POSTSCRIPTS TO HISTORY

LINCOLN’S PURPLE PERIOD, OR, WE’RE GLAD HE GOT IT OUT OF HIS SYSTEM

Abraham Lincoln is generally considered to have been the best writer of all our Presidents. But like any other writer, it took him a while to get there. As an example, we offer the following excerpt from remarks he delivered to the Illinois House of Representatives on December 26, 1839, a speech that derived its emotional character from the dire conviction that Van Buren Democrats might ultimately bring ruin to the Republic. In his conclusion, the thirty-year-old Whig became nearly unhinged:

“I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption, in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing, while on its bosom are riding like demons on the waves of Hell, the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare resist its destroying course, with the hopelessness of their effort ; and knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to bejust; it shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and alone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. …”

FLAGRANT MISUSE OF FLAG FLOGGED

The cover of our February, 1977, issue inspired, amoner others, the following letter from the Honorable Thomas F. Butt, probate judge of the Thirteenth Chancery Court of the State of Arkansas:

“Surely, surely, your make-up staff reversed the negative on the reproduction photo of Speaker Joe Cannon. Surely ‘Uncle Joe’ was not left-handed; surely, the national flag behind the speaker was not incorrectly hung, in actuality. Properly hung, the starred union of the flag should be at its upper right quarter rather than in the upper left quarter as shown in the photo. I suspect this letter will be about the 4,004th such communication inviting your attention to this apparent error.”

Although we received considerably fewer than 4,004 such letters, there were, indeed, many of them. Actually, we can provide a bit of information that most people apparently do not know (and that we did not know until we looked into it): before 1942, there was no uniform official code for the proper display of the flag. Until then, within Congress and out (as the photograph on pages 74-75 of this issue will demonstrate), the national emblem tended to be hung every which way, with few people being overly concerned about it. (Note, however, that if the flag in the Cannon photograph were turned counterclockwise to hang horizontally, the field of stars would be in its accustomed position.) Whether “Uncle Joe” normally held the gavel in his left hand is not known, but to corroborate our conviction that the picture on our cover was not reversed, we point out that his coat is buttoned in the manner that has been fashionable among men for generations.

HAIR-RAISING ANTIQUITY

In “Who Invented Scalping?” an article in our April, 1977. issue, James Axtell argued that—contrary to recent revisionist notions—Europeans did not teach the Indians how to scalp. The Indians, he said, had learned it all by themselves and had practiced it long before Europeans inflicted themselves on this innocent continent. Additional evidence to support Mr. Axtell’s theory has since come to us from Douglas Owsley and Hugh Berryman, anthropologists at the University of Tennessee, who furnished us with the photograph above and a description of what happened to the skull’s former owner:

“The human skull shown in the picture is that of an adult male American Indian who was scalped. The bones of this individual [who died in about A.D. 1300] were recovered during an archaeological excavation of the Arnold site in Williamson County, Tennessee. … Cuts in the bone (visible in the photograph) extend across the forehead in the approximate location of the hairline. Two or three strokes with a sharp stone knife were all that was required.

“In the historic period, and likely the prehistoric as well, certain tribes in the southeastern United States considered the scalp symbolic of an individual’s soul. Loss of the scalp had supernaturally dangerous consequences to the victim’s eternal future unless his death was avenged by friends and relatives.”

MATERIA HYSTERICA

The twitches, convulsions, and erratic behavior of the seventeenth-century Salem. Massachusetts, erirls who accused their elders of witchcraft have been the subject of speculation for nearly three hundred years. It is still not known why they acted as they did, but theories continue to abound—including a unique recent one, which enjoyed a short vogue before it was shoveled into the dustbin of the unlikely.

The new theory was developed by Linda Caporeal, a graduate student in psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. In the April 2, 1976, issue of Science magazine, she argued that the Salem girls behaved in a crazed fashion because they had ingested ergot, a parasitic fungus that grows on rye, a staple in colonial New England. Convulsive ergotism, a condition caused by the long-term consumption of ergot, manifests itself in symptoms remarkably similar to those displayed by the afflicted Salem girls: hallucinations, vertigo, headaches, crawling sensations on the skin, and painful muscular contractions resulting in vomiting, diarrhea, and convulsions.

To support this theory, Caporeal marshaled considerable evidence. The 1691 growing season, she pointed out, had been warm and rainy, ideal conditions for the parasite’s infestation of the rye crop. All the afflicted girls probably were fed rye obtained from the same fields to the west of Salem Village. And, Caporeal noted, the hysteria ended abruptly after the harvesting of the 1692 rye crop, which had grown in a season of drought and hence was less susceptible to ergot infestation.

Caporeal’s dramatic notion was hardly advanced, however, before it was refuted. In the past several months a number of articles have appeared in learned journals taking her to task. It seems that convulsive ergotism occurs only in individuals suffering vitamin A deficiencies. In healthy people, the fungus does not produce hallucinations and hysteria; it produces a form of gangrene. Since vitamin A is found primarily in fish and dairy products, and since Salem Village was a farming community bordering a major seaport, it seems unlikely that adolescent girls from reasonably prosperous families would have suffered this deficiency. Had ergotism been the devil’s tool in the small New England village, putrefaction, not execution, would more likely have resulted.

PRONOUNCE IT “PEWTOWN,” SON

Grace Lichtenstein’s article, “Pronounce it Callaradda, Son” (October, 1976), inspired a letter from Mr. J. Leslie Tooher of Schenectady, New York:

“Your article states that Pueblo, Colorado, is pronounced ‘Pee-eh-blo’ by residents. This comes as a surprise. I was born in Pueblo around the turn of the century and it was my home until 1923. To my best recollection, I never heard it pronounced any way other than ‘Pwe’blo’ or ‘Pye’blo’ (both ‘e’s being short). Moreover, it is interesting to recall that among the city’s industries, there were then two smelters and a steel-producing plant. When the wind was ‘right,’ the smelter-smoke, soot, and other stenches made life in general unbearable, thus the appellation of ‘Pewtown’ enjoyed wide popularity.”

RELIEF FOR TIRED EYES

A number of readers have written us to celebrate the fact that we have lately taken to running our articles all in a piece, rather than “jumping” them to the back of the issue. Apparently many people appreciate not being forced to rummage around in the lost-and-found region of the back pages, and we plan to continue this new policy whenever possible.

THE FOUNDING PHYSICIANS

The article on the founding of the Johns Hopkins medical complex that ran in our February, 1976, issue generated some interesting mail. Dr. Ronald Rosenthal of Nashville, Tennessee, writes:

“On page 30 you have a reproduction of the famous portrait by John Singer Sargent of the four founding physicians of this great institution. Unfortunately, you have Dr. Halsted and Dr. Osier reversed; in the portrait Dr. Halsted is standing directly to the left of Dr. Welch, and Dr. Osier is sitting directly to the right of Dr. Kelly. You are calling Osier Halsted, and Halsted Osier. Friends of mine at Johns Hopkins say that during the painting of the portrait Mr. Sargent became so incensed at Dr. Halsted over one thing or another that when it came time to paint Halsted’s picture, he used inferior pigments so that Halsted’s face would fade more rapidly than the others. I have no idea whether this story is true or not; certainly in the portrait Halsted is in somewhat of a shadow as compared to the other three.”

Dr. Stephen Lehrer of New York City called our attention to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association which indicates that the unfortunate Dr. Halsted was not cured of his narcotic addiction before he came to Baltimore. In the late 1890’s Dr. Osier wrote a private biographical sketch of his colleague. In it he said:

“When we recommended [Halsted] as full surgeon to the Hospital in 1890,1 believed, and Welch did too, that he was no longer addicted to morphia. He had worked so well and so energetically that it did not seem possible that he could take the drug and do so much.

“About six months after the full position had been given, I saw him in a severe chill, and this was the first intimation I had that he was still taking morphia. Subsequently I had many talks about it and gained his full confidence. He had never been able to reduce the amount to less than three grains daily; on this he could do his work comfortably and maintain his excellent physical vigor (for he was a very muscular fellow). I do not think that anyone suspected him, not even Welch.”

But Osler appended a footnote to this many years later that suggests that Halsted did finally triumph over his addiction:

“Subsequently, 10 Jan. 1898, he got the amount down to 1 ½ grains, and of late years (1912) has possibly got on without it. ”