Devon Garden: RD&E Exeter

Clare and I had a potter around the "Devon Garden" - a sensory / memory garden for dementia sufferers - at the RD&E yesterday. Neither of us is a sufferer; this is more serendipity of the sort that got me to see Yeo Ward's lovely Tree of Life courtyard mosaic in June 2014.

Maxwell Gray in Sanatogen ad shock

Cross-posted from A Wren-like Note: the odd bit of detail on the Newport-born author Maxwell Gray (Mary Gleed Tuttiett) continues to surface, often via researching something else. A sidetrack on patent medicines while writing the ATURFUQIL piece brought something of a surprise: Maxwell Gray giving a celebrity endorsement for the patent remedy Sanatogen.

ATURFUQIL: philanthropy funded by snake oil

This is a fairly well-known local curiosity, but as it was a beautiful day, I decided to take an afternoon off to see it for myself: the "ATURFUQIL" memorial in Ringmore churchyard on the grave of William Newcombe Homeyard and his wife Maria Laetitia Kempe Homeyard.

Getting well in Bournemouth

Horace Dobell's 1886 The Medical Aspects of Bournemouth and its Surroundings must win some kind of prize for a location account whose illustrations make the reader least likely to want to go there. They contrast strongly with those in Sydney Heath's 1915 Blackie guide Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch, which is illustrated by EM Haslehust's delicate but luscious watercolours.

1873 ads: a selection from Shaw's

A nice crop of adverts from the 1873 Shaw's Tourist's Picturesque Guide to the Isle of Wight. Unlike the locally-targeted ads in Shanklin Spa: A Guide to the Town and the Isle of Wight, these are general-purpose ones that must have appeared in the whole UK stable of Graphotype-illustrated Shaw's guides.

Iapetus

Just a piece of stream-of-consciousness that led to some literature I'd quite forgotten... I saw an old Daily Mail article about the very cute cat Venus, who is a chimera - an organism composed of genetically distinct patches. It's not unusual in animals, but unusual to have such a distinct facial division: blue-eyed ginger tabby on the left, green-eyed black cat on the right. She even has a Facebook page.

Tree of Life

A belated post (I wanted to confirm permission to blog about a non-public location): after my last chemotherapy at the end of June, I got feverish and needed a precautionary couple of days in hospital on antibiotics. But on the plus side, I wouldn't otherwise have seen Tree of Life, a beautiful mosaic mural in the courtyard garden off the Yeo oncology ward at Exeter's RD&E hospital.

The Journal of a Disappointed Man

Backdated at random: The Journal of a Disappointed Man. This is the pseudonymous diary of Bruce Frederick Cummings (7 September 1889 – 22 October 1919), who wrote as W. N. P. Barbellion an account of his life and decline due to multiple sclerosis. There are more than a few things I didn't realise about the account: particularly that MS was diagnosable in the early 1900s without the scan you'd expect nowadays. Also the standard story of who knew / didn't know about the diagnosis is increasingly under revision.

The Shapters

One of my several defences of going to the pub is the conversation; and on Tuesday I had a very interesting one about Thomas Shapter, a doctor who features prominently in Exeter history, and whether a couple of Topsham streets are named after him.

Sandrock Spring: quaffing the lymph

Further to The Sandrock Chalybeate Spring, I just found these excessively erudite verse testimonials to its medicinal properties, courtesy Isle of Wight County Press Archive.

The Eyes! The Eyes! and other ads

It goes without saying that ads for scammy products are nothing new, especially in the days before the Advertising Standards Authority, but these (among many) caught my eye while I was browsing the Isle of Wight Observer for April 05, 1879.

It ain't that kind: 18 months on

As some readers will know, in September 2012 I was diagnosed with cancer of unknown primary. A progress report:

Bright and Miss Follett: a Topsham courtship

Richard Bright (from Medical Portrait Gallery)

Browsing for history of the Goat Walk yesterday, I ran into a Topsham connection I never knew: the courtship of Richard Bright and Eliza Follett.

Richard Bright (1789 – 1858) was an eminent physician and an early pioneer in the research of kidney disease (Bright's disease - a historical classification of nephritis - is named after him). There's a chapter on him in the 1838 Medical portrait gallery. Biographical memoirs of the most celebrated physicians, surgeons, etc., etc., who have contributed to the advancement of medical science: see Richard Bright, M.D. F.R.S. Bright was married twice. His first wife Martha Lyndon Babington, died of childbirth complications in 1823. A few years later he courted a childhood friend, Eliza Follett, sister of the lawyer and politician William Webb Follett, and they married on 27th July 1826 (ODNB).

Follett Lodge, Ferry Road, Topsham

 The Folletts being a Topsham family, a deal of Eliza's courtship with Richard took place around Topsham, and their walks are recorded in the 1983 biography by Bright's great-great niece.

It is at Easter 1826 that we hear, in a letter written to his father, all about his visit to the Folletts at Topsham.

'Passage' (or Follett Lodge as it is known today) had been the family home since the first Folletts, natives of Normandy, had come to England in Henry II's time. Eliza's father, Benjamin Follett, was a retired captain of the 15th Foot Regiment and carried on the old family business as ships' chandler and timber merchant. He had married an Irish girl, Ann Webb of Kinsale, and they had a family of six sons and two girls.

'Goat's Walk' seems to have been Bright's and Eliza's favourite spot; it is often mentioned in Eliza's love letters. It was a narrow path along the water's edge. At high tide a vast expanse of water stretched before them, while at low tide the tortuous channel of the Exe was winged with sea birds plummeting down on to cushions of sea-pink. Here they would watch the bare-legged winkle gatherers, dressed in striped skirts looped to the waist. Their wind-ravaged faces arrested Bright's interested attention, and Eliza soon discovered it was the same when they met gypsies, or talked to her father's men in the timber yard. Exploring with him was a wonderful experience. He was always stopping to pick a flower, to identify the sound coming from a bush or to scoop up the clay where the river Clyst met the solid wall of the old Bridge Inn. Walking along the road where the Romans had marched, he would always find some evidence of their existence and of their battles.
- Dr. Richard Bright, (1789-1858), Pamela Bright, Bodley Head, 1983.

I guess you had to be there. Anyhow, this does show that the Goat Walk's existence as a path - and it seems its name - pre-dates the anecdote connected with its early 20th century upgrade to concreted form.

A later biography of Bright adds:

The wedding took place in the old church of St Marguerite [sic] at Topsham in July 1826. As with his marriage to Martha we have no surviving details of the ceremony nor the honeymoon.
- Richard Bright, 1789-1858: physician in an age of revolution and reform, Diana Berry, Campbell Mackenzie, Hugh L'Etang, Royal Society of Medicine Services, 1992 

- Ray

A Christmas Carol: a rationale

I'd normally save this topic until Christmas, but it seems too good to waste. Last Sunday's Independent carried an interesting news story:

A Brazilian man recovering from a stroke has turned into a philanthropist after damage to parts of his brain changed his personality in a way previously unheard of by doctors.

The 49-year-old senior manager of a large corporation found that he could not stop giving away money and spending cash liberally on sweets, food and drinks for children he met in the street. His wife told doctors her husband’s generosity had led to significant family distress and almost bankrupted them.

The man, referred to as Mr A, suffered a stroke triggered by high blood pressure. This led to bleeding in his subcortical region, an area immediately below the cerebral cortex, associated with higher-level thinking and decision-making.

...

Mr A told doctors he was aware of his behaviour and no longer wanted to work because he had “seen death close up (and) wanted to enjoy life which is too short”.

- Businessman suffers stroke, then can’t stop giving his money away, Janet Tappin Coelho, Rio de Janeiro, The Independent, Sunday 08 September 2013

That would be a nice rationale for Ebenezer Scrooge's personality change, following an overnight epiphany about life and death, in A Christmas Carol. I'm not the first to think of this (though this is the first example I've heard of with symptoms and circumstances matching the Dickens story): a stroke is one of the possibilities covered by Lisa Sanders, MD, in her December 17, 2006 New York Times article, Diagnosing with Dickens, though she ultimately settles on Lewy body dementia.

- Ray

Slightly different shaped buttons

I just encountered - thanks, Vickie - an article I somehow missed in the Guardian's Occam's Corner series, Why I'm feeling so crabby about cancer conspiracy theories. It'd be worth reading just for one memorable analogy:

Briefly, killing cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed is like trying to win an old fashioned infantry battle in which both sides are wearing the same uniform, except some of the enemy have slightly different shaped buttons, others have slightly longer bootlaces, others have slightly lacier underwear, and all have the ability to suddenly change clothes halfway through the fight.
- Why I'm feeling so crabby about cancer conspiracy theories, Cath Ennis, The Guardian, 7 December 2012

- Ray

Blue pill - wrong Kingsley

extract, Nelson's Column, page 15,
East Devon Coast & Country, Dec 2012

One for Misattribution Corner. I was just reading East Devon Coast & Country, one of our glossy regional magazines. I recommend it: it's an exception to the usual run of advertorial magazines in actually having good articles, and paying contributors for them. What's more, it puts its issues online.

I did, however, catch one of its regulars in an error in the December 2012 edition, with a reference to a quotation concerning dyspepsia:

Just chatting

Clare, who's researching World War One topics, just drew my attention to this article: Of Lice and Men: Trench Fever and Trench Life in the A.I.F. by Dr. M. Geoffrey Miller.

It's a good article in itself, but one that also leads into a wealth of superb material. Up one level, and you get to The Medical Front, a compendium of texts on "all medical aspects, military and civilian, of the Great War". And this is just part of the GWDPA: the Great War Primary Document Archive, whose intention is "to present in one location both primary and relevant secondary documents between 1890-1930".

However, returning to Of Lice and Men, one point of interest was the reference to "chats" and "chatting" ...

There are three varieties of lice; head lice, or 'nits', (pediculus capitis), pubic lice, or 'crabs', (Phthirius pubis), and body lice, or 'chats' (pediculus corporis)
...
Accordingly the soldiers had to attempt to remove the lice as best they could. This removal, a procedure known as "chatting up" was usually by hand, picking out the lice from the clothes, or with the flame from lighted candles run up and down the seams of the clothes. (This was the origin of the verb "to chat" as the soldiers made the removal of their lice into a social event).

... and part of this rang etymological alarm bells with us both.

"Chat" for "louse" is fine. I suspected it might be Anglo-Indian, but it turns out not:

1699 B. E. New Dict. Canting Crew, Chatts, lice.
1725 in New Canting Dict.
1819 J. H. Vaux New Vocab. Flash Lang. in Mem., Chats, lice.
- Oxford English Dictionary

"Chatting up" checks out likewise, as a couple of contemporary references show:

Then they gave us hot water and soap and a clean towel, and told us to go to it. This was an advancing signal-corps company that was chatting up after the retreating Boche.
- The Literary Digest, Volume 59, page 42, 1918
"Chatting-up," searching for " them " by divesting oneself of tunic, shirt and even breeches. This informal parade used to take place frequently among the men in the trenches during the summer months.
- The Athenaeum, 1919 

But the statement that this is the origin of the verb "to chat" is completely untrue. "Chat" goes back to Middle English in a couple of similar obsolete senses, but even the modern sense dates back to the 1500s.

3. intr. To talk in a light and informal manner; to converse familiarly and pleasantly.
1551 R. Robinson tr. T. More Vtopia sig. ✠viiv, I muste commen with my wife, chatte with my chyldren, and talke wyth my seruantes.
- Oxford English Dictionary

"Chatting up" in the delousing sense, by the way, has no connection with the modern sense of "flirting with". The OED's first citation for this sense is much later, and seems to be a modern development, first cited to the 1960s, on an obsolete meaning of "chat" equivalent to "chat up".

1916  C. J. Dennis, Songs Sentimental Bloke 19, I tried to chat 'er, like you'd make a start Wiv any tart.
- Oxford English Dictionary

- Ray

Warp spasm!

Athletes tend to be highly superstitious when it comes to anything that might improve performance. So they're a ready market for commercially-hyped scientifically-unproven talismans, which this Olympics manifested in the practive of sticking magic blue go-faster tape on themselves (see Olympians Showcase Superstition With Mysterious Kinesio Tape, Scientists Doubtful, Peter Murray August 12th, 2012).

Whatever the actual claims for this stuff may be, a number of news media sites have circulated this factoid about its claimed mode of operation:

... it separates the upper layer of the skin from muscle tissue. This extra space allows for muscles to fire and recover more quickly.

 I don't know who originated this, but did no-one put brain into gear about this statement? The skin is anchored by the underlying 'superficial fascia' to the fibrous 'deep fascia' that sheaths the muscles. To separate these would involve major subcutaneous tearing of tissue, and I doubt that would do much for athletic performance ...

I was tickled by one commenter's ridicule of the idea - "you could turn round in your own skin" - as it reminded me of the ríastrad (battle frenzy) of the Celtic mythological hero Cúchulainn, as described in the prose epic Táin Bó Cúailnge (aka The Táin). Turning around in his own skin was just one of many weird physical transformations; Cieran Carson, one translator of The Táin, rendered "ríastrad" as "torque", but I much prefer Thomas Kinsella's term "warp spasm". One such description is:

"The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front… On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child… he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn't probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and his liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram's fleece reached his mouth from his throat… The hair of his head twisted like the tange of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage."

I first ran into the word, not realising its credentials, in the comic strip Sláine in the comic 2000 AD. Its barbarian hero Sláine is somewhere between Cúchulainn and Conan the Barbarian, and the series is a very ingenious adaptation of Celtic mythology as fantasy with SF elements.

Sláine in full warp spasm
Redbubble / ISODIAWD Drawing and Illustration HQ / Comic Art Thread #4 - SLAINE

- Ray

Bismarck fears the wurst

I seem to have known forever the apocryphal story about a proposed duel with sausages between the conservative German statesman Otto von Bismarck and his liberal/radical political antagonist (and groundbreaking biologist) Rudolph Virchow. The current edit of the Wikipedia article on Virchow (06:16, 16 July 2012) summarises it as follows ...

The Sausage Duel
As a co-founder and member of the liberal party (Deutschen Fortschrittspartei) he was a leading political antagonist of Bismarck. He was opposed to Bismarck’s excessive military budget, which angered Bismarck sufficiently to challenge Virchow to a duel in 1865. There are two versions of this anecdote: in one version, Virchow declined because he considered dueling an uncivilized way to solve a conflict. The second has passed into legend but was well documented in the contemporary scientific literature. It states that Virchow, having been the challenged and therefore entitled to choose the weapons, selected two pork sausages: a cooked sausage for himself and an uncooked one, loaded with Trichinella larvae for Bismark. His challenger declined the proposition as too risky.

... and at least the existence of the story is well-cited to an article in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases (Rudolph Virchow, Myron Schulz, Emerg Infect Dis. 2008 September; 14(9): 1480–1481. doi: 10.3201/eid1409.086672).

I'll cut straight to the chase on this one. It needs going back to German primary sources, and Hella Machetanz did exactly that in 1978.

Die tödlichen Trichinen als von Virchow gewählte Waffen sind aber in keiner der zahlreichen deutschen Veröffentlichungen uber dieses Thema zu finden, auch nicht in den Briefen an seine Eltern noch in der Biographie von Ackerknecht. Die Duell-Förderung ist dagegen als gesichert anzusehen, wie aus den Stenographischen Berichten des Preußischen Landtags hervorgeht.

(The deadly Trichinella selected as weapon by Virchow is however to be found in none of the numerous German publications about this topic, nor in the letters to his parents still in the biography by Ackerknecht. The duelling challenge, to the contrary, is deemed to be verified, as appearing in the stenographic records of the Prussian Landtag.)

- Trichinen und die Duell-Forderung Bismarcks an Virchow im Jahre 1865, Hella Machetanz Medizinhistorisches Journal Bd. 13, H. 3/4 (1978), pp. 297-306 Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag

There's an English account of the Landtag dispute between Bismarck and Virchow in the foreign section of the Sydney Morning Herald for August 15th 1865: see the Germany section, columns 3/4, page 3. The duel challenge is there, but no sausages.

As to the English incarnation of the sausage variant, Google Books finds a particular crop of variously embroidered English repetitions of this story in the early 1900s, and tracking a litte back finds the first English citations in American medical journals in 1893. For example:

It is said that Bismarck once sent a challenge to Virchow because of some frank speaking on the part of the great pathologist. The latter instantly remarked that as the challenged party he had the choice of weapons, and held up two sausages apparently exactly alike, saying: "One of these is filled with deadly trichinae, and the other is perfectly healthy. Let Bismarck choose which of these he will eat, and eat it, and I will eat the other." The duel was not fought.
- uncredited anecdote, The American Lancet, p494, Volume 17, 1893

However, it goes back further, and at least one US newspaper carries this version of the story:

A Berlin journal relates that the famous Bismarck once challenged Dr. Virchow for offensive language used in parliamentary debate. The learned doctor was at that time engaged in investigations relating to trichinosis. He is said to have thus replied to the messenger who bore Bismarck’s challenge: “My arms; there they are—those two sausages. One of them is full of trichinae; the other is pure. Let his Excellency breakfast with me. We will eat the sausages; and he shall take his choice of them.
- The Hawaiian Gazette, August 5th, 1868.

A pity we're not told what "Berlin journal" this allegedly came from. The whole anecdote seems to be a cross-fertilisation between the real story of his political conflict with Bismarck leading to a duel challenge, and another real story arising Virchow's activism concerning trichinosis (in particular its association with raw sausages - i.e. not precisely raw, but ones for uncooked consumption made with very lightly cured pork). In Germany in the mid-1800s, this was highly controversial, as Virchow was challenging the safety of a highly-established food industry.

This circumstance seems to be the prototype for the sausage duel story.  The Lancet of February 1866 reports:

At Berlin, a meeting of town-councillors, butchers, doctors, and a sprinkling of the general public, was held shortly before Christmas. Professor Virchow addressed the meeting, and urged the necessity of instituting a microscopical examination of all pork. At the conclusion of his speech, he handed to the president a piece of smoked sausage, and a piece of meat from a pig which had been recognised as tricniuous. Thereupon a veterinary practitioner, of the name of Urban, rose and combated all that science has acquired during the last five years as an unfounded illusion. "Trichinae, he said, "are the most harmless animals in the world. It is only doctors without practice who make a noise about them, in order to create some occupation for themselves," &c. (Great interruption; the president is obliged to stop the veterinarian.) Drs. Virchow and Mason demand an apology from M. Urban. Dr. Mason challenges Urban to eat some of the sausage on the president's table. (Great applause.) Urban wishes to explain. The meeting calls upon him to eat. "He had not spoken of Berlin doctors (' Eat, eat!'); but of those at Hedersleben. ('Eat!') He would first see whether the sausage contained trichinae." (Great laughter, and continued shouts of "Eat! eat! eat!") Whereupon M. Urban suddenly seizes the sausage on the president's table, bites off a piece, eats it, and leaves the ball forthwith, amidst the applause and laughter of the assembly.

About five days later (on 23rd December) the Oelkszeitung [sic] reported that the veterinarian, Urban, was ill. He was confined to his bed, and his arms and legs were paralysed. A hope was expressed that the illness was not caused by trichinae contained in the sausage of which he had been badgered to swallow a piece. Vain hope!

- The Trichina Disease, Dr Thudichum, The Lancet, February 1866, reprinted as pp18-19, The half-yearly abstract of the medical sciences, Volume 43, 1867

This has an urban myth flavour - the poetic justice is just a little too apt. A more reliable summary of events is contained in this dissertation by Lars Harald Feddersen: Die Darstellung Rudolf Virchows in der Vossischen Zeitung im Zeitraum vom 1. Januar 1844 bis zum 31. Dezember 1865 (The Representation of Rudolf Virchow in the "Vossische Zeitung" during the Period of 1st of January 1844 until the 31st of December 1865).

Mr Feddersen's detailed examination of Virchow coverage in the Vossische Zeitung (a prestigious liberal Berlin-published newspaper) confirms that there was a heated meeting at which the veterinary surgeon Urban - a trichina denier - was heckled into eating a suspect sausage. However, there was no report of his subsequently getting ill. The follow-up was that Virchow issued a statement saying the sausage, being four weeks old and heavily smoked, contained only dead trichinae. The newspaper shortly after denied this, saying it was contaminated, but not with trichinae.

Nach diesen Ausführungen sah sich V[irchow] groben Anschuldigungen des ebenfalls anwesenden Tierarztes Dr. Urban ausgesetzt: Dieser warf V neben Oberflächlichkeit und Schwindel vor, er würde die Angst vor den Trichinen schüren. Urban verleugnete, dass eine Trichinenproblematik existierte. Das aufgebrachte Publikum strafte den Tierarzt mit beleidigenden Zwischenrufen.  Dieses veranlasste Urban schließlich, von der mitgebrachten Wurst zu essen. Es kam zum Eklat. V erklärte enttäuscht, dass er die Versammlung nicht ein zweites Mal besuchen wolle. (vgl. VZ 17.12.1865-Nr. 296)

Wenige Tage darauf ging V anlässlich eines Vortrags im „Berliner Handwerkerverein“ erneut auf die Trichinenfrage ein: Er erklärte, dass die Wurst, von der Tierarzt Urban in der „Schlächterversammlung“ gegessen hatte, nur bereits tote Trichinen enthielt. Die Wurst, so V, war bereits vier Wochen alt und stark geräuchert. (vgl. VZ 21.12.1865-Nr. 299)

Zwei Tage später dementierte die VZ diesen Bericht: Die Wurst, von welcher Urban in der Versammlung gegessen hatte, sollte zuverlässigen Meldungen zufolge bei der Untersuchung durch V nun doch nicht trichinös verseucht gewesen sein. (vgl. VZ 23.12.1865-Nr. 301) 

If any fluent German readers can confirm/correct my reading of this, I'd be grateful.

Ray

Piddock and the Romans revisited

I've just added a post backdated five years - Piddock - and an appendix - following updates to a piece originally posted on my other weblog.

It concerns a story connecting luminous shellfish with a Roman villa near Lyme Regis that I picked up from a wall presentation in the Devon RD&E hospital, where I was staying over Christmas 2007 after an appendectomy. Five years later, Dr Andrew May, a volunteer at Lyme Regis Museum, and maintainer of the Lyme Regis Museum blog, contacted me as the connection was proving difficult to verify, and a quick visit today confirmed that I'd misread the presentation. Oops!

However, the story took another turn from there: check it out.

- Ray