I can see clearly now

Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen discovered the X Ray by accident in 1895. The London Pall Mall Gazette reported in 1896:

“You can see other people’s bones with the naked eye…..On the revolting indecency of this there is no need to dwell.” 

Shortly thereafter many scientists including Edward Waymouth Reid began conducting experiments with x rays before the safety issues were considered

“Passage of the rays for an hour through the head of a laboratory boy of medium intelligence did not in my hands cause deterioration or improvement thereof.” Scot.Med.Surg.J. 1897

“Professor Kuenen, who in those days himself made all the college vacuum tubes, was my colleague in the sport. In his attempts to get a picture of a fountain pen in the pocket of my waistcoat worn front to back, he succeeded in damaging a good square foot of the varnish of my casing, though luckily the insulation of my field coils held out, and I can still command enough amperes to electrolyse a lobster mayonnaise.

“The early X-rays shadow pictures were a real delight. We groped for swallowed teeth within the entrails, of criminals supplied by the Bell Street authorities, and located bullets within the skulls of living men.”

The use of protective goggles became commonplace in the early 1900s but sadly it was too late to save the sight of many of the early experimenters who had not understood the risks.

Advanced Intelligence say they can give you x ray vision in colour if you buy their glasses for the introductory price of $2800.00. Here’s a sample of what to expect if you’re prepared to spend time hanging out at the pool in a pair of their specs

Frigorific ways of restoring hair

Lightning is rumoured to be responsible for lots of strange things. In 1971 Edwin Robinson became blind and deaf as the result of an accident. Nine years later he was struck by lightning while feeding his chickens.

Tesla’s coil

Within hours he could again see and hear and was also conscious of another new and strange sensation. After being bald for 35 years he sprouted hair.

We’ve talked about “electrified” people and things here before. Galen thought electric eels could cure a prolapsed anus. He speculated that it was the “frigorific” principle of animal spirit coursing through the creatures that was responsible.

With the discovery of static electricity centuries later much stronger shocks than those of an eel could be produced. On one occasion at Versailles, 180 of the King’s guards were caused to leap simultaneously by all  holding hands and connecting the soldier on the end to a Leydon jar. A similar exercise was conducted at a Carthusian monastery where a “mile of monks” leapt together after also receiving a charge from a capacitator. 

In the 19th century hot and cold electric air baths were all the rage. Negative breezes were supposed to cure baldness. That theory has been thoroughly disproved but it still sounds a lot safer than standing around waiting to be struck by lightning.

let down your hair vicar

Robert S Hawker  (born 1804) loved a practical joke. Parson Hawker, as he was known to his parishioners, was something of an eccentric, both in his clothes and his habits. He loved bright colours and it seems the only black things he wore were his socks. He built a small hut (that became known as Hawker’s Hut) from driftwood on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, where he spent many hours writing poems and smoking opium. Other eccentricities included excommunicating his cat for mousing on Sundays. He dressed in claret-coloured coat, blue fisherman’s jersey, long sea-boots, a pink brimless hat and a poncho made from a yellow horse blanket, which he claimed was the ancient habit of St Padarn. He talked to birds, invited his nine cats into church and kept a huge pig as a pet.

 

 

At full moon in the July of 1825 or 1826, he swam out to a rock at “some little distance from the shore, plaited seaweed into a wig, which he threw over his head, so that it hung in lank streamers halfway down his back, enveloped his legs in an oilskin wrap, and, otherwise naked, sat on the rock, flashing the moonbeams about from a hand-mirror, and sang and screamed till attention was arrested. Some people passing along the cliff heard and saw him, and ran into Bude, saying that a mermaid with a fish’s tail was sitting on a rock, combing her hair, and singing.

A number of people ran out on the rocks and along the beach, and listened awe-struck to the singing and disconsolate wailing of the mermaid. Presently she dived off the rock, and disappeared.

Next night crowds of people assembled to look out for the mermaid; and in due time she re-appeared, and sent the moon flashing in their faces from her glass. Telescopes were brought to bear on her; but she sang on unmoved, braiding her tresses, and uttering remarkable sounds, unlike the singing of mortal throats.

This went on for several nights; the crowd growing greater, people arriving from Stratton, Kilkhampton, and all the villages round, till Robert Hawker got very hoarse with his nightly singing, and rather tired of sitting so long in the cold. He wound up the performance one night with an unmistakable “God save the King,” then plunged into the waves, and the mermaid never again revisited the shores of Bude.”

Reverse Mermaid found here

t shirt friday 27.3.2009

 

 

Inkspot noticed the top from a previous corset friday post was from Wheels & Doll Baby which is the coolest shop in Sydney. I’m always on the lookout for their clothes and picked up this t shirt at a market for $5.00 🙂

any players for T shirt Friday?

GnuKid is in, so is Sledpress and renalfailure followed by 70s as Robin

 

… the better to taste you with, my dear

My favourite Peter Greenaway film is The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. The cinematography and the costumes were sumptuous as was the food prepared by chef Giorgio Locatelli.

For those not familiar with this movie there is a scene where a roasted human is presented at the dining table. Locatelli says it was difficult to create a convincing replica. A prototype engineered from pink foam rubber  needed to be coloured to a crispy brown by multiple applications of veal stock.

To enable actor Michael Gambon to make inroads into the dish with a knife and fork, a slab of roast pork was inserted invisibly into the abdomen. He was then able to realistically dig in and extract a morsel to eat while being filmed.

Another cannibal film is Human BBQ Pork Buns about a restaurant owner who was caught selling human flesh-filled bread rolls. This Chinese production is supposedly based on a true story. A misanthrope kills a man and takes over his restaurant. When another accuses him of cheating at mah jong, he kills him too by beating him to death with a soup ladle. Then, the misanthrope cuts him up and cooks him into a batch of barbecue pork buns.

us mah jong addicts will play anywhere

But for pure melodrama nothing beats the Tennessee Williams’  play filmed as Suddenly Last Summer with Elizabeth Taylor at her most beautiful. The cannibal scene is n0t shown explicitly but her expressive eyes reflect it all. 

have you seen any of these films…. if so what did you think of them?

everyone wants a slice of the pi

One of my favourite food groups is shiraz. But my body only allows me two glasses a day because I’m one of those people who get drunk on very little alcohol. Three glasses and I’d be falling off my walker and spraying urine round the room like the patients I lock in the cellar lovingly care for. 

so how come other people can down a couple of bottles and still be standing? Is it because they’re bigger than me or more experienced at grog swilling?

Michael Deakin thinks it’s because our bodies contain two types of tissus – those that absorb alcohol and those that don’t. Neither fat nor bone will absorb alcohol so much depends on the total weight of the remaining tissue.  This “reduced weight” can be difficult to calculate but if you’re a 70 kilo man perhaps 48 of those kilos will absorb what you’re drinking. As a slim woman I might only have 25 kilos working for me. 

Have a look at the guide below to see what your healthy weight should be.

Metric Measurement Height Without Shoes Healthy Weights (Min/Max) 142 cm 40-51 kg 145 cm 42-53 kg 147 cm 44-54 kg 150 cm 45-56 kg 152 cm 46-58 kg 155 cm 48-60 kg 157 cm 49-62 kg 160 cm 51-64 kg 163 cm 53-66 kg 165 cm 54-68 kg 168 cm 56-70 kg 170 cm 58-73 kg 173 cm 60-74 kg 175 cm 61-77 kg 178 cm 63-79 kg 180 cm 65-81 kg 183 cm 67-83 kg 185 cm 69-86 kg 188 cm 71-88 kg 191 cm 73-91 kg 193 cm 74-93 kg 196 cm 77-96 kg 198 cm 78-98 kg

Then the way to calculate approximately what your “reduced weight” will be is to weigh yourself and compare your actual weight with what you should weigh. Take the lower figure and multiply it 68% if you are a man and 55% if you are a woman. 

wine rack bra found at Gizmodo

This is what Michael Deakin calls the Mathematics of Getting Drunk. I’ve already had my allotted two glasses tonight so the math is temporarily beyond my capabilities but I’m not about to start spraying urine any time soon. Speaking of the urge to piss, here’s a cute little tutorial on how to do it while sporting Morning Wood*** 

*** thanks Mark for sending me this. 

why do you ask so many questions, Grasshopper?

when it comes to strange and exotic foods I’m usually game to try something new, especially when travelling. Pigeon soup, fertilised duck eggs, jellied eel, black pudding, dried squid sandwiches, crocodile… they’ve all passed my lips and made it into my stomach at some time or another.

William Buckland (1784-1856) went a lot further. 

“He boasted that he had eaten his way through the whole animal creation, from mouse to bison. No sentimentality held him back as he devoured slices of crocodile, hedgehogs, puppies and snails.

His laboratory was his own stomach. Buckland could state quite categorically that mole was the nastiest meat of all (although he later changed his mind to blue bottle). Hapless friends were also guinea pigs.

John Ruskin, more sympathetic than some to Buckland’s eccentricity, wrote: “I have always regretted a day of unlucky engagement on which I missed a delicate toast of mice.” 

His son, Frank Buckland, followed in William’s footsteps, both as a popular scientist and as an omnivore, serving up elephant and rhino, kangaroo and Chinese sea slugs to bemused dinner parties.

(“Tortellini” by Sergei Voichenko, Vladimir Zessler)

Once, when the Bucklands were visiting an Italian cathedral together, they came upon a stain on the flagstones, supposed to be martyr’s blood. Buckland senior dropped to his knees and licked the spot. “I can tell you what it is: it’s bat’s urine,” he announced.

For my adventurous readers I have sourced this delicious recipe for Parcht Locusts enjoyed in 1687 by William Dampier

“The Natives would go out with small Nets, and take a Quart at one sweep. When they had enough, they would carry them home, and parch them over the Fire in an earthen Pan; and then their Wings and Legs would fall off, and their Heads and Backs would turn red like boil’d Shrimps, being before brownish. Their Bodies being full, would eat very moist, their Heads would crackle in one’s Teeth. I did once eat of this Dish, and liked it well enough….”

banana wine knocks you out

umbilical cord clamp found here

ok I know most of my male readers won’t want to know about cesareans and forceps deliveries but this is really interesting.

The invention of forceps was kept secret for more than a century. Developed in the 17th century by Peter Chamberlen, he and his family soon realised its value as a life saving instrument.

Whenever they were called in to help a mother in obstructed labour they ushered everyone else out and covered the mother’s lower half so even she couldn’t see what was going on. Three generations on, Hugh Chamberlen divulged the secret to Dutch surgeon Roger van Roonhuysen who kept the technique within his own family for sixty years. 

(This lovely “corset knife” is not a medical instrument – unless David Cronenberg gets his hands on it)

Once revealed, the forceps quickly gained wide acceptance. When Princess Charlotte’s delivery failed in 1817, her obstetrician was reviled for failing to use them and subsequently shot himself.

The first recorded successful cesarean in the British Empire was conducted by a woman. Sometime between 1815 and 1821, James Miranda Stuart Barry performed the operation while masquerading as a man and serving as a physician to the British army in South Africa.

While Barry applied Western surgical techniques, nineteenth-century travelers in Africa reported instances of indigenous people successfully carrying out the procedure with their own medical practices. In 1879, for example, one British traveller, R.W. Felkin, witnessed cesarean section performed by Ugandans. The healer used banana wine to semi-intoxicate the woman and to cleanse his hands and her abdomen prior to surgery. He used a midline incision and applied cautery to minimize hemorrhaging. He massaged the uterus to make it contract but did not suture it; the abdominal wound was pinned with iron needles and dressed with a paste prepared from roots. The patient recovered well.

tie me up tie me down

William Moulton Marston, a Harvard trained psychologist, is often cited as being the inventor of the first rudimentary polygraph which John Larsen later modified. He’s also famous for being the creator of Wonder Woman and living in a polygamous relationship with two apparently satisfied women.

Marston was a staunch feminist with interesting ideas about matriachy

Though Marston had described female nature as submissive, in other writings and interviews he referred to submission to women as a noble and potentially world-saving practice, leading ideally to the establishment of a matriarchy, and did not shy away from the sexual implications of this:

“The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound … Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society. … Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element”.

 

About male readers, he later wrote: “Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they’ll be proud to become her willing slaves!

Nurse by Rubex

(I like a man who can stand up for himself but I also like a tussle over who’s really in charge :-))

corset friday 20/3/2009