[HN Gopher] The pills that cured all ills; James Morison the Hyg...
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       The pills that cured all ills; James Morison the Hygeist (2014)
        
       Author : antognini
       Score  : 21 points
       Date   : 2024-12-13 02:35 UTC (20 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thelondondead.blogspot.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thelondondead.blogspot.com)
        
       | Terr_ wrote:
       | > In England a quack never fails unless he is untrue to himself,
       | that is, if he be not sufficiently outrageous in his professions;
       | let him promise and persevere in promising the impossible - let
       | him screw his courage to that point and he'll not fail; the
       | yearly sum in advertisements alone by some of those venders of
       | nostrums (the value of which they assert, and truly, is unknown
       | and incredible) must be immense. [...]
       | 
       | > - Henry Wood - "Change for the American Notes in Letters from
       | London to New York by an American Lady." (1843)
       | 
       | I feel this phenomenon is still going strong over a century later
       | and an ocean away.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Berkeley gave up philosophy to expound the virtues of tarwater:
         | 
         | https://brill.com/view/journals/esm/25/2/article-p173_4.xml?...
         | (article at https://www.pismin.com/10.1163/15733823-00252p04)
         | 
         | https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4d89/d61ba488a87c62107ebbeb...
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_water
        
       | sevensor wrote:
       | The striking thing about this is how widespread a problem
       | constipation was and how desperate people were to solve it. What
       | were people eating in Victorian England? Gristle and paste,
       | sprinkled with arsenic?
        
         | nighthawk454 wrote:
         | No, no, the arsenic was in the wallpaper. Plenty of other
         | things in the food like alum (which causes constipation
         | actually)
        
         | trillic wrote:
         | Not fruits and vegetables. Lots of processed grain, boiled
         | meat, suet, porridge. Add in an obsession with tea, a diuretic,
         | with poor drinking water and I'm not surprised.
         | 
         | I'd bet today most people in the US are under-hydrated and
         | don't eat enough fiber.
        
         | xattt wrote:
         | If you ever watch taped broadcasts of 1970s and 1980s daytime
         | television, half of the ads are for some form of laxative while
         | the other half was for some meat-heavy or sugar-laden ultra-
         | processed food.
        
       | ninalanyon wrote:
       | But what were they made of?
        
         | antognini wrote:
         | I don't think it is known for sure, but some of the suspected
         | ingredients are rhubarb, myrrh, and gamboge (which is toxic).
        
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       (page generated 2024-12-13 23:01 UTC)