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A Cure for Balding

Joannes de Mediolanus’ 1528 cookbook is full of intriguing accounts of what food does to bodies and bodies do to food. Here, he prescribes onions as

  • an aphrodisiac
  • an antidote for dog bites
  • a tremendous cure for baldness
  • and warts
  • the opposite of a cognitive enhancer

(Spelling has been modernized.)

Onions sodden and stamped restore hairs again, if the place where the hairs were be rubbed therewith. This is of truth when the hair goeth away through stopping of the pores and corruption of the matter under the skin. For the onions open the pores and resolve the ill matter under the skin and draw good matter to the same place. And therefore, as Avicen saith, oft robbing with onions is very wholesome for bald men.

Wherefore the text concludeth that this rubbing with onions prepareth the beauty of the head: for hairs are the beauty of the head. 

For a farther knowledge of onions’ operation, witteth that they steer to carnal lust, provoke the appetite, bring color in the face. Mingled with honey they destroy warts, they engender thirst, they hurt the understanding (for they engender an ill gross humour), they increase spittle, and the juice of them is good for watering eyes and doth clarify the sight, as Avicen saith.

Farther note that onions, honey and vinegar stamped together is good for biting of a mad dog.

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DIY Periscopes

That’s clearly what these are, right? For the Boo Radleys of the Earth, who wish to benevolently (and conspicuously) spy on their neighbors.

(Photo taken 1/18/2012)

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Breasts–The Reaction Shot

I wrote some time ago, over at The Hairpin, about a ladies’ fashion in the seventeenth century for wearing dresses that exposed the breasts. Browing the Library of Congress yesterday, I found this:

The cartoon is by artist Richard Newton, who died at 21 in 1798, a full hundred years after this fashion took London by storm. The lorgnette-bearing gent’s leer, alongside the excited caption (complete with exclamation point!) suggests to me that by this time, the seventeenth century had been rejected for its libertine excesses, and that this fashion had come to be regarded with the puritanical (and seamy) astonishment we feel for it, e’en now.

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Taglines for HUGO

Hugo: We’ll shove our metaphors down your throat through your eyes.

Hugo: Frenchifying Dickens because it’s prettier that way. (Don’t worry–everyone still talks British!)

Hugo: Orphans are sad, but old men who never got recognized for their filmmaking are sadder.

Hugo: People want to work, but they don’t want to be cogs in a machine, except they sort of do, because machines are cool. Whatever. MOVIES.

Hugo: We Make Your Dreams, So Thank Us. (No, Seriously.)

Hugo: The Robot Totally Doesn’t Matter.

Hugo: We made the girl a writer at the very last second because writing (like her) is an afterthought.

Hugo: Dogs Are Inconvenient.

Hugo: Did you ever hear that story about the first moviegoers who saw a train coming toward them and screamed? It’s neat.

Hugo: Turns out the girl was an extra part. Oops.

Hugo: Victor, H.G. and Jules agree: “all of the steampunk, none of the calories!”

Hugo: Yes, that is Sacha Baron Cohen. And yes, you do have lots of time to think about that, because not a whole lot is happening.

HUGO: We have really beautiful shots and want to tell you how we got them, because that is the interesting part.

Hugo: The tragedy of how film was melted down, not for important war purposes, but FOR HIGH-HEELED SHOES FOR VAIN WOMEN.

Hugo: Not Acting. Reenacting

Hugo: An undocumented worker with two jobs risks arrest to repair an old man’s mythically bruised ego.

Hugo: nine hundred shots of gears, ninety shots of blue eyes, nine minutes of story. 9-9-9!!

Hugo: Don’t Let Film Die Another Death Just Because We’re In Another War.

Hugo: Go for beautiful steampunk cinematography, stay for Martin Scorsese’s Song of Himself.

Hugo: The Death of Self-Referential Art.

Hugo: War Veteran Orphans Are The Bad Guys.

Hugo: Old Movies Are Better Than New Movies.