What an exciting project! I'm going to mark my calendar for 2 years from this date to check back in on the published results.
>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.
> 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.
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.
This was an example of the dubious kind of parapsychology experiment conducted during the period. I'm sure there were true believers, but I think healthy skepticism probably prevented people from pursuing it too seriously, even when positive results were reported.
Ingo Swann said at the talk I attended that the government managers always hated their remote viewing program, so they had to get results right from the start. As soon as the Soviet Union was no more they said ‘thank God we can finally get rid of this awful program.’ The problem was that they liked the idea that there can be “secrets”.
You're completely right, I don't know how I made that mistake when the article literally says longitude. I'll blame the fact that I wrote the comment during a meeting before I had my coffee for the day.
>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.
[^1]: https://erenow.net/common/longitudethetruestory/5.php