Tag: history

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Silphium

Posted on by Jinavie

Although sex was devised by Mother Nature to promote procreation, humans have been trying to separate the baby-making aspect of sex from the pure carnal pleasure it gives for a very long time. The Romans are known to have used a fennel-like herb called the silphium as a form of birth control. They discovered that the leaves of this plant could be ground up and made into a resin pill, which seemed to reduce the likelihood of women becoming pregnant. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder recorded that one could use the resin as a pill or pessary to promote menstrual discharge, suggesting pregnancy has not occurred.

News of this medicine spread throughout the empire and there was massive demand for it. The plant grew exclusively on a narrow coastal area in present-day Libya and was impossible to cultivate. This meant settlements in this area could trade the plant at a very high price. It is said silphium was “worth its weight in denarii (silver coins)”. Its economic importance is signified in coins from Cyrene (an ancient North African city where silphium was produced) depict the silphium plant or seed. In fact, one theory of the origin of the heart symbol is the shape of the silphium seed pod. Overharvesting of the plant, the fact that it could not be cultivated and other factors such as changing environments and overgrazing ultimately led to the extinction of this plant and scholars still debate the exact identity of the plant.

Although there are records that indicate silphium was used as a contraceptive and abortifacent (substance that induces abortion), it is unclear as to how effective it was. Related plants such as wild carrots have shown to have abortifacent properties in some studies and there certainly are a vast list of plants that could potentially harm or terminate a pregnancy. Regardless of the potency, the heavy trade of the plant and its intended use points towards the fact that the concept of contraception is not new to human civilisations. It is interesting to think that we are the only species to actively want to reduce the risk of making a baby during sex, which is the original purpose of sex.

Posted in Philosophy

Ouroboros

Posted on by Jinavie

The Ouroboros is a symbol that depicts a serpent or a dragon biting its own tail, forming a ring. It is the symbol of cyclicality – something that is in a constant cycle of rebirth through the three steps of creation, maintenance and destruction.

The concept of a serpent devouring itself likely stems from the ancient belief that a snake shedding its skin is the act of leaving an old, inferior body to be reborn into a better, new body. The ancient Greeks explained that the Ouroboros connects its beginning (mouth) and end (tail) to form a metaphor for the link between life and death. By forming a circle, the Ouroboros has no beginning and no end; it is an infinite, linear path that cycles endlessly. Because of this, the Ouroboros is also the symbol of infinity, immortality and the cycle of time. An alternate ancient explanation for the Ouroboros is that because it eats itself, it will ultimately end up as nothing.

The Ouroboros was an important symbol in medieval alchemy. Alchemists used the symbol “O” to represent the Ouroboros. To the alchemists, the Ouroboros was an entity that did not place importance in the two natural processes of creation and destruction, but the often-neglected third force – maintenance. This neutral process is the connection between the start and end of anything. Alchemists knew that in any chemical reaction, the process is just as important as the starting ingredients and the final product. The Ouroboros also represented “everything” and “perfection” to alchemists as it connected its own beginning and end. Because of this, the Ouroboros came to represent the Philosopher’s stone.

Perhaps the most relevant application of the Ouroboros to us is the concept of rebirth and cycling. Nothing in nature is permanent. Matter changes states, chemicals react and species evolve. We too are never permanent. There is always room for change – to destroy what you do not like about yourself, create something better and then maintain that state until the next cycle comes. As much as it is important to know to love who you are, it is vital that you continuously recycle, refine and develop yourself to become the person that you are truly happy to call “me”.

Posted in History & Literature

Halitosis

Posted on by Jinavie

There is a technical word for everything in medicine. A great example is halitosis. In the late 19th century, Dr. Joseph Lawrence and Jordan Wheat Lambert developed a new surgical antiseptic. Finding that the target market was too small, they distilled the new product and advertised it as a floor cleaner and also a cure for gonorrhoea. But sales were still not great and they came up with a brilliant marketing scheme. Their company Listerine began advertising the dangers of “chronic halitosis” as a serious health problem in the 1920s. People were unfamiliar with this condition and instantly associated it with some form of major illness. They were desperate to prevent themselves from getting it, or to treat it if they already had it. Lucky for them, Listerine came to the rescue with their product that treated chronic halitosis.

Of course, halitosis is simply the medical term for bad breath. Although bad breath is not an actual disease, Listerine was extremely successful in convincing the population that it was a problem and was able to market their product this way. Listerine’s campaign was so successful that bad breath is still considered extremely offensive and socially unacceptable, making mouthwash almost a “necessity”. To quote advertising scholar James B. Twitchell, “Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis”. They had successfully invented a problem that their product could solve – creating not only supply for the product, but also the demand. This strategy has since been employed by countless advertising schemes to help sell products.

Posted in History & Literature

The Oldest Trick

Posted on by Jinavie

Magic has been a great source of entertainment for the masses for thousands of years. Across the globe, under many guises, magicians have amazed audiences with seemingly impossible “miracles” using misdirection and clever trickery. The oldest recorded trick – that is to say one performed purely for entertainment and not under the guise of religion or supernatural power – dates back to ancient Egypt.

According to the Westcar Papyrus, a magician by the name of Dedi was famous for his miraculous feats. The Papyrus tells the story of how Dedi was called to put a show on for King Khufu. He proceeded to decapitate a goose, then reattach the head, bringing the bird back to life. He repeats the magic with a duck, then with a bull, wrenching its head off then bringing it back to life by reattaching the head. For his amazing performance, he is rewarded by being allowed to live in the palace. This trick is still practised by magicians to this day, thus making it the longest performed trick in history.

Posted in History & Literature

Prostitution

Posted on by Jinavie

They say that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. The job sure lives up to its reputation – the first recorded incidence of paying money for sex is in 2400BC, where prostitution is recorded among a list of professions in ancient Sumer. Of course, there is no proof of it being literally the “oldest” profession, because the money (or any currency) to pay for sex must have come from somewhere else. Evidence of prostitution can be found in almost every other ancient civilisations, including the ancient Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Jews, Aztecs, Korean, Chinese and Japanese. It is also heavily referenced in the Bible, suggesting that it was a widely spread profession.

As unnatural as the act of paying for sex may seem, prostitution has been recorded in animals as well. In 1998, a marine biologist named Fiona Hunter was studying the mating behaviour of Adélie penguins. She observed that the penguins would couple up and begin building a nest for their future offspring. The females would go out alone to look for pebbles at the beach. But then, she noticed that some female penguins would not head to the beach to collect the pebbles. Instead, they approached another male penguin (usually one that was single) and engage in courtship rituals to lure them into having sex. The female would then grab some pebbles and run off, while the male just let her go. Hunter concluded that this behaviour was indeed a material exchange for sexual pleasures.

Similar behaviour of offering food or grooming for sex has been observed in different primate species such as chimpanzees and crab-eating macaques. The most interesting study on this topic was that of training capuchin monkeys to use a currency. As soon as they learned that the silver discs could be used to purchase food, monkeys were seen “gifting” these silver discs to each other in exchange for sex. This kind of behaviour does not seem too unnatural if you consider that sex is a biological need (or at least a strong want), and sexual pleasure is, psychologically speaking, one of the strongest rewards.

Prostitution is generally deemed immoral and looked down upon, especially given the exploitation of women for their bodies and cheapening the act of making love. However, it should also be noted that throughout history, there are several cases of women using it as an opportunity to achieve something great. For example, Rahab was a harlot from Jericho in 1400BC. Back then, intelligent, independent women could not have much freedom as a married woman was treated as a slave to her husband. As a harlot, Rahab could live her own life and make her own decisions. When the city of Jericho was laid under siege by King Joshua, he sent in two spies to scout the area. Rahab hid these two men from the guards of the king of Jericho and showed them the secret passages of the city, ultimately allowing for Joshua to conquer the city with easy.

There is also the case of Theodora of Constantinople, who rose from being a harlot to an empress by seducing the Emperor Justinian, who made her a valued co-ruler of the empire. She then proceeded to use her power to crack down on the exploitation of women and protecting women’s rights.

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Posted in Science & Nature

Four Fs

Posted on by Jinavie

Biologists state that the driving force behind evolution can simply be summarised as four forces: fight, flight, feed and mate (“fuck”). These are known as the Four Fs. Evolution is described as the process by which species adapt to an environment through modifications in the genomes of successive generations. The Four Fs describe the adaptations most commonly seen in evolution; that is, the four things that species evolve in order to better adapt and survive their environment. For example, carnivores developed sharp teeth and claws to hunt better and herbivores developed faster legs to flee from their predators better. Nature is a vicious battleground where different species compete with each other for survival, and the Four Fs are the most powerful weapons of survival.

As much as we’d like to think that we are higher-order, civilised beings, human beings are still driven by the basic four forces that drive every other species in the world. Obviously, our bodies are well-adapted to these forces, such as our fight-or-flight drive activating in the face of danger to let us fight harder or run faster through adrenaline. Anyone can see that nature has done her job well by bestowing us the gift of satiety and orgasm to promote our feeding and mating. But what is interesting that the Four Fs go beyond our “natural evolution” to affect the evolution of our civilisation.

Consider this: what is the purpose of war? Since the dawn of time, mankind has spent a considerable amount of resources figuring how to most efficiently kill another group of people, or live in fear that other people will kill us. If we study the behaviour of chimpanzees (one of the few species other than us that wage warfare), we can see that their motivation is for food and sex (i.e. mating partners). This also applies to mankind and it is not a story of ancient times. It is well-known that raping and pillaging runs rampant during wars. Less than 800 years ago, a man named Genghis Khan was so successful in waging war that DNA evidence suggests that 0.5% of the world population are descended from him. Even in the present, countries wage war to secure natural resources to ensure that their people can eat, as the health of the economy directly correlates with the ability of people to put food on their plates. Almost every war essentially boils down to a fight for food.

Then what about sex? Like it or not, sex has been a tremendously influential force in history. From Cleopatra’s seduction of Caesar preventing Rome’s invasion of Egypt, to Henry VIII turning against the Catholic Church to marry Anne Boleyn, sex has been a timeless motivator for humanity. Although the consequences would not be as dramatic as those described, a significant proportion of our actions are also based on our primal desire to reproduce.

Of course, this is not always the truth and human beings are capable of acting on less wild motivators such as happiness and altruism. However, the next time you make a decision or see a conflict on the news, question this: how much of an impact did food and sex have to motivate that?

Posted in History & Literature

Merlion

Posted on by Jinavie

It is common to see creatures in mythology that are a combination of different animals. The unicorn, griffin, chimera, basilisk, hippocampus… The list goes on and on. But perhaps the more interesting combinations are those between humans and animals. Centaurs are a cross between man and horse, harpies are a cross between woman and bird while mermaids and mermen are half-human, half-fish. Although these examples are all from ancient mythologies, there are more recent examples such as the merlion.

The merlion – top-half lion, bottom-half fish – is the national symbol of Singapore. This symbol was designed by Alec Fraser-Brunner in 1964 to promote the name of Singapore. Since then, the merlion has been used frequently in Singaporean art such as in statues and souvenirs. Although the concept of merlions have been found in certain ancient Indian and Hellenistic cultures (not to mention the “sea lion” which is an actual animal), it is almost synonymous with Singapore in modern times.

How did this bizarre combination of a lion and fish come to be? The union of the lion and fish is a symbol for Singapore’s history. Singapore originates from a small fishing village called Temasek – which means sea town in Javanese. This is symbolised by the fish tail, which forms the “root” of the icon. The lion symbolises modern Singapore, which gains its name from Singapura, which means lion city. Furthermore, Singapore is an island nation – a combination of land and water. The core culture of Singapore is descended from Asia via the land mass of South-East Asia, while its affluence and modernisation came from the sea via trade routes. Singapore is one of the most famous and important trade ports in modern history as it controls the passage from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This allowed the country to thrive economically from the flourishing trade, being dubbed one of the Four Asian Tigers (along with South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan – all four countries achieved exceptionally high growth rates from the 1960s to the 1990s).

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Posted in Science & Nature

Blue

Posted on by Jinavie

Why is the sky blue? This is because of a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering where molecules and tiny particles in the atmosphere scatter direct sunlight. Light scatters at different amounts depending on its frequency. Because of this, blue and violet light (short-wavelength light) scatters more than the other colours, causing the sky to be blue. But during sunrise and sunset, the light enters the atmosphere from an angle, causing blue and green light to be so scattered that you cannot see it. This produces a red or orange colour.

The deep ocean is blue for a similar reason; red and yellow light is absorbed while blue becomes scattered by the water. However, the colour of the sea is also largely dependent on the colour of the sky at the time, as it reflects the sky. The colour of the sea may change due to algae in the water, which can make it green, brown or even red.

A similar form of light scattering called the Tyndall effect is responsible for blue eyes, caused by a turbid layer in the iris. The Tyndall effect can also be seen in a glass of water mixed with milk, or flour suspended in water.

Blue has one of the most interesting histories compared out of all the colours. In the ancient world, blue was considered a lowly colour, with some cultures such as the ancient Greeks not even considering it a “real colour” such as red, black, white and yellow. In fact, the Greeks did not have a word for the colour blue; it was merely called bronze colour. The ancient Romans considered blue the colour of barbarians. The Romans stereotyped blue-eyed women as promiscuous and blue-eyed men as aggressive and foolish. Only the ancient Egyptians liked the colour blue, as they considered it a colour of divinity. They made blue dye from copper.

Perhaps the hatred for the colour blue was due to the difficulty of making blue dyes. This all changed nearer to medieval times as artists and dyers successfully created blue dyes from minerals such as lapis lazuli, azurite and cobalt. Blue became the colour of the Virgin Mary. Artists began painting the sky and the sea as blue, which were previously depicted using black, white and green. Nobles began wearing blue instead of the traditional red and purple, and dyers followed this trend by devising better blue dyes with a variety of shades.

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This led to the thriving of blue dye industries in European cities such as Amiens, Toulouse and Erfurt, where blue dye was made from a plant called woad. Although this was a very lucrative business, blue was still a very expensive and difficult colour to use, with the dying process involving soaking the woad in human urine (which contains ammonia) to extract the colour.

Blue became a much more accessible colour in the 18th century when flourishing trade brought indigo from the Americas. Indigo was much easier to use, more concentrated and produced a richer, more stable blue than woad. As blue became more and more popular, synthetic blue dyes were discovered – one of the most famous being Prussian blue which was discovered in Berlin in 1709.

Throughout its history, perhaps the product that best promoted the status of blue as a colour is the denim jean (dyed with indigo blue), invented by Levi Strauss in 1873. 

In modern times, blue is an extremely popular colour that is widely used in art, fashion, architecture etcetera. However, the one field that blue has not yet been able to set foot in is food. Researches show that the colour blue drastically decreases a person’s appetite as it is associated with poison in the natural world.

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Posted in History & Literature

Destroyer Of The Environment

Posted on by Jinavie

In the history of mankind, who could be considered to have done the most damage to the environment? Although many names may pop up, no one comes close to the destruction that resulted from one man: Thomas Midgley Jr. While working for General Motors in 1916 as a chemist, Midgley discovered that adding iodine to kerosene reduced “knocking” in engines – where pockets of air/fuel mixture explode in the engine. The effects of knocking on engines range from negligible to destructive. However, he found that the iodine only reduced knocking slightly. To improve on this, he tried adding different elements to fuel until he found the magic solution – lead. And so, the leaded petroleum was born.

Leaded petrol was an instant commercial success and it became the most popular choice of fuel. This resulted in cars, buses, planes and almost all motor vehicles pumping out billions of tons of lead into the atmosphere for over seventy years. Unfortunately, lead is a highly toxic metal that causes symptoms such as muscular weakness, pain, nausea, vomiting, fatigue and madness. Lead poisoning is particularly dangerous to children as it can cause irreversible retardation of physical and mental development. Even though the effects of lead poisoning were recognised since the late 19th century (with many workers and even Midgley himself suffering from it), it was only after the 1970s when fuel companies stopped adding lead to their fuel. Thanks to Midgley’s idea of adding lead to petrol, who knows how many children would have suffered a crippling illness due to lead poisoning.

But Midgley’s “accomplishments” did not stop there. In the late 1920s, Midgley decided to tackle the problem of using sulfur dioxide, propane and ammonia as refrigerants (possibly out of guilt over the whole lead fiasco), which were effective but prone to combusting or exploding. Within three days, he developed an alternative – dichlorofluromethane. This amazing gas was inert, non-toxic and did not have the risk of exploding. It was the first of the chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), which was named “freons”. We now know that freons are responsible for destroying the ozone layer.

In 1940, Midgley contracted polio, causing him to be disabled. Poliomyelitis causes paralysis due to the destruction of motor neurons. Being an inventor, Midgley devised a clever device that would help him off the bed using pulleys and strings. Unfortunately, one day the invention twisted in a certain way, leading him to become entangled in the ropes and being killed of strangulation.

Such was the sad life of Thomas Midgley Jr, who environmental historian J. R. McNeill dubbed “[someone who] had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth’s history”.

Posted in History & Literature

Rod Of Asclepius

Posted on by Jinavie

There are many symbols that represent the field of medicine such as a red cross or a stethoscope. However, one of the most famous symbols representing medicine and healthcare is the rod of Asclepius. This symbol is used in the logos of numerous medical associations and army medical corps. Those who do know of the rod may describe it as a staff with two wings and two snakes intertwining on it, but this is a common misconception. That symbol is called the caduceus and is actually the symbol of Hermes – the Greek god of messengers, merchants, markets, the high roads, gamblers and thieves. The misconception is very common and many medical associations use the caduceus as their symbol instead of the correct Rod of Asclepius.

The Caduceus

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The actual rod of Asclepius is much simpler looking, as it is simply a stick with one serpent intertwining it. The reason that it is associated with medicine and healthcare is that it was wielded by the Greek god Asclepius – the god of medicine and healing. Asclepius was the son of Apollo and had a particular interest in the human body and the healing of ailments. The ancient Greeks often referred to Asclepius in the field of medicine. In fact, the famous Hippocratic Oath originally began with the line “I swear by Apollo the Physician and by Asclepius and by Hygieia and Panacea and by all the gods…” (Apollo was the god of many things and medicine was one of his minor domains).

The rod of Asclepius

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So why does the rod of Asclepius have a serpent wrapped around it? In Greek mythology, it is said that Asclepius commanded many non-venomous snakes which he used in healing rituals. The snakes would crawl around the temple, living freely among the physicians and patients. A certain species of snake called the Aesculapian snake is considered to be the model for this story. The reason why the Greeks chose the snake as the animal of healing may be because snakes shed their skin periodically – symbolising rebirth and fertility. 

Another possible root of the symbol may be the traditional treatment for a certain parasitic infection. The Guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis) is a parasite that lives under the skin, digging itself out through a painful blister when mature. As the blisters burn, the patient immerses the area in cold water to soothe it. The worm detects the change in temperature and releases its larva, completing its life cycle. The traditional treatment was to slowly pull the worm out of the skin, entwine it around a stick and leave it for a period of hours to weeks until it would be completely removed. The Greeks may have taken this image (of the worm wrapped around a stick) and applied it to the rod of Asclepius.