祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
KIROKAZE
@theartofmadeline
wallacepolsom
RMH
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
h
JVL
blake kathryn
🪼
occasionally subtle
⁂
Product Placement
Jules of Nature
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
taylor price
Three Goblin Art
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Claire Keane
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@knitfreakcosplay
Mentioning me in the three of the same "ray bans givaway" post seems kind of suspicious, is your account compromised? You don't strike me as a ray bans fan from the content I'm used to seeing from you.
Yeah, looks like my account was hacked. (I haven’t actually spent much time here in a while, but a friend let me know.) I’m terribly sorry about that!
the idea of people having to be ‘useful’ is just so gross, like people do not exist to be used
having to produce something and have a use is a capitalist ideal and not an intrinsic part of humanity
just by being alive you are human and you are worth something and you can never be useless
this applies to animals as well
“Having to like DO THINGS is SO OPPRESSIVE. No one had to like DO THINGS before evil capitalism. In ancient times food, water, and shelter just existed and everything was taken care of for me”
Guess what happened to people who didn’t do things before capitalism? They died. Cause if you weren’t hunting, gathering, or useful in some aspect of nature. You were killed, died or starvation, dehydration, or exposure.
Being useful is literally part of our biology. Fucking moron. You pull some idea out of your ass because you literally don’t want to get off your ass.
I’m not saying nobody should ever do things ever, I’m saying people don;t have to produce to an arbitrary standard in order to prove their right to live
And if you really think disabled people deserve to die if we can’t ‘contribute’ or be useful in a way you approve of then congrats youre a fucking monster
actually there’s significant evidence in terms of Neolithic burials that disabled people who would not have been able to hunt for themselves (the archaeological evidence mostly shows mobility disabilities because it’s visible in the bone record) were well fed and cared for by their communities
so the “people like you would have been left to die” argument isn’t just cruel and violently ableist, it’s extremely historically inaccurate and based off of projecting modern prejudice on prehistoric cultures
sources because I’m on my laptop now!
note: in the neolithic era, a person in their 40s or 50s would be considered elderly
12,000-year-old burial of a woman about 45 with mobility disabilities both congenital and acquired
burial of a 40-50 year old Neanderthal man who had survived to old age with a deformed right arm and a long-healed head injury that would have made him blind in one eye
neolithic burial of a man in his 50s who lost the use of his left arm in adolescence
neolithic burial of a man in his 40s with evidence of a significant mobility disability caused by an injured hip and leg, some time in adulthood but long before his death
neolithic Asian burial of a man in his 20s with a congenital disorder which would have made him a quadriplegic around age 14. He survived for 10-15 years after that.
5th century burial of child with Down Syndrome
Our society continually propagates the myth that our ancestors’ lives were miserable, but the truth is human beings figured out how to live cooperatively and humanely a long time ago. Really the agricultural revolution fucked everything up.
Cuz clearly people only died and starved before capitalism
Anthropologically, proof of fixed femur fractures in ancient hominids shows that is one of the signs of civilized people– caring for the sick and injured is a cornerstone of civilization. So lmao go fuck yourself with the injured and disabled died thousands of years ago if they couldn’t help provide for their group.
Stop turning ancient hominids into these cruel “survival of the fittest” images. Especially cause that isn’t even what is meant by that phrase.
Even Neanderthals cared for their sick and injured. Which says a lot about those who are against the idea.
Another point: back in the ancient times, pretty much ALL work that got done was work of the “if it doesn’t get done, you starve” variety, perhaps embellished a bit by the “if it doesn’t get done, you’re uncomfortable” sort. Work was vital, yes, but all the work that was vital was vital.
Nowadays, on the other hand, we have excess, and waste, and an absolute shitpot of arbitrary work that gets shoved into the “necessary and vital” pile just because somebody else can make a buck off it, made as much off of cut corners and financial shenanigans as of anybody’s honest labor. Shitty Wal-Mart plastic pitchers and crap toys that capture attention and drop it just as fast, “fast fashion” that you wear twice and it falls apart, shiny chrome washer-dryers that are going to be replaced in five or ten years because planned obsolescence meets upgrade culture, and produce that gets rejected because it doesn’t look shiny and uniform and perfect.
If you’re a cashier, you have to stand even though you could do your job just as well sitting. A fast-food place throws out pounds of fries, empties the whole assembly-line of prepared food into the dumpster at the end of the night, and if you take any of it home to eat, that’s called stealing. Grocery stores throw out entire cartons of eggs because one out of twelve is cracked and lock their dumpsters so nobody can scavenge food from the tons of what’s thrown out still edible. Tech stores demand that unsold computers be destroyed with a sledgehammer before being thrown out, and all the labor that went into making it, assembling it, forming its component parts and mining its raw materials, is all wasted.
We can see this shit going on, we encounter it and sometimes we’re ordered to carry it out, in our workplaces that pay us shit, and let me tell you, there’s a hell of a difference between “if you don’t get the wheat harvested we’ll have no bread all winter” and “you need to spend the next eight hours cooking food so we can hold a profit after throwing a quarter of it in the garbage.” A multitude of people would benefit greatly if allowed to access that waste or allowed to not produce what’s likely going to be wasted.
It’s not that we want something for nothing–it’s that we want the stuff we’ve put work into creating to benefit us, or someone who could use it, and not see good work twisted into benefiting no one while still being demanded and still being underpaid.
If people in agrarian societies of the past starved it was frequently due to an uncontrollable act of nature (drought, flood, locusts, plague).
Now people starve because they don’t “produce” in an acceptable way for our capitalist system, which has a very narrow and limited definition of what being “useful” is, and because our corporate overlords would rather throw food away than feed someone who is starving.
We have enough food, but people are starving to death.
We have enough houses, but people are dying of exposure because they’re homeless.
We have enough medicine, but people are dying because they can’t afford to pay for it.
And we accept this as correct because we’ve been brainwashed that only “useful” i.e. “capitalist productive” people deserve to have food, shelter and healthcare.
That’s fucked up.
caring for the sick and injured is a cornerstone of civilization
I’ve used this in arguments for years. Those in need are never a drain on a society – but the way they are treated is the measure of one.
Some Edgelord On Tumblr: Pssh, disabled people should just die already, if you can’t work you’re something something Darwin something. Zog, the Neanderthal: …you big asshole, Zog no like.
I understand why people dislike leather and animal products. But leather is such a good resource? Like… My mom bought a sturdy leather coat in 1989. I’m in my 20’s and I now wear that coat. That’s a 30 year old coat? 30 years, two generations, one coat. Versus, like… A plastic one, that rips and gets thrown out, or releases bits into the ecosystem every time it’s washed, takes a billion years to decompose, lasts maybe a decade if you’re super duper careful, and uses oil products in it’s construction. Like, yeah leather is expensive and comes from a living animal, and I’m not saying that you should go out and buy fifty fur and leather products for the he’ll of it, but like… Maybe the compromise is worth it? One animal product, valued and respected and worn down for generations, versus like… Six plastic products that will never ever go away?
idk, I could be wrong.
this is why im so fucking pissed white colonial fucks and white vegans get so enraged at indigenous people for using hides/leather and animal bones as if that shit breaks or rips like cheap polyester does
Remember, kids:
It’s not “vegan wool”, it’s plastic.
It’s not “vegan leather”, it’s plastic.
It’s not “vegan fur”, it’s fucking plastic. It’s all plastic.
It’s all fucking plastic, and every time you wash it, or damage it, or try to dispose of it, that plastic winds up in the water, in the earth, in the air.
Hell, the damage has already done when the fucking thing’s been made. As the OP says, it’s all oil and oil products; it creates pollution just to produce synthetic fabrics and materials, even before you try to throw them away, which, I mean, good luck with that.
A lot of vegan ideology is built up around a very superficial set of ethics that are supposedly about protecting animals, wildlife and the environment, but they fall apart when you look even a little bit below the surface. Every time you eschew an animal-based product in favour of something “synthetic” for the sake of “saving an animal’s life”, you’re creating pollution and trash that won’t go away for thousands of years, damaging the Earth and making life so much worse for countless animals and people.
Think about this stuff more than not at all, please.
Eeeeeeverybody loves to get up my asshole because I wear fur. Yeah? Okay then.
When you live somewhere with -40C winter temperatures, you realize that pragmatism and warmth trump all other considerations.
I’m in and out of cars and buildings all day, every day. I have to dress for the weather and fur is hands down one of the warmest things you can wear — ask the fucking Inuit.
So you know what I do?
I check consignment stores. I check estate auctions. I get family heirloom furs.
I buy furs that are literally older than I am, in styles that would consign them to the dumpster, and then get them tailored to fit. My fur earmuffs? Salvaged fur from a coat that was ripped and functionally useless. My fur short coat? A fur that got raggedy and moth-eaten at the bottom and so was hemmed to hip height. My long fur coat is almost fifteen years older than I am, and I’m thirty one years old. Do that math.
So yes. I wear fur, because it fits my needs, my budget, and my ethics. The vegans wearing pleather can kick a brick. Only one of our coats is going to destroy the planet, and it isn’t my grandmother’s mink stole.
Not to mention the fact that buying these natural leather products from indigenous peoples both subverts capitalism (that wants you to buy cheap shit that breaks), and also supports indigenous communities and artisans.
I’m reading the notes and it’s really cute when people go “but use hemp! Use cotton! Try linen!”
Yeah?
Imma wear linen when the weather looks like this:
I am NOT going to wear hemp, linen or cotton when the weather looks like this:
When the weather outside is frightful, I’mma make like an Inuit and dress like this:
(Also, as you say: it is possible to responsibly source ethical furs. I prefer furriers like Victoria Kakuktinniq, who is an Indigenous Inuit fashion designer who interprets traditional fur designs for a modern sensibility. The funds from her clothing — and from other northern Indigenous communities — allows those northern communities to maintain their cultural traditions, while also introducing a much-needed revenue stream. If you have to buy fresh fur, Indigenous furriers are a good bet!)
@acti-veg this is just…. *sigh*
Which part is *passive aggressive sigh*?
Would it be the:
-reuse of fabrics and furs that are generally anywhere from 10-50 years old?
-recycling and repurposing of old or otherwise unusable materials like leather and fur to make smaller items like jackets, vests, gloves, hats and balaclavas?
-support for Indigenous traditions, handicrafts and artisans?
-recognition of the fact that there are very few plant-based products that will stand up to winters where the average temperature is anywhere from -20 to -50
I know, I know. Your ethics are itchy and it’s very simple to talk that good shit.
But let me introduce you to a Canadian phenomena: frostbite.
Frostbite occurs when your cells freeze. Your cells.
Ice crystals begin to form in cells in temperatures lower than -4C, which is what Canadians call “spring, fucking finally”.
In the teeth of winter, you get maybe ten hours of sunlight a day and your highest temperature is still double digits below 0C and the weather channel is saying “WEATHER WARNING: skin freezing in 30SECONDS”, and the government has put out a WEATHER EMERGENCY: EXTREME COLD WARNING.
When the weather is that severe, we don’t actually get the luxury of waxed cotton, woollen peacoats and a few layers of linen.
Sanctimony and sighs and good intentions don’t keep us warm.
Seriously, it hit -50F here last winter, linen and cotton don’t do fuckall in those temps.
Well, that’s not true. They DO, actually. They get wet from sweat and then get clammy and suck the heat out of you, leading to frostbite. Polyester is plastic, and I avoid that, because it’s bad for the environment.
You know what actually keeps you warm when it hits -50F? Wool, fur, and down. All animal products, all renewable and biodegradable, and all of which will last years with proper care.
I have two fur coats, both of which I paid $20 or less for at thrift stores, and both of which are vintage. Wool doesn’t harm the sheep it’s sheared from…they need to be sheared to stay healthy, actually…and down is harvested from animals that will be eaten, meaning none of the animal goes to waste.
Ah, yes. Truely, sheep live terribly. (Note; sheep wool is useless unles they have good pasture they’re raised on)
Ah, yes, the sheep are so mistreated when they’re sheared. A whole four minutes and they’re done. It’s like giving a fussy toddler a haircut.
And if they’re NOT shorn, you get flystrike, which I’m not going to post a pic of here because it is very unpleasant. Basically, flies lay eggs on the thick wool and the larvae eat the sheep’s skin off. It can be fatal.
https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/health-welfare/livestock-diseases/parasitic-diseases/fly-strike-warning-warm-wet-weather-continues
But please, tell me, the granddaughter of farmers who lives in farm country and who has neighbors who keep sheep, how sheep work.
Hi I’m the OP and I grew up dirt poor on a Canadian sheep farm and I support this message
To even pull away from cold weather folks, my people are all from Texas and Louisiana and leather is 100% useful for so many things. Tanned hides were a common good for us and surrounding tribes because they’re fucking awesome when it comes to rain protection, provide quick shade in the heat, and were a great way to protect your ass when riding an animal.
Tanned hides work great as a base for moccasins, because it’s thick enough to protect your feet from the heat of the packed dirt, and thin enough that your feet don’t sweat to death inside of them. In boots, I don’t trust any material that isn’t leather or reptile skin to protect me from animals or the elements.
Y’all really need to look at your anti fur/leather/wool campaigns and recognize the anti-Indigenous sentiment that runs through all of them.
All of this. I echo all of this. This is part of the reason why I don’t agree with veganism for ethical reasons.
Light-weight wool, like wool crepes, also make GREAT summer clothing. Wool is an insulator, y'all. It will keep you warm if done one way, yes, but it can also be super lovely and cool.
Also I don’t have sources rn, but organic cotton is SUPER not sustainable.
I’ve owned both real and fake leather before, and both were black leather jackets.
The first was the faux leather, which was always fun to laugh and say “oh, but don’t worry, it’s not real!” until the darned thing wore out in about two years and got pitted from either creasing too much near the zipper or something poked it too hard.
Meanwhile, my actual-leather biker jacket, while certainly a bit strained from its age, still looks awesome, can take a beating from its klutzy owner, helps stop the wind from cutting me, and is probably around 10 years old (I got it from a relative).
Plastic is convenient. Leather is sustainable.
I once tore through a “vegan” leather jacket during my teens years by flexing.
Did that in a leather jacket and just tore some seams. Easy to fix and then give to my little brother.
Have you ever thought that maybe Darcy just isn't a very positive character for women? Even if she isn't a mary sue, she doesn't do much of anything. At least Jane is smart.
No. No, I have not. Because if I had, I’d be, Hey brain, why are you being so fucking stupid today? Remind me to stab you with a q-tip later, okay?
To recap, let’s discuss what Darcy does:
Takes an unpaid internship with a TWO BRILLIANT ASTROPHYSICISTS who totally seem like the type to have someone hang around when they are “stupid”.
Recognizes Thor is a danger at first and not only protects herself, but protects all of her friends by tazing the fuck out of him while Erik and Jane are like WHUT IS THIS?! DANGER?!
Helps Jane research shit that most people wouldn’t understand
OMG A BOOK? HOW TO USE?! HOW DO U DO?! NEED INSTRUCTIONAL DIAGRAM!!
Doesn’t turn heel and run when the Destroyer is tearing the shit out of Puente Antiguo, and instead stays and not only tries to help her friends, but also rescues trapped animals (a la the deleted scene).
Goes to Norway with Jane and is a computer badass. (See comics.)
MY HACKER NAME IS FCKUCOULSON!
Stays with Jane in London to help her with her research. Smart enough that Jane trusts her to watch over the equipment.
Recruits an intern for herself.
Calls for help when Jane gets herself into a pickle, even though she knows Jane will be pissy… because IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
YOU WERE GONE FOR FIVE HOURS AND CAME BACK WITH AN INFINITY STONE BABY BUMP, DON’T GIVE ME ANY SHIT.
Is sassy and completely unflustered with Thor.
Goes and bails Erik out of jail and is kind and gentle with him even though he’s bananaballs.
THIS WORKPLACE IS NOT PANTS OPTIONAL (UNLESS U R THOR)
Helps Jane figure out what the fuck is going on with the dark elves and all this inter-dimensional bullshit.
FUCK, IF THEY SUCCEED, I WON’T BE ABLE TO SEE WHEN STEVE AND THOR TAKE OFF THEIR SHIRTS. THIS IS BULLSHIT.
Put aside her own fucking safety to help Jane defeat the dark elves and save the UNIVERSE.
FUCK. YEAH.
In conclusion, I have no fucking idea what movies you were watching. In the little time that Darcy spent on screen, she was functionally smarter than many of her “smart” colleagues, she was LOYAL AND KIND, and funny as hell. You’re not required to love her, but please cease with the bullshit about how she’s not a positive character.
THANK YOU, sevensneakyfoxes!!!!!
Okay, but let’s remember that in Thor, Darcy is a Political Science major completely out of her field with this internship, but adapts and thrives anyways. That her background in sociology and politics leads her to support Jane’s earliest theories of Thor being an alien-god from another realm with valid historical/anthropological theories (also that Darcy’s the one who twigged to Thor appearing OUT OF THE WORMHOLE/EINSTEIN-ROSEN BRIDGE/BIFROST IN THE FIRST PLACE.)
Let’s remember that she successfully corralled two Absentminded Genius types who (in Jane’s case) might forget to eat or shower because science! if not for Darcy’s bugging her. (Seriously, Darcy is a successful Genius Cat Herder.)
And you know, even on top of and aside from all of that, I take HUGE issue with Anon’s message that Darcy isn’t a positive character for women, because she’s not a genius or an ultimate badass.
I feel like this is some Strong Female Character toxicity in action. Where the only valid women are the ones who can “keep up with the boys” by being twice as amazing, and the only kind of strong or value a woman can be or have is if she’s somehow exceptional.
Darcy is a fantastic positive character for women, because she’s average or damn close to. She can’t murder a man with her thighs or bring down NASA with a keystroke, she can’t solve the mysteries of the universe before breakfast or pilot an Iron Man suit. She’s not a CEO or a model or a doctor.
She’s a relatable, clever, brave young woman and all too like the average woman watching her onscreen, and she’s having adventures and in control of her destiny (and her romantic/sexual life) and choosing to stand in the face of universe-destroying power and fear with nothing but a taser, her snark, awesome knitwear, and somebody else’s half-assed plan.
Tell me again how Darcy Lewis isn’t a positive character for women to relate to.
Tell me again.
just throwing in my two cents in as an artist who draws horny content: it’s about context.
if you’re drawing fictional characters in titillating poses for cheesecake or straight up porn purposes, that’s one thing. the context is a sexual one. keep living your best life, i know i am.
however, all those old comic book artists are drawing female-shaped characters to look sexual in a non-sexual context. they’ll draw spiderwoman climbing a building with her suit suctioned to her tits and ass, basically making her look naked covered in bodypaint, when the situation straight up does not call for that. she’s a woman essentially at work and yet they’re gonna objectify her anyway. (fuck you milo manara.)
one of my favorite old articles is this one comparing ed benes’ art of wonder woman to cliff chiang’s. ed benes draws wonder woman and a bunch of other justice league women, who are all captured and imprisoned, like they’re ready to be “punished” in a BDSM scenario. it’s stupid and distracting– why have wonder woman’s breasts center in the screen like this?? this does NOT suit the context of the story and it’s just plain uncomfortable.
cliff chiang has four pages of wonder woman nude and yet he never exploits it, because it actually isn’t important to the story. she sleeps nude because that how Diana just do, she’s woken up by a girl in trouble, so she has to get dressed while they talk. seriously go read that article, it has more pictures.
imagine what this scene would have looked like if it were drawn by ed benes, or milo manara or greg land (who would’ve traced porn anyway) or j. scott campbell or ALL OF THOSE FOOLS IN THE COMIC INDUSTRY. this is why i like cliff chiang’s art so much more, because aside from it actually just looking better in all ways, he also knows how to draw women characters with respect.
context matters. draw tittilating sexualized art of superheroes all you want, but keep it where it belongs: in a sexual context. NOT in every scene ever, because why the FUCK would i want to find a corpse, a torture victim, or an otherwise serious battle randomly sexy? or for that matter, women just doing their jobs? they’re superhero stories, not low-budget pornos featuring plumbers and pizzamen for fuck’s sake.
reblog if AAAAAAAAA
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AAAAAAAAAHHH!!!
This is such an abstract type of comedy I don’t even know how to handle it
This gives off heavy Cenozoic animals with microphone vibes
That’s still a lot of trees #EthicalMemes
Here is the link in case anyone wants to donate some trees!
https://teamtrees.org/
The official site of #TeamTrees. One dollar plants a tree...
They’re only about 1.2 million away, and a couple of weeks ago they were 4 million away. There’s a good chance that with a bit of noise made about this, they could rally for that home stretch. This would be a good time to tell your family, friends, co-workers about the project, as there are many people interested in donating to charities at this time of the year. Once you choose a donation amount, you can also select that it is a gift for someone else, if you’re interested in gift ideas.
If nothing else, please help pass on the news here!
Less than 1.1 million left! Come on, people!
They really are close, and we have two weeks left!
Fun little thing about medieval medicine.
So there’s this old German remedy for getting rid of boils. A mix of eggshells, egg whites, and sulfur rubbed into the boil while reciting the incantation and saying five Paternosters. And according to my prof’s friend (a doctor), it’s all very sensible. The eggshells abrade the skin so the sulfur can sink in and fry the boil. The egg white forms a flexible protective barrier. The incantation and prayers are important because you need to rub it in for a certain amount of time.
It’s easy to take the magic words as superstition, but they’re important.
The length of time it takes to say a paternoster was a typical method of reckoning time in the Middle Ages. It’s likely that whoever wrote this remedy down was thinking of it both as a prayer and a timespan and that whoever read it would have understood it the same way.
I wonder if this shows up in other historical areas besides medicine?
I ask because I have a very Italian, very Catholic friend who was once describing how she makes pizzelles. They’re cooked in a specific press, similar to a waffle iron, long enough to get light and crispy but not burnt, and in her own words: “I don’t know the exact time it takes to cook them in seconds, but I usually do either two Hail Mary’s or an Our Father and a Glory Be.”
I would be extremely surprised if medieval people didn’t use prayers while cooking. You don’t want to roast an egg for too long, have it explode, and get hot yolk in your eye. :P
I know that church bells were definitely used as timekeepers.
Before oven thermometers existed, one way to check the temperature of your oven was to stick your hand inside and recite an Our Father. The length of time before you snatch your hand out was timed by how far you’d gotten in the prayer. The shorter the time, the hotter the oven. So you knew that if you wanted a hot oven to bake bread, you wanted your hand out by “kingdom” (for example) but to slow cook a stew, you might want the oven cool enough to get to “trespasses”.
This popped up in “Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook” as well, though there the timing method wasn’t prayer but X verses of “Where Has All The Custard Gone?”
Other timing methods are “a while” (approx. 35 mins) and “a good while” (variable, up to 10 years, which the book suggests is a bit long to let batter rest before making pancakes…)
All absolutely standard, and also varied from region to region. The use of prayer was more common than most, since the Catholic church had a monopoly on… well, pretty much everything. And all the prayers were in Latin, and at a specific cadence, so the effect is similar to watching the second hand on a clock today.
it’s important to note that to the medieval people the prayers were important because of timekeeping AND god. like, i think as modern people we do tend to want it to be “just timekeeping, they weren’t just superstitious idiots, they had a good reasonable scientific reason!” but it’s also important to remember just how culturally steeped in a mystical religion they were, a relationship with christianity entirely unlike the modern relationship found in modern american culture even amongst the most religious people. i have no doubt that in the medieval mind, they were aware of the prayer being the time it took but also if there had BEEN another way to measure that time, the prayer would have been held to be preferable and important in its own right because of the importance of spiritual assistance in worldly things like bread-baking
Definitely, this is a great point! I was talking to somebody in the comments who was saying that medieval medicine was mostly bunkum because it involves spirituality, supposedly meaning it couldn’t also have logical basis behind it. But that’s a really modern way to see it. To the medieval worldview, those things aren’t contradictory. They’re part of each other. Think about how many medieval Christian scientists were monks, nuns, and priests.
*INHUMAN SCREECHING*
M Y T I M E H A S C O M E
You guys don’t understand how excited it made me to read this post, I literally wrote my master’s thesis on this exact topic.
STORY TIME
Sometime in the 10th century in Anglo-Saxon England (for context, this is before the Norman Conquest and near-ish to the reign of Alfred the Great), a dude named Bald asked another dude name Cild to write a book. Not just any book. A leechbook, which was essentially the medieval version of WebMD for practicing doctors. BUT NOT JUST A LEECHBOOK. This leechbook was gonna be the damn Lamborghini of leechbooks. This thing was going to be split into two parts, the first dealing with external medicine and the second dealing with internal medicine—something that was unheard of at the time. It was going to be organized (head to toe, like all the good leechbooks were). It was gonna be nice (leather and vellum). It was gonna use all the best ideas (from all over the known world). And the whole thing was going to be written in Anglo-Saxon. Now, a few medical books had been compiled in Anglo-Saxon before, but none like this. This one was going to be EPIC. And it was—and still is.
Bald’s Leechbook (also goes by the more boring but more informative MS Royal 12 D XVIII over in the British Library) contains a lot of medical remedies. A lot of them rely on things like prayers and chants and odd charms, like one for a headache, which recommends plucking the eyes off a living crab, letting the crab back into the water, and wearing the eyes about your neck in a little sack until you feel better. However, it’s worth pointing out that the really wild remedies, the stuff that makes absolutely no freakin’ sense, is most often recommended to treat ailments that are hard to treat even today—migraines, toothaches, cancer. These things are really painful or deadly and, without modern medicine, almost impossible to treat. So are you going to make up some nonsense to make your client at least feel like they’re doing something, and hey, if it sort of works, it works? Of course you are. You want to help people. Even if it sounds crazy, what else are you going to do? You have to try something, and the people who are suffering are willing to try anything.
But there’s also things that make complete sense. To echo concepts that have been mentioned by commentators above, there is a recipe that calls for the recitation of the paternoster while boiling a honey-based salve meant to treat carbuncle. The book instructs the physician to bring it to a boil, and sing the paternoster three times, and remove it from the fire, and sing nine paternosters, and to repeat this process two more times. A century ago, historians read the use of the paternoster as a magical incantation, but today, most agree that in lieu of a stopwatch, the paternoster is just meant to make sure you don’t burn the honey.
BUT THAT ISN’T NEAR THE COOLEST THING.
Now, this book was compiled by a master physician (we don’t know if it was Cild himself or if Cild was the scribe for an unnamed author) who was compiling recipes that had been written down for some time, and had, as many things do, gone through various permutations over the years. Many came from Greece or the western Mediterranean, and had been adapted for local English horticulture and herbs. Some came from around what is now Germany, and some ideas came from farther away in the Middle East (King Alfred was a sickly king; some scholars believe that he had his physicians seek out cures from all over the world in an attempt to treat himself). But there is one recipe that has only ever been identified in England. Not only has this recipe only ever been identified in England, it’s only ever been identified in this one manuscript. When translated into modern English, it reads as follows:
Work an eyesalve for a wen [stye], take cropleek and garlic, of both equal quantities, pound them well together, take wine and bullocks gall, of both equal quantities, mix with the leek, put this then into a brazen vessel, let it stand nine days in the brass vessel, wring out through a cloth and clear it well, put it into a horn, and about night time, apply it with a feather to the eye; the best leechdom.
For those who don’t know and/or are lucky enough to have never had one, a “wen” or a stye is a bacterial infection that manifests like a boil or a cyst that on the eyelid. They hurt something awful, and can cause larger infections of the eye. They are usually caused by Staphylococcus aureus.
With me? Okay. Fast-forward to 1988. A former biologist turned historian called M.L. Cameron decides to take a look at this old medical leechbook to see what he can see. He takes a good look and says “Lads I do believe these Anglo-Saxon leeches weren’t nearly so daft as we thought they were” (he did not and probably would never actually say that, I’m paraphrasing). Cameron was particularly interested in the recipe above. As a scientist, he knew a few things:
Garlic and cropleek (leek or onion, or another related plant) have been known to have antibacterial qualities for centuries.
Wine (alcohol) also has antibacterial qualities.
Bullocks gall (literally bile taken from a bull) is known to have detergent properties, and has long been used as an additive to soap for particularly tough stains.
A brazen vessel, or a vessel made of brass, contains a good amount of copper in it. And that copper, when left to sit around for, I don’t know, about nine days, would have plenty of time to react with the acids in the onion and garlic and the tartarates in the wine to create copper salts.
Coppers salts, as it happens, are cytotoxic, meaning they kill everything: tissue and bacteria.
What an interesting find.
Fast-forward again to 2015. A paper is published by a team from the University of Nottingham, who’ve been working on an ‘Ancientbiotics’ project to investigate ancient medical remedies and see if they actually work. They’ve turned their sights to the Anglo-Saxons, and are, as was Cameron, particularly interested in this recipe for an eye salve. Without boring you with the finer details of the experiment and its various trials (read it yourself!) I will spoil the ending by telling you that they discovered a few things:
This recipe, which was over 1,000 years old when they tested it, worked.
It worked well.
It worked extremely well.
So well, in fact, that (in a lab setting) they even got it to kill Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or as it’s more commonly known, MRSA. MRSA is a modern superbug that has built up a resistance to the antibiotic Methicillin. And this goddamn Anglo-Saxon witches’ brew freakin murdered it.
Now, as an advocate for modern medicine and sound scientific method, I’m not about to say that we should go throwing this salve on everything in 2019, because it is, if anything, just a starting point for modern scientists. This salve is still incredibly crude by modern standards and comes with a lot of potential problems. But as a historian… it works, you guys, it really works.
Medieval physicians were not idiots. They believed in magic, they believed in all things supernatural, they believed in all those things that are ‘unreasonable’ or unpopular today, and they practiced them too. But they also interacted with the real world with brains and intellects as sharp if not sharper than yours and mine. They were smart, they studied, they talked to each other in Latin and Greek and Arabic and Anglo Saxon. They made old recipes better and came up with brand new ones. They tried dumb stuff and they tried smart stuff. They didn’t have access to even the smallest fraction of the information we have at our fingertips today, and yet they created things like this.
To this day, no one knows who created the eyesalve recipe. And no one truly understands why this is the only copy of it. If it worked so well, why isn’t it plastered to the headings of every medical textbook from Alfred to Victoria? Speaking personally, I would argue that it has to do with language. Not so long after Bald’s Leechbook was written, the French invaded England and took over. Latin and French became the language of the court, and while Anglo-Saxon lived on throughout the country, and certainly lay doctors would have used Anglo-Saxon books daily, the language of formal English medical education was Latin. Oxford and Cambridge were late to the medical ed game after Salerno, Bologna, Paris, and Montpellier, and naturally fell in step with continental schools as a result, using Latin almost exclusively, and sometimes Greek or Arabic.
Point being, by the time medical licenses and medical college degrees are a thing in England, not only does almost no one of university-eligible class speak Anglo-Saxon anymore, no one has use for those Old English texts, because they don’t get you your degree, and you can’t make a living as a doctor without a degree and doctor’s license. And no one’s going to translate an old Anglo Saxon text into Latin when Avicenna’s newest old hit, now in Latin, is fresh off the boat from France.
All that to say: Never write something off because it’s old. 1,000 years is a long time ago, but human ingenuity and intelligence are hardly modern inventions. The science of the world hasn’t changed; only our tools and our perspective.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk
Further reading:
The 2015 Ancientbiotics report: A 1,000-Year-Old Antimicrobial Remedy with Antistaphylococcal Activity
NPR: ‘Ancientbiotics’ Researchers Look For Old Fixes To Modern Ailments
Mental Floss: 20 Anglo-Saxon Remedies from Bald’s Leechbook
Read a paper about how scholars are building on the work of the Ancientbiotics project to better understand how to apply ancient ideas effectively to modern medicine.
Look through Royal 12 D XVIII for yourself! Bald’s eyesalve recipe is on f. 12v and looks like this:
It’s like the Star Wars fandom is a neverending tense holiday family dinner where no one gets along and everyone has different political opinions, and just when it looks like a brawl’s gonna break out (again), The Mandalorian walks in with his cute new baby and everyone is suddenly like AWWW LOOK AT HIM WHAT A SWEET LITTLE GUY and is (temporarily) on their best behavior because we all wanna hold the BABY.
(That, is, of course, until the inevitable arguments erupt about how Uncle So-and-So thinks everyone’s coddling the Baby, he’s not THAT cute, and then there’s a fistfight over whether or not the Baby merely takes after Yoda, or if he is time-traveling Yoda, or a clone of Yoda, and then someone gets up and threatens to leave because I swear to God, this is the stupidest thing that’s happened since that year Luke died livestreaming himself across space, and then someone else takes offense at that because honestly they thought it was a very touching MOMENT how many more times do we have to argue about this?!, and some old man in a recliner yells out that he still doesn’t like that Phantom Menace, to which someone else yells back DAD IT’S BEEN TWENTY YEARS, GET OVER IT and…)
I’m the mom in the kitchen crying over her not-first glass of wine about how “YOU PEOPLE ALL PROMISED THAT WE’D PUT ASIDE OUR DIFFERENCES AND WE’D HAVE A NICE CHRISTMAS! THIS BULLSHIT IS WHY YOUR GREAT-UNCLE GEORGE LEFT THIS FAMILY, YOU KNOW!”
(Some jackass drunkenly yells back that UNCLE GEORGE WAS A HACK! HE WAS ALWAYS A HACK!, to which someone else shouts “…AND YET HERE YOU ARE, STILL LIVING IN HIS HOUSE!” and the next round of fighting begins.)
Either that, or I’m upstairs with a few of the cool cousins, tuning everyone else out while we trade pictures of Obi-Wan and talk about how this family is omg so lame.
This is a perfect description of Star Wars fandom.
Also, Great-Uncle George is indeed a hack and Great-Aunt Marcia saved his ass at least three times before having had enough of his shit and then we saw just how much of a hack George is.
My mom spotted this beauty at Second Avenue Exchange in Warren, Pennsylvania
You awaken in the middle of the night, you hear clip clopping throughout the house. A loud whinny and your stool breaks out a window and escapes into the night.
This is the second cousin, once removed, of Twoflower’s Luggage in the Discworld series.
I don’t reblog much, but this is too well said not to.
This always gets a reblog.
ALWAYS
How are disabled and interracial illegal???
Interracial marriage was outlawed for the longest time, and disabled people lose government benefits when they get married so they cannot have reassurance that they will continue to LIVE if they get married.
Story time: my mom is white, dad is black. They’ve been together twenty four years, married for twenty three. When my parents were dating they did it on the low TO KEEP MY DAD SAFE.
My mom’s parents said “We don’t care who you love.” At that point she’d only ever brought home white guys. She brought my dad home-her mother called her a nigger lover and damned the relationship as much as possible. Her father grew around his prejudices after I was born but never apologized, just wasn’t a blatant fuck.
The day she introduced my father to her family was the last time she spoke to her mother for over twenty years. When I was getting sick and she called and asked her mother and grandmother if anyone in the family had anything strange happen similar what I was going through they told her “it’s because you married a black man. You made your bed, you lie in it.”
Cops pulled them over all the time and asked my mom IF SHE WAS OKAY AND IF SHE NEEDED HELP BECAUSE MY FATHER-A BLACK MAN-WAS DRIVING A 100 POUND WHITE WOMAN AROUND. HE WAS HARRASSED AND THREATED WITH ARREST.
My father ended up getting into a fight in self defence because some entitled hick decided he didn’t like seeing a black man and white woman in the bar together. Thankfully other patrons helped my father but he still couldn’t go to the er for his injuries. My mom patched him up and they were terrified the cops would take him away.
THEIR BEST FRIEND GOT LICENSED TO MARRY THEM SO THEY COULD ACTUALLY TIE THE KNOT BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE WOULD AND CITED JIM CROW ERA LAW AS TO WHY.
When shopping with just me my father wouldn’t hold my hand if there was a group around. Why? I’m far lighter than him and people had stopped and asked him “whose child is that?” Or “little girl where’s your parents?” and were stunned when I grinned and pointed at my dad and proudly proclaimed “my daddy’s right here.” You know where else mixed kids couldn’t hold their parents hands? Apartheid South Africa. We live in fucking FLORIDA.
So yeah. Some history for you.
This post was made in October 2018. The above poster’s parents met in 1994. We were a generation removed from the Civil Rights movement and this was happening.
when my parents got married in 1979, they had to check to make sure they could legally do it at their intended venue
why?
my mom has epilepsy, and in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, several states passed laws banning people with epilepsy- among other disabilities -from marrying
(luckily the state in question had removed the law from the books, but just the fact that it was a concern is appalling)
And it’s SO important to remember these things. People on tumblr often somewhat remember life before Hodges v. Obergefell, but many were kids. And that was just 4 years ago. Loving v. Virginia, the case that allowed interracial marriage, was argued in 1967. My mom was 9. She’s a Boomer and I’m a Millennial. This was NOT that long ago. But by not framing it like that, it’s easy for people for whom it’s always been law to not realize how recent it was.
Me: wow people used to pay 150 for college? Wish that was my bill
Everyone over the age of 30: yeah but minimum wage was 3.10
Me: okay so it would take about three, four weeks instead of a lifetime?
Them: factor in other stuff like the gas crisis!
Me: 3.10 an hour to 150 is still way better than 10 an hour to 150,000 idk man
Me: oh factor in the gas crisis? Five weeks, my bad.
OP really said over 30 like we all ain’t in this together. anyone who mentions the gas crisis etc is over 50 MINIMUM ok.
Yeah... I’m in my late thirties. Let me tell you how ma y of my friends are still paying off their fucking student debts.
also consider: LOTR but hobbits have Tapeta Lucidum
Boromir gets the fright of his life their first night on the road
Boromir: *glances over his shoulder* ??!!!!???!!
Hobbits:
Hobbits: what
i will never get over that you used an image of raccoons for this purpose because it is incredibly accurate
LOTR au but instead of hobbits literally raccoons
Gandalf: well this raccoon found the ring and has been carrying it around. unfortunately we can’t take it off him or he gets very bite-y. so I figure, the raccoon is the ringbearer now
Elrond: what are those other three raccoons doing here
Gandalf: he brought his buddies. I call this one ‘Merry’
TRASH PANDA HOBBITS
@auraboo THE LEGACY OF FATTY MCFAT LIVES ON
Aragorn: *watching Frodo & Sam scamper off in the direction of Mordor* our hopes lie with those raccoons now
Legolas: do they… know where they are going
Aragorn: I sure hope so
Faramir: father why is this raccoon in the livery of the citadel
Denethor: haha doesn’t he look precious
Elfhelm: Dernhelm, is that a raccoon in your bag?
Dernhelm: *sweating nervously* Uh no, sir.
Eowyn, later: And I said no, you know, like a liar.
Denethor: WHY did you let a raccoon go off with the Ring??
Faramir: ….it just seemed like the right thing to do
Gandalf: he scratched you up real good huh
Faramir: ……………gouged my FUCKING arm and bit me on my face
Witch King: no living man can kill me - AUGH FUCK, RACCOON, RACCOON ON MY LEG ARGHHHH
Eowyn: *stab*
Wraiths break into the room at the prancing pony: *UnHoLy ScReEcHiNg*
Trash Panda Hobbits:
Wraiths: Oh, what the fuck, whAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!
Treebeard: Baroom, humm, where are my small, impatient friends?
Merry and Pippin:
Don’t go where I can’t follow, Mr. Frodo.
~~~~~~The Hobbit interlude~~~~~~
Thorin: You’re the burgular.Go on and…burgle something! Bilbo:
Saruman: Well since some fucking TREES took over Isengard I guess I’ll take over The Shire. Farmer Maggot and ever other Halfling down to the Sacksville-Bagginses:
Funniest thing I’ve ever reblogged.
I have never read a single animal transformation fic in The Hobbit fandom that has Bilbo turn into a raccoon and I am still sad about it
@foenixfyre
My husband knows my preferred content.
women wear suits better than men and thats just a cold hard fact
One name to those who doubt these words:
ESTHER QUEK
I rest my case.
Exhibit B: Janelle Monáe
Exhibit C: Lucy Liu
High Warlock, Minister of Magic, and Kingpin
Y'all are doing butch women dirty by only showing more gender conforming women in suits.
May I present historic gnc women
The fact that there is no kd lang when she has worn suits almost every moment of her career is …… a crime
Also
help im gay
There have been new additions since I last saw this and I Am So Happy!!!!
I was waiting for the night bus at 1am the other night, eating fries, when a dude, high as fuck, tried to harass me. It took several “I don’t want to talk to you, please go away” for him to finally move, but I think it helped that another man was giving him the death stare and clicking his tongue at him. He then checked I was okay and whether I knew the guy or not. Good dude.
Shout out also the man who silently switched places with me on another night bus to be a buffer between me and a guy who had threatened me. Thank you
Men: this here? This here is what you need to be doing as allies. The men who harass and insult women are not likely to take our complaints about it seriously. But you, another man, they will listen to.
I was pumping gas at like 10 PM one night, and these bunch of drunk guys came walking up to the gas station, and one of them yelled over to me if I wanted to see his dick. His friend says to him, “You don’t have anything she wants to see.” and apologized. It was pretty awesome.
this is all we want from men. to recognize the wrongs done by other men, and acknowledge it. not give us shitass defense like, “not all men do that”
thank you.
In other words, don’t say “not all men”. Prove “not all men”. Men who sexually harass women defend their actions by pretending it’s normal male behavior. They think all men are just like them. Calling them out and refusing to act like them is how you prove them wrong.
^^^^^^^^^
In other words, don’t say “not all men”. Prove “not all men”.
Written flawlessly.
Yeah, that doesn't prevent pregnancy.
Dfgajagakala it’s so you don’t get a UTI 😂
*facepalm* So, given that sex ed in the US is a tire fire:
Vagina-having people have a shorter urethra, which means we’re more prone to UTIs because the bacteria doesn’t have to travel as far to get up into your bladder and cause a problem.
Which means if you’re exposing your bits to bacteria (as with sex), peeing will flush out bacteria in the urethra. (Urine isn’t actually sterile - that’s a myth - but you’re *supposed to* have a little bit of bacteria - that’s how bodies work. But it still flushes things out that shouldn’t be there.)
Oh! You should ALSO pee after you masturbate, especially if it involves penetration with fingers/toys/etc
So I’ve blocked like five transphobes on this post, which I feel should have been relatively uncontroversial.
If you’re one of the people saying “You meant ‘women’”, fuck you. I meant “people who have a vagina, regardless of their gender or lack thereof”, and you can go fuck yourself with a cactus.
And you should pee afterward, so you don’t get a UTI.
[Image Description: a photograph of a wolf in on top of a rock, looking over the forest below. In orange 3D text it says "ALWAYS PEE AFTER SEX". Majestic. End ID]
