Which diseases were the most glamorous?

Yes, yes, I know. Disease isn’t glamorous. You know that, and I know that. But tell that to the people in other centuries. Even though most diseases were regarded in history much the way they are today, some ailments had cachet.

So which ones could theoretically allow the sufferer to convalesce attractively in a day bed?

Gout. A very painful type of acute arthritis brought on by excess consumption of rich foods and alcohol. Gout was called “the disease of kings” because it was something only wealthy people had—they were the only ones who could afford such delicacies. If you had gout, you were obviously a privileged person. And thus, glamorous.

Consumption. This was what they used to call tuberculosis—a deadly and deeply unpleasant disease. But how many stories, paintings, and operas have there been in which our heroine died from consumption? Plenty. In fact, consumption was called “the romantic disease.” That’s massively glamorous.

Melancholy. Better known as depression. Theories on its causes ranged from demonic possession to an excess of what was called “black bile” (which was thought to be produced by the spleen). Starting in the 16th century, melancholy was actually seen as a desirable thing because it marked the sufferer as especially sensitive and thoughtful, and often, more creative. Very glamorous indeed.

The Vapors.  Not technically a disease, more of a symptom. And curiously, the vapors were always suffered by women. Because, you know, the “fairer sex” was just more prone to dainty fits and fainting spells. Fever, fatigue, anxiety, and PMS, among other things, could all be ascribed to the vapors. The classic Victorian image of a woman with the vapors is one in which she’s swooning on a couch. How much more glamorous can you get?

On the flip side, men often used the vapors as a diagnosis for women who were headstrong, didn’t obey their husbands, or were somehow “too emotional.” Which is not just unglamorous, it’s also misogynist crap.

Your hot dead guy for Friday

Billy Mitchell

Some people know his name only from the movie, The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, starring Gary Cooper (an EXTREMELY hot dead guy). But Billy Mitchell is arguably the father of modern air power. As a member of the newly formed U.S. Air Service during World War I, he saw the stalemates caused by trench warfare and believed that air power could break those stalemates. He advocated the use of bombers to weaken enemy forces by destroying their positions and supply lines.

His superiors didn’t quite share his enthusiasm for strategic air power. He criticized the top military brass for being short-sighted, which didn’t exactly endear him to people. Then, after two Navy accidents involving naval aircraft, he took his rants public. Newspaper reporters quoted him as saying, “Those accidents are the result of the incompetency, the criminal negligence, and the almost treasonable administration of our national defense by the Navy and War Departments.” He was served with court-martial papers and was ultimately found guilty of insubordination.

Mitchell resigned in 1926 and died ten years later. But his ideas about the superiority of air power—and the limits of sea power—would prove to be eerily prophetic fifteen years later with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The man wasn’t just handsome, he was also ahead of his time.

Two more hot dead guys

John Donne

I don’t know that I consider him to be hot, really, but he has a very nice face and he wrote some very lovely poems. Anyone who’s ever taken a college-level English class has probably read something by John Donne. One of his most famous works is “Meditation 17” from a collection called Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. This is the poem with the lines, “No man is an island” and “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” It inspired Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, written more than 300 years after Donne’s death. And if they ever decide to cast a period film with Donne as one of the characters, I think Robert Downey Jr. should play him.

Voltaire

I’m not a fan of the hair. But other than that, Voltaire, born François-Marie d’Arouet, was a pretty handsome fella. He was a writer and philosopher who was well known in French high society for his clever bon mots. But his particular brand of snark wasn’t appreciated by all. His habit of loudly criticizing the goverment, the royal family, the Catholic church, and prominent members of society, got him into trouble a lot. He did a stint at the Bastille, followed by exile to England, followed by various other bans and exiles throughout his life. Quite the dashing troublemaker, non?

More hot dead guys

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Yowza! If I had known when I was in high school that Hawthorne looked like this, I might have been inclined to finish reading The House of the Seven Gables like I was supposed to. But this portrait was painted many years before he wrote the book. When he was older he grew a mustache and grew out his hair, per the style of the times, and it didn’t really suit him. What a shame.

Joseph Lister

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Lister, a Scottish surgeon, for keeping us from dying from infected wounds. In the 1860s, around the same time that Louis Pasteur was writing about how microbes caused decay and fermentation in produce, Lister theorized that micro-organisms were responsible for infection in human tissue. He started using carbolic acid to clean his surgical equipment as well as his patients’ wounds. Result: the number of his patients who died from infection dropped by 67%. Surgeons throughout Europe and the US adopted his practices, leading to much lower rates of mortality. This hot doctor really knew his stuff.

By the way, Lister didn’t invent Listerine, the antiseptic mouthwash. But it was named in his honor, which I think is a nice tip of the hat to him.

Hot guys in history

Many people have written about historical hotties in blogs and other websites, and now it’s my turn. I will post frequently on this subject. And I’ll be sure to give some attention to the hot chicks of history as well.

For now, though, here’s a sampling of hot dead guys, in no particular order:

The Duke of Wellington

What a stud. It’s said that during the Napoleonic Wars, he and Napoleon enjoyed the company of the same French and Belgian prostitutes. And according to some of those ladies, the duke was much better in the sack than his Corsican opponent. I find this to be a particularly tantalizing tidbit of information. And it’s a good thing I can’t travel to 1815…because I would have kept him so busy he never would have made it to Waterloo.

Alexander Hamilton

By far one of the most attractive founding fathers (to be fair, though, most of them weren’t lookers so there wasn’t much competition in that department). Unfortunately he liked his women stupid—his wife, Kitty, was a lovely woman but he especially appreciated the fact that she wasn’t an intellectual powerhouse. And he had affairs. Still, I’d be happy to play dumb for such a handsome fellow New Yorker.

Eamon de Valera

I have a weakness for Irish men. I can’t help myself. So Mr. de Valera gets bonus points for being Irish (well, half Irish, actually—his father was Spanish). He was one of the heavy hitters in the fight for Irish independence from Great Britain. Eventually he served as Taoiseach (prime minister) and later as president of Ireland. I wonder how many Irish lasses swooned over him back in the day.

George Mallory

Possibly the first guy to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, way back in 1924, but we’ll never know for sure. I like to think he did reach it before he died on his way back down the mountain. I read a biography of him and I have to admit, I don’t think I would have liked the guy very much. He was obsessed with climbing to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. And he was a bit of a tease towards the women—and men—who thought he was the bee’s knees. That’s not very nice. But he was good to look at, and if he hadn’t died at the age of 27, I think he would have aged quite nicely indeed.

Dinner guests from history

I suspect this will probably morph into a history blog of some sort, with other random shit sprinkled in.

I can’t remember the first time I heard the question “If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to dinner, who would it be?” My first thought was probably, “Why would I want to invite a dead person to dinner? Wouldn’t that be a little creepy?”

But my answer to this question has remained the same over time: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Jesus, and Nikola Tesla.

Abraham Lincoln. I’m sure a lot of people include him as a dinner guest in response to this question, so he’d probably have a pretty booked schedule. Still, I would be thrilled to host a dinner with our 16th president in attendance. He loved to tell jokes, he had a bawdy sense of humor, and even though he was widely despised during his presidency, he was badass.

Theodore Roosevelt. See “badass” above. Man, I wish TR could be president again. Sure, there are things about him that I’m not fond of. The hunting, for one. And the warmongering. But he founded the Progressive party, which advocated all kinds of good stuff: women’s suffrage, election campaign reform, labor reform, and cutting the sleaze and corruption out of politics. He was a huge proponent of environmental conservation, expanded the number of national parks, and established the Antiquities Act for designating and preserving historical and archaeological landmarks. He was in favor of a national health system and universal insurance coverage way before the Clintons or anyone else. And there’s a stuffed animal named after him. What’s not to love?

Jesus. Regardless of whether he is indeed the Messiah, he must have been an extremely nice guy, and you just know he’d have tons of interesting stories. It would be nice to invite him to a dinner party where Judas isn’t invited. I think he would enjoy himself. Plus, he’d be able to help if we ran out of wine.

Nikola Tesla. One of the most underrated, underappreciated men ever to walk the earth. He was crazy brilliant. I mean, brilliant beyond anything most of us can possibly comprehend. You think Thomas Edison was a genius? Tesla ran circles around Edison. (Edison, by the way, really was one of history’s bigger assholes. More about that in a later post, perhaps.) In terms of electricity and electronics, Tesla invented, envisioned, or inspired pretty much everything we have today. It would be fun to have a mad scientist at the dinner table.

Now of course, I have no idea if all these guys would get along at a dinner party. Jesus would presumably get along well with everyone. And I suspect Abe and Teddy would get along very well. And Tesla was a charming gentleman, even though a bit odd, so I think he’d be able to hold his own.

Packing for a trip through time

I would love nothing more than to have a time machine so I could visit various places in different centuries, witness particular events, meet certain people, etc etc etc.

But how would you pack for such a trip? And what other preparations would be required? You’d have to prepare a lot in advance. And some destinations would require more planning than others.

For instance, if you wanted to visit Salem during the witch trials (although I’m not sure why you would want to), you’d obviously have to have clothing and equipment that were appropriate to the period. You’d have to make sure you had the right hairstyle, and you’d have to have a fluency in the English that was spoken during the 1690s. And of course you’d need a thorough understanding of the social and religions customs so you could blend in and not attract attention with any peculiar behavior. Because there’s one thing worse than being pegged as a tourist, and that’s being pegged as a witch.

In any case, here’s just some of what you would need to enjoy your trip safely.

Medicine for stomach aches and other gastrointestinal problems. Whether you’re having olives and wine in ancient Rome or enjoying a huge Victorian meal with 12 courses, you might have some digestive difficulties. Or you might find that the meat you ate was rotten or not completely cooked. And that can put a damper on any vacation.

Vaccinations against pretty much everything. No matter where you travel, you’re going to be in a cesspool of ick. Things like smallpox, yellow fever, measles, and typhus were everywhere. Sometimes you only worried about them during an epidemic, but in a lot of areas these diseases were endemic and posed a risk at any given time.

An arsenal of antibiotics. See “cesspool of ick” above. Plague, tuberculosis, typhoid, scarlet fever, cholera, and all kinds of other bacteria whirling around waiting to infect some unsuspecting time traveler.

(For the gentlemen) An era-appropriate condom or two. You’re on vacation, and you might meet some hot chicks that you’d like to get to know better. Maybe you always wanted to have your way with an 18th-century French courtesan. Or a Victorian trollop. Technically, you could leave all kinds of fair maidens with child without any repercussions. But condoms have been in use since the 16th century, so it would probably be a good idea to have one made that looks like the ones in use at your destination. Also, see above for “cesspool of ick.”

(For the ladies) Some sort of non-detectable birth control. Let’s say that image from “Pride and Prejudice” of Colin Firth in the wet shirt is etched on your retinas. If you were to visit England in 1810, you might find many gentlemen to your liking. In which case, you might want to get busy with some of them. But even if you’re visiting an age where condoms were in use, you can’t exactly whip one out from under your petticoats—women didn’t do that unless they were working girls. And you’d have a lot of explaining to do with a diaphragm or a sponge. Here’s where the Pill, an IUD, or hormonal injections come in handy, because they’re completely invisible. So you can have your way with your new friends, free of the risk of getting knocked up with a mixed-century child.

It would also be helpful to find some way of deadening your olfactory nerves during your trip. People and places were pretty ripe. The combo of body odor, human and animal waste, dead bodies, rotting food, and other unseemly aromas would probably be enough to make most of us keel over.

And you might want to leave your iPod, cell phone, and laptop at home.