Lisa Smith

Masturbation and the Dangerous Woman

by Lisa Smith April 30, 2013
Masturbation and the Dangerous Woman

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor Remember all those playground stories about masturbation causing hairy palms and blindness? Those tales go way back. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, much ink was spilled on the devastation that masturbation would cause. Men’s frequent self-pleasuring would destroy the fibres of their penis, and the masturbator would become effeminate, [...]

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An Old Doctor, a Convent Apothecary, and an Eighteenth-Century Medical Dispute

by Lisa Smith March 2, 2013
An Old Doctor, a Convent Apothecary, and an Eighteenth-Century Medical Dispute

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor In December 1718, Dr. Tolozé, who styled himself an ‘Ancien Medecin’ (Old Doctor), wrote to physician Étienne-François Geoffroy.[1] Tolozé wanted Geoffroy to settle a dispute between him and the nuns of St. Eutrope near Chartres. Geoffroy, he believed, was well-placed to help, being the doctor of a Mme Cossins who [...]

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Medicinal Compounds, Efficacious in Every Case

by Lisa Smith January 30, 2013
Medicinal Compounds, Efficacious in Every Case

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor Perhaps the most famous cure-all of all time is Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, immortalized in song as “Lily the Pink” (or “The Ballad of Lydia Pinkham”).* Although the original vegetable compound aimed to treat women’s ailments, the song suggests—tongue in cheek–that it might have much wider, rather miraculous applications. [...]

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A Botanist, a Butcher and a Body: Encountering an Eighteenth-Century Vrykolakas

by Lisa Smith October 30, 2012
A Botanist, a Butcher and a Body: Encountering an Eighteenth-Century Vrykolakas

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor From 1700-1702, French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort journeyed through the Greek islands and Constantinople. The following tale is his account of a Greek revenant (vrykolakas) on the island of Mykonos (A Voyage into the Levant, vol. 1, 1718). The story begins with the unsolved murder of a local “ill-natur’d and [...]

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The Ghost of a Murderous Midwife

by Lisa Smith September 30, 2012
The Ghost of a Murderous Midwife

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor Helen King recently discussed the long history of depicting midwives as murderers. In the lively comments section, Michelle Moon wondered whether midwives were frequently prosecuted for infanticide. In short, the answer is no. But that didn’t mean there weren’t stories! One such murderous midwife, Mrs Adkins, played a starring role in a [...]

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A Modern Exercise in Making an Old Herbal Remedy

by Lisa Smith July 30, 2012
A Modern Exercise in Making an Old Herbal Remedy

By Lisa Smith Earlier this month, I attended the newly revived Fairlop Fair, lured by the promise of dogs in silly costumes, bearded ladies, and Georgian medicine. My companions were leery of attending a medical herbalist’s workshop on eighteenth-century remedies, but the ominous clouds decided us: the workshop was undercover. I have studied early modern recipes for [...]

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Imagining Vampires

by Lisa Smith June 30, 2012
Imagining Vampires

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor Vampires were the flavour of the month, with two very different types of vampires on show: the staked skeletons of an archaeological discovery and the sexy beasts starring in a new season of a certain TV programme. The division of these two types can be traced to the eighteenth century. [...]

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The Puppy Water and Other Early Modern Canine Recipes

by Lisa Smith May 31, 2012
The Puppy Water and Other Early Modern Canine Recipes

At first I thought it was a joke when I read a recipe for “The Puppy Water” in a recipe collection compiled by one Mary Doggett in 1682. “Take one Young fatt puppy and put him into a flatt Still Quartered Gutts and all ye Skin upon him”, then distill it along with buttermilk, white [...]

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The Merry Month of May?

by Lisa Smith May 1, 2012
The Merry Month of May?

I once wandered into a pagan festival in Edinburgh by accident. A friend and I had curiously followed the crowds and sound of drumming, ending up at Calton Hill Beltane. People painted blue or red danced past by torchlight, then a group of women in white. A marriage-like ceremony between a white-clad woman and a [...]

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Who buys used postcards anyhow?

by Lisa Smith March 14, 2012
Who buys used postcards anyhow?

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor The ‘archival jolt’ happened in the strangest of places, a Brighton fleamarket. Idly rummaging through the detritus of people’s lives in search of treasure, I found a large box filled with used postcards, and I wondered who on earth would purchase such a useless thing. Of course, the snoop in me [...]

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Impotence in the Archives: or, a Research Trip Failed

by Lisa Smith January 23, 2012
Impotence in the Archives: or, a Research Trip Failed

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor A year ago I went to Paris on a week-long research trip. My goal was to look at eighteenth-century impotence trials, part of the Série Z at the Archives Nationales. I planned to compare them with English impotence trials that I had already examined. There were the standard research problems, [...]

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An Epidemic Caused by Alcohol: Beaune, 1746

by Lisa Smith December 21, 2011
An Epidemic Caused by Alcohol: Beaune, 1746

By Lisa Smith (W&M Regular Contributor) After the Battle of Rocoux (11 October, 1746), several Dutch prisoners of war were held in Beaune (Burgundy).  Townsmen were recruited as guards, with local lawyers and physicians – men of responsibility – as captains. Physician Vivant-Augustin Ganiare (1698-1781) expressed concerns about the prisoners being a potential source of [...]

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Manly Menstruation?

by Lisa Smith December 5, 2011
Manly Menstruation?

By Lisa Smith (W&M Regular Contributor) In 1780, physician M. Carrere wrote a letter to the French Royal Society of Medicine describing the unusual case of a twenty-five year old miller, Jacques Sola, who bled monthly from his right little finger. Sola became ill with dysentery and peripneumonia in 1764. The cause? Sola’s blood flow had [...]

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