Six steps to exorcising Halloween Demons (Elizabethan Style)

Was your child levitating from her bed last night? Was your spouse muttering gibberish and bent over in a sugar-induced stupor? Did your coworkers stagger in today looking disheveled with that telltale frothing at the mouth?  You can blame it on eating too much candy corn, but there may be a far more nefarious spirit at work.

Your loved one may be possessed by Halloween demons! 

Don’t despair. Simply take a page from the Elizabethan guide to exorcisms and choose any of the following demon expunging tactics.  

1. Give Birth

If you were a nubile woman in Elizabethan times, the only way to get rid of some demons was to just give birth. Oddly, the Elizabethans often confused pregnancy with demon possession. Blame the uncertainty on conceptions beliefs.  Doctors at the time believed conception could only take place if the woman had an orgasm. This belief led many sexually ungratified women to assume that their swelling belly was the result of demon possession and not a growing baby. One Elizabethan woman, after becoming pregnant from her affair with a local priest, insisted that her lover exorcize the demon growing in her belly. By all accounts, the priest was more up to this task because she soon gave birth to, 'a little female spirit.' (aka a bouncing baby girl).1

2. The Herbal Method

In Elizabethan times, you would also find the same herbs used to expel a fetus were also used during your typical Elizabethan exorcist. One of the most popular abortificants, rue, was believed to be an anathema to both babies and demons.  Other herbs like garlic were always removed from a woman giving birth and a women being exorcised because they were believed to bind a demon to the room.  At least this one sounds like it was on the right track. No one needs to smell garlic when they are going through labor.

3. Vinegar

When preacher John Lane was called to the house of Anne Mylner to exorcise a particularly ferocious demon, the first thing he did was pour vinegar into his mouth and then spit it into her nostrils. (I can’t imagine what vinegar up your nose feels like, but I guessing it would be far worse than say salt water up your nose.)Vinegar not only protected townspeople from the plague, but also exorcised demons. For centuries, it was believed to cleanse the body in the same way that we would try a detox diet today.

4. Farting

Demons were believed to enter the body through different orifices, with the mouth, nose and ear being preferred. A demon could hide in anything as innocent as a radish and then bam….once you ate the demon laden radish, you were possessed. If mouths, noses and ears were the point of entry, it made perfect sense that the point of exit must be the anus. This thinking led most people to believe that farting would naturally expel demons. Martin Luther was particularly fond of farting to cleanse the body and was never short on fart jokes for his dinner companions. 

5. Fasting

In 1574, John Parkhurst, bishop of Norwich, ordered the whole town to fast to expel the demons in the son of an alderman.  In Elizabethan times, it was believed food generated more blood and since demons fed on blood, fasting was the best method to starve them. This one actually might work if your fasting eliminated all chocolate consumption. 

6. Praying

You would think the old standby of praying to a particular saints would be the first line of defense against demons, but evoking any saint was a dangerous practice in Elizabethan England.  Viewed mostly as popish, Elizabeth I had forbade prophesying and exorcising demons. Any priest that practiced exorcists could be arrested and tried for witchcraft. (This law was especially ironic considering the pope accused Elizabeth’s chief alchemist, John Dee, of necromancy.) When John Darrell dared to use prayer and fasting to exorcise the demons from an apprenticed musician named William Somers, his efforts got him imprisoned awaiting trial. Luckily, local, leading clerical figures campaigned for his release.

Personally, if you have a young one jumping off the walls this morning, I would just pray, pray, pray. Those sugar demons can only survive so long. 


Notes:
(1)Sand. p. 19
Sources and Further Reading:
R. Sands, Kathleen. Demon possession in Elizabethan England, Westport (Conn.) : Praeger, 2004.
Lake, Peter and Questeir, Michael. Conformity and orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560-1660, Woodbridge : Boydell Press, 2000

Showing some skin

Today's crafters could take a few tips from our ancestors on incorporating "found objects" into their altered journals. The one shown above was made to honor Crispus Attucks, the first man shot in the Boston Massacre. Isn't it beautiful? Don't you just want to run your fingers along its delicate spine? Sniff the pages of history? Well, before you get too excited, you might want to know that it is made of human skin....supposedly the skin of the martyred Cripus Attucks. This object can be found in the Wellcome Library's new exhibit, "Skin" going on now until September 26th.

Cover Art
The Wellcome Library folks are suspicious that the Crispus Attucks book is really made of skin, but Crispus is not the only human to be immortalized as a book. In 1821, John Horwood was executed for the murder of Eliza Balsum. In the 19th century, it was common for the remains of executed criminals to become fodder for anatomy classes. Horwood awaited such a fate with a gruesome twist - his skin became the cover of the ledger book that contained details of his execution. His doctor did a splendid job. If you look closely, you can see a skull and crossbones delicately embossed in each corner. Those Victorians could be so clever!

Remember my Touch
Some might think using skin as a book is a tad too nasty to contemplate, but others have felt that nothing says remember me like a book made from human remains. Such was the thinking of French novelist, Eugene Sue's mistress. She stipulated in her will that her skin should be bound around one of her lover's works. The book, Sue's Vignettes: les Mysteres de Paris sold at Foyle's in London for 29$. I guess that's the going rate for skin books.

As Tough as Old Boots
Famed outlaw, Big Nose George Parrott fancied himself as "tough as old boots." His moniker seemed to hold true until he was captured and lynched by an angry mob of local citizens. George's death left a curious Doctor named Thomas Maghee to ponder: was George really as tough as old boots? Well, there was only one way to find out. He used George's skin to make himself some snazzy new shoes.

Let that be yet another Raucous History lesson - when you are coming up with a catchy slogan for yourself, you really must be careful that someone doesn't take you literally.

Sources and Further Reading:
Old Volumes
Murphy, Edwin. After the Funeral: The Posthumous Adventures of Famous Corpses, Barnes & Noble Books, 1998.
Carbon County Museum
The Wellcome Library
John Horwood and his macabre book legacy

What should you never feed a vampire?

The obvious answer to this week’s quiz is garlic, but garlic may have been the one food that could cure a vampire.

The word vampire was first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1734, a year after an insidious disease had erupted throughout the Old World. Symptoms of this unexplained sickness included bad breath, sensitivity to light, dementia, aggression and eventually death. No one was safe and no one could figure out the cause. Romanian peasants described the epidemic as nosferatu, a term derived from the Greek nosophorus, meaning ‘plague carrier.’ Before long, the word vampire came into 18^th century lexicon and a cottage industry of Hollywood dramas and teen literature was born.

Today we know the disease that ravaged Europe’s population as pellagra, a vitamin deficiency of niacin and tryptophan. One food is now believed to have caused it.

The mystery food that led to vampirism

If you look on any food box in your cabinet you will probably find the food that caused pellagra. Its derivatives are listed as dextrose, dextrin, xanthan gum and a bunch of other scary chemically modified foods. It is the number one food crop grown in America and our first known genetically engineered diet staple. You can find it in everything from soda to crackers and it may even someday power our cars.

What is this mystery food? Scroll down for answer…

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Answer: The indigenous Americans called it maize, but we know it as corn.

A Brief history of Corn

Ancient mesoAmericans may have been a little slow discovering the wheel, but they sure knew how to whip up a good batch of corn. Corn did not sprout out of the ground with its sunny kernels begging for some butter. Maize was originally an inedible weed-like grass that was crossbred with a wild grain called teosinte. After a series of genetic mutations….voila corn on the cob. But corn still needed a little more coaxing to make it digestible so indigenous Americans soaked the maize in ashes of lime in a process known today as nixtamaliuzation. They called it Nahuati (which sounds far more magical and is much easier to spell).

This last step was VERY important!

Enter my favorite guy Columbus. He brought maize to Europe and everyone loved it. It was easy to grow. It packed a high caloric punch and it soon became the staple food supply for most of rural Europe. Unfortunately, Columbus and the rest of his marauding thugs forgot the instructional booklet on how to grow maize and Europeans skipped the nixtaumaluzation process. Bad move. What resulted was a bunch of crazed lunatics in need of some serious Flinestone vitamins. By skipping the last step, the maize essentially prevented the body from naturally absorbing niacin. The disease that resulted was pellagra and it bore a eerie resemblance to vampirism.

Sensitivity to Light

Remember when Bram Stoker described the Count’s skin as of  “an extraordinary parlor"? Vampires throughout legend have always been sensitive to light, but were they really suffering from pellagra? One of the first symptoms of pellagra is an increased sensitivity to light with shiny, paper-thin skin following any exposure to sunlight. Hmmmm.... coincidence? 

Vampire fangs

Pellagra victims also suffered from a swollen, red tongue and inflamed reddened lips which made them look like they had just chugged a big blood fruit smoothie and forgot to wipe their mouth. The swollen tongue may have also resulted in tooth imprints on the tongue and lips that could appear to be caused by....fangs.

Dementia

Things get really fun in the later stages of pellagra when grandma starts acting wacky and eating the family pet. Pellagra victims suffer from insomnia, anxiety, depression and a desire to eat strange things. When a person has unnatural food craving caused by vitamin deficiencies we call it pica, but to an 18^th century peasant it looked a lot like their loved one had gone to the dark side.

Death

Pellagra is not always a quick death. Victims slowly become anemic due to gastrointestinal bleeding. When a person becomes anemic, they lose weight, get paler and paler and appear as if the blood is getting sucked right out of them. In Dracula, everyone suspected Lucy was being drained of her blood, but maybe she was just eating too many corn chips in bed?

Springtime for Vampires

In Stoker’s Dracula, Jonathan Harker is warned as he enters Transylvania that, ‘it is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?' Stoker had done his research. According to legend, vampires would gather at the edge of the village on St. George’s Day in late April for their annual vampire convention. Springtime was not only mardi gras for vampires, it was also the worst time for pellagra victims. Before new crops could be harvested, cornmeal was often the only food source for a typical peasant resulting in increased cases of pellagra.

Garlic

So where did we get the myth that eating garlic keeps away vampires? Well, if you were living in an impoverished village where all your friends and family were turning into vampires then eating garlic may have been the one food that could save you. Eating garlic actually prevents niacin deficiencies and may have prevented pellagra.

So our superstitious ancestors may have been smarter than we think when it comes to living with vampires. Let that be a little raucous history for your teen (or you) going to see the latest Twilight movie. Stay away from the popcorn or you could return a vampire. (insert evil/geeky laugh here)

Love monsters? Read more about the Science and Lore behind your favorite monsters with Monstrous: The Lore, Gore, and Science behind Your Favorite Monsters. In stores Fall 2019

Sources and Further Reading

Standage, Tom. An Edible History of Humanity, Waterville, Me. : Thorndike Press, 2009.

Pellagra and the origin of a myth: evidence from European literature and folklore, Jeffrey S. Hampl & William S. Hampl. JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF MEDICINE, Volume 90 November 1997

The Bastille falls, 120 Days of Sodom follows...

This post has adult content

This week in history, Revolutionary Paris fell upon the fortress/prison Bastille setting free its seven prisoners.  The Bastille had become a glowing beacon in a dark night of monarchial ideals and the peasant class was determined to put out the light. They didn’t just demolish the Bastille. They dismembered it brick by brick in their frenzied pursuit for ammunition.

But they also had another intent less written about. People wanted souvenirs. One of these stolen souvenirs, was the infamous book, 120 Days of Sodom written by none other than, 18th century bad boy, Marquis de Sade.  (The man who gives us the word “sadism”) Arrested for descecrating church property, poisoning some prostitues, sodomy and various other sexual acts to heinous to repeat, Sade had become the Bastille's most famous prisoner. It was during his stay at the Bastille, that he penned his masterpiece on a 5 inch wide scroll in miniscule type and then wedged it in the walls.

120 Days of Sodom tells the story of four wealthy libertines who lock themselves up in a medieval castle to torture 46 harem girls. The book proceeds to describe their quest for sexual gratification in such exaggerated detail that it becomes almost tedious. Sade described this work as a “magnificent banquet” where a reader could choose the dish that suited him best. (1)  (Sort of like a Pu Pu platter of sexual abherrations.)

When the Bastille fell, 120 Days of Sodom disappeared into the dust.

When Sade realized his crowning literary achievement had become a victim in the melee, he “wept tears of blood.” Unfortunately, it really was his fault that his pet porn project was lost. Ten days before the storming of the Bastille, he was screaming obscenities below his prison window and trying to incite the locals into tearing down the towering edifice. Always a creative man, Sade had employed a ingenious tactic to get his voice heard throughout the surrounding area. He took the tin funnel used to channel his bowl movement into the sewage below and employed it as a megaphone. That Sade could be so cheeky,

Well, the prison guards just couldn’t have their most famous sexual terrorist disturbing the peace so they moved him to the far less posh Charenton asylum where he couldn’t scare the kids.

Somehow, 120 Days of Sodom showed up in Germany in 1904. Then in 1935, some enterprising editor had that eureka moment and said, - hmmmm.....these tiny scraps of pornographic drivel would sure make one heck of a book. Let that be a lesson to aspiring writers with a stack of rejection letters. Sometimes it takes years to get your book into the right hands.

The Marquis de Sade - A Misuderstood Moralist?

Today, 120 days of Sodom is banned in most countries as one of the most obscene works of literature every printed. Most people see it as the morose ramblings of a sexual deviant with a deep-seated rage toward humanity. Still, even Sade has his defenders. Author Simone de Beauvoir (Must we Burn Sade?) spun Sade's writing as superbly illustrating the innate struggle between good and evil that can only be conquered through destructive impulses. When I am feeling naughty, I break out a chocolate bar. It's a lot less messy than whipping my husband with a cat o' nine tails.

Either way, if it had not been for the storming of the Bastille, 120 Days of Sodom might not have ever been printed.

Happy Bastille Day to my French readers!

Notes
p. 351 Schaeffer

Sources and Further Reading
Schaeffer, Neil. The Marquis de Sade : a life Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Univ. Press, 1999.

Horned Damsels

Madame Dimanche makes you feel really guilty about bemoaning occasional acne flare ups. Born in early 19th century Paris, “The Widow Sunday” grew a dark brown horn resembling an overcooked sausage straight out of her forehead and down past her chin. According to the medical reports, Dimanche’s horn started off as a small wart above her right eyebrow and then just kept on growing.

By the time Dimanche reached the ripe old age of 82, she decided that having a horn on her head wasn’t getting her any dates and had it removed by Dr. Souberbeille. Miraculously, she lived another seven years. How her dating life improved after the cosmetic surgery is left for history to ponder.

Today, A waxed cast of The Window Sunday’s famed horned face can be seen in the Mutter Museum. (shown here)

Sources and Further Reading:
Extracts from the Records, Boston Society for Medical Improvement, Boston, 1853-83.

Brotherhood of Death

If you lived in 15th century Italy and found this scary cloaked man rattling his chains behind you then you were in some serious trouble. He was a member of the fraternity called The Brotherhood of Death and his job was to make a condemned prisoner's last days on earth more comfortable. He showed up in your prison cell before you were to be hanged, cut your hair, got that last meal, and then said a few prayers for your soul. Then, he followed behind you on your way to the gallows and sometimes collected alms for your soul. After your execution, he was also the guy who was responsible for cleaning up the executioner's mess - ie. collecting the rope and burying the corpse in a mass grave.

The executioner gets all the glamour while the Brotherhood of Death guy is just another one of those underappreciated worker bees of the Renaissance.

Sournces and Futher Reading:
Engraving - Cesare Vecellio
Jacob, P. L. Manners, Customs and Dress during the Middle Ages, London, Chapman and Hall, 1876.

Mistress of the Poggio Catino Palazzo

Imagine waking up in your own baronial palazzo in the quiet town of Poggio Catino 45 km northeast of Rome. You are greeted each morning to panoramic views of bucolic hilltops and the warm sun melting your worries away. You have a steaming cappuccino in one hand (or a glass of vino in my dream sequence) and a good book (of course) in the other hand. No screaming kids. No obnoxious bosses. Just you and the sweet aroma of crocus flowers filling the air (and possibly a handsome naked serving boy named Fabio). Your world could not be more peaceful.

Then, you find a 16th century skeleton loitering in your basement. Named the “Poggio Catino Skeleton”, it was discovered in 1933 in a cell beneath the ruins of the tower by its owner, Vincenzo Biraghi. It is believed to be a woman and judging by the shackles around her wrists and ankles, her bent knee position, and her less than cheerful living quarters...she most likely bit it hard.

According to one legend, the woman was the wife of Geppo Colonna, the lord of Poggio Catino. Supposedly, Miss Colonna had an illicit affair with another nobleman of Poggio Catino. As they say in Italy...idea stupida! Her jealous husband discovered the dalliance and locked her up in an underground cell where she most likely starved to death.

You can read more about the Poggio Catino Skeleton and see several other creepy artifacts at the Museo Criminologico.

The Masked Lady

I found this great post over at Two Nerdy History Girls about 17th and 18th century masks. Below is a watercolor from Habits de France published in 1581.

In 16th century France, these full masks were worn to protect the woman's face from the wind and sun. Kind of Silence of the Lambs creepy huh? I doubt ladies could breath or even speak very easily under these masks. But maybe that was the point.

Quiz time: Can you guess the most deadly invader in London’s history?

The proud city of London has been brought to its knees by many invaders, but one particular assailant packed the Muhammed Ali of punches to local residents. This mystery invader could rip flesh from bones with its bare teeth at a force of 7000 pounds per square inch. They could scale the tallest fortification and fall fifty feet without any harm. They felt no remorse invading the homes of helpless women and children and they laughed in the face of danger (1) This invader may sound fictitious, but it was very real. And much like Muhammed Ali’s famous "rope-a-dope" strategy, just when Londoners thought they had it beaten…. it came back year after year and multiplied in strength and numbers.

What was this insidious raider upon the peaceful streets of London?

Scroll down for answer?





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Answer: RATS. Or more precisely, Rattus rattus otherwise known as the black rat.

In the 14th century, rats were as ubiquitous as Central Park pigeons. You could hardly turn a street corner without a rat’s beady eyes staring you down. London had become such a cesspool of rodents that an English-French Dictionary warned travelers that they would enjoy their stay in London as long as they didn’t mind the “great pack of rats and mice.”

Most people would blame London's rat problem on the streets being so dirty, but rats are actually pretty clean rodents. They are very similar to cats and will incessantly lick their fur. In fact, rats clean themselves far more than the average 14th century person ever did. (if you consider rat spittle clean.)

The true problem was food, not filth. London's sanitation methods gave the rat had an all-night buffet of every food choice imaginable. Slaughter houses killed animals on the streets and left their decaying bodies to rot amongst the stench. Barber surgeons bled their patients and then dumped the blood into the narrow street. Wild pigs and dogs roamed freely and fell dead in ditches. “Rakers”, the trash collectors of their day, were employed to cart the rubbish away, but they tended to fall into the drunk and lazy category and often simply deposited waste in neighboring wards or hoped the rain would wash it into the Thames (rats btw, are excellent swimmers and have even been known to survive the good old toilet flush). Fines were instituted and often ignored. London’s population had become so large that it was simply too difficult to keep the rat's food supply down.

These were good times to be a rat.

Londoners vs. the Rats
Londoners fought back with futile measures using poisons such as hellebore root. Unfortunately, rats are extremely smart creatures and will actually learn over time what is poisonous and then warn their rat buddies not to eat the poison by urinating on it. (rats don't eat feces or urine...even they have standards.) Other rat removal methods only aggravated the problem, such as a popular 17th century remedy that advised housewives to, "Fry a sponge in butter and hang it by a string, and the rats will forsake the room."(2) I don't know about you, but I have never seen a rat forsake butter.

When poisons and butter didn’t work, Londoners employed “rat catchers” (shown above right) to round up rats Holocaust style. But rats are also amazing breeders. Left to their own vices, two black rats breeding for three years can produce 329 million offspring. That’s a lot of baby rats biting the toes of London’s children. But sadly, the rat’s true handmaiden of death was not in its bite, but on its back.

A bad day for ratsWhat could possibly be worse than a fat, healthy rat crossing your path in 14th century London? A sick plague infested rat crossing your path in 14th century London. For hidden in its fur, Mr. Rat carried one of the deadliest forms of germ warfare known to man—Bubonic Plague. The Victorians christened it “The Black Death” and for good reason. This disease was truly dark. It killed four out of five people it infected and usually in less than four days. Symptoms began with fever, chills and headaches. That was the fun part. On the last days of the disease, puss filled sores called buboes erupted like walnut sized zits. In the 14th century, the plague annihilated at least 1/3 of London’s population (about 200 people per day) and some historians estimate closer to 1/2 of the population in other areas. The death toll became so great that church bells stopped ringing to honor the dead. Husbands abandoned wives. Wives abandoned husbands. Children were orphaned over night. And then there was the little problem with how to bury so many corpses. Grave diggers got lazy and stacked bodies on top of each other in shallow graves only for the dogs to dig up the corpses the next day. Imagine seeing grandma's body dragged through the silent streets by a hungry dog. And do you think the rats cared? Well, plague was not any picnic for them either.

Some rat sympathy
In the 19th century, Robert Koch described plague as, “a disease of rats in which men participate”. (3) Koch was correct. Plague killed rats too, but there was more to the story. Plague’s true villain was a deadly bacterium inside the rat's bloodstream called Y. Pestis who chose rats as its primary disease vector. It was a smart decision, not only because rats were so abundant, but because the rat had a lethal conspirator—X. cheopis (rat fleas).(4)

The dangers of flea vomit
Here is how plague worked: the rat fleas fed on the rat’s blood and became infected with Y. Pestis. This infection resulted in a blockage of undigested blood in the flea’s foregut causing the flea to vomit the plague bacilli into its victim with each bite. As a bonus side effect, nutrients were prevented from ever reaching the flea and without any nutrients…14th century Londoners had some very hungry rat fleas on their hands. Have you have ever met a hungry rat flea? Let’s hope you never do. When starving, they are not particularly picky eaters. After their rat host dies, cats, dogs, bunnies, and cute little medieval boys and girls taste just as yummy.


The Raucous Royals against the Rats
People throughout the 14th -19th century were unaware of Y. Pestis, but they did understand the connection between debris, disease and rats. Several royals fought back against rat invaders. Edward III issued edicts demanding that Londoners clean up their act. (The king was later to lose his favorite daughter, Princess Joan to the Black Death.) Henry VIII fought back with vinegar, demanding that the palace walls be scrubbed daily to remove bugs and vermin. Queen Christina of Sweden took a more direct approach and fired four-inch canons equipped with tiny iron balls at rats. Elizabeth I employed her dog rat catchers to remove these pests and Queen Victoria hired not only dogs, but some of the most famous rat catchers in London’s history. Most kings and queens avoided rats by continually moving from palace to palace. If plague broke out, then they simply followed the advice of 14th century plague doctor Guy de Chaulliac of 'go quickly, go far, and return slowly.'(5)

Sure….Blame it on the cows instead
Debate still continues on the true cause of the Black Death, but it is still generally believed that infected rat fleas jumped from rats to humans and then….BAM you were trapped in a Grien painting. (ouch....my hair!) However, several questions have caused debate about the rat's role in the 14th century plague.

First, there were no reports of medieval rats dieing. Rat fleas typically bite humans when the rat population is decreased so dead rats piling up was a clear sign that rat fleas would be looking for their next meal. Some have speculated that the death of rats went unnoticed because dead rats were such a frequent occurrence in London.

Second, the Black Death never subsided in winter months when rat fleas obviously would not be as active. In fact, some of the highest death rates were in December and January.

Third, the disease spread so quickly and rats are not exactly the adventurous type. As long as they have food, they tend to stay in the same 100 feet radius their whole lives (approximately nine months). Some scientists have speculated that the human flea would have done a far better job spreading plague than the rat flea because humans traveled greater distances and would have had more opportunity to spread plague from person to person. Others claim that the human flea contains too few bacilli to spread the disease efficiently.

These questions have led to some rat defending conspiracy theorists. The rat defenders have speculated that the plague was really a deadly form of cattle Anthrax or the Ebola virus. To complicate matters further, plague could be transmitted person to person through the air, called pneumonic plague and this more virulent form of the plague did not require any rats. So once the plague got going, the rats were not entirely to blame.

All ends well for plague infested London
Some historians like to put a positive spin on catastrophes. I am not one of those people, but everyone wants a happy ending, so here goes:

There was a benefit that the black rat left in its wake. Plague deaths caused Europe to have a labor shortage and the surviving peasants could now demand higher wages for menial labor. This eventually led to the collapse of serfdom and freed up capital. In other words, with everyone dead and buried, the people left standing got a pay raise. Some even argue that the Renaissance wouldn't have happened without all this fire and brimstone urging progress and democracy forward. From a biological standpoint, those who survived may have also developed immunity to the plague and this immunity is identical to HIV immunity. So if you have an ancestor that survived the plague, you could be immune to HIV. Now, go thank a rat.

In his recent book, Ian Mortimer reminds us that if you had an ancestor that didn't survive the plague than you might not appreciate someone talking about the benefits of their death. I liken it to a historian 100 years from now writing that 9/11 was a good thing because the rubble got recycled into more efficient buildings. Further putting the Black Death into perspective Mortimer writes:

"The deaths in 1348-49 are so numerous that the statistics are much easier to talk about than the individual tragedies...If anything, it proves the value of virtual history—of understanding historical events as lived experiences, as opposed to impersonal facts." (6)

Rats Today: Just as lovable
Today the black rat is far less common than its much larger cousin, the brown rat. (The brown rat is the city rat you see today scampering around the corner after you have just finished a big, expensive dinner in a fancy restaurant.) Rats still cause all sorts of raucous, mostly from their gluttonous diets. They eat crops destroying valuable grain. They eat through clothing. They have killed off over 19 species of birds in their quests for eggs. (Rats really like eggs.) Heck, they will even eat right through a lead pipe. But probably the most annoying thing they eat is history. Most of British History's most important documents are illegible because they are half-eaten by rats.

Some think rats are sort of cute and keep them as pets. Today we have "fancy" rats and whole organizations dedicated to loving rats. Rat pet owners say their rats are very similar to dogs - easily trained, curious, lovable and extremely sociable. (If you get a pet rat than you have to get him a girlfriend/boyfriend. Rats hate to be alone.) Rats are sort of cute...from a very safe distance.

Plague Today: Just as lethal
The plague continued to wreak havoc throughout the 14th century and made a spectacular appearance in the The Great Plague of 1665 and again in 1890, but none of these plagues matched the destruction of the Black Death. Y. Pestis is still a very real problem today. About 3000 cases of Bubonic Plague are reported worldwide. In America, the disease can be spread by rats, skunks, prairie dogs, squirrels, chipmunks and even cats. Fortunately, the plague can now be cured by antibiotics, if it is caught it time. Currently, there is no vaccine for the plague.

Stay tuned for a future post on the wackiest plague cures in history to coincide with the release of my next book: I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat, History's Strangest Cures (October 2010).

Notes:(1) Yes, rats really do laugh. If you tickle their tummy they will make a sort of chirping sound. If you don’t believe me then this scientist who studies rat laughter will.
(2) From Hannah Woolley, A supplement to the queen-like closet. London, 1674.(3)Kelly. P 42
(4) Besides X. cheopis, Y. Pestis can be transmitted by over 31 different flea species, possibly including P. irritans (the human flea).
(5) Mortimer. p 203
(6) Mortimer. p 203
Sources and Further Reading:Black rat image from the Wellcome Library
Bubonic Plague
Marrin, Albert. Oh Rats! The story of rats and people, New York: NY, Dutton, 2006.
Kelly, John. The Great Mortality. An Intimate History of the Black Death, The Most Devastating Plague of all time. New York: NY, Harper Perennial, 2005.
Mortimer, Ian. The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England. A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century, New York: NY, Touchstone Books, 2008.

The Beast of Gevaudan

If you look out your window tonight you will see the full moon shining brightly. It is only on a night like tonight that cursed men transform themselves into a savage half-wolf, half-man called a werewolf. Over 200 years ago, the local residents from a small French providence fell victim to one such creature. Here is their story…

In 1764, in the mountainous area of Gevaudan, France, a young girl was tending to her flock of cattle when out of the bushes sprung a large wolf-like creature with a long tufted tail and sharp fangs. The girl’s dogs fled the scene, but her cattle attacked the beast with their horns saving the girl’s life. (All the cows that I know wouldn’t care less if a human was getting mauled, but it is a known fact that French cows are a bit more rambunctious than your average American cow.)

A few days later, another girl was not so lucky and her father found her mutilated body with her throat slashed and claw marks covering her body. Over 100 mysterious murders soon followed all resembling an animal attack with some victims even showing signs of a sexual assault. At the time, wolves were believed to be possessed by the devil so a horny wolf prowling through the quiet hills of France was nothing to take lightly. The wolf hysteria soon reached its height when a young boy survived an attack from the beast with a very different tale to tell. In his account, the wolf in question stood upright like a man and had wolf-like traits. It wasn’t long before talk of a werewolf spread across France and became known as ‘The Beast of Gevaudan.’

Rumors of the man-eating wolf soon reached the king’s ears and although Louis XV wasn't always so compassionate toward the local peasants, he wasn’t about to suffer international ridicule for tales of werewolves in an age of reason. Thus, the king began to throw a tremendous amount of resources into catching the beast hiring professional wolf trackers and a cavalry led by Captain Duhamel. But despite the numerous wolves killed….the attacks continued. Louis soon hired the Van Hesling of wolf hunters, - Francois Antoine, Lieutenant of the Hunt. Antoine managed to kill a very large wolf reportedly over 130 pounds and was declared a hero. He had the beast stuffed and rotting away, but weeks later…the attacks began again. Finally, a local farmer named Jean Castel offed the beast with a silver bullet through the heart and was declared the true hero. (It’s from this story that Hollywood borrowed the concept that only a silver bullet can kill a werewolf.)

Who was the beast of Gevaudan? Was it some sort of hybrid rabid dog or a man disguised as a wolf? Some believe it was a hyena brought over to France in a royal menagerie. Others believed it be a wild baboon. And others believed it to be a werewolf sent by god to punish the providence’s sinners. In a recent History Channel documentary, criminal profiler, George Deuchar and cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard battle it out with competing theories. George believes only a man could be so savage while Ken taps away at his computer pulling up youtube videos of prehistoric wolf-like beasts that could have roamed the countryside. In the end, they “solve” the mystery by agreeing that they were both right. Their concluding theory is that the beast was most likely a hyena trained by Jean Castel to attack humans and was shot by his master when becoming the town savior became more rewarding than terrorizing the residents. They prove this theory by shooting silver bullets into wads of blubber and showing how inaccurate silver is if you want to kill an angry hyena. Their tests conclude that the beast must have been in close range to be killed with a silver bullet and therefore must have either trusted a man with a rifle pointed at him or was one very stupid hyena.

I found all two hours utterly fascinating despite the distracting reenactments of snarling wolves and mutilated bodies. Still, I must warn readers that my skeptical husband watched ten minutes and accused me of suffering from new mother sleep deprivation and suggested that I really should get out of the house. But who wants to leave the house when werewolves might be lurking around the corner?

Sources and Further Reading:
History Channel, The Real Wolfman
Thompson, Richard H. Wolf-hunting in France in the reign of Louis XV: the beast of the Gévaudan, Lewiston: New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 1992

La Voisin: A Duchess among Witches

As an independent, sexually elusive 35 year old with flowing robes, suspicious herbal garden, dilapidated residence and proclivity for drinking large amounts of alcohol, Catherine Monvoison, named “la Voisin”, was the 17th century poster child for evil sorceress. Yet, despite her unflattering engraving (shown here) la Voisin was not some badly dressed charlatan scaring the local kids. She was the chief witch to the most influential members of Louis XIV’s court.

Members of the nobility would find themselves at la Voisin’s doorsteps for several reasons. She dabbled in the usual witch fare; tarot card reading, séances, horoscopes, abortions, palm reading, chiromancy, beauty potions, and an occasional aphrodisiac to make a reluctant lover fall hopelessly in love. When M. de Prade sought a marriage with the wealthy Madame Laferon, la Voisin buried a wax figure of de Prade in Madame Leferon’s garden. * Another recommended love spells was to bury menstrual blood. To get rid of an unwanted husband, la Voisin recommended obtaining some of his urine and discarded eggshells from the eggs he had eaten. If urine didn’t work then you better find yourself some pigeon or sheep’s hearts, mummy powder, iron filling, or a mole's teeth to work into a spell.

Ironically, la Voisin hated her husband so much that the typical polite greeting was to inquire whether or not he had dropped dead yet. La Voisin claimed that she never used her spells on her husband and he did continue to live on, but evidence suggests that she may have been "experimenting" with his meals. (Obviously, if she admitted to using her potions she would not only have been accused of attempted murder, but it also would have been bad for business.)

La Voisin's popularity as chief purveyor of potions and spells to the nobility soon earned her the moniker ‘a duchess among witches’, but also fate a less desirable than Psychic to the Stars. On March 1679, la Voisin was arrested on charges of witchcraft. A witch-hunt soon followed with over 400 people implicated in what became known as ‘The Affair of the Poisins.’ La Voisin’s daughter Marie started to talk and favored courtiers with a dangerously close proximity to the king were accused of practicing witchcraft. Some of these names even included Louis’ mistress, Francois-Athenais de Rochechouart, Madame de Montespan and his old crush, Olympe Mancini, comtesse de Soissons.

The accusations stemmed from La Voisin’s less innocuous repertoire involving poisons and love spells using dead body parts and celebrating Black Masses with sacrificial babies. Supposedly, Madame de Montespan paid a visit to la Voisin when she wanted to usurp her rival for the king’s affections, Louise de la Valliere. La Voisin recommended that Madame de Montespan sneak dead baby’s blood, bones, and intestines with a dab of toad and bat parts into Louis’ meat. Yum!

These allegations seem absurd when we consider Madame de Montespan’s extreme piety. To engage in any sinister black magic would have been an extreme crime against the church and dammed her soul. Even more ridiculous was the allegations that Madame de Montespan had sought to poison the king. Killing off her sugar daddy would have seriously cramped her decadent life style. (1)

Madame de Montespan may have experimented with beauty potions and aphrodisiacs such as the popular Cantharides – a medicine scraped from the wings of the Spanish fly beetle. As the pseudonym for sexual sadism, The Marquis de Sade is later remembered for unsuccessfully using Spanish fly to ignite the passions of young prostitutes. (The prostitutes died a painful death). Even George Washington had some Spanish fly in his medicine chest.**

But whether deserved or not, la Voisin is not remembered for harmless beauty potions and aphrodisiacs, but as one of history's great poisoners and raucous trouble makers.The Poison Affair ended with over 34 people executed and several courtiers banished from court. (Olympe Mancini fled in fear for her safety. ) A year after her arrest, la Voisin was burnt to death at the Place de Greve in Paris.

*History doesn’t tells us if these spells worked, but think carefully before you sneak into your neighbor’s garden with a wax doll.
**Get your mind out of the gutter. Spanish fly was used as a blistering agent to heal George’s throat infection.

Notes:
Fraser, p. 181

Sources and Further Reading
Somerset, Anne. The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV, New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 2004.
Fraser, Antonia. Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King. New York, NY: Nan A. Talese, 2006.

IF: Contained Rats

I have been reading through Henry Mayhew’s account of the working class in Victorian London and came across this fascinating story of Jack Black. Jack Black was the “official” rat catcher to Queen Victoria. He peddled rat poison throughout the streets of London and always carried a large cage of rats (much larger than what is shown here). Jack was rather fearless in handling his rats and would even kill them in front of live audiences while demonstrating the potency of his rat poison.


Jack also collected rats for a curious entertainment popularized in Victorian London called Ratting which was basically dropping rats into a big pit to watch a “pit dog” rip them to shreds. Sounds rather dull to me, but to Victorian kids…it was the most fun they would have all week.

But don’t think Jack hated rats. He actually kept some rats as pets and bred white rats - a mutation in Victorian times. Jack then sold these white rats to highborn ladies who thought that if a rat was white…well then it just didn’t count as vermin. Rumor has it that he even sold one of his pet rats to Beatrice Potter who later based her character of Samuel Whiskers on Jack’s rat. Clearly, this story has to be a smear campaign because you can see Mr. Whiskers is a cute, little brown mouse and not a disease-spreading rat. The proof lies in Mr. Whisker's attire. Everyone knows that rats do not wear pants.

Anyway, my painting is no Samuel Whiskers, but I wanted to do some sort of caricature of Jack and his rats. Let me know what you think.

Sources and Further Reading:
Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor, Volume 3. New York, NY : Dover Publications, 1968

Strangest Royal Gifts in History

With Christmas now over, there are probably some bizarre gifts still lingering under many a half-dead tree. But chia pets, self-help books and nose hair clippers don’t compare to some of the more exotic gifts given to royalty throughout history. The following are some of my favorite.

Cute and Cuddly Gifts
King Manuel I of Portugal went for the big box when he gave Pope Leo X, a rare white elephant named Hanno. Leo fell in love with his large gift and used his new pet to lead ostentatious parades through the streets of Rome with a silver tower on his back. For years Hanno reciprocated the Pope’s love and would cry “bar bar bar” every time he saw Leo. Unfortunately, Leo may have loved his pet pachyderm a little too much. The gold-enriched laxatives fed to Hanno were a little too rich for even an elephant’s stomach. Hanno dropped dead after one of these royal treatments.

The “oh you shouldn’t have” gift
At the wedding of Catherine de Medici, Pope Clement VII gave King Francis I, a unicorn horn mounted in a solid gold pedestal. These slightly phallic edifices were not intended to match the furniture, but were instead valued for their medicinal qualities. A unicorn or “alicorn” horn would supposedly sweat in the presence of poison. Unfortunately, the mythical horns were actually rhino and narwhal horns and often cost about as much as a small estate.

Honey…Look what I killed for you
Having an animal carcass arrive on your doorstep may seem like a less than romantic gift but to 16th century princes it was a most tender gesture of love. Henry VIII may have wooed Anne Boleyn with love letters and jewelry, but it was the freshly killed stag that really made her go….awwwww ain’t that sweet.

Royal Re-gifting
Every proud papa likes to give gifts to his daughter on her wedding. King Philip IV was no different when he bestowed several priceless jewels on his daughter Isabella after her marriage ceremony to Edward II. Unfortunately, Edward immediately re-gifted Isabella’s jewels and sent them to his royal mistress. This re-gifting might not have been so insulting if it were not for the fact that Edward’s girlfriend was none other than the pretty boy, Piers Gaveston. Most people would have agreed that Isabella looked better in pearls.

History tells us that even exotic gifts can be re-gifted. Such was the case with the Turkish corsair and chief pirate of the Ottoman empire, Barabarossa who gave King Francis a rare Nubian lion. In theory, a pet lion may seem like the perfect gift to impress a king, until you have to feed the beast. Francis certainly came to this conclusion when the perpetually hungry lion started eyeing the monkeys, reptiles and exotic birds in the rest of the king’s royal menagerie. Thus, Francis gave the big cat to the cousin of Pope Clement VII, Ippolito de Medici who fell in love with his new pet.

The wife of Louis XV, Maria Leszczynska, received an expensive New Year’s gift – an enamel and gold snuffbox with a small watch on the lid. Unfortunately for Maria, the gift was intended for Louise Madeline de la Motte, the mother of Louis’ famed mistress Madame Pompadour. Fortunately for Maria, Louise had just died and no one wanted to waste the gift.

Sources and Further Reading:
Bedini, Silvio. The Pope's Elephant. Austin, Texas: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, 1997.
Knecht, R.J. Francis I, New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Weir, Alison. Queen Isabella. New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 2005.
Ives, Eric. Anne Boleyn. New York, NY : Blackwell, 1988.
Lever, Evelyne. Madame de Pompadour : a life. New York, NY : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

Royal Ghost Tales

This is the end to this terrifying Halloween month and the point where I feel obliged to take all the fun out of what could have been spooky tales. The following just might be the least scary ghost tales you have ever heard.



The Ghost of Anne Boleyn

The Scary:
Visit the Tower of London and you might spot a very famous ghost. Several eyewitnesses have reported the ghostly apparition of Henry VIII’s second wife clad in white roaming the Green Tower with her head in her hands.

And if Anne’s tower haunting is not spooky enough then take a trip over to Blickling Hall. Anne’s ghost has been spotted drawing up to the stately home in a coach pulled by four headless horses driven by a headless coachman.

The not-so-scary:
If Anne was to haunt the tower wouldn’t she have the dignity to put her head back on her shoulders? That hussy Katheryn Howard might prance around without a head….but not our lovely Anne. And I really can’t understand why Anne would choose to use a horse drawn coach considering that they didn’t exist in England at the time. If she was really going to pull up in an anachronistic vehicle…why not something a bit fancier, like a Porsche?

The Ghost of Marie Antoinette

The Scary:
You don’t have to travel all the way to Paris to see Marie Antoinette’s ghost. In a house on the coast of Maine in North Edgecombe, a phantom appears decked out in a towering headdress and a satin dress. The ghost sightings have become so common that the house is called the “Marie Antoinette House”. According to legend, there was a plot to rescue Marie Antoinette in a ship called the Sally with the intention of taking her to Maine. But alas, the rescue attempt failed and Marie Antoinette was beheaded and never forgave the French. For this reason, Marie Antoinette’s ghost has chosen to haunt the coast of Maine. If you see this ghost, you must bow deeply while backing away. If you don’t follow this royal etiquette then the ghost will have a royal tantrum and will curse like a Maine truck driver.

The not-so-scary:
Marie Antoinette was well-known for eschewing royal protocol. She got her husband to abolish the custom of dining in public daily and thought it was downright silly for her ladies-in-waiting to serve her while kneeling. And swearing would never have happened. Marie Antoinette was so polite that she apologized for accidentally stepping on her executioner’s toe. But most importantly, if any self-respecting ghost was to arrive in Maine, they would stick around for maybe one winter and then head straight for Florida to never return again.


The Ghost of Mary Queen of Scots

The Scary
Mary is believed to haunt at least 5 Scottish landmarks including Stirling, Craignethan, Borthwick and Lockleven Castle and also the Palace of the Holyrood House. Wheeeeew! When it comes to castle haunting, Mary really gets around. And if that was not enough to keep Mary’s ghost busy you can also visit the ghost of a young boy believed to be her servant at Glamis Castle.

Legend has it that there is a blood stain on the floor of Holyrood House from when Mary’s secretary David Rizzio was butchered. People have tried to clean the blood stain but it keeps…reappearing.

The Not-So Scary
It’s ironic that Mary has chosen to haunt Scottish castles considering that she was confined in English castles for the majority of her life (19 years). Why not float over to Buckingham and try to scar the queen? She is at least the namesake of the women who sentenced her to death? And why not haunt some castles in France? She certainly spent the happiest years of her life in France. Those raucous Scotsmen seem to be very possessive of Mary. With all this talk about the Scottish government digging up the poor woman’s body and shipping it back to Scotland, they can at least be satisfied that they got her ghost.

And as far as the bloodstain goes - have they tried Pine-Sol? That stuff works wonders and smells like Christmas trees.