Gould and Pyle have some fascinating things to say about early skin grafts.

Rodgers reports the case of a white man of thirty-eight who suffered from gangrene of the buttocks caused by sitting in a pan of caustic potash while intoxicated.  Rodgers used grafts from the under wing of a young fowl, as suggested by Redard, with good result.

Vanmeter of Colorado describes a boy of fourteen with a severe extensive burn. Grafts were taken from two young puppies of the Mexican hairless breed, whose soft, white, hairless skin seemed to offer itself for the purpose with good prospect of a successful result.

Two beautiful Mexican puppies found here

Masterman has grafted with the inner membrane of a hen’s egg, and a Mexican surgeon, Altramirano, used the gills of a cock. Fowler of Brooklyn has grafted with the skin from the back and abdomen of a large frog.

rooster and frog found here

Leale remarks that as common warts of the skin are collections of vascular papillae, admitting of separation without injury to their exceptionally thick layer of epidermis, they are probably better for the purposes of skin-grafting than ordinary skin of less vitality.

Ricketts remarks that the prepuce of a boy is remarkably good material for grafting. There is recorded an instance in which the breast of a crow and the back of a rat were grafted together and grew fast. The crow dragged the rat along, and the two did not seem to care to part company.

rat’s ass t shirt worth crowing about found here

Last week the Gimcrack sent nursemyra on a Senior First Aid Refresher course where I was given my very own take home blow up doll

The instructor told us all a story about the doctor who developed mouth to mouth resuscitation having a daughter named Annie who died, saying CPR Annie was modelled and named for her. This is not actually true as the face used was that of a French girl who drowned in the Seine

Death masks were common in the 18th and 19th century and were kept for the purpose of identification of unknown corpses before photography was invented. Many writers and eminent scientists also had their features recorded for posterity in this way.

Death masks of Keats and Tesla found here

Another kind of mask with an interesting history is the gas mask.

One such design began as a “Safety Hood and Smoke Protector” invented by Garrett A. Morgan in 1912, and patented in 1914. It was a simple device, consisting of a cotton hood with two hoses which hung down to the floor, allowing the wearer to breathe the safer air found there. Morgan won acclaim for his device when in 1916 he, his brother, and two other volunteers used his device to rescue numerous men from the gas and smoke-filled tunnels beneath Lake Erie in the Cleveland Waterworks.

Excellent collection of gas mask photos here

Masks of this type have also been eroticized as a fetish. If that’s your thing you’ll find a lot of photos here

Stephen cast the faces of several of his artist friends for an exhibition in 2004 called Cosmos. You can see some examples here at the New Zealand Chartwell Collection website.

Here’s a special treat for underwear aficionados. Ms. Mysterious, whom I have never met in person, sent a photo of herself in a very chic pink striped corset, taken, I believe, by her devoted husband. She also gave me permission to publish it on Corset Friday!

Spinach Pie did an excellent job last weekend, she not only took the photographs for today, she donated the cute little flip skirt I’m wearing

So a big thanks to Ms. Mysterious and Spinach Pie for making this weeks’ corset friday extra special. I love you gals…..

nursemyra

Ms. Mysterious

Australia has had its fair share of home grown murderers. Back in 1942, we imported one named Leonski from the good ol’ US. He would become known as The Brownout Strangler as his killings were all perpetrated during the wartime “brownout” at night.

On May 3, 1942, Ivy Violet McLeod, 40, was found dead in Albert Park, Melbourne. She had been beaten and strangled, and because she was found to be in possession of her purse it was evident that robbery was not the motive.

Ivy Ling Po not Ivy McLeod

Just six days later, 31-year-old Pauline Thompson was strangled after a night out. She was last seen in the company of a young man who was described as having an American accent.

Pauline Bonaparte, not Pauline Thompson

Gladys Hosking, 40, was the next victim, murdered on May 18 while walking home from work. A witness said that, on the night of the killing, a disheveled American man had approached him asking for directions, seemingly out of breath and covered with mud. This description matched the individual Pauline Thompson was seen with on the night of her murder, as well as the descriptions given by several women who had survived recent attacks.

Gladys Zender not Gladys Hosking

These survivors and other witnesses were able to pick 24-year-old Edward Leonski out of a line-up of American servicemen who were stationed in the city during World War II. A Private in the 52nd Signal Battalion, Leonski was arrested and charged with three murders.

Edward Munster not Edward Leonski

During the investigation, police found that all three of the women had sung in choirs or professionally at concerts. Detective “Bluey” Adams, who was not assigned to the case, happened to be sitting in a bar one night where Leonski, not yet under suspicion, was drinking with friends. Bluey watched the soldier swallow a mixture of beer, whiskey and hot sauce and then walk on his hands along the top of the bar.

Bluey not Bluey Adams

He turned to his colleague and said “That bloke’s as mad as a hatter. And look at his hands – they’re the hands of the Brownout Strangler”

Handstand image by Philip Greenspun found here

Decades later when William Nagle was writing a movie screenplay about Leonski’s crime, he noticed an odd coincidence in the names of the murderer and his victims.

The victims were McLEOd, ThompsoN and HoSKIng…….

In the 70s and 80s many gay men used to advertise their various kinks through the handkerchief code. By wearing colour coded bandannas in the back pocket of their jeans they could let others know what turned them on.

In its early manifestation the code of a dozen or so colours was manageable. But after a while yellow for water sports or red for fisting wasn’t specific enough for some tastes.

Andrejkomasky lists over 80 variations but please don’t confuse your fuschias with your magentas unless you’re particularly into spanking armpits…..

There’s also a fine (nonsexual) history of the handkerchief over here

In the 18th and 19th centuries, handkerchiefs were used mostly by men. Many feature common male interests, such as grand industrial projects; sport (horse racing, pigeon shooting, cricket and boxing); railways; mapping; and, especially during the Napoleonic wars, the great naval and military encounters of the day.

Another stylee is the handkerchief joke that folds to produce a punchline. One illustrates the “Eastern Question” (the conflict with Russia over the Ottoman empire). It shows portraits of four of the chief rivals: a Russian hero of the Crimean war, Prince Gorschakoff; Germany’s chancellor Otto von Bismarck; and the Turkish foreign minister, Safvet Pacha. If folded across the diagonals, the portraits morph into a single head-that of Benjamin Disraeli, the British prime minister, who lorded over them all

]]> http://nursemyra.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/not-to-be-sneezed-at/feed/ 40 nursemyra 1950-handkerchief flag fushcia flag mustard flag olive drab homosexual_generation1 funny horse Handkerchief http://nursemyra.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/dicksuckle-day/ http://nursemyra.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/dicksuckle-day/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:02:50 +0000 nursemyra http://nursemyra.wordpress.com/?p=6512 ]]>

We Aussies have always liked a good practical joke, and no one knows this better than Dick Smith. According to wikipedia, Smithy is an entrepreneur, a businessman and an aviator. But there’s much more to our Dick than that.

photo by Trevor Dallen found here

“Remember the day in 1978 when he hoodwinked Australia with a sheet of white plastic and a mountain of foam?

In a clever piece of self-promotion, the then budding 34-year-old electronics entrepreneur pulled off an imaginative April Fools prank: the great Sydney Harbour iceberg hoax.

What’s more, it cost him only $1200, for the hire of a barge, and the purchase of a big sheet of white plastic and lashings of fire-fighting foam.

Several dozen cans of shaving cream – used to complete the Dickenberg One, as it was dubbed – had been provided free by a manufacturer.

Cindy Crawford covered in shaving cream found here

At 3am a fellow inventor and collaborator, Hans Tholstrup, towed the barge out through the Heads, and, secretly under cover of darkness, the iceberg was built.

Two hours later, as Mr Smith boarded the iceberg, 300 of his employees started ringing local radio stations and newspapers.

“‘What’s that thing coming through the heads?’ they asked. ‘It looks like an iceberg.”‘

Mr Smith was approached by several boats demanding chunks of ice, or “Dicksicles” as they were called.

tentacle image found here

Dick Smith also introduced the microdot Pric (a PRinted Integrated Circuit) that when attached to speakers and doused with lemon juice became a radio. In the early 1980s he served as the conductor aboard a London double decker bus which jumped 15 motorcycles. The bus, driven by Hans Tholstrup, was a humorous poke at Evel Knievel who had visited Australia in 1979 and jumped his motorcycle over buses.

image found here

In 1863 Dr Walter Lewis wrote a report on the dangers of train travel.

“Railway travel, if not too excessive,  has little injurious effect on healthy, strong well-built people, but persons who take to habitual rail travel after the age of 25 are more easily affected than those who begin earlier. The more advanced in age a traveller is, the more easily he is affected by locomotion.

Weak, tall, loosely-knit persons are very unsuited for habitual train travelling and should avoid it unless absolutely necessary.”

The enterprising Dr Lewis went on to devise a cure for people in those high risk categories. His patent traveller’s calming engine was, he said, the only certain palliative for the potentially severe health effects induced by high speed locomotion.

This “cure” was a wooden box containing a bottle of smelling salts, a bottle of brandy, a cap that came down over the eyes and an instrument which looked like a giant pair of scissor handles with two flat pads instead of blades.

The handles were squeezed together which pushed the pads down hard on the unfortunate sufferer’s  temples. This pressure, together with the smelling salts and a swig of brandy was purported to provide an instant sense of calm and renewed vigour…….

Thankfully road and air travel took off soon after this and Dr Lewis’ calming engine for train travel was no longer needed…..

image found here

Today Gould and Pyle are examining the many foreign objects discovered in vaginas…..

Bazzanella of Innsbruck removed a drinking glass from the vagina by means of a pair of  obstetric forceps. The glass had been placed there 10 years previously by the woman’s husband.

Fatty Arbuckle**

Szigethy reports the case of a woman of seventy-five who, some thirty years before, introduced to her vagina a ball of string previously dipped in wax. The ball was effectual in relieving a prolapsed uterus, and was worn with so little discomfort that she entirely forgot it until it was forced out of place by a violent effort.

Ball of String found here

Breisky is accredited with the report of a case of a woman suffering with dysmenorrhea, in whose vagina was found a cotton reel which had been introduced seven years before. The woman made a good recovery.

image found here

There is a record of a woman of twenty-eight who was suddenly surprised by someone entering her chamber at the moment she was introducing a cedar pencil to her vagina. With the purpose of covering up her act and dissembling the woman sat down, and the pencil was pushed deep inside her and lost….

**read about Fatty Arbuckle’s trial here

Last Friday of the month I swap the corsets for a t shirt. Here’s my Franz Ferdinand contribution for October. Anyone else playing along?

nursey troll doll given to me by yorksnbeans

alljoedirt has a t shirt up, so have healingmagichands and renalfailure

70s is in as well as is sledpress

and a late entry from Malach

Oscar Hammerstein’s Olympic Theatre was on the verge of bankruptcy until he had the inspired idea of staging the worst act in vaudeville – The Cherry Sisters.***

The sisters were so awful that patrons conveyed their critical consensus by flinging cabbages and overripe tomatoes. At one performance, theater-goers threw eggs and chased the girls offstage. To protect her siblings, Addie at least once brandished a shotgun at an overly rambunctious crowd.

image of Charlene Holt found here

The sisters mistook the raucousness for approval, and considered themselves a huge success so were horrified by a nasty review in the Cedar Rapids Gazette and sued the city editor for slander. A theatrical trial was held the following day with the Cherrys mounting the stage for the benefit of the magistrate, offering their performance as testimony. The jury, confronted with the evidence of the plaintiffs’ far graver crime, nevertheless found the editor guilty and sentenced him to marry one of the sisters. (All parties declined to enforce the ruling.)

From Davenport to Vinton, month after month, the onslaught of rotten eggs and pension-aged fruit continued. At one show, patrons of the arts pitched slabs of fresh liver at the hapless troupe; in Dubuque, they were greeted by “a volley of turnips.” Everywhere they went, it rained cabbages, potatoes, rutabagas; one spectator heaved an old tin wash boiler onstage.

image of Cherry Darling (NOT one of the Cherry Sisters) found here

Then, things got ugly and the reviews got worse.

“Effie is spavined, Addie is knock-kneed and string-halt, and Jessie, the only one who showed her stockings, has legs without calves, as classic in their outlines as the curves of a broom handle.”

Learn how to graft a cherry tree here

In “The Gipsy’s Warning,” Jessie portrayed a barefoot flower maiden falling prey to a swashbuckling Lothario, played by Addie. Later in the evening, a “living sculpture” tableau entitled “Clinging to the Cross” featured Jessie suspended from a giant crucifix.

Hammerstein assured his headliners that the barrage was orchestrated by jealous rival stars. “Your talent is so great,” he explained, “that you can expect fruit and vegetables to be thrown at every performance.” The Cherrys played to packed houses for two months, earning upwards of a grand per week.

They amassed a fortune estimated around $200,000. The American Weekly noted that over seven years of touring, “They began as the four worst professional actresses in the world and ended without improving one iota.”

None ever married, in fact they boasted of never having been kissed. (“We are too devoted to each other to consider matrimony and we could never stand the shock of being dictated to by a man.”)

***You can read the article I have quoted in its entirety here

image of Don Cherry found here