is diagonally below and behind the chamber. When it discharges it kind of rocks back, and if you don't try to fight it, your whole forearm floats up with it.

My sparring partner said he was impressed at how I wasn't afraid of the kick. I'll admit I was a little apprehensive about looking like a girl, but I've been in kung fu class long enough to know that getting hit isn't the end of the world. You just absorb the blow and keep on with the task at hand. Plus, in tai chi we learn to "separate the substantial from the insubstantial," which basically means you pay attention to what parts of the body must be tightened to do work, and which parts have to be soft to act as shock absorption. I figured out real fast that you have to tense the wrist and hand, to hold the gun, while the index finger is soft to pull the trigger and the elbow is loose to allow for the kick. If you try to take the kick at the hand, you'll get hurt.

Besides, you only have to aim long enough to pull the trigger. Once the explosion is gone, so is the bullet, and the kick doesn't matter to your aim.

I spent an hour or so working up to the Colt. First I shot a little .22 rifle with a scope, which was so smooth and effortless it was like throwing darts--only more accurate, since I can't throw darts to save my life. Then I progressed to a .22 revolver, which was harder to aim but got me familiar with the grip and action. Then they gave me something with a larger caliber: a James Bond gun, the Walther PPK 9-millimeter. It was very cool and sleek-looking, and I was pretty keen on it until I fired it. It's a small gun, and it felt good in my hand, but the slide-action made it jerk a lot. There's no mass to hold it down, and that explosion packs quite a punch. It shoves itself back into your hand. All the recoil seemed to bear right on the web of my thumb and forefinger. I shot through several magazines but never really settled to it. Sure looks sexy, though.

Then the Colt. My arm was softened up by this time, but after the Walther my nerves were a bit rattled. The range-master arranged me in a slightly forward stance, and I remembered my tai chi and rounded my shoulders across the back. Two hand grip: right around the grip and left palm cupping underneath. The gun was designed for larger hands than mine and I had to stretch to pull the hammer back, but it was no difficulty to cock it with my thumb.

I had figured out how to sight with one eye by this time. The left wasn't quite closed, it was just unneccessary; I wasn't focusing with it. The barrel was long and shiny, and I could look right down it to the red dot in the center of the target. The angle of the grip makes it as if you really are just pointing your finger, much more so than with the modern Walther. I set my teeth, felt for the ground with my toes, and pulled the trigger.

Boom! Crack! Ping! Nothing else sounds like a gunshot, especially out-of-doors. I had taken my earplugs out to really get the experience. The noise is so loud and percussive that it rings--you can feel the prick of your eardrums. My forearm seemed to rock back and I let it float down again. You can't really see where the bullet goes, in that moment when you pull the trigger; the assault to your senses is too disruptive. But there was a hole in the paper: had it been there before?

Sight down the barrel again, nice and slow. There's a tension on the trigger, an easy pull and then a point where you feel the spring. It takes only the tiniest curl of muscle to pull it past that point. Boom! Another hole in the paper. My back teeth are vibrating. I put my earplugs back in. The SP tells me that the range-master's mouth fell open at that point. Cock the hammer back, try to think forward at the paper. Boom! The kickback isn't a recoil, like the Walther, it's a torque around the chamber. I can't stop it, so I let my wrist go with it. Boom! Boom! A spray of wood pulp goes up behind the target. I am definitely hitting something. Boom!

Click. I'm out of ammo. I'd forgotten to count. I thumb the chamber and the barrel, gingerly at first, but they are only warm, not hot. The clean silver of the gun has darkened, smokily, around the chamber.

Everybody in the world, I think, has certain delusions about their own prowess. Some commedian said we all believe we're above-average drivers. Everyone I know seems to think they are above-average marksmen, as well. Maybe it's just the men I know.

"Did I hit anything?" I asked, semi-jokingly.

"Hell, yeah, you hit it!" the range master said. "That was outstanding!"

I won't claim I dead-eyed it. But all six shots hit the paper--one of those tabloid-sized targets--at fifty feet. Four were in the black. One was an inch from the bullseye.

"Did the SP tell you I'd never fired a handgun before?" I said to the range master as he signed and dated my paper target.

"Yeah... I'd say you have a gift." He grinned at me.

I sighed theatrically. "I suppose now I'll have to do something responsible with it."

"You may be obligated," he agreed.

for the curious

From, A Short History of Technology: From the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900, by T.K. Derry and Trevor I. Williams, Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1993.

Although batteries were [...] an extremely convenient source of electricity for a great many purposes, the wide-spread use of electricity for heat, light, and power depended upon the development of mechanical methods of generation. The first mechanical generator was shown in Paris within a year of Faraday reading his classic paper to the Royal Society in 1831, by an instrument-maker, Hippolyte Pixii, in whose hand-turned generator the coils were fixed and the horseshoe magnet rotated. But before another year had passed, a machine was demonstrated at a Cambridge meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in which the opposite principle, namely rotation of the coils relative to a fixed magnet, was utilized; this is now general practice. From 1834, at latest, rotating-coil generators were being made commercially in London.

The earliest generators produced alternating current[...]with a frequency depending upon the speed at which the machine was turned. This was looked upon as a most serious disadvantage--partly, at least, because all workers were accustomed tow orking with the direct current provided by batteries--but towards the end of the century it was realized that for large-scale use alternating current had decisive advantages over direct. For the time being, however, the problem of the conversion of alternating into direct current was solved by the invention of the mechanical commutator: a commutator designed by Ampere was fitted to an early generator made by Pixii.

There's a good deal more, such as the heating problems those early generators had, and the realization of self-exitation--that electromagnets could retain enough magnetism to start output from an electric generator, thus ending the need for an external battery or permanent magnets--being generally accepted by 1866. But none of that is really needed to underscore the point.

It should suffice to state that the ring-armature Gramme dynamo (generator) was introduced in 1870; it mostly ran on steam power, which goes to show that truth is stranger than fiction.

And for those desiring a more comprehensive timeline, here is a more succinct account of early electrical devises, appropriately enough, describing the Preconditions for Edison's Lamp.

Miss Sabine Fairweather kindly requests that the oh-so-educated gentlemen will refrain from impugning her research in the future, without the benefit of persuasive evidence. She dislikes wasting time in explaining herself.

surgical antiseptics

Carbolic acid, the stuff first used by Lister as an antiseptic in surgery, is also known as Phenol. According to Wikipedia:

Phenol has antiseptic properties, and was used by Sir Joseph Lister in his pioneering technique of antiseptic surgery, though the skin irritation caused by continual exposure to phenol eventually led to the substitution of aseptic (germ-free) techniques in surgery. It is one of the main components of the commercial antiseptic TCP.

Phenol has anesthetic properties, and is the active ingredient in some oral anesthetics such as Chloraseptic® spray.

Yum. Anyway, it appears hospitals have never really stopped using it, but found other applications for it. Wikipedia again:

Used as a "scrub" for pre-operative hand cleansing. Used in the form of a powder as an antiseptic baby powder, where it is dusted onto the belly button as it heals. Also used in mouthwashes and throat lozenges, where it has a painkilling effect as well as an antiseptic one.

According to a fictitious but well-researched account I read, surgeons stopped soaking their hands in acid about the same time rubber gloves came along, around 1885. Instead they scrub well and may rise with a mild phenol solution. Today most surgical procedures prevent infection by operation in a sterile environment, with metal instruments that can be sterilized. Any after-infections are treated with antibiotics and antiseptics.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Following links can be a grand waste of time, particularly if you're randomly jumping from one blog to another. But eavesdropping can learn you all kinds of useful things, like where Victorian Goths shop for perfume. I give you the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Dig the fonts and the illustrations, but the real triumph is the descriptions of the scents, for instance:

GRAND GUIGNOL
In 1897, a new form of entertainment was presented to the people of Montmartre, Paris: the Théâtre du Grand Guignol. During the course of an evening at the theatre, one would watch several small plays, ranging from crime dramas to sexual farces, a violent, throat-ripping, eye-gouging, acid-tossing good time, which always included shock topics such as infanticide, necrophilia, insanity, murder, paranoia, vengeance and death by common household object. Our Grand Guignol perfume is a shot of sweet apricot brandy; just enough to settle your nerves after a ghoulish, gory brush with the macabre.

Now see: that's what I want in a Halloween party.

Among other things, Black Phoenix Alchemy has an entire line called "Mad Tea Party, or, The Dodson Collection"--inspired by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I love it.
Hell, I want one of each.

the age of paleontology

I'd always kind of wondered about the study of paleontology and how it came to be. As with so many other of our modern sciences, I had a vague idea of it rising from the muck of the Industrial Revolution, but I didn't really know how or when. I had a sort of collective image of the late-Victorian Egyptologist grave-robbers and the early fossil-hunters being cut from the same cloth. And perhaps they were; before the turn of the century there still wasn't a lot of differentiation between the sciences or the scientists who studied them--an educated man was supposed to know a little about everything.

Today I found a site that overviews the rise of paleontology in America and Europe and now I'm all excited and discombobulated.

Colonial Americans understood neither the concept of geological time nor the actual process by which fossils were created. Their society was one that still looked largely to scripture for explanations of much of the surrounding natural world. For instance, the fossil fish and seashells found at quarries and construction excavations in the 1700s were widely believed to be residue from the great flood survived by Noah.

In 1841, Dr. Richard Owen, a leading British authority on anatomy, published a report concluding that the individual bones [found up until that time] were from animals that had all been members of a group of large reptiles that had completely died out in some past age. Because of their apparent size, as well as their fangs and claws, Owen called them by a combination of the Greek words for "terrible lizards" -- dino saurs.

The very idea -- that previously unknown species of monstrously large reptiles could have existed outside of the events documented in the Bible -- was a highly controversial one. It also exerted a deliciously exotic pull on the imaginations of nineteenth-century scientists and laymen alike.

I should think it would. And every time I read something like this I'm appalled to realize just how narrow and shaky the platform of science and reasoning is. Barely a hundred years ago we were still living in the dark ages. Most of the world still does. Hell, most of humanity still does. What passes for logic these days is not, by and large, a structured method of thought.

Of course now I'm brainstorming ways of letting Sabine work a lecture about dinosaurs into casual conversation and wondering if Trace will run across any dinosaur bones while he's out in the desert and musing over whether dead monsters buried in the earth could serve as a metaphor for anything else--or at least provide a horror sequence. The temptation with a character like Miss Fairweather is to give her a miraculous insight into all kinds of things we understand now--germ theory, for instance, which was in its infancy--antibiotics, anesthetics, stuff like that. But I must restrain myself, or I'll come off sounding like Clan of the Cave Bear chick, with cavegirl Ayla feeding digitalis to the mongoloid kid with the heart murmur.

At the same time, part of my interest in creating Miss Fairweather was to explore the collision of science and faith, which I have not done much of to this point because the science keeps taking a back seat to the occult overtones. Maybe something useful will come out of this new bit of knowledge.

yummy

From The Prairie Traveler, by Randolph B. Marcy (pub. 1859), the chapter "Stores and Provisions":

The pemmican, which constitutes almost the entire diet of the Fur Company's men in the Northwest, is prepared as follows: The buffalo meat is cut into thin flakes, and hung up to dry in the sun or before a slow fire; it is then pounded between two stones and reduced to a powder; this powder is placed in a bag of the animal's hide, with the hair on the outside; melted grease is then poured into it, and the bag sewn up. It can be eaten raw, and many prefer it so. Mixed with a little flour and boiled, it is a very wholesome and exceedingly nutritious food, and will keep fresh for a long time.

I've seen several "receits" for pemmican, and that has got to be the worst. Although I've been known to eat raw cured bacon fat, so maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge.

Also of interest: the word "antiscorbutics," i.e. "something to prevent scurvy."

how to be beautiful, 1889

I find this to be quite droll, as well as common-sensical. Particularly read the chapter on Corsets, from which comes the following:

This unending war against corsets that has been raging for about two score years and ten is certainly as good an advertisement as the most enterprising manufacturers can wish for. It proves conclusively that the corset wins all of the battles. If, in the fight, it has even wiped off from the face of the earth a few brainless women it is difficult to understand why the corset should be held responsible.

This is the point the femi-nazis are missing. Beauty can be a weapon. You just have to know how to wield it.

I give you expert testimony:

MEN condemn and criticize the very things in their own wives and sisters that they run after and admire in the sisters and wives of other men. One of their great "hobbies" is "common-sense" shoes. They advocate them and insist upon their wives and sisters wearing them, yet were they ever known to say a lady had a pretty foot that was seen in a commonsense shoe? Never! The nearest they get to it is : "What a lovely foot that woman has! if she would only take off that French heel and wear a common-sense shoe! " Poor things, they don't know that only the French shoe can show the outlines of a pretty foot. Men are so peculiar. They talk of their admiration for sensible girls, condemn paint, powder, small waists and French heels, and at the same time their most serious attentions are given to girls de voted to all of the frivolities known to the fair sex. Just as long as men go on--but I digress.

And I rest my case.

feeding my brain

I bought two books today at lunchtime. There's a Borders three blocks away from my office, which cost me a great deal of paycheck, the first couple years I worked here. It's a great place to pass a lunch hour--especially in the summer, among the cool, quiet stacks that smell of bleached paper and soy-based inks.

I went in there semi-seriously looking for a tome on Catholicism in nineteenth-century America. I know such a work exists: I've seen some on Amazon, but today I just wanted to do some skimming, not buying.

Instead I got sidetracked by the African-American studies. I saw the endcap, with a new compilation of slave narratives, and figured I could pick up some anecdotes. I found a thin bound copy of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, for the whopping price of $2. I knew who Booker T. was, but I never had heard of this book. Maybe I read an excerpt and forgot about it. We didn't even cover him in Minority Lit, in college. Still, for $2, every kid in America ought to be made to read this. It's not a man with an ax to grind or a scholar trying to build a reputation. He's just a guy telling it like it was.

The other book I got is way more fun: Lotions, Potions, and Deadly Elixirs: Frontier Medicine in America. It's a hoot. Beautifully bound and printed on glossy paper, with a number of proofreading errors that set my teeth on edge, it's both informative and entertaining. The first half is anecdotal and expository; the back half is an encyclopedia.

Applying vinegar mildly pickled the top layers of the skin. Regardless of the smell, and the desire to bite oneself, vinegar helped relieve sunburn and similar skin irritations. When applied to irritated skin, vinegar makes skin sting before it feels better. That is perhaps why it found little favor in treating minor hemorrhoid flare-ups or burning bottoms caused from improper wipings with pine straw or leaves.

I kid you not. The author also relates how his Grandma doctored everybody with coal tar and veterinary medicines, fried her chicken in lard, ate eggs and bacon for breakfast every day, dipped snuff and still lived to be ninety-four. My kind of woman. I figure with modern advances in medicine--and less chance of contracting parasites--I can make it to a hundred and four.

and now we venture into strange new territory

I have an idea for a story in which Trace has to either pose as or debunk a parlor medium/spiritualist. Not sure how or whether it will play out yet, so don't start second-guessing me, hear? But in preparation for said topic, I've been doing a little reading. The Internet, for all its faults, is the ideal place to read up on stuff like this.

Voila: The International Survivalist Society and their impressive collection of archives. The biographies are of particular interest to me.

In the mere half-hour that I've been surfing, I've already seen several implications--if not outright assertions--that the learned men of the nineteen century were more open-minded than we are today: that most scientists were quick to accept the truth of spiritualism, mesmerism, and other para-sciences.

Riiiiiight.

Anyway, this guy particularly interests me, because of the religious angle. I must also do some reading about Catholicism and the general state of faith in the late 1900's, and I must say I'm not looking forward to exploring either of these topics. Religion and psychic phenomenae fall into the category of things that seem to be discussed only by those with an axe to grind.

You know, on a total aside note: I'm the only writer I know who's so chatty about her ideas. Even among my writing colleagues who are actually producing, I never know a thing about what they're working on until there's a copy in my hands. In fact, I've heard writers say that a story will die on them if they talk about it too much beforehand. Am I just weird, or what? Desperate for approval, in love with the sound of my own voice, thinking aloud? Careless or naive about somebody stealing my ideas? Don't know. Don't care.