Explosive Cats Imagined in a Strange, 16th Century Military Manual

in History | March 7th, 2014

catpigeon

Paw prints and feline urine stains on a medieval scribe’s man­u­script, per­haps they weren’t entire­ly out of the ordi­nary in the 15th cen­tu­ry. But cats strapped to mini-pow­der kegs, bound­ing off to burn down a town — now that’s pret­ty unusu­al.

The incen­di­ary feline fea­tured above (and else­where on this page) comes from a dig­i­tized ver­sion of an ear­ly 16th cen­tu­ry mil­i­tary man­u­al writ­ten by Franz Helm. An artillery mas­ter, Helm wrote about a broad and imag­i­na­tive set of destruc­tive ideas for siege war­fare. Although my Ger­man is some­what rusty, I got the sense that he was awful­ly fond of explod­ing sacks, bar­rels, and var­i­ous oth­er recep­ta­cles, and even­tu­al­ly decid­ed to com­bine these ideas with an unwit­ting ani­mal deliv­ery sys­tem. These ani­mals, accord­ing to Helm’s guide, would allow a com­man­der to “set fire to a cas­tle or city which you can’t get at oth­er­wise.”

runningcat1

The text was orig­i­nal­ly dig­i­tized by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, and a UPenn his­to­ri­an named Mitch Fraas decid­ed to take a clos­er look at this strange explod­ing cat busi­ness. Accord­ing to Fraas, the accom­pa­ny­ing text reads:

“Cre­ate a small sack like a fire-arrow … if you would like to get at a town or cas­tle, seek to obtain a cat from that place. And bind the sack to the back of the cat, ignite it, let it glow well and there­after let the cat go, so it runs to the near­est cas­tle or town, and out of fear it thinks to hide itself where it ends up in barn hay or straw it will be ignit­ed.”

That’s the mil­i­tary strat­e­gy in a nut­shell. Seems like a great idea, apart from the fact that cats are noto­ri­ous­ly unpre­dictable. In any case, it’s Fri­day, so here are more illus­tra­tions of weaponized cats to round out your work week.

runningcat2

For more of Helm’s work, head on over to Penn in Hand: Select­ed Man­u­scripts.

via Nation­al Post

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

How to Pot­ty Train Your Cat: A Handy Man­u­al by Charles Min­gus

Humans Fall for Opti­cal Illu­sions, But Do Cats?

Thomas Edison’s Box­ing Cats (1894), or Where the LOL­Cats All Began

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Andy Warhol’s 1965 Film, Vinyl, Adapted from Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange

in Film | March 7th, 2014

Sure­ly you’ve seen Stan­ley Kubrick­’s ver­sion of A Clock­work Orange. But have you seen Andy Warhol’s? Antho­ny Burgess’ 1962 nov­el of the robust cul­ture of teenage vio­lence in our freak­ish dystopi­an future caught the eye of not just the man who had pre­vi­ous­ly made 2001: A Space Odyssey, but that of the man who had pre­vi­ous­ly made the eight-hour still shot Empire as well. Warhol and Kubrick­’s sen­si­bil­i­ties dif­fered, you might say, as did the means of pro­duc­tion to which they had access, and a com­par­i­son of their Clock­work Orange adap­ta­tions high­lights both. Using three shots in this 70-minute film instead of Empire’s one, Warhol cre­ates, in the words of Ed Howard at Only the Cin­e­ma, “a strange and intrigu­ing film which, like most of Warhol’s movies, often toes the line between slow and down­right bor­ing, a piece of “alien­at­ing, atti­tude-based cin­e­ma” that “pro­vides no easy plea­sures,” “replac­ing the con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive dri­ve with a clut­tered mise-en-scene of bod­ies.” For all its cheap­ness, Warhol’s  lo-fi cin­e­mat­ic ren­di­tion did at least come first, in 1965 to Kubrick­’s 1971 — plus, you can watch it free on Youtube above.

“Vinyl is such a loose adap­ta­tion of the source nov­el that even peo­ple who have seen it should be for­giv­en for not real­is­ing that it is built on Burgess’s lit­er­ary scaf­fold,” says the web site of the Inter­na­tion­al Antho­ny Burgess Foun­da­tion. “The film is pre­sent­ed as a series of images of bru­tal­i­ty, beat­ings, tor­ture and masochism all per­formed by a group of men under the gaze of a glam­orous woman. In its pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with pornog­ra­phy and vio­lence, it bears many of the oblique hall­marks of Warhol’s work, along with a famil­iar cast of Fac­to­ry reg­u­lars such as Ger­ard Malan­ga, Edie Sedg­wick and Ondine. The fin­ished film is dis­turb­ing, con­tains unsim­u­lat­ed vio­lent acts and is not very audi­ence-friend­ly.” Either a strong dis­rec­om­men­da­tion or a strong rec­om­men­da­tion, depend­ing on your pro­cliv­i­ties. And if none of that draws you, maybe the sound­track includ­ing Martha and the Van­del­las, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and the The Isley Broth­ers will. Did Warhol pay to license their songs? Giv­en that he cer­tain­ly did­n’t look into obtain­ing the rights even to A Clock­work Orange, some­thing inside me doubts it.

You can watch Three More 1960s “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol — Sleep, Eat & Kiss — in our 2011 post. They are oth­er­wise list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 635 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Cre­ates Album Cov­ers for Jazz Leg­ends Thelo­nious Monk, Count Basie & Ken­ny Bur­rell

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Sal­vador Dalí

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Last Time Lennon & McCartney Played Together Captured in A Toot And a Snore in ’74

in Music | March 6th, 2014

The num­ber of Bea­t­les bootlegs—in every pos­si­ble medi­um and state of quality—must approach infin­i­ty. A per­son could spend a life­time acquir­ing, cat­a­logu­ing, scru­ti­niz­ing, and dis­cussing the rel­a­tive mer­its of var­i­ous out­takes, live record­ings, demos, and stu­dio goof-offs from the band and its indi­vid­ual mem­bers. It should go with­out say­ing that a great many of these arti­facts have more his­tor­i­cal than musi­cal inter­est, giv­en their frag­men­tary and unse­ri­ous nature—and the sim­ple bar­ri­ers posed by bad record­ing. But while I imag­ine some angry anti­quar­i­an or zeal­ous devo­tee inter­ject­ing here to tell me that absolute­ly every­thing the fab four touched turned direct­ly to gold, I remain unsold on this arti­cle of faith.

So where are we aver­age fans to place A Toot and a Snore in ’74, the boot­leg album (above) record­ed at Bur­bank Stu­dios and fea­tur­ing musi­cal con­tri­bu­tions from Ste­vie Won­der, Har­ry Nils­son, Jesse Ed Davis, and Bob­by Keys? Well, its his­tor­i­cal val­ue is beyond ques­tion, since it rep­re­sents the only known record of John Lennon and Paul McCart­ney play­ing togeth­er after the Bea­t­les’ breakup. Though their mutu­al dis­like at this time was well-estab­lished and they hadn’t seen each oth­er in three years, the tapes doc­u­ment a very laid-back ses­sion with the two legends—John on lead vocal and gui­tar, Paul singing har­monies and play­ing Ringo’s drumkit—letting go of the past and hav­ing some fun again. Lennon first men­tioned the record­ing while dis­cussing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of reunion in the 1975 inter­view below (he’s sur­pris­ing­ly warm to the idea). At 1:45, he says, “I jammed with Paul. We did a lot of stuff in LA. There was 50 oth­er peo­ple play­ing, but they were all just watch­ing me and Paul.”

How does McCart­ney remem­ber the ses­sion? “Hazy,” he said in a 1997 inter­view, “for a num­ber of rea­sons.” The drugs were sure­ly one of them. The title refers to Lennon offer­ing Ste­vie Won­der coke in the open­ing track: “do you want a snort Steve? A toot? It’s going round….” The impromp­tu gath­er­ing con­vened on March 28 dur­ing the record­ing of Har­ry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats, which Lennon was pro­duc­ing. This was dur­ing Lennon’s so-called “lost week­end,” the year and a half dur­ing which he sep­a­rat­ed from Yoko, lived with their assis­tant May Pang, and did some seri­ous drink­ing and drugs (as well as record­ing three albums).

Pang, who was present and plays tam­bourine, recalls it as a night of “joy­ous music” in her 1983 book Lov­ing John, but you prob­a­bly had to be there to ful­ly appre­ci­ate it. As Richard Met­zger at Dan­ger­ous Minds notes, “it’s basi­cal­ly just a drunk, coked-up jam ses­sion.” But, he adds, “a drunk, coked-up jam ses­sion of great his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance.” And for that rea­son alone, it’s worth a lis­ten. Or, if you like, you can read a tran­script of the ram­ble and ban­ter over at Boot­leg Zone. Con­sist­ing of lots of stu­dio crosstalk, noodling improv, and a few attempt­ed cov­ers, the ses­sion was released by Ger­many’s Mis­tral Music in 1992, cred­it­ed sim­ply to “John and Paul.”

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)

Hear the 1962 Bea­t­les Demo that Dec­ca Reject­ed: “Gui­tar Groups are on Their Way Out, Mr. Epstein”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Getty Images Makes 35 Million Photos Free to Use Online

in Photography | March 6th, 2014

Found­ed in 1997, Get­ty Images has made a busi­ness out of licens­ing stock pho­tog­ra­phy to web sites. But, in recent years, the com­pa­ny has strug­gled, fac­ing stiffer com­pe­ti­tion from oth­er com­pa­nies .… and from online pira­cy. Quot­ed in the British Jour­nal of Pho­tog­ra­phy, Craig Peters, a Senior VP at Get­ty Images, observes that Get­ty is “real­ly start­ing to see the extent of online infringe­ment. In essence, every­body today is a pub­lish­er thanks to social media and self-pub­lish­ing plat­forms. And it’s incred­i­bly easy to find con­tent online and sim­ply right-click to utilise it.” All of this becomes a prob­lem, for Get­ty, when cash-strapped “self pub­lish­ers, who typ­i­cal­ly don’t know any­thing about copy­right and licens­ing,” start right click­ing and using the com­pa­ny’s images with­out attri­bu­tion or pay­ment.

Fight­ing a los­ing bat­tle against infringers, Get­ty Images sur­prised con­sumers and com­peti­tors yes­ter­day when it announced that it would make 35 mil­lion images free for pub­lish­ers to use, with a few strings attached. Pub­lish­ers, broad­ly defined, are now allowed to add cer­tain Get­ty images to their sites, on the con­di­tion that they use embed code pro­vid­ed by the com­pa­ny.  That embed code (find instruc­tions here) will ensure that “there will be attri­bu­tion around that image,” that “images will link back to [Get­ty’s] site and direct­ly to the image’s details page,” and that Get­ty will receive infor­ma­tion on how the images are being used and viewed.

Not every Get­ty image can be embed­ded — only 35,000,000 of the 80,000,000 images in Get­ty’s archive. And, to be sure, many of those 35 mil­lion Get­ty images are stock pho­tos that will leave you unin­spired. But if you’re will­ing to sift patient­ly through the col­lec­tion, you can find some gems, like the shots fea­tured above of some great jazz leg­ends — Miles Davis, Bil­lie Hol­i­day and John Coltrane.

If you’re inter­est­ed in rum­mag­ing through free images from muse­ums and libraries, don’t miss our recent post: Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es.

via BJP

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

14,000 Free Images from the French Rev­o­lu­tion Now Avail­able Online

The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain (and There’s More to Come)

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

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Listen to Tree Rings Getting Played on a Turntable and Turned into Music

in Art, Music | March 6th, 2014

There’s some­thing odd­ly sooth­ing about lis­ten­ing to music on vinyl. Regard­less of what dig­i­tal music lovers say, and irre­spec­tive of the fact that the same sound may be pro­duced dig­i­tal­ly, die-hard vinyl fans will tell you that noth­ing com­pares to the warm scratch­i­ness of a nee­dle on a record. I don’t have a horse in the race, but hav­ing grown up with a record play­er in my bed­room, I can’t help but slip into a brief rever­ie when­ev­er I hear an old Satch­mo record spin­ning on a turntable.

In an ele­gant twist on the digital/analog bat­tle, Ger­man-born Bartholomäus Traubeck has cre­at­ed Years, a “record play­er that plays slices of wood,” using a process that trans­lates the data from the tree’s year rings into music. This process is, how­ev­er, com­plete­ly dig­i­tal. Instead of using a nee­dle to pick up the sound from the record’s grooves, Traubeck used a tiny cam­era to cap­ture the image of the wood, and dig­i­tal­ly trans­formed this data into piano tones. More than mere­ly a clever con­trap­tion, how­ev­er, Years is also an intrigu­ing inter­ac­tion between the phys­i­cal and the tem­po­ral. As Traubeck notes,

 “On reg­u­lar vinyl, there is this groove that rep­re­sents how­ev­er long the track is. There’s a phys­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the length of the audio track that’s imprint­ed on the record. The year rings are very sim­i­lar because it takes a very long time to actu­al­ly grow this struc­ture because it depends on which record you put on of those I made. It’s usu­al­ly 30 to 60 or 70 years in that amount of space. It was real­ly inter­est­ing for me to have this visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of time and then trans­late it back into a song which it wouldn’t orig­i­nal­ly be.”

A lit­tle con­vo­lut­ed? Don’t wor­ry. Play the video above, and enjoy the eerie melody.

via Live­Science

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956 (That’s Rel­e­vant in 2014)

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Har­vard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Envi­ron­ment Profs

How Cli­mate Change Is Threat­en­ing Your Dai­ly Cup of Cof­fee

 

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Buckminster Fuller Gives a Lecture About Semantics at San Quentin State Prison (1959)

in Technology | March 6th, 2014

San Quentin State Prison, Cal­i­for­ni­a’s only male-inmate death row, has a rep­u­ta­tion for hav­ing con­tained some of the most fear­some mur­der­ers to make head­lines, up to and includ­ing Charles Man­son. But some non-ser­i­al-killing cul­tur­al fig­ures have also passed through it gates: coun­try singer-song­writer Mer­le Hag­gard, for car theft and armed rob­bery in his youth; actor Dan­ny Tre­jo, who did a few years in the six­ties; jazz sax­o­phon­ist Art Pep­per, who served two sen­tences there in that decade; and Neal Cas­sady, the inspi­ra­tion for Dean Mori­ar­ty in Jack Ker­ouac’s On the Road, locked up for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion in 1958. The fol­low­ing year would see the con­struc­tion, up north at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon, of the very first full-sphere “con­tin­u­ous ten­sion-dis­con­tin­u­ous com­pres­sion” geo­des­ic dome. What on Earth could link these these two struc­tures, one bru­tal­ly util­i­tar­i­an with a name that spooks even hard­ened out­laws, and the oth­er a tech­no­log­i­cal­ly for­ward-think­ing, utopi­an attempt at archi­tec­tural­ly bring­ing about a bet­ter world?

The con­nec­tion comes in the form of Buck­min­ster Fuller him­self, the archi­tect, inven­tor, writer, and much else besides respon­si­ble for the design of the geo­des­ic dome. (He also invent­ed the Dymax­ion Car, Dymax­ion House, Dymax­ion Map… and the list goes on.) He came to San Quentin that same year, not as an inmate — one imag­ines him as far too busy spin­ning off new the­o­ries or keep­ing the Dymax­ion Chronofile to so much as con­sid­er com­mit­ting a crime — but as a lec­tur­er. Described as “a talk giv­en to inmates on gen­er­al seman­tics,” Fuller’s address, which you can hear above, start­ing around the 20:30 minute mark, takes on an even more gen­er­al breadth of sub­jects than that, includ­ing his own biog­ra­phy and the expe­ri­ences that orig­i­nat­ed the ideas that drove him to live his life as “an exper­i­ment to find what a sin­gle indi­vid­ual can con­tribute to chang­ing the world and ben­e­fit­ing all human­i­ty.” Through that con­cern with human­i­ty, he could relate to pris­on­ers just as well as he could to any­one else. “There are no throw-away resources,” he says at one point, “and no throw-away peo­ple.” At over three hours long, the lec­ture gets into some detail, but if you want a still more thor­ough look into Fuller’s mind, con­sid­er fol­low­ing it up with the 42-hour Every­thing I Know.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bet­ter Liv­ing Through Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Utopi­an Designs: Revis­it the Dymax­ion Car, House, and Map

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975)

875 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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New Google-Powered Site Tracks Global Deforestation in ‘Near-Real-Time’

in Current Affairs, Environment, Google, Maps | March 5th, 2014

In Sep­tem­ber we told you about tril­lions of satel­lite images of Earth, gen­er­at­ed by the Land­sat, that are now avail­able to the pub­lic.

Now we can share an inter­ac­tive tool that is using some of those Land­sat images to stop ille­gal defor­esta­tion.

With help from Google Earth Engine, the World Resources Insti­tute launched Glob­al For­est Watch, an online for­est mon­i­tor­ing and alert sys­tem that allows indi­vid­ual com­put­er users to watch forests around the world change in an almost real-time stream of imagery.

Whis­tle blow­ers are mak­ing pow­er­ful use of the Glob­al For­est Watch tool. Using spa­tial data streams avail­able on the site to observe for­est changes in south­east­ern Peru, a num­ber of users sub­mit­ted alerts about rapid­ly esca­lat­ing defor­esta­tion near a gold mine and riv­er val­ley. In anoth­er case, observers sub­mit­ted an alert about ille­gal log­ging in the Repub­lic of the Con­go.

Five years ago, NASA and the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey lift­ed pro­to­cols that kept Land­sat images pro­pri­etary. Now, agen­cies like the World Resources Institute—and even tiny cit­i­zen watch­dog groups around the world—have access to incred­i­bly rich tools and data. Some of the imagery is hard to inter­pret. Glob­al For­est Watch devel­oped a num­ber of dif­fer­ent data lay­ers for users to apply, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to mon­i­tor for­est areas for trends or ille­gal log­ging. The video at the top of this page gives a good overview of how the site works. This one gives more detail about how to use the maps on the Glob­al For­est Watch site.

Select an area of the world and then select a data set that inter­ests you. Choose to look at ter­rain, satel­lite, road, tree height, or com­pos­ite images of a par­tic­u­lar region. Data lay­ers can be lay­ered on top of one anoth­er to show trends in for­est man­age­ment. In Indone­sia, for exam­ple, you can use the FORMA alerts but­ton to see what has already been report­ed in that area of the humid trop­ics.

How can you tell if for­est change is due to ille­gal log­ging? Turn on the For­est Use fil­ters to see which areas are autho­rized for log­ging and min­ing and which are pro­tect­ed. In Indone­sia, many areas are des­ig­nat­ed for oil palm pro­duc­tion, but expan­sion of those crops are often asso­ci­at­ed with loss of nat­ur­al for­est.

Do your own sleuthing. The site is designed to har­ness data from gov­ern­ment and aca­d­e­m­ic sci­en­tists, along with obser­va­tion from indi­vid­u­als (us). There is even infor­ma­tion about com­pa­nies that are grow­ing oil palm trees, so it’s pos­si­ble that a dili­gent user could catch an over-aggres­sive grow­er step­ping over the for­est bound­ary.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Plan­e­tary Per­spec­tive: Tril­lions of Pic­tures of the Earth Avail­able Through Google Earth Engine

Trace Darwin’s Foot­steps with Google’s New Vir­tu­al Tour of the Gala­pa­gos Islands

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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Get Ancient Advice on Losing Weight, Sobering Up, Removing a Tattoo & More at Ask The Past

in History | March 5th, 2014

recto

It may seem that we live in an era so tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced that our dai­ly con­cerns dif­fer vast­ly from those of our ances­tors. Noth­ing could be far­ther from the truth: we still won­der about the best ways to talk to the oppo­site sex, still devise out­landish hang­over cures, and still obsess over how to lose weight. Con­sid­er­ing that our fore­bears have, by now, repeat­ed­ly faced these nig­gling prob­lems, would it not be wise to con­sult their wis­dom? If you’re more inclined to take the advice of an ancient monk than write Dear Abby, you’re in luck. Ask The Past is here to help.

Run by Johns Hop­kins’ Eliz­a­beth Archibald, Ask The Past is a com­pendi­um of wis­dom from the his­to­ry books. Below, we’ve select­ed sev­er­al pieces of ancient wis­dom that may (or may not) help our read­ers over­come some com­mon prob­lems:

How To Remove A Tat­too (c. 500)

 “They call stig­ma­ta things inscribed on the face or some oth­er part of the body, for exam­ple on the hands of sol­diers… In cas­es where we wish to remove such stig­ma­ta, we must use the fol­low­ing prepa­ra­tion… When apply­ing, first clean thes­tig­ma­ta with niter, smear them with resin of tere­binth, and ban­dage for five days… The stig­ma­ta are removed in twen­ty days, with­out great ulcer­a­tion and with­out a scar.”

Aetius of Ami­da, Tetra­bib­lion (c. 500)

How To Sober Up (1628)

“That one shall not be drunke. Drink the iuyce of Yer­row fast­ing, and ye shall not be drunke, for no drinke; and if you were drunke it will make you sober: or else take the mar­row of porke fast­ing, and ye shall not be drunke; and if you be drunke annoint your priv­ie mem­bers in vineger, and ye shall waxe sober.” 

The Booke of Pret­ty Con­ceits (1628)

The 16th Cen­tu­ry “How To Lose That Bel­ly In 14 Days!” (1595)

“An excel­lent and approved thing to make them slen­der, that are grosse. Let them eate three or foure cloves of Gar­lick, with as much of Bread and but­ter every morn­ing and evening, first and last, nei­ther eat­ing nor drink­ing of three or foure howres after their tak­ing of it in the morn­ing for the space of four­teene days at the least: and drinke every day three draughts of the decoc­tion of Fen­nell: that is, of the water where­in Fen­nell is sod, and well strained, four­teene dayes after the least, at morn­ing, noone and night. I knewe a man that was mar­veilous grosse, & could not go a quar­ter of a mile, but was enforst to rest him a dosen times at the least: that with this med­i­cine tooke away his grosse­nesse, and after could iour­ney verye well on foote.”

Thomas Lup­ton, A Thou­sand Notable Things (1595)

How To Grow A Beard (1539)

 “To make hair and beard grow. Take hon­ey­bees in quan­ti­ty and dry them in a bas­ket by the fire, then make a pow­der of them, which you thin out with olive oil, and with this oint­ment, dab sev­er­al times the place where you would like to have hair, and you will see mir­a­cles.” 

 Traic­té nou­veau, inti­t­ulé, bas­ti­ment de receptes (1539)

How to Make Some­one Die of Laugh­ter (13th cen­tu­ry) 

“Beneath the armpits are cer­tain veins called “tick­lish” which, if they are cut, cause a man to die of laugh­ter.” 

Richardus Saler­ni­tanus (13th c.?)

For more pearls of wis­dom, includ­ing How To Walk On Water, How To Gar­den With Lob­sters, and How To Tell Jokes, head over to Ask The Past.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Washington’s 110 Rules for Civil­i­ty and Decent Behav­ior

Lewis Car­rol­l’s 8 Still-Rel­e­vant Rules For Let­ter-Writ­ing

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

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