Strychnine for snakebite. 1903.

If  you know about the effects of strychnine (or have read my earlier post about same) you will not really want to have it injected into your body. Many years ago having it injected was considered a cure for snakebite. It was believed that the two poisons were antagonistic and I suppose that they just kept injecting strychnine until it was victorious. I wonder how long it usually was before the patient died from strychnine poisoning that the snakebite poison was actually defeated.

The Sydney Morning Herald 18 Feb 1903 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article28243131

I was not really surprised to find that out as it seems to me that, until quite recently, anything that bought on a reaction in an afflicted person was considered to be a cure, even if they died shortly after. (See post ‘Strychnine and beer’ for its use in killing a person who merely had a cold!)

Poor William was treated with both strychnine and chloride of lime. Chloride of lime is a disinfectant and antiseptic and I hope that it was used only on the outside of him. Nothing would surprise me though.

The Courier Mail 8 Oct 1936 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article37022769

Young Cecil was lucky and his life was saved by a series of people slapping, scolding and shaking him for eight hours to keep him from succumbing to the effects of the bite he received. Poor kid. I’m not sure if being smacked around is the recommended treatment for snakebite but it has to be better than strychnine.

A wonder anyone survived…..

The more I look for washing copper articles the more surprised I am that anyone that had one on their property survived. Most of the articles about them are regarding women’s skirts catching fire and them being seriously burnt or killed, or small children falling into the boiling water and suffering terribly in hospital until they die. It is awful. The other thing that makes me surprised the humble copper didn’t kill everyone that came in contact with them is the other uses they were put to. They didn’t just use the for washing and bathing. They were also used for cooking.

The Argus Sat 15th Feb 1930http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4069001

I have found newspaper references to them being used for; drying grapes, purifying honey, making tomato sauce, brewing beer, boiling jars for preserving fruit and being used as illegal stills . Once they were finished using them for cooking there was a chance that they were again dragged out for a multitude of purposes such as; boiling rope to prevent it stretching, dyeing cloth, making a solution to kill ticks in a shed, and making an arsenic-based weed killer and many other things that would not make their way into my washing machine let alone my cooking pot!

You might think that they would have a few coppers, each used for different things, and I certainly hope so, but the only recipe I found that recommended having a single purpose copper was for the making of jam. There was a lot of published advice on how to keep your copper clean and after reading all the things that it could have been used for, no wonder they were so obsessed with keeping them clean!

Stuff we don’t know anymore.

I was lighting the fire last night and it started me thinking about all the skills and knowledge our quite recent ancestors had that we no longer think we have a need for. We have lost so many skills that were once considered common knowledge and rely so heavily on appliances for our day-to-day comfort that the human race is doomed when Skynet takes over…. joking….mostly… 😉

I keep some wood next to the fireplace in my grandmothers washing copper so I don’t have to go outside at night and brave the nocturnal scurriers in the woodpile. I have been asked what it is and when I say it is a copper I am usually met with a blank look. I suspect that most people under a certain age think we humans went straight from living in caves and bashing our loincloths on rocks, to laundries, hot running water and washing machines. Some people remember them being used, but not many.

When I first got the copper from my Dad the kids asked what it was and how it worked. I got halfway through the explanation before they wandered off, bored. The only thing I have to know is the difference between jeans and t-shirts and smalls and how to measure the washing goo.

The Advertiser- Wed 4th Nov 1903-http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5016579

Back then washing was such an involved chore, and judging by the sheer volume of articles in the same vein as the one on the right, apparently quite dangerous.

These days the hardest thing is lugging the basket up to the washing line and pegging it out. Although for me the hardest thing is remembering to bring it in before dark, when the damp and spiders move in.

In the time of my coppers heyday my grandmother would have either made her own soap, or bought bars of soap, and then shaved it into flakes. I complain when it’s a rainy day and I can’t hang things on the line to dry (like today). Imagine how much I would whinge if I had to go through all the things they did instead of dumping dirty clothes into the machine and coming back 20 minutes later to find them magically transformed into clean and damp clothes. My Grandmother would have carted wood for the fire to heat the water, carted water to fill the copper stirred the washing with a big stick in the copper over a fire,scrubbed with a scrubbing board, wring by hand (unless they had a mechanical wringer). Rinse, and repeat. Carting water back and forth all day long for washes and rinses and more washes. Exhausting. My Dad even remembers he and his brothers being bathed in it as children, so it really sounds like the copper was seldom cold.

All that effort for just one chore that we consider only slightly annoying today. Now we push the button and walk away knowing the clothes will be clean when we go back to it. Can you imagine all the things needed to be done just to keep a house going for just one week 100 years ago? Bill Bryson, in his wonderful book At Home, makes the point that once people had servants for everything, that they had servants like we have appliances today. I suppose that those people surrounded by servants lived like we do now. There are things that need to be done, but it gets done for you so the knowledge of the doing disappears.

I think we should all try to learn to do something the hard way, appliance free. I’m not telling you to do it that way forever…god no…when my washing machine died recently did I drag the copper out into the garden and start carting water? No. I called a man in to fix it. But when Skynet becomes self-aware and we all have to resort to living in caves again…..