Eighteenth-Century fashionable diseases, and the dangers of crowded rooms.

“Fashion, like its companion luxury, may be considered as one of those excrescences which are attached to national improvement; Whilst one part of a polished nation is assiduously engaged in cultivating the arts and sciences, another part is not less busily employed in the invention and regulation of its fashions”.

So wrote James McKittrick Adair in 1790 at the beginning of his Essays on Fashionable Diseases. Adair was a medical luminary. According to the blurb at the start of his book he was variously a member of the Royal Medical Society, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Physician to the Commander in Chief of the Leeward Islands and colonial troops, a judge on the Court of King’s Bench…the list went on.

As a physician to the wealthy Adair was in prime position to observe the types of conditions that afflicted his clients, but also the types of conditions that were becoming fashionable. The eighteenth century was perhaps the golden age of the ‘trendy’ disease. Where once sickness had been something feared and malign, some conditions were now becoming if not desirable then not unwelcome either. This was the age of the ‘heroic sufferer’; letters became filled with narratives of illness, commonly with the writer fashioning themselves into the role of embattled victim, wrestling with almost overwhelming symptoms and constantly surprised that they even had strength to hold a pen. These were the types of people who seemingly darkened the door of McKittrick Adair’s consulting rooms.

Of the evil influence of ‘fashion’, Adair was in no doubt. No longer was it just contained to dress, but influenced manners, politics, morals, religion and, worst of all in his view, even medicine was becoming enthralled to the “empire of fashion”. Whereas fashion had long influenced people in their choice of doctors, it was now influencing their choice of diseases too. This is how Adair explained the rise of fashionable diseases.

When doctor and patient were both persons of fashion, the patient would enquire of the doctor what condition their symptoms displayed. The doctor, not wishing to offend the polite patient’s ear with a lengthy medical discourse (or perhaps even not knowing!) gives the symptoms a general name – e.g. nervousness. As sickness and symptoms are a popular topic for discussion, the patient speaks to others and ascribes similarities where, Adair argued, none exist, but soon the condition becomes widespread…and fashionable!

In the early part of the eighteenth century “spleen, vapours or hyp was the fashionable disease”. Thirty years previously, a treatise on nervous diseases had been published by a professor of physic at Edinburgh. “Before this”, Adair argued, “people of fashion had not the least idea they had nerves”. At some stage an exasperated apothecary of his acquaintance, bowed under the weight of symptoms from a wealthy patron exclaimed “Madam, you are nervous!”. As Adair put it “the solution was quite satisfactory, the term became fashionable and spleen, vapours and hyp were forgotten”.  But the process didn’t end there…

The ‘faces’ of nervousness and biliousness. (Courtesy of Wellcome Images

“Some years after this, Dr Coe wrote a treatise on biliary concretions, which turned the tide of fashion: nerves and nervous diseases were kicked out of doors, and bilious became the fashionable term. How long it will stand its ground cannot be determined”.

In many ways Adair was forward looking, and questioned the role of his fellow practitioners and their ministrations. He was particularly frustrated by the old Galenic practices of bleeding and purging, which still clung on in the late eighteenth century. “The idea of bleeding and purging each spring and fall, to prevent fevers and other diseases, was formerly very general in this country”. This was due to the “ignorance and knavery” of rural medicators who, he argued, feathered their nests by “disciplining whole parishes” in this way.

Worse still, many patients who only suffered slight complaints were now given to violently purging themselves using an array of potent substances from magnesia, salts and rhubarb to James’s purging pills, which destroyed the very health that they were trying to preserve! Adair’s point was that people were simply overdoing it with medicines. Instead of the odd purge, potion or pill, people were taking them every day, ill or not, to the extent almost that the cure became the kill!

Adair had other words of warning for the fashionable, in terms of their continued attendance at packed society balls. In places like Bath, where Adair had his practice, fashionable functions were everywhere and life for the well-heeled was a constant round of parties, balls and visits. Danger, however, lurked in this lifestyle.

Just as blacksmiths, bakers and glassmakers were weakened by the excessive heat of their trades, he argued, so the cramped, airless fug of the ballroom was deeply injurious to the human body. Heat and fire could only hurt the delicate constitution so, once again, in their quest to be fashionable, the dandies and fops of Bath society were putting their health in danger.

Part of the problem was the noxious air that became trapped in crowded rooms. The smell of sweaty, unwashed bodies mixed with stale perfume, alcohol and coal smoke to produce a toxic miasma that threatened to overwhelm those delicate constitutions. The very atmosphere of Bath made the whole situation worse, surrounded by hills and therefore trapping the residual warmth and creating a cauldron-like atmosphere. The steam from the hot baths added to this, as did the fires caused by so many visitors in their lodging houses. Bath was the modern Babylon as far as McKittrick Adair was concerned.

His book is interesting as it sits right on the cusp of change. He was ‘modern’ enough to see the changes in medicine and disease, but still essentially rooted in ideas of the past, e.g. the concept of bad airs and heat. He wrote as a professional who criticised other professionals but still took the same position as did elite physicians of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, who complained constantly about quacks and empiricks.  Most of all Adair’s book fizzes with Enlightenment style and language, but also seems oddly familiar in tone. Even at 200 years distance, it feels like we could hold an interesting conversation with this man.  What stories would he be able to tell us about his clients?!

‘Politeness and Pogonotomy: shaving and masculinity in Georgian Britain’ | Wellcome Library

I’ll be giving a public seminar at the Wellcome Library, London, on Tuesday 5th of February at 6.15pm. Click the link below for more details, including an abstract.

‘Politeness and Pogonotomy: shaving and masculinity in Georgian Britain’ | Wellcome Library.

Shopping and advertising in Georgian Britain

Oh Noooooooooo!

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, it’s the festive season. There are clearly two meanings of Christmas; the religious one…and the retailers’ one. This is the season when we are expected to spend, whether we are jolly, wish peace and goodwill to all mankind, or indeed whether we’ve been naughty or nice. Shops and businesses want our money and will go to almost any lengths to get it. Pity the poor guys currently standing on roundabouts near where I live, dressed as ‘comedy’ reindeer and clutching advertisements for mobile phone deals in their freezing paws. The Christmas TV advertisements start in early October, the lights are all on in the high street and it seems, as many people remark, that Christmas is getting earlier each year.

The concept of high street shopping seems like a modern invention, but it in fact has a long history. Whilst descending en masse to the Christmas sales is certainly more recent, the high streets were very much open for business in Georgian Britain. In fact, in many ways, this was a golden age of shopping, where visiting the right shops, buying the right thing and even behaving in the right way inside shops were all important matters.

In many ways, the Georgians invented shopping. This was an era where towns were expanding and also becoming more self-consciously genteel. Old tumbledown buildings were being removed and replaced with elegant neo-classic facades   - all pillars and pediments. The high street, in its modern incarnation of rows of shops began to appear in the eighteenth century. Pavements were widened to allow the well-to-do to promenade in comfort, and especially to allow them to browse far enough away from passing coaches and carts so as not to get their elegant costumes muddy. By the late eighteenth century, shoes and boots with extra thick soles were becoming available which allowed people to walk through puddles without their clothes dragging in the dirt. Browsing was a serious business.

Shop windows and interior displays certainly became more elaborate. Businesses began to use their shop fronts, and especially their window displays, as advertising spaces. Funeral directors, for example, might well display a fully decorated coffin with all its accoutrements, to show off the finery of their craftsmanship. Makers of scientific instruments might put special pieces in the window to attract attention, from telescopes to orreries or microscopes. The idea was to make the shop enticing and draw people inside to browse.

The process of ‘polite’ buying was markedly different to today, not least in the role of the shop assistant and the matter of money. The place of a shop assistant in a Georgian retailer was to serve the customer, but through a very well defined set of rules. Browsing, for example, was common and involved the seller providing a range of goods for the customer to pore over. A ‘polite’ customer was well versed in quality and fashion; their own taste and sagacity should draw them to the quality of the goods on sale. The shop assistant was full of flattery and would gently coerce to secure a sale. But, the question of money was considered too base , so it would be rare in polite premises to find an Enlightened equivalent of the ‘Apprentice’-style sales technique. Instead, any goods chosen would be sent on the customer’s house by courier, and paid for later on account, since cash transactions were not usual. The browsing session would often finish with tea being served to the customer, adding a further formal ritual to the proceedings. In some ways this has echoes in the coffee shops found in department stores today.

Another apparently modern concept is that of advertising but, again, eighteenth-century retailers were well versed in the art of distance selling. Just as today, retailers took advantage of cheap print to fill newspaper columns with row after row of goods and services. It is worth taking a look inside a single page from a typical (and familiar-sounding) publication, The Sun, from March 7^th 1793.

There are, for example, a number of advertisements for products, and medicines were amongst the most common. From Mr Moulter of 96 the Strand in London, a perfumer, could be purchased “The Devonshire Tooth Tincture and Powder”.  From Thomas Taylor in Blackfriars could be bought “Leake’s Patent Pills” for “venereal and scorbutic complaints” which, attested a certain Mr Thomas Lloyd “The taking of one box only, gave me considerable relief”.

James Rymer, a surgeon of Soho, boasted of the royal patent he had been granted  for his “Cardiac and Nervous Tincture” which allegedly cured “Disorders of the head, stomach and bowels, viz: Headach, confusion and giddiness; Indigestion and Loss of Appetite with bilious crudities and retchings; Yellowness of the eyes and skin; gripings, heartburn, colic and costiveness”. The list of potential conditions continues for another four paragraphs! Rymer included a long list of agents from whom the product could be bought and also found space to peddle his latest book A Treatise upon Indigestion and the Hypocondriack Disease.

But on the same page could be found other interesting advertisements and snippets of news. “Mr Charles, artist to his royal highness the prince of Wales” would take “A most perfect resemblance of the Face in Fifteen minutes in Miniature for Lockets, rings etc in a masterly manner”. What better present to give a loved one that a locket with a painted portrait set within it…guaranteed to set your beloved lady in a swoon! For those suffering from the discomfort of ruptures (hernias), “Dowling’s Improved Elastic Breeches” were warranted to bring relief and “fitted in the neatest manner and in the best workmanship”.

Coincidentally, if you had visited Baker’s Coffee House in Exchange Alley in London in March 1793, you could also have encountered  one Robert Withy, perhaps a forebear of mine, who offered “Opinion and Advice on Money Business” and sought to rescue the unenlightened from “The many frauds daily committed by advertising money lenders”. It appears that the problems of unscrupulous money lenders and ‘payday loans’ are equally nothing new. Amongst the other notes were a programme for ‘Longman and Brodrips Comic Opera” called “Hartford Bridge or the Skirts of the Camp”, then playing at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.

It is surprising how modern much of this indeed sounds. Georgian shoppers, just like us, could head out for the high street, dressed up to the nines, to browse, to see and be seen, and to buy. Although the mechanics of shopping and buying have changed, the basic structures of shop display, the use of shop space to encourage browsing, and the role of the assistant in guiding purchase were all present. Advertising was very much in vogue and eighteenth-century consumers were bombarded with advertising and puffery, all desperate to entice them to part with their money.

As we dodge the charity muggers, the ‘comedy’ reindeer, the dreadful music, the bands, the ‘Gluhwein’ stalls, the “quality wrap, fifteen sheets for a pound” and the constant dialogue of advertisers, it’s worth remembering that much of this is not a modern plague…we can blame our eighteenth-century advertisers.

And Christmas IS getting earlier every year!

Lady Elinor Stepney and the Georgian ‘Heroine Pill’

In many ways, Lady Elinor Stepney of Llanelly, Glamorganshire, (born 1702) had everything going for her. She was the only daughter, and therefore sole heiress, to the fortune and lands of her father John Lloyd of Llangennech, including the picturesque house of Buwchllaethwen near Llanelly. She married John Stepney, heir of the wealthy patriarch Sir Thomas Stepney of Llanelly, and together they had five children; Margaretta (b. 1718), Justina (b. 1719), Maria (b. 1721), Thomas (b. 1724) and John (b. 1726).

Buwchllaethwen House – ancestral home of Elinor Stepney

By the late 1720s, perhaps unsurprisingly, given that she bore so many children in such a relatively short space time, Elinor was somewhat delicate and prone to bouts of illness. But these were no attacks of fashionable nervousness or fainting; she was chronically ill. Information about her ailments is sketchy, but a series of letters from Elinor, her husband John, and some prominent medical practitioners, can help us to recreate what was an increasingly desperate situation.

It is difficult to say, from nearly 300 years’ distance what was wrong with Elinor, although a common theme seems to have been chronic stomach pains and fits. In January 1729, for example, she was suffering from “Colical pains”, and had regular fits which left her debilitated and weak. According to her husband, after having “escap’d her fits from Tuesday to Sunday” but then was stricken with terrible pains that “seized her in her stomack, side, back, gut…with a palpitation of the heart & thence it dispers’d itself in to her stomack as before, then to the back and both the sides, the violence of which would throw her into small fits, & her stomach very much swelled”. Even down the centuries, this account of the “violence” of her pain is striking.

It is clear from other clues that Elinor’s sickness had an impact on the family’s life. It was said that the Stepneys rarely left Llannelly House, preferring the peace and solitude of a country life. But, clearly worried about his wife’s deteriorating condition, John Stepney was determined to seek out the best medical advice that money could buy, and this often took he and his wife outside their native countryside and to one of the most busy and cosmopolitan cities in Georgian Britain.

One of his Stepney’s correspondents was Dr John Powell of Carmarthen, in many ways an unusual Welsh practitioner. Powell was distinguished from his many unlicensed and unorthodox colleagues by having gone to Lincoln College in Oxford, achieving a BA, MA and MD. He was licensed by the Bishop of Llandaff to practise medicine in the diocese of Llandaff, Hereford and St Davids and letters testimonial to his skills were signed by several medical luminaries, including the president of the Royal College of Physicians in London, Thomas Witherley.  Unusually, given that many Welsh doctors who left the Principality to train subsequently set up practice outside Wales, Powell returned to Carmarthen and counted a number of wealthy Welsh gentry amongst his clients.

But Powell also seems to have taken advantage of the popularity of the newly fashionable city of Bath, and especially its growing reputation as a place of healing, as it appears that he sometimes held a practice there.  Even more interestingly, his consultations were not always held alone; letters suggest that he occasionally held court with another rising medical star – Richard Mead. Mead was a celebrated Whig physician and medical author who had attended Padua and Leiden, and studied under the famous Herman Boerhaave. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and was physician to George II. Amongst the exclusive clients who made their way to Bath to consult these two luminaries were Sir John, and Lady Stepney.

Richard Mead (1673-1754)

Powell first corresponded with John Stepney, their letters discussing Elinor’s health, and mentioning the consultations in Bath, the prescriptions given and offering further advice. At this point it seems that Elinor was the third party. John Stepney seemingly took responsibility for ordering the many medicaments that Powell prescribed, generally including purges, vomits and various electuaries, pastes and juleps. In January 1729, for example, Powell recommended “a paper of cordial powders” to help with her stomach pains, as well as a “stomack plaster to spread and apply to her stomack”. If she found herself “bound”, she could take “2 ownces of purging tincture” to relieve her symptoms. From Dr Mead came the advice to take chalybeate tincture, and drink “bitter decoction” and peppermint waters. These were well-known digestifs and were clearly targeted specifically at her symptoms.

A common theme in the letters is that of the sheer amounts of medicines that Lady Stepney must have been taking. So much so, in fact, that she frequently ran out and even, on occasions, depleted local supplies so much that emergency doses had to be obtained from Powell in Carmarthen, but even from London. In September 1725, there was even a note of irritation in Powell’s letter to John Stepney regarding the increasing demand. “Had your lady spoken to me that she would have her things made by our apothecary here” he wrote “I would have sent them to her by the first carrier when I came home”.  As a result, he chastised Stepney, “she has lost a pretty deal of time both in takeing the medicines & drinking ye waters”. Powell immediately sent for another batch of medicaments, including a “fresh cargo from London”, including “a Vomit, 2 Doses of Purging Pils, a Paper of Ingredients for a bitter wine, anchovies, Garlic Electurary” and a “Antiscorbutic Electuary”.

By 1730, Powell was corresponding directly with Elinor herself, and it seems that her treatment had now included visiting Bath again to take the waters, although the sulphourous liquids did little to ease her discomfort. In June 1730 Powell noted that her stomach “acted indifferent” to most types of food and that she should stick to drinking asses or goats milk until such time that she could bear to take the waters again.

It also seems that Powell was becoming increasingly concerned about Lady Stepney’s apparent habit of staying indoors.  It was imperative, he argued, that she “use exercise to get out into the air more or less everie other day, if not everie day”, and for three to four miles every morning, whether walking or on horseback, or even in a coach “if it be inclement weather”.  This, he argued, would “restore your lost Stomack and Appetite and cause all ye animal functions to perform their proper office”. Such themes of natural, animal constitutions, vigorous exercise and fresh air, were common in eighteenth-century medical thought.

But one of Powell’s prescriptions to Elinor stands out particularly from the page. On returning from a consultation in Bath in May 1731, Powell made reference to some prescriptions from Richard Mead, and to one pill in particular. These pills were made from “Russia Castor, Goa stone & wild valerian, with the syrup of compound peony”.  These pills were designed to ‘loosen’ the constitution, and be taken in conjunction with a cordial julep. The pills, Powell stated, “I call ye heroine pills”. Not to be confused with the Class A drug, it is interesting that the use of the name predates the latter use by 250 years. Perhaps Lady Stepney was one of the first in history to partake of a dose of ‘Heroine’.

Unfortunately there is no happy end to this tale. Elinor died in 1734, at the young age of 32. Her memorial reads:

“Near this place rested the body of Mrs Eleanor Stepney wife of John Stepney Esquire, and daughter of John Lloyd of Llangennech, Esquire. She was a most obliging, endearing wife, a most tender but prudent Mother; happy in all valuable endowments, religious and moral; constant in her devotions to God, ever sincere to her friends, charitable to the poor, just and benevolent to all, a pattern truly worthy the imitation of her sex. In her husband’s affectionate esteem she still lives and as an instance of that esteem this monument is erected to her memory. She died the 3rd of January 1733/4. Aged 32 years”

Despite the best efforts of her husband, family and some of the most prominent medical practitioners and treatments of her day, Lady Elinor was ultimately helpless in her ongoing battle against her unknown malady. The striking accounts of her treatments and suffering provide us with a useful, if ultimately tragic, account of the experience of sickness in eighteenth-century Britain.

Seeing History: The rise of spectacles in early modern Britain.

The percentage of people in the UK requiring either spectacles or contact lenses has risen over successive decades. It is difficult to put exact figures on this; some estimates suggest that over 68% of the population in Britain currently wear glasses or lenses, and this varies dramatically within age groups. Around 29% of 16-18 year olds require some sort of visual aid; a 2005 report put the figure for the age group 65 and above as high as 98%. It seems that spectacles today have largely shed their pejorative connotations and even become desirable, helped by many high-profile celebrity spec-wearers. Indeed, opticians have even reported a growth in sales of spectacles with blank lenses over recent years, to cater for those who see glasses as a fashion item. This apparent love affair with spectacles is not consistent, however.

A prosthetic eye, possible 17th century.

Until the seventeenth century, eye complaints were troublesome and painful, and effectively seen as a form of disability. The virtual plague of ophthalmic conditions in early modern Britain is attested to by the ubiquity of remedies for eye complaints in remedy collections. Common were remedies for sore eyes, which were often treated (in line with the ‘doctrine of sympathies’) by using substances of a similar constitution to the eye. Remedies using snails were popular; one common example was to impale a garden snail on a pin and let the juice run into the eye. Another recommended using fresh goose dung, its gelatinous consistency resembling the watery eye. Yet another suggested the blowing of dried hen’s dung into the afflicted party’s eye just before they went to sleep. For more on the uses of animal substances in remedies, see Lisa Smith’s excellent blog post on the subject. http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/05/the-puppy-water-and-other-early-modern-canine-receipts.html

Opthalmic surgery was also in its infancy, with a procedure known as ‘couching’ or ‘cooching’ being one of the most invasive operations undertaken, being used for the treatment of cataracts. Here, a small silver instrument called an itinerarium was passed into the sufferer’s eye. The intention was to physically push the cataract film back away from the lens of the eye and thus clear the vision. This was doubtless uncomfortable and seems almost impossible to imagine – bearing in mind the patient was awake and conscious at the time. We shouldn’t assume that it was necessarily dangerous though. The seventeenth-century diarist Walter Powell of Llantilio Crossenny, in Monmouthshire, endured the procedure three times and still carried on with his diary afterwards, so presumably his vision was little worse if it wasn’t much better.

The wearing of spectacles was certainly known in Tudor times. Most typically, these were armless and sat on the bridge of the wearer’s nose. There were other types of device that could be used. Fearing he was losing his sight after years of close working in extremely bad light, Samuel Pepys tried a revolutionary new device in 1668 (the “tubespecticall”) which involved reading through three-inch long paper tubes, which eliminated glare and excess light.  Essentially, however, these were items connected with a physical disability – the same as prosthetic limbs, bandages or trusses.

The 17^th century, though, witnessed the beginning of a shift towards people being more comfortable with what was essentially a form of disability, and this was especially noticeable in portraiture. Fashion was a factor to some extent. In previous blog posts I have noted the use of steel as a desirable material, and shining steel spectacles represented a desirable fashion item. As such, steel spectacles could also be a mark of literacy and wealth.

Eighteenth-century spectacle makers also needed to adapt to the times, and produce items that could fit with current fashions. One of the most important exponents of this, and indeed in many ways a forefather of the modern spectacle designs, were ‘Martin’s Margins’, invented by the London maker Benjamin Martin. These were fairly revolutionary. Rather than sitting on the wearer’s nose, they had spring-loaded arms which enabled them to adhere seamlessly to the head, with less chance of falling off and being damaged.

Martin’s Margins

The eighteenth century was in fact an age of innovation in opthalmics. The optical instrument maker James Ayscough invented frames with long, folding arms to reach around the head, also known as ‘railway spectacles’. ‘Wig spectacles’ were designed with arms to slide into the fibres of a wig, and keep them in place – especially important given the increasingly ebalorate coiffeurs of the elites. The gradual introduction of steel springs in nose-pieces also helped fitting. The lenses of spectacles also developed through the eighteenth century. Around a third of the lens in a pair of ‘Martin’s Margins’, was filled with ox horn, to restrict light. Other developments included D-shaped spectacles in the 19^th-century, which had side visors which provided protection from dust and light. A self-portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds depicts him wearing a pair of wig-spectacles:

Reynolds Self Portrait © PCMAG

To be depicted in spectacles drew attention to the eyes, and the vision of the subject, perhaps literally or notionally. Conversely, though, spectacles could also be used in morality paintings to emphasise undesirable traits, such as miserliness. This portrait of Benjamin Franklin shows him squinting to read a document through his new-fangled spectacles:

There was also a medical aspect to the use of spectacles: too much light was seen as potentially injurious to vision, and spectacles were sometimes designed to restrict the amount of light entering the eyes. Tinted lenses, especially green, were considered to be therapeutic in the 17^th century (note the green lenses in the ‘Martin’s Margins’ above too).

So today’s fashion for spectacles has a long gestation, and it is interesting to see how perceptions of eye complaints have shifted over time. In fact, opthalmics has tended to move away from a strictly ‘medical’ field; the optician is now a common feature of the high-street and eye-tests and fittings can be done virtually on a drop-in basis. It is also interesting to note that the wearing of spectacles for fashion is not new. I heartily recommend a visit to the MusEYEum in the Royal College of Optometrists in London, where there is a fascinating library of artefacts and books about the history of spectacles, as well as some rare portraits of spectacle-wearers through history. The blog of its curator, Neil Handley, can be found here: http://www.college-optometrists.org/en/knowledge-centre/news/blog/index.cfm/id/199E66BA-4091-4C98-A53907402DE66669

Advertising razors in Georgian Britain

This seemingly mundane advertisement appeared in the General Advertiser in May 1752. Daniel Cudworth was one of the many London business owners to take advantage of increased advertising opportunities to push his ‘flat razor strap’. On the surface, there seems little unusual here; a product, some notes about its quality and durability and a list of suppliers. And yet Cudworth’s advertisement actually pinpoints a turning point in male personal grooming. His advert is, as far as I can ascertain, the first example of a product targeted at men who ‘shave themselves’.

Up to this point, the barber was the main source of shaving for the majority of men. There aren’t many personal records to suggest how often men actually visited barbers, but it seems likely that many did so every week, if not every few days. Surviving barber’s accounts also tend to point towards a frequency of every few days, often done on an account settled monthly or even annually.

But, around the mid eighteenth-century, shaving – and male toilette in general, was beginning to attract a range of new products. The availability of cast steel meant sharper, more durable razors. Older steel razors were sometimes brittle and easily blunted; shavers complained about inept barbers whose lack of concentration could prove painful!

But now men could buy their own, high-quality shaving equipment from specialist retailers, who also sold a range of ancillary goods. Cudworth’s main line were razor-straps (strops), long pieces of leather which were used to keep razors in pristine, sharp condition. Shaving with blunt razors was an extremely uncomfortable experience. He makes reference to the poor quality (“thin things”) passed off as steel razors, requiring repair every few months, and notes the importance of maintenance in keeping a sharp edge. Clearly, a razor was becoming something to keep, rather than a throwaway item – disposable razors were not in vogue.

But Cudworth also sold shaving powders, the point of which was to soothe a smarting face but also to give it a smoother appearance. On one level these are clearly functional items. But they also represent something of a sea-change in attitudes towards male grooming. Rough masculinity was beginning to be displaced by a predilection for pampering.

At the upper levels of society, it is likely that servants performed the task. A whole set of shaving paraphernalia also became available for gentlemen who travelled, including sets of instruments and even portable shaving cases, including a mirror and bowl to allow the man to perform his task in comfort. Cudworth’s advert makes reference to this new trend; his ‘travelling boxes’ were small enough to be carried in a pocket, allowing businessmen and Grand Tourists alike to take their razors, scissors etwees and so on with them on their peregrinations.

Examples like this remind us that even the mundane and everyday can be fascinating. Even individual advertisements can be revealing about not only products for sale, but changing popular attitudes and social mores. It is often through these little snapshots of history that we can gain a better understanding of the bigger picture.

Steel and the body in the Enlightenment:

Whilst I was a research fellow at the University of Glamorgan, working with Professor Chris Evans, I was lucky enough to be part of a project far away from my usual research on Welsh medical history, but one which opened my eyes to an extraordinarily fruitful and fascinating area of research.

As the sociologist Richard Sennett commented, the eighteenth-century body was a ‘mannequin’ upon which were hung conventions of fashion, taste and politeness. Historians, however, have been slow to recognise the important influence of ‘enlightened’ manufactured goods in this process. New industrial technologies yielded products aimed specifically at the body, of which articles made from steel were central. Steel is not often thought of in terms of its contribution to culture, but rather as a prosaic industrial material. Technological breakthroughs between the 1680s and 1740s (such as Huntsman’s crucible steel) made steel an increasingly abundant and important good. It was, however, a material that could actually play a role in the fashioning of a new, refined self, and was indeed vital for some of the most personal rituals of everyday life. It was the metal with which people had the closest, even the most intimate, physical contact.

Razors were a prime example of this. Better steel enabled razor-makers to produce blemish-free, durable and more comfortable blades. Pre-crucible steel razors tended to blunt quickly and, although sharp, were not superbly keen. Part of the reason for this was the use of pre-Bessemer cementation steel, which was more brittle due to the less than uniform distribution of carbon. Crucible (or cast) steel razors were far superior; not only could they carry a much sharper edge, they could be polished to a mirror-like shine, making them far more aesthetically pleasing for consumers.

Indeed, when advertising their wares in popular publications, it was to domestic consumers rather than professional barbers that they most often appealed. Personal razors allowed their owners to meet expectations of refinement and social order. Shaving the face evinced gentlemanly neatness and elegance, while shaving the head prepared it for the wearing of a wig – an expression of genteel masculinity.

Cast steel had effects in other ways. Its ability to take a sharp edge also influenced the design of surgical instruments, for example, and this led to changes in operative techniques, which had implications for both the patients and practitioners of surgery. The amputation knife was one such instrument. The standard amputation knife around the mid eighteenth century was long and straight – something resembling a chef’s knife today! But advances in steel allowed a new, curved design. This allowed surgeons to use a more natural cutting stroke around the leg, cutting through the soft tissues more quickly, before sawing through the bone. Given the risk of losing a patient through hypovolemic shock in pre-anaesthetic surgery, speed was of the essence.

The springy strength of steel was likewise indispensable for medical paraphernalia from trusses to deportment collars. Here, steel was a pure Enlightenment good, scientifically honed to improve or correct nature’s vagaries. As makers of ‘elastic steel trusses’ frequently emphasised, steel was the only material with which they could claim to cure hernias or ruptures. Steel ‘neck swings’ could be used to force the body back into its ‘natural’ shape, while deportment collars and steel ‘stays’ encouraged young ladies and gentlemen to stand up straight.

Other devices benefitted from the development of new types of steel. It could, for example, be employed in fixing correctional devices to the body, such as the flexible springs in spectacles’ side arms. Spectacles became a permanent part of costume, with an aesthetic value in their own right. In this process, they ceased to be indicators of bodily deficiency and acquired more positive associations (learning and sagacity), as archival and artefactual collections at the College of Optometrists can demonstrate.

One of the most visible uses of steel, though, was in costume jewellery. By the mid eighteenth-century, jewellery was strongly in vogue amongst the upper echelons of society. As Marcia Pointon has noted, diamonds were the very height of luxurious and conspicuous consumption, and costume jewellery reflected a range of social mores and rituals related to society ritual and appearance. Prohibitively expensive, the potential market for these precious stones was therefore extremely limited.  But steel offered new possibilities as an ersatz precious metal; here was a material which could offer all the decorative allure of diamonds, but at a fraction of the price. Cut and faceted into imitation stones known as ‘brilliants’, cast steel sparkled. With flat surfaces polished, it shone like a mirror.

By the late eighteenth-century demand for cut-steel jewellery reached across Europe and appealed to royalty as well as affluent middling sorts with disposable income to match their social aspirations. Fashionable gentlemen increasingly bought cast steel watch chains, both to support their newly modish gold and silver watches, but also as a costume adornment in their own right. Added to these chains were a further range of accoutrements such as seals and lockets, which further served to draw attention to the means of the wearer. In the 1760s, chatelaines made from ‘blued steel’ presented a ‘gamut of metallic hues’. Glistening steel buttons also became an essential part of the dress of the Beau Monde, so much so that their effulgence was satirised in cartoons such as Coups de Bouton, showing a society lady cowering in the face of the blinding light reflected in the buttons of her rakish companion. But this perhaps also worked on a deeper level. Steel jewellery reflected the light but, in doing so, it also perhaps somehow reflected the spirit of the age – literal enlightenment.

It is often surprising what even the most basic of materials can reveal about society and culture, as well as the technological processes involved in making them. Steel was in many ways a ‘crossover’ between technology and culture; it was both a product of the enlightenment, and something that acted as a vector for enlightened ideals, through the various uses to which it was put.

 

The ‘heroic sufferer’; sickness narratives in early modern letters

I mentioned in my last post about the concept of the ‘heroic sufferer’. Patient narratives are very much the coming thing in medical history. ‘Off Sick’, for example, a recent collaboration between Cardiff University and the University of Glamorgan has looked at the voices of the patient over time. The historiography of disability is re-engaging with the often indistinct voices of disabled people in the past. Even in popular history, it’s often these ‘voices’ that people want to hear about – ‘Voices of the Great War’ and so on. Overall, there has been an impetus to learn about the sickness experience through those who had that experience; not those who treated them.

In my own work, I’ve looked at sickness narratives in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the letters that sufferers wrote to friends and relatives. Other than actual conversation (or even perhaps more than conversation), letters allowed people to construct their own narrative; their own sickness persona. Writing it down gave sufferers power over their own image; freed from the immediacy of speech, letter-writers could fashion themselves as literary sufferers. The results were often fascinating.

What strikes me most about these letters is the construction of a distinct persona, almost the creation of a different ‘sick self’. As I said in the previous post, it’s something that we do to a certain extent when we call in sick to work. There is perhaps an innate need to engender empathy, if not sympathy, and people are often very keen to detail even the most intimate symptoms to complete strangers. This seems to have been a constant for hundreds of years.

One of the most fruitful batches of letters for my purposes were those of the eighteenth-century Morris Brothers of Anglesey – Lewis, William and John. Lewis and William, especially, were prolific letter writers and, as was common for the time, health was a regular topic of conversation. Lewis Morris was a constant sufferer of sudden fits, coughing and giddyness, sometimes so bad that he could hardly get up. What struck me, though, was how far he was prepared to defend his right to be the unchallenged winner in any competition for worst symptoms. When William suggested that he was labouring under his own cough and ‘an asthma’, Lewis wrote back swiftly: “I own your asthma is heavy, but if you had such an asthma as I have, you would be unable to go to the office or even sit there”. In other words, my cough is worse than your cough!

Lewis was also the art exponent of the good old-fashioned wallow. In one letter complaining of various maladies, aches and pains, he was “scarce alive” but, stoically, would “trudge on while I live”.  Recovering from a “pleuritic fever” he told his brother he was “just returned from the shades of death”. When his brother asked him to check some papers, Lewis responded that he would do so if he recovered, having been suffering from an ague fit. Many times he began letters wearily, doubting that his life had long to run, but by the end of the letter was talking in fairly cheery terms about items of news and events.

Perhaps my favourite of all, though, were the letters of Roger Jones, an attorney from Talgarth in 1770s-Breconshire. Jones seems to have been something of a savant – a man of letters, constantly travelling around and involved in polite society (such as there was in eighteenth-century Breconshire!). His letters to his brothers reveal another side to sickness – that of the comedic narrative. Sickness was, at the time, far from funny, but Jones’s letters show a very modern sense of laughing at the profoundly un-funny, perhaps in a way to reduce its impact.

In 1771, for example, he set out on a journey to Hay on Wye, where he suddenly felt “weak and faynty and was obliged to give over”. A fever ensued, and he took pills and a glister to flush out his system. In the night he took a whey drink, which made him sweat profusely which “with the weakness occasioned by the fever, reduced me to a mere skeleton”.

Jones was certainly no fan of doctors. Whilst ill at Bath the previous year he had consulted a physician, who had prescribed glisters, opening pills, cordial drinks and purges which made him no better but a lot thinner. We can only guess at the frustration he encountered once when he lost his voice and tried to get help from his servant…who was deaf. Poor Roger was forced to repair to the local alehouse, where the landlady administered an emetic or, as he called it, “the puke”.

These are the voices of the sick in the past, speaking to us in their own terms but, importantly, terms they have selected very carefully. They tell us plenty about the experience of being ill – but they tell us more about how sufferers wanted to represent themselves to others. They are brilliant (and often under-used) sources in medical history and, one day, I can feel an article coming on!

Beards, Moustaches and Facial Hair in History

 (This is not me by the way)

Today in the town of Bad Schussenried, Germany, will be held the World Beard and Moustache championships. Attracting hirsute entrants from across the globe, competitors can enter in no less than eighteen categories, from chin beards to Imperial moustaches. The Germans seem to be particularly adept at this competition, and have fielded a number of champions in recent years. Men’s relationship with the beard has changed a great deal over time and it is interesting to see how wearing (or indeed not wearing) some form of facial hair can often be linked to broader social and cultural trends.

In the Renaissance, for example, beard-wearing was a sign of masculinity and almost a rite of passage. To be able to grow a beard represented the change from boy to man. As Will Fisher put it in his article on beards in Renaissance England,  “the beard made the man”. It is noteworthy, for example, that almost every portrait of a man painted between, say, 1550 and 1650 contains some representation of facial hair - from the Francis Drake-style pointy beard to the Charles I ‘Van Dyke’. Beards were the coming thing.

The wearing of a beard, especially during this period, was actually linked to beliefs about the body. As people believed that the body consisted of four fluid humours in a perpetually precarious state of balance, so there were different ideas about how it got rid of waste material. Most people can associate bloodletting with the early modern period, and this was done to rid the body of excess blood, and carry with it any troublesome or dangerous waste. People routinely took laxatives and emetics to purge themselves of any potentially problematic substances.

Where does the beard fit in with this? Until at least the late seventeenth century it was widely believed that facial hair was aactually a form of excreta – a waste material generated by the body as a result of heat in the testicles! But this also provides the link with masculinity. Since the beard was linked to the genitals, it was an outward sign of virility and masculinity.

But in the eighteenth century something changed. For reasons that are so far obscure, men stopped wearing beards and, more than this, the beard even became socially unpopular. The eighteenth-century culture of politeness certainly played a part in this. The ‘man of letters’ was clean-shaven; the beard was seen as hiding the face, whereas shaving it left it clean and smooth and, therefore, more aesthetically pleasing. Having an ‘open countenance’ was also a metaphor for an open mind – the keystone of the enlightened thinker.

New shaving technologies also played a part. The invention of cast steel in the mid-eighteenth century meant that sharper and longer-lasting blades were available, making shaving a less uncomfortable experience. As newspaper advertising expanded, so razormakers capitalised on this new vogue for shaving, offering not just new types of razors ‘on philisophical principles’, but also a range of other goods. These included ‘razor strops’ to keep your shiny new razor sharp, to other things such as face creams, shaving powders and scents. We tend to think of male pampering as a modern thing, but the Georgians got there first!

A century later, though, the beard was back with a vengeance! In fact, in the Victorian period, there was even a ‘beard movement’. The reasons for this are more certain. By the mid-nineteenth century, the British Empire was in full flower, and the power of the British military was a matter of pride at home. Some military regiments had begun to wear moustaches, and British men began to imitate this style, with all its attendant military, masculine associations. There were other factors too. This was the age of explorers heading out into untamed lands and living amongst wild nature. Such men were the heroes of their day. Often unable to shave ‘in the field’ they sported large beards, and to imitate this was to link yourself to their rugged masculinity.

But there was also a rediscovery of the beard as both a symbol of natural virility and masculinity, and even in health terms. Rather than being a form of excreta, some writers now extolled the virtues of the beard in stopping disease before it could get to the face and mouth! The beard as a visual symbol of innate manliness also made a comeback in this period, and many popular writers of the day – from Trevelyan to Dickens – not only supported the beard, but sported fine examples. (See Christopher Oldstone-Moore’s excellent article on the Victorian beard movement in the Victorian Studies journal, 2005)

Fashions for facial hair seemed to change more rapidly in the twentieth century. In the 10s and 20s the fashion was for moustaches. By the 40s and 50s, the clean-shaven look was partially favoured before stunning ‘badger beards’ made a comeback in the 60s and 70s. My father sported a particularly fine ginger example c. 1975! But these things do show that facial hair has a history of its own. It is linked to the way men have experienced their own gender and sexuality, and how society and cultural values have intervened in the construction of male appearance. I’ve just finished an academic article on beards and shaving in the eighteenth-century, and it’s been an interesting journey.