Medieval medicine under the spotlight in major new project
cam.ac.uk
cam.ac.uk
>One treatment for gout involves stuffing a puppy with snails and sage and roasting him over a fire: the rendered fat was then used to make a salve
While extremely horrific to read, it reminds me of a similar belief relying on animal abuse in the 18th century regarding the latitude problem. People back at shore would dip the bandages from a wound inflicted on a dog, which would supposedly cause the dog on board to yelp. Dip the bandage precisely at the hour, and you'd supposedly have a means of telling time on board[^1]. Admittedly, this might have been satire, but I found it an interesting anecdote.
It also reminds me of early books of knowledge and the speculum literature that developed and grew during the period mentioned in the article. The plants section of those texts, to my knowledge, generally focused on their medical applications. There's a sense that magic was seen as not only present, but also commonplace, and honestly there's a thrilling sort of mystery in reading those sorts of texts.
I'm excited to compare these to some of the writings of Al Rhazes and others, in that also give medicinal and medical advice.
That kind of morbid experimentation was apparently still in fashion during the Cold War:
> Dr. Pavel Naumov … conducted animal biocommunication studies between a submerged Soviet Navy submarine and a shore research station; these tests involved a mother rabbit and her newborn litter and occurred around 1956 … . When the submarine was submerged, assistants killed the rabbits one by one. At each precise moment of death, the mother rabbit's brain produced detectable and recordable reactions.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00792R0006003... (page 12)
It started as a threat assessment.
Two of my previous comments on Swann and the CIA’s remote viewing program: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19427917 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238552
I can find any number of modern texts that suggest even more ridiculous treatments for the same problems.
However, while attention usually centers on the absurd and curious, we can often use comparative methods and references to other sources to build better accounts. Vesalius would be towards the later end of the sources in the article (I also assume that the texts would be more Norman/early British rather than continental), but might be a good example. We know that while Vesalius's accomplishments and findings resulted in recognition and renown, we also know that he faced significant resistance. I imagine a lot of his opponents would have survived, but in a sense they might not have needed to, as he was railing against neo-Galenists so often and so vehemently in much of his work that we can get a picture of where his findings clashed with mainstream thinking or powerful opponents.
On another note, because the texts likely have similarities with speculum literature and various early encyclopedias that have survived, as well as grimoires and other texts, we can get a sense of in what spaces this knowledge was being circulated and how orthodox they were.
[^1]: A brief tangent but a fantastic book, Montaillou, gives a really detailed account on French peasant life in the early 14th century. It's only made possible because of inquisitorial records made, not because the peasants themselves recorded anything.
It is not government mandated at all.
Sites could do away with all the banners if tracking was opt-in.
Sites could do away with complex pop-overs if opting out was easy, but they want to make opting out as difficult as possible and accidentally opting in as easy as possible.
Heck, even if you do consider it government mandated: most sites are not compliant with the mandates as it should be as easy or easier to opt-out as it is to opt-in.
Governments can make life a pain in many ways, but don't blame them for what corporations and individuals very deliberately do to you in order to get around the letter of the law (or to break it in a way they hope to, and so far often do, get away with).
> This one is particularly obstructive, blocking the whole page.
This particular site seems to do things right IMO though (or as close to right as makes no odds, compared to most). Yes there is a pop-over, but the options default to opt-out, the whole thing can be dismissed in a single click without opting in, and you can't easily accidentally opt-in.
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EDIT: checked on mobile, and it does indeed take up practically the whole screen – but given it plays nice in practically every other way I can deal with that.