Kill or Cure. Or poisoning my children part 2.

Possibly as Rhianna is still in bed with sore throat and ears, blocked nose and a headache, my mind is running on remedies today. We’ve seen the doctors, we’re taking the tablets, but the nose and headaches persist, so I tried her with that old-fashioned remedy – a salt-water inhale. We giggled together that I was encouraging her to sniff white powdery substances, but having gamely tried to inhale the heavily salted water, she now thinks this is the second time in a year I have tried to poison her. Her headache is worse and she is barely speaking to me.

I retreated to the shower with a bowl of sugar and a bottle of lemon juice for a bit of body buffing – another old-time household standby for cleaning and softening rough hands and elbows and which I extend top to toe. So I’m scoured and unpopular, but it beats the hair shirt.

As I stood in the shower I didn’t sing, but, & exactly in the manner of old Carpenter’s songs, there are two words repeating themselves ceaselessly in my head this morning: anti-scorbutic and antimony…. anti-scorbutic and antimony….anti… you get the idea.

And they are? Yes, yes, I’m rushing to the dictionary, and can now confidently tell you antimony is a toxic chemical element while scorbutic means to do with scurvy, so an anti-scorbutic is a treatment or regimen to prevent scurvy.

Why are these my apparent mantra for today? I’m reading on the history of science and last night’s chapter dealt with how C17th scientists commonly dosed themselves with noxious substances including antimony and mercury in search of a therapeutic dose. They took acid precipitate of amber, they drank hot steel ‘quenched in wine’ and explored tobacco, opium and anti-scorbutics as potential cures. It could literally be a kill or cure option, and aren’t we glad that the idea of purging the humours has given way in orthodox western medicine to a more symptomatic approach?

Many of these same men of science (women were deliberately excluded) were also avid collectors of animals and plants from the far flung climes the European powers were then “opening up” for trade. The medical men got very excited over Chinese rhubarb and cocoa, and not just because they sold them for a fortune. They were prized for their comforting and of course, in the case of rhubarb, purgative qualities.

The first chocolate marketed in England made the fortune of Sir Hans Sloane – he of Sloane Square, and was sold as an aid to the digestion. Not mixed with honey and pepper as it was taken in Jamaica, but mixed with milk and “Greatly recommended by several eminent Physicians especially those of Sir Hans Sloane’s Acquaintance, For its Lightness on the Stomach, & its great Use in all Consumptive Cases.”

Sloane, also imported quinine bark from Peru, sold as a cure for ‘tertian ague’ or malaria, which modern travellers will be surprised to find, was widespread during C17th English summers. A keen collector of all types of botanical and scientific rarities and curiosities, Sir Hans’ fortune made as merchant and fashionable society physician allowed him to collect on global scale and to acquire the collections of others as they came on the market. That, to cut a long story short, is how the collections of British Museum and the Natural History Museum in London began.

It is almost uncanny then, that although for the last 3 days Rhianna’s normally healthy appetite has deserted her, she moans now and then, “Chocolate, I need chocolate.” Maybe I should ditch the salt water and let Sir Hans be my guide.

The book I’m reading? Lisa Jardine’s Ingenious Pursuits

Fascinating material, but I’m not sure she makes the best of it. 5 out of 10.