1. DON’T FART WHEN YOU’RE DANCING WITH A GIRL.
“Buttocks clenched, snot wiped off face … okay little lady, let’s bust a move!
source: Hester
This is a very handy tip from the sixteenth century from a dude by the name of Antonius Arena, who was clearly a real ladies’ man.
Writing in Leges Dansandi in 1530 he had some great advice for young men out clubbing:
“Furthermore never fart when you are dancing; grit your teeth and compel your arse to hold back the fart…
” … Do not have a dripping nose and do not dribble at the mouth … and remember not to wipe your nose with your fingers; do it properly with a white handkerchief.’
2. TAKE CARE WITH YOUR RELATIONSHIP.
“What the hell did you just put in my ear … !”
Girls, if you can find a non-farting non-dribbling alpha male, you want to hang on to him! And the way to do it is this:
You get some chicken feathers, some hair from the right leg of his dog and some fur from his cat’s tail (this clearly only works with an animal lover) and you stick them in his ear.
Yes, his ear.
Forget about learning to communicate and not going to bed angry.
This is much easier.
This great advice comes from The Distaff Gospels in the 14th century.
3. THIS IS HOW YOU CURE A NOSEBLEED.
You take some manure fresh out of a donkey, mix it with vinegar and blow it up the patient’s nose. Does it stop the bleed? I doubt it.
But it sure stopped them complaining about the nosebleed. This first aid tip was being touted by an apothecary named Hieronymus Braunschweig in 1561.
4. AND YOU CAN ALSO MAKE YOUR OWN GLUE.
Dice up some old cheese and soak it in water for two days. “Then add to them almost as much good quicklime, and grind them well together, and it is the best glue; use it immediately while it is moist. This glue joins wood very well and when it is dry it is dissolved by neither fire nor water.”
That’s some strong glue. Back in the day they didn’t need nails or even cement, they could build a Hilton out of Stilton, a shack out of Monterey Jack. This lost gem is from the Secretum philosophorum of 1300.
5. ARE THEY DEAD OR NOT?
“Quick, go and get the onion out of the oven, this is an emergency!”
No need to waste time checking the carotid pulse back then. You just applied a lightly roasted onion to the patient’s nose.
If they scratched their nose, there was still hope; if they didn’t, it was time for the plague pit.
This ever-reliable trick came from Johannes de Mirfield in his Breviarium Bartholomei of the late fourteenth century.
6. LIVEN UP YOUR DINNER PARTIES!
“Forsooth! One of my denuded capons has awoken from its slumber!”
The Vivendier of 1450 recommended plucking a chicken alive in hot water.
Once denuded, you smothered it in egg yolks that had been mixed with saffron and dripping so that it looked as if it had been cooked. Just before you served dinner, you put the outraged chicken’s head under its wing “…and turn it in your hands, rotating it until it is fast asleep.”
You then served it to your guests. When the guest of honour started to carve it “it will wake up and make off down the table upsetting jugs, goblets and whatnot.”
And all your guests would then, presumably, laugh uproariously. Why this little party trick ever went out of favour amazes me.
7. THIS IS HOW YOU FIX YOUR SMELLY FEET.
No, washing is for wimps. What you do is fill your shoes with iron filings. ” …it takes cleane away the evill smell thereof.” Well yes, you can barely walk, but isn’t that small price to pay? This from one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Thomas Lupton, in A Thousand Notable Things.
8. THIS IS HOW TO KEEP YOUNG.
Simple. You find an adolescent and suck their blood … “a youth, I say who is willing, healthy, happy and temperate …” (Life must have been very different then, full of happy and temperate teenagers.)
You suck “an ounce or two from a scarcely-opened vein of the left arm; they will immediately take an equal amount of sugar and wine.” Apparently this is best done when the moon is waxing.
This call to vampirism came from Marsilio Ficino, an early Italian renaissance philosopher.
9. HOW MUCH WINE SHOULD YOUR TODDLER DRINK?
Well you should dilute it, obviously, if the child is less than seven years old. Michele Savonarola, a professor of medicine at Padua in the fifteenth century, also recommended only white wine for toddlers, because that seemed the responsible thing to do.
‘The little brat’s drunk all my 1995 Chateau Rayas again!”
10. YOU MUST DEFEND YOURSELF FROM BASIL.
Thomas Lupton again, that reliable fount of wisdom: “An Italian, through the oft smelling of an hearb called Basil, had a Scorpion bred in his braine, which did not only a long time grieve him, but also at the last killed him… Take heede therefore ye smellers of Basil!”
Sage advice.
Question though: if you are killed by a plant, is that first degree herbicide?
11. AND FINALLY, A WORD ABOUT DENTAL HYGIENE:
“This is how to keep your teeth: gather the grains of a leek, burn them with henbane, and direct the smoke thereof to your teeth with a funnel, as if smoking a pipe.” This sound advice comes from the 13th century tome, Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum.
The Middle Ages, ladies and gentlemen. So much more than just plague and the rack.
For more gems like this check out the excellent http://askthepast.blogspot.ca/
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