Urine Wheels in Medieval Manuscripts: Discover the Curious Diagnostic Tool Used by Medieval Doctors

in Books, Health, History | April 25th, 2023

If you went to the doc­tor in late medieval Europe hop­ing to get a health com­plaint checked out, you could be sure of one thing: you’d have to hand over a urine sam­ple. Though it dates back at least as far as the fourth mil­len­ni­um BC, the prac­tice of uroscopy, as it’s called, seems to have been regard­ed as a near-uni­ver­sal diag­nos­tic tool by the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry. At Medievalists.net, you can read excerpts of the then-defin­i­tive text On Urines, writ­ten about that time by French roy­al physi­cian Gilles de Cor­beil.

When a skilled physi­cian exam­ines a patien­t’s urine, de Cor­beil explains, “health or ill­ness, strength or debil­i­ty, defi­cien­cy, excess, or bal­ance, are deter­mined with cer­tain­ty.” Urine “dark­ened by a black cloudi­ness, and mud­died with sed­i­ment, if pro­duced on a crit­i­cal day of an ill­ness, and accom­pa­nied by poor hear­ing and insom­nia, por­tends a flux of blood from the nose”; depend­ing on oth­er fac­tors, “the patient will die or recov­er.”

Urine that looks livid near the sur­face could indi­cate a vari­ety of con­di­tions: “a mild form of hemitri­teus fever; falling sick­ness; ascites; syn­ochal fever; the rup­ture of a vein; catarrh, stran­gury; an ail­ment of the womb; a flux; a defect of the lungs; pain in the joints; con­sump­tive phithi­sis; the extinc­tion of nat­ur­al heat.”

White urine could be a sig­nal of every­thing from drop­sy to lipothymia to hem­or­rhoids; wine-col­ored urine “means dan­ger to health when it accom­pa­nies a con­tin­ued fever; it is less to be feared if there is no fever.”

We may feel tempt­ed, 800 years lat­er, to dis­card all of this as pre-sci­en­tif­ic non­sense. But com­pared with oth­er diag­nos­tic meth­ods in the Mid­dle Ages, uroscopy had a decent track record. “Urine was a par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful tool for diag­nos­ing lep­rosy,” writes the Pub­lic Domain Review’s Kather­ine Har­vey, “because the imme­di­ate phys­i­o­log­i­cal cause was thought to be a mal­func­tion­ing liv­er — an organ which was cen­tral to the diges­tive process, and thus any prob­lems would be vis­i­ble in the urine.” Indeed, “new forms of urine analy­sis have devel­oped from these ancient tra­di­tions, and our present-day med­ical land­scape is awash with urine sam­ples.”

That’s cer­tain­ly a vivid image, and so are the “urine wheels” that accom­pa­ny Har­vey’s piece: elab­o­rate illus­tra­tions designed to help doc­tors iden­ti­fy the par­tic­u­lar hue of a giv­en sam­ple, each one col­ored with the best pig­men­ta­tion tech­niques of the time. But “there was no stan­dard­iza­tion,” notes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Sarah Laskow, “and while some book pub­lish­ers cre­at­ed detailed col­or­ing instruc­tions, the arti­sans who did the work didn’t always con­form to those spec­i­fi­ca­tions.” As much pres­tige as these vol­umes sure­ly exud­ed on the book­shelf, it was as true then as it is now that you become a good doc­tor not by read­ing man­u­als, but by get­ting your hands dirty.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed con­tent:

Behold the Medieval Wound Man: The Poor Soul Who Illus­trat­ed the Injuries a Per­son Might Receive Through War, Acci­dent or Dis­ease

How the Bril­liant Col­ors of Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made with Alche­my

Behold a 15th-Cen­tu­ry Ital­ian Man­u­script Fea­tur­ing Med­i­c­i­nal Plants with Fan­tas­ti­cal Human Faces

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Down­load 100,000+ Images From The His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, All Free Cour­tesy of The Well­come Library

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Why the Ancient Romans Had Better Teeth Than Modern Europeans

in Food & Drink, History | April 21st, 2023

The cas­es for trav­el­ing back in time and liv­ing in a past era are many and var­ied, but the case against doing so is always the same: den­tistry. In every chap­ter of human his­to­ry before this one, so we’re often told, every­one lived in at least a low-lev­el state of agony inflict­ed by tooth prob­lems, to say noth­ing of the unimag­in­able unsight­li­ness of their smiles. But as jus­ti­fied as we prob­a­bly are in laugh­ing at the pearly whites on dis­play in Hol­ly­wood peri­od pieces, the his­tor­i­cal record con­flicts with our belief that the fur­ther you go into the past, the worst every­one’s teeth: ancient Romans, as explained in the Told In Stone video above, actu­al­ly had bet­ter teeth than mod­ern Euro­peans.

That’s hard­ly a high bar to clear, a mod­ern Amer­i­can may joke. But then, the Unit­ed States today takes den­tal care to an almost obses­sive lev­el, where­as the cit­i­zens of the Roman Empire had prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing to work with by com­par­i­son. “The stan­dard, and often sole imple­ment employed to clean teeth was a tooth­pick,” says Told in Stone cre­ator Gar­rett Ryan. These “were paired with tooth pow­ders, which were rubbed over the teeth and gums with an enthu­si­as­tic fin­ger.” Ingre­di­ents includ­ed “pumice, pul­ver­ized bone, pow­dered glass, and crushed shell,” or some­times “sheep­’s sweat and the ash of a wolf’s head.” — all a far cry from any­thing offered on the tooth­paste aisle today.

“Bad breath was a chron­ic con­di­tion in the clas­si­cal world,” and “toothache seems to have been almost equal­ly preva­lent.” The treat­ment most com­mon­ly prac­ticed by Roman den­tists was extrac­tion, per­formed with­out anes­thet­ic. Yet only about a third of the pre­served skele­tons recov­ered from the ruins of Pom­peii and Her­cu­la­neum were miss­ing teeth, “and rel­a­tive­ly few had cav­i­ties.”  Though many soci­eties today take den­tal con­di­tion as a mark­er of class, in ancient Rome the rela­tion­ship was, to a cer­tain extent, reversed: “A young girl wear­ing expen­sive jew­el­ry, for exam­ple, already had five cav­i­ties, prob­a­bly because her fam­i­ly could afford to give her plen­ty of snacks smoth­ered in expen­sive and sug­ary hon­ey.”

Indeed, “in the absence of processed sug­ar, oral bac­te­ria were less aggres­sive than they are today.” Romans got cav­i­ties, but “the per­va­sive black­ened teeth and hol­low cheeks of ear­ly mod­ern Europe,”  an era at the unfor­tu­nate inter­sec­tion of rel­a­tive­ly plen­ti­ful sug­ar and rel­a­tive­ly prim­i­tive den­tistry, “were near­ly as dis­tant from the Roman expe­ri­ence as they are from ours.” Some of us here in the sug­ar-sat­u­rat­ed twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, with its con­stant pur­suit of den­tal per­fec­tion, may now be con­sid­er­ing the poten­tial ben­e­fits of shift­ing to an ancient Roman diet — with­out, of course, all those tiny, enam­el-abrad­ing stones that had a way of end­ing up in ancient Roman bread.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Try the Old­est Known Recipe For Tooth­paste: From Ancient Egypt, Cir­ca the 4th Cen­tu­ry BC

Explore the Roman Cook­book, De Re Coquinar­ia, the Old­est Known Cook­book in Exis­tence

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pom­peii

Bars, Beer & Wine in Ancient Rome: An Intro­duc­tion to Roman Nightlife and Spir­its

The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved: Why Has Roman Con­crete Been So Durable?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Succession Star Brian Cox Tells the Entire Histories of Ancient Greece and Rome in 20 Minutes Each

in History | April 20th, 2023

Spoil­er alert: The death of Logan Roy the week­end before last marked the end of an era. Or at the very least, it was notable for occa­sion­ing, in the Los Ange­les Times, per­haps the first news­pa­per obit­u­ary of a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter. Roy was the mogul-patri­arch at the cen­ter of the hit black com­e­dy-dra­ma Suc­ces­sion, which is now approach­ing the end of its fourth and final sea­son on HBO. Bri­an Cox’s per­for­mance in that role had much to do with the suc­cess of Suc­ces­sion, so to speak, not least because he clear­ly under­stood that, for all its of-the-moment ref­er­ences, the series’ nar­ra­tive is deeply root­ed in con­cepts like dynasty and empire, which them­selves extend way back to antiq­ui­ty.

Antiq­ui­ty hap­pens to be the sub­ject of two videos Cox nar­rat­ed, just before the pre­miere of Suc­ces­sion, for the Youtube chan­nel Arza­mas. “Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes” and “Ancient Rome in 20 Min­utes” deliv­er just what their titles promise, brief but clear and well-informed primers on the clas­si­cal civ­i­liza­tions that mod­ern West­ern­ers have long thought of as the pre­cur­sors to their own.

Of course, there were no sin­gle, con­tin­u­ous polit­i­cal or geo­graph­i­cal enti­ties called “Ancient Greece” and “Ancient Rome”; rather, those names refer to large regions of the world in which city-states rise and fell — as their very nature and rela­tion­ships with one anoth­er changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly — over a peri­od of cen­turies upon cen­turies.

To these acclaimed videos Cox brings his sig­na­ture irrev­er­ence-laced grav­i­tas. At the very end of “Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes,” he tells of the Byzan­tine Empire, “which extend­ed the life of Greek cul­ture anoth­er thou­sand years — leav­ing us the weird Russ­ian alpha­bet, for instance.” This line is fun­nier if you know that Arza­mas is a Russ­ian chan­nel that has also put up videos on Russ­ian his­to­ry and cul­ture: the one on the coun­try’s twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry art just above, for instance, which Cox also nar­rates. Rus­sia has inher­it­ed ele­ments of the ancient Greek and Roman civ­i­liza­tions, as have oth­er dis­tant lands like the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. And wher­ev­er we live, we can laugh at Cox’s obser­va­tion that “if an ancient Greek were to see mod­ern democ­ra­cy, he would say just one word: oli­garchy” — a form of rule Logan Roy knew all about.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry: A Free Online Course from Yale

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Athens: Fly Over Clas­si­cal Greek Civ­i­liza­tion in All Its Glo­ry

The Rise & Fall of Roman Civ­i­liza­tion: Every Year Shown in a Time­lapse Map Ani­ma­tion (753 BC ‑1479 AD)

An 8‑Minute Ani­mat­ed Flight Over Ancient Rome

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

An Archive of Animations/Cartoons of Ancient Greece & Rome: From the 1920s Through Today

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Discover the Medieval Illuminated Manuscript Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, “the World’s Most Beautiful Calendar” (1416)

in Art, Books, History | April 17th, 2023

We don’t hear the phrase “very rich hours” as much as we used to, back when it was occa­sion­al­ly employed in the head­lines of mag­a­zine arti­cles or the titles of nov­els. Today, it’s much to be doubt­ed whether even one in a hun­dred thou­sand of us could begin to iden­ti­fy its ref­er­ent — or at least it was much to be doubt­ed until an elab­o­rate New York Times online fea­ture appeared just last week. Writ­ten by art crit­ic Jason Fara­go, “Search­ing for Lost Time in the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Cal­en­dar” takes a close look at the Très Rich­es Heures du Duc de Berry, a late-medieval illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script cre­at­ed (between 1412 and 1416) for the bib­lio­philic John, Duke of Berry by a trio of Flem­ish artists known as the Lim­bourg broth­ers.

The word “hours” in the title refers not to units of time, exact­ly, but to the prayers that believ­ers must speak at cer­tain hours: this is a book of hours, a huge­ly pop­u­lar form of man­u­script in the Mid­dle Ages. But com­pared to most sur­viv­ing books of hours, Très Rich­es Heures du Duc de Berry is, well, very rich indeed.

Fara­go calls it “the finest sur­viv­ing man­u­script of the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry, a mon­u­ment of Inter­na­tion­al Goth­ic book arts. Real­ly, the thing is just stu­pe­fy­ing. Its pic­tures com­bine astound­ing detail with exu­ber­ant, some­times irra­tional spa­tial orga­ni­za­tion.” But “like every book of hours, it opens with a cal­en­dar. And here, on its first 12 spreads — with one full-page illus­tra­tion per month — the Lim­bourgs did their most painstak­ing work.”

Here we have just five of the images from the cal­en­dar at the head of the Très Rich­es Heures. You can see the rest at the site of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, which offers its “inti­mate North­ern vision of nature with Ital­ianate modes of fig­ur­al artic­u­la­tion” in down­load­able dig­i­tal form. These detailed images con­sti­tute a win­dow into not just medieval life (or at least an ide­al­ized ver­sion there­of), but also the medieval rela­tion­ship to time. “Time appears to be a cycle,” writes Fara­go. “It repeats year after year.” And “months rather than years were the meat of these cycles. Sea­sons. Har­vests. Feasts. Con­stel­la­tions.” All this “could be per­ceived with the sens­es. In snow­fall, in star signs. In the bright col­ors you wore in May, in the furs you wore in Decem­ber.”

On top of this pal­pa­bly cycli­cal expe­ri­ence of time, monothe­is­tic reli­gions intro­duced the notion that “time pro­gressed onward,” and indeed “offered a one-way tick­et to the end of days.” Coex­ist­ing in the medieval mind, these two con­trast­ing modes of per­cep­tion gave rise to the sort of cal­en­dars cre­at­ed and used in that era. No fin­er exam­ple exists than the Très Rich­es Heures, cre­at­ed as it was not long — at least in his­tor­i­cal time — before the approach of moder­ni­ty, with its ever more fine­ly divid­ed and rig­or­ous­ly cal­i­brat­ed chrono­met­ric regimes. Our hours are much more clear­ly demar­cat­ed than the Duke of Berry’s; whether they’re rich­er is anoth­er ques­tion entire­ly.

Vis­it the New York Times’ fea­ture on the beau­ti­ful medieval man­u­script here. If you’re inter­est­ed in delv­ing deep­er, also see the free book (cour­tesy of the Met Muse­um) The Art of Illu­mi­na­tion: The Lim­bourg Broth­ers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry.

Relat­ed con­tent:

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece the Book of Kells Has Been Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Dis­cov­er the Sara­je­vo Hag­gadah, the Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script That Sur­vived the Inqui­si­tion, Holo­caust & Yugoslav Wars

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Devil’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Man­u­script in the World

Why Butt Trum­pets & Oth­er Bizarre Images Appeared in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Discover the Sarajevo Haggadah, the Medieval Illuminated Manuscript That Survived the Inquisition, Holocaust & Yugoslav Wars

in Art, History, Museums, Religion | April 14th, 2023

If you attend­ed a seder this month, you no doubt read aloud from the Hag­gadah, a Passover tra­di­tion in which every­one at the table takes turns recount­ing the sto­ry of Exo­dus.

There’s no defin­i­tive edi­tion of the Hag­gadah. Every Passover host is free to choose the ver­sion of the famil­iar sto­ry they like best, to cut and paste from var­i­ous retellings, or even take a crack at writ­ing their own.  

As David Zvi Kalman, pub­lish­er of the annu­al, illus­trat­ed Asu­fa Hag­gadah told the New York Times, “The Hag­gadah in Amer­i­ca is like Kit Kats in Japan. It’s a prod­uct that accepts a wide vari­ety of fla­vors. It’s prob­a­bly the most acces­si­ble Jew­ish book on the mar­ket.”

21st cen­tu­ry adap­ta­tions have includ­ed Mar­velous Mrs. Maisel, Sein­feld, Har­ry Pot­ter, and Curb Your Enthu­si­asm themed Hag­gadot.

There are Hag­gadot tai­lored toward fem­i­nists, Lib­er­tar­i­ans, inter­faith fam­i­lies, and advo­cates of the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment.

One of the old­est is the mirac­u­lous­ly-pre­served Sara­je­vo Hag­gadah, an illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script cre­at­ed by anony­mous artists and scribes in Barcelona around 1350.

Though it bears the coats of arms of two promi­nent fam­i­lies, its prove­nance is not defin­i­tive­ly known.

Leo­ra Bromberg of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Thomas Fish­er Rare Book Library notes that it is “espe­cial­ly strik­ing for its col­or­ful illu­mi­na­tions of bib­li­cal and Passover rit­u­al scenes and its beau­ti­ful­ly hand-scribed Sephardic let­ter­forms:”

As pre­cious as this Hag­gadah was, and still is, Hag­gadot are books that are meant to be used in fes­tive and messy settings—sharing the table with food, wine, fam­i­ly and guests. The Sara­je­vo Hag­gadah was no excep­tion to this; its pages show evi­dence that it was well used, with doo­dles, food and red wine stains mark­ing its pages.

Some brave soul took care to smug­gle this essen­tial vol­ume out with them when 1492’s Alham­bra Decree expelled all Jews from Spain.

The manuscript’s trav­els there­after are shroud­ed in mys­tery.

It sur­vived the Roman Inqui­si­tion by virtue of its con­tents. As per a 1609 note jot­ted on one of its pages, noth­ing there­in seemed to be aimed against the Church.

More hand­writ­ten notes place the book in the north of Italy in the 16th and 17th cen­turies, though its new own­er is not men­tioned by name.

Even­tu­al­ly, it found its way to the hands of a man named Joseph Kohen who sold it to the Nation­al Muse­um of Sara­je­vo in 1894.

It was briefly sent to Vien­na, where a gov­ern­ment offi­cial replaced its orig­i­nal medieval bind­ing with card­board cov­ers, chop­ping its 142 bleached calf­skin vel­lum down to 6.5” x 9” in order to fit them.

It had a nar­row escape in 1942, when a high-rank­ing Nazi offi­cial, Johann Fort­ner, vis­it­ed the muse­um, intent on con­fis­cat­ing the price­less man­u­script.  

The chief librar­i­an, Dervis Korkut, a Mus­lim, secret­ed the Hag­gadah inside his cloth­ing, reput­ed­ly telling  Fort­ner that muse­um staff had turned it over to anoth­er Ger­man offi­cer.

After that folk­lore takes over. Korkut either stowed it under the floor­boards of his home, buried it under a tree, gave it to an imam in a remote vil­lage for safe­keep­ing, or hid it on a shelf in the museum’s library.

What­ev­er the case, it reap­peared in the muse­um, safe and sound, in 1945.

The muse­um was ran­sacked dur­ing 1992’s Siege of Sara­je­vo, but the thieves, igno­rant of the Haggadah’s worth, left it on the floor. It was removed to an under­ground bank vault, where it sur­vived untouched, even as the muse­um sus­tained heavy artillery dam­age.

The pres­i­dent of Bosnia pre­sent­ed it to Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers dur­ing a Seder three years lat­er.

Short­ly there­after, the head of Sarajevo’s Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty sought the Unit­ed Nations’ sup­port to restore the Hag­gadah, and house it in a suit­ably secure, cli­mate-con­trolled set­ting. 

A num­ber of fac­sim­i­les have been cre­at­ed, and the orig­i­nal codex once again resides in the muse­um where it is stored under the pre­scribed con­di­tions, and dis­played on rare spe­cial occa­sions, as “phys­i­cal proof of the open­ness of a soci­ety in which fear of the Oth­er has nev­er been an incur­able dis­ease.”

UNESCO added it to its Mem­o­ry of the World Reg­is­ter in 2017, “prais­ing the courage of the peo­ple who, even in the dark­est of times dur­ing World War II, appre­ci­at­ed its impor­tance to Jew­ish Her­itage, as well as its embod­i­ment of diver­si­ty and inter­cul­tur­al har­mo­ny depict­ed in its illus­tra­tion:”

 Regard­less of their own reli­gious beliefs, they risked their lives and did all in their pow­er to safe­guard the Hag­gadah for future gen­er­a­tions. Its destruc­tion would be a loss for human­i­ty. Pro­tect­ing it is a sym­bol of the val­ues which we hold dear.

For those inter­est­ed, the Sara­je­vo Hag­gadah fig­ures cen­tral­ly in the best­selling 2008 nov­el Peo­ple of the Book, writ­ten by the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author Geral­dine Brooks. You can read an New Times review here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Turn­ing the Pages of an Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­script: An ASMR Muse­um Expe­ri­ence

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Has Been Dig­i­tized and Put Online

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Spot a Communist by Using Literary Criticism: A 1955 Manual from the U.S. Military

in History, Literature | April 13th, 2023

In 1955, the Unit­ed States was enter­ing the final stages of McCarthy­ism or the Sec­ond Red Scare. Dur­ing this low point in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, the US gov­ern­ment looked high and low for Com­mu­nist spies. Enter­tain­ers, edu­ca­tors, gov­ern­ment employ­ees and union mem­bers were often viewed with sus­pi­cion, and many careers and lives were destroyed by the flim­si­est of alle­ga­tions. Con­gress, the FBI, and the US mil­i­tary, they all fueled the 20th cen­tu­ry ver­sion of the Salem Witch tri­als, part­ly by encour­ag­ing Amer­i­cans to look for Com­mu­nists in unsus­pect­ing places.

In the short Armed Forces Infor­ma­tion Film above, you can see the dynam­ic at work. Some Com­mu­nists were out in the open; how­ev­er, oth­ers “worked more silent­ly.” So how to find those hid­den com­mu­nists?

Not to wor­ry, the US mil­i­tary had that cov­ered. In 1955, the U.S. First Army Head­quar­ters pre­pared a man­u­al called How to Spot a Com­mu­nist. Lat­er pub­lished in pop­u­lar Amer­i­can mag­a­zines, the pro­pa­gan­da piece warned read­ers, “there is no fool-proof sys­tem in spot­ting a Com­mu­nist.” “U.S. Com­mu­nists come from all walks of life, pro­fess all faiths, and exer­cise all trades and pro­fes­sions. In addi­tion, the Com­mu­nist Par­ty, USA, has made con­cert­ed efforts to go under­ground for the pur­pose of infil­tra­tion.” And yet the pam­phlet adds, let­ting read­ers breathe a sigh of relief, “there are, for­tu­nate­ly, indi­ca­tions that may give him away. These indi­ca­tions are often sub­tle but always present, for the Com­mu­nist, by rea­son of his “faith” must act and talk along cer­tain lines.” In short, you’ll know a Com­mu­nist not by how he walks, but how he talks. Ask­ing cit­i­zens to become lit­er­ary crit­ics for the sake of nation­al secu­ri­ty, the pub­li­ca­tion told read­ers to watch out for the fol­low­ing:

While a pref­er­ence for long sen­tences is com­mon to most Com­mu­nist writ­ing, a dis­tinct vocab­u­lary pro­vides the more eas­i­ly rec­og­nized fea­ture of the “Com­mu­nist Lan­guage.” Even a super­fi­cial read­ing of an arti­cle writ­ten by a Com­mu­nist or a con­ver­sa­tion with one will prob­a­bly reveal the use of some of the fol­low­ing expres­sions: inte­gra­tive think­ing, van­guard, com­rade, hoo­te­nan­ny, chau­vin­ism, book-burn­ing, syn­cretis­tic faith, bour­geois-nation­al­ism, jin­go­ism, colo­nial­ism, hooli­gan­ism, rul­ing class, pro­gres­sive, dem­a­gogy, dialec­ti­cal, witch-hunt, reac­tionary, exploita­tion, oppres­sive, mate­ri­al­ist.

This list, select­ed at ran­dom, could be extend­ed almost indef­i­nite­ly. While all of the above expres­sions are part of the Eng­lish lan­guage, their use by Com­mu­nists is infi­nite­ly more fre­quent than by the gen­er­al pub­lic…

Rather chill­ing­ly, the pam­phlet also warned that Com­mu­nists revealed them­selves if and when they talked about “McCarthy­ism,” “vio­la­tion of civ­il rights,” “racial or reli­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion” or “peace.” In oth­er words, they were guilty if they sug­gest­ed that the gov­ern­ment was over­step­ping its bounds.

Accord­ing to Corliss Lam­on­t’s book, Free­dom Is As Free­dom Does, the First Army with­drew the pam­phlet after Mur­ray Kemp­ton slammed it in The New York Post and The New York Times wrote its own scathing op-ed. In 1955, the press could take those risks. The year before, Joseph Welch had faced up to Joe McCarthy, ask­ing with his immor­tal words, “Have you no sense of decen­cy, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decen­cy?

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared our site in 2013.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

Bertolt Brecht Tes­ti­fies Before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (1947)

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

 

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The History of Ancient Japan: The Story of How Japan Began, Told by Those Who Witnessed It (297‑1274)

in History | April 13th, 2023

Here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, many of us around the world think of Japan as essen­tial­ly unchang­ing. We do so not with­out cause, giv­en how much of what goes on there, includ­ing the oper­a­tion of cer­tain busi­ness­es, has been going on for cen­turies and cen­turies. But the polit­i­cal, cul­tur­al, reli­gious, eco­nom­ic, and eth­nic com­po­si­tion of the civ­i­liza­tion we’ve long known as Japan has, in fact, trans­formed a great deal over the course of its exis­tence. Some of the most dra­mat­ic changes occurred between the third and thir­teenth cen­turies, the span of time cov­ered by the video above.

“How Japan Began” comes from Voic­es of the Past, a Youtube chan­nel pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its videos on a first-hand account of the destruc­tion of Pom­peii, an ancient Chi­nese his­to­ri­an’s descrip­tion of the Roman Empire, and how the first Japan­ese vis­i­tor to the Unit­ed States and Europe saw life there.

In telling the sto­ry of how ancient Japan (though most­ly in a time span that falls with­in Europe’s Mid­dle Ages) assumed some­thing like its cur­rent form, the video adheres to its usu­al method of direct­ly incor­po­rat­ing as many pri­ma­ry or close-to-pri­ma­ry sources as pos­si­ble: the Chi­nese Records or His­to­ry of the Three King­doms, eighth-cen­tu­ry court edicts and nation­al his­to­ries, the thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry émi­gré Chi­nese Bud­dhist monk Mugaku Sogen.

As for the rest of the nar­ra­tion, Voic­es of the Past cred­its Thomas Lock­ley, co-author of the book African Samu­rai: The True Sto­ry of Yasuke, a Leg­endary Black War­rior in Feu­dal Japan. Yasuke, whom we’ve also fea­tured before, arrived in Japan in 1579, three cen­turies after the events chron­i­cled in “How Japan Begin” — and thus quite deep indeed into the his­to­ry of a volatile land of reli­gious shifts, polit­i­cal ambi­tions, and (vol­un­tary or invol­un­tary) cul­tur­al exchanges, all amid an inter­nal state oscil­lat­ing between frag­men­ta­tion and con­sol­i­da­tion as well as an ever-chang­ing rela­tion­ship to the world at large. We can’t say what mix­ture of sta­bil­i­ty and insta­bil­i­ty will char­ac­ter­ize Japan’s next mil­len­ni­um, but we can hope its future chron­i­clers are up to the task.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

When a UFO Came to Japan in 1803: Dis­cov­er the Leg­end of Utsuro-bune

The 17th Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Samu­rai Who Sailed to Europe, Met the Pope & Became a Roman Cit­i­zen

Hear the First Japan­ese Vis­i­tor to the Unit­ed States & Europe Describe Life in the West (1860–1862)

1850s Japan Comes to Life in 3D, Col­or Pho­tos: See the Stereo­scop­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of T. Ena­mi

A Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca (1861): Fea­tures George Wash­ing­ton Punch­ing Tigers, John Adams Slay­ing Snakes & Oth­er Fan­tas­tic Scenes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Smithsonian Puts 4.5 Million High-Res Images Online and Into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Use

in Archives, History, Museums | April 12th, 2023

That vast repos­i­to­ry of Amer­i­can his­to­ry that is the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion evolved from an orga­ni­za­tion found­ed in 1816 called the Columbian Insti­tute for the Pro­mo­tion of Arts and Sci­ences. Its man­date, the col­lec­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of use­ful knowl­edge, now sounds very much of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry — but then, so does its name. Colum­bia, the god­dess-like sym­bol­ic per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, is sel­dom direct­ly ref­er­enced today, hav­ing been super­seded by Lady Lib­er­ty. Traits of both fig­ures appear in the depic­tion on the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry fire­man’s hat above, about which you can learn more at Smith­son­ian Open Access, a dig­i­tal archive that now con­tains some 4.5 mil­lion images.

“Any­one can down­load, reuse, and remix these images at any time — for free under the Cre­ative Com­mons Zero (CC0) license,” write My Mod­ern Met’s Jes­si­ca Stew­art and Madeleine Muz­dakis. “A dive into the 3D records shows every­thing from CAD mod­els of the Apol­lo 11 com­mand mod­ule to Hor­a­tio Gree­nough’s 1840 sculp­ture of George Wash­ing­ton.”

The 2D arti­facts of inter­est include “a por­trait of Poc­a­hon­tas in the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery, an image of the 1903 Wright Fly­er from the Nation­al Air and Space Muse­um, and box­ing head­gear worn by Muham­mad Ali from the Nation­al Muse­um of African Amer­i­can His­to­ry and Cul­ture.”

The NMAAHC in par­tic­u­lar has pro­vid­ed a great many items rel­e­vant to twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can cul­ture, like James Bald­win’s inkwell, Chuck Berry’s gui­tar May­bel­lene, Pub­lic Ene­my’s boom­box, and the poster for a 1968 Nina Simone con­cert. The more obscure object just above, a Native Amer­i­can kachi­na fig­ure with the head of Mick­ey Mouse, comes from the Smith­son­ian Amer­i­can Art Muse­um. “When Dis­ney Stu­dios put a mouse hero on the sil­ver screen in the 1930s,” explain the accom­pa­ny­ing notes, “Hopi artists saw in Mick­ey Mouse a cel­e­bra­tion of Tusan Homichi, the leg­endary mouse war­rior who defeat­ed a chick­en-steal­ing hawk” — and were thus them­selves inspired, it seems, to sum up a wide swath of Amer­i­can his­to­ry in a sin­gle object.

More items are being added to Smith­son­ian Open Access all the time, each with its own sto­ry to tell — and all acces­si­ble not just to Amer­i­cans, but inter­net users the world over. In that sense it feels a bit like the Chica­go World’s Fair of 1893, bet­ter known as the World’s Columbian Expo­si­tion, with its mis­sion of reveal­ing Amer­i­ca’s sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, and artis­tic genius to the whole of human civ­i­liza­tion. You can see a great many pho­tos and oth­er arti­facts of this land­mark event at Smith­son­ian Open Access, or, if you pre­fer, you can click the “just brows­ing” link and behold all the his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and for­mal vari­ety avail­able in the Smith­so­ni­an’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions, where the spir­it of Colum­bia lives on.

via Kot­tke/My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Library of Con­gress Launch­es the Nation­al Screen­ing Room, Putting Online Hun­dreds of His­toric Films

The Smith­son­ian Design Muse­um Dig­i­tizes 200,000 Objects, Giv­ing You Access to 3,000 Years of Design Inno­va­tion & His­to­ry

The Smith­son­ian Presents a Gallery of 6,000+ Rare Rock ‘n Roll Pho­tos on a Crowd­sourced Web Site, and Now a New Book

Why 99% Of Smithsonian’s Spec­i­mens Are Hid­den In High Secu­ri­ty

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry: From Colo­nial­ism to Oba­ma in 47 Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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