Parrots Taught to FaceTime Each Other Become Less Lonely, a New Study Shows

in Biology, Life, Science | May 1st, 2023

It’s telling that the avian par­tic­i­pants in a recent study where­in pet par­rots, assist­ed by their own­ers, learned to make video calls to oth­ers of their kind were recruit­ed from the online edu­ca­tion­al forum Par­rot Kinder­garten.

In the above footage, the humans’ hope­ful, high-pitched cajol­ing, as they encour­age their birds to inter­act with a new “friend”, car­ries a strong whiff of those Mom­my and Me class­es where a dozen or so adults sit cross­legged in a cir­cle, shak­ing tam­bourines and bright­ly war­bling “Twin­kle, Twin­kle, Lit­tle Star,” while an equal num­ber of tod­dlers wan­der around, marked­ly less invest­ed in the pro­ceed­ings.

Though, real­ly, who am I to judge? I don’t have a par­rot, and it’s been over two decades since my youngest child required parental inter­fer­ence to foment social inter­ac­tion…

Eigh­teen pet par­rots enrolled in the study, hang­ing out with one anoth­er dur­ing self-ini­ti­at­ed video chats, to see how and if such inter­ac­tions might improve their qual­i­ty of life.

No one was forced to make a call if they weren’t feel­ing it, or to remain on the line after their inter­est flagged.

I’m hunch­ing the aver­age parrot’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy clocks in far south of the aver­age Amer­i­can toddler’s, which may explain why they com­plet­ed a mere 147 calls over the course of two months (and 1000 hours of com­bined footage.)

That said, I can eas­i­ly imag­ine a sce­nario in which the aver­age human tod­dler, hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly got­ten their beak, excuse me, hands on a touch­screen tablet, los­es all inter­est in Face­Tim­ing with a peer, pre­fer­ring the soli­tary plea­sures of Bal­loon Pop or Peek-a-Zoo.

Typ­i­cal­ly, human tod­dlers have more oppor­tu­ni­ties for “inter­species eth­i­cal enrich­ment” than crea­tures whose lives are pri­mar­i­ly spent in a cage. As the authors of the study note, “over 20 mil­lion par­rots are kept as pets in the US, often lack­ing appro­pri­ate stim­uli to meet their high social, cog­ni­tive, and emo­tion­al needs.”

The par­rot par­tic­i­pants may not have thrown them­selves into the pro­ceed­ings with the vig­or of Bye Bye Birdie’s teenaged tele­phone cho­rus, but all placed calls, the major­i­ty exhib­it­ed “high moti­va­tion and inten­tion­al­i­ty”, and their humans indi­cat­ed that they would glad­ly con­tin­ue to facil­i­tate this social exper­i­ment.

The human con­tri­bu­tion is not incon­sid­er­able here. It took vast amounts of time and patience to ori­ent the birds to the sys­tem, and care­ful mon­i­tor­ing to make sure calls didn’t run off the rails. Noth­ing like hav­ing your iPad screen smashed by a par­rot who’s got beef in an online forum…

Sev­er­al legit friend­ships formed over the course of the exper­i­ment — a Goffin’s cock­a­too and an African grey who made each other’s vir­tu­al acquain­tance dur­ing the pilot study were still chat­ting, a year after they met.

Data col­lect­ed in the field shows that the num­ber and dura­tion of out­go­ing calls were close­ly tied to the num­ber and dura­tion of incom­ing calls. The most pop­u­lar birdies did not take their con­nec­tions for grant­ed.

It’s a find­ing humans would do well to absorb if we are to com­bat feel­ings of iso­la­tion from with­in our own species.

Read Birds of a Feath­er Video-Flock Togeth­er: Design and Eval­u­a­tion of an Agency-Based Par­rot-to-Par­rot Video-Call­ing Sys­tem for Inter­species Eth­i­cal Enrich­ment here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

Par­rot Sings AC/DCs “Whole Lot­ta Rosie”

– 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.

Plan Your Trip Across the Roads of the Roman Empire, Using Modern Web Mapping Technology

in History, Maps, Travel | April 28th, 2023

At the moment, I hap­pen to be plan­ning some time in France, with a side trip to Bel­gium includ­ed. Mod­ern intra-Euro­pean train trav­el makes arrang­ing the lat­ter quite con­ve­nient: Thalys, the high-speed rail ser­vice con­nect­ing those two coun­tries, can get you from Paris to Brus­sels in about an hour and half. This stands in con­trast to the time of the Roman Empire, which despite its polit­i­cal pow­er lacked high-speed rail, and indeed lacked rail of any kind. But it did have an expan­sive net­work of roads, some of which you can still walk today, imag­in­ing what it would have been like to trav­el Europe two mil­len­nia ago. And now, using the web­site OmnesVi­ae, you can get his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate direc­tions as well.

Big Think’s Frank Jacobs describes OmnesVi­ae as “the online route plan­ner the Romans nev­er knew they need­ed.” It “leans heav­i­ly on the Tab­u­la Peutin­ge­ri­ana” — also known as the Peutinger Map, and pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture — “the clos­est thing we have to a gen­uine itin­er­ar­i­um (‘road map’) of the Roman Empire.”

Though not quite geo­graph­i­cal­ly accu­rate, it does offer a detailed view of which cities in the empire were con­nect­ed and how. “Geolo­cat­ing thou­sands of points from Peutinger, OmnesVi­ae refor­mats the roads and des­ti­na­tions on the scroll onto a more famil­iar­ly land­scaped map. The short­est route between two (ancient) points is cal­cu­lat­ed using the dis­tances trav­eled over Roman rather than mod­ern roads, also tak­ing into account the rivers and moun­tains the net­work must cross.”

You can use OmnesVi­ae just like any oth­er way-find­ing appli­ca­tion, except you enter your ori­gin and des­ti­na­tion into fields labeled “ab” and “ad” rather than “from” and “to.” And though “for some cities cur­rent day names are under­stood,” as the instruc­tions note, it works bet­ter — and feels so much more authen­tic — if you type in cities like “Roma” and “Lon­dinio.” The result­ing jour­ney between those two great cap­i­tals looks ardu­ous indeed, pass­ing at least three moun­tain­ous areas, thir­teen rivers, and count­less small­er set­tle­ments. And accord­ing to OmnesVi­ae, no roads led to Brus­sels: the clos­est an ancient trav­el­er could get to the loca­tion of the mod­ern-day seat of the Euro­pean Union was the Wal­loon vil­lage of Liber­chies — which, as the birth­place of Djan­go Rein­hardt, remains an impor­tant stop for the jazz-lov­ing trav­el­er of Europe today.

via Big Think

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Roads of Ancient Rome Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

How the Ancient Romans Built Their Roads, the Life­lines of Their Vast Empire

The Roman Roads and Bridges You Can Still Trav­el Today

How to Make Roman Con­crete, One of Human Civilization’s Longest-Last­ing Build­ing Mate­ri­als

The First Tran­sit Map: a Close Look at the Sub­way-Style Tab­u­la Peutin­ge­ri­ana of the 5th-Cen­tu­ry Roman Empire

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

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.

A Culinary Videos Series Shows Every Conceivable Way to Cook Eggs, Potatoes, Pizza, Bacon & More

in Comedy, Food & Drink | April 28th, 2023

So you think you know your way around a pota­to, eh?

No doubt you excel at boil­ing, mash­ing, roast­ing, bak­ing and twice bak­ing …

You may make a mean pota­to chip or pomme frite…

Per­haps you’ve per­fect­ed some tricks with a microwave or air fry­er.

But before you’re puffed too full of brag­ging rights, have you ever thought to sub­ject this hum­ble root veg­etable to a blow torch, an iron, a dish­wash­er, a juicer or a gaso­line pow­ered gen­er­a­tor plugged into a giant dim­mer switch?

No?

Con­grat­u­la­tions on hav­ing avoid­ed some tru­ly dread­ful meth­ods for prepar­ing a pota­to, judg­ing by the results of some of Bon Appétit Con­tribut­ing Edi­tor Amiel Stanek’s more out­ré, tongue-in-cheek exper­i­ments, above.

Wait, maybe there aren’t real­ly 63 ways to cook pota­toes?

The prepa­ra­tion we’re legit­i­mate­ly eager to try is pick­ling, for spuds Stanek declares “very sweet, salty, acidic”, a wel­come addi­tion to a cheese board or a cru­dité plate.

And there’s an argu­ment to be made for turn­ing a waf­fle iron into a dual pur­pose device by mak­ing hash browns in it.

Stanek fares less well, pip­ing pre-mashed pota­toes into a Rol­lie ® Eggmas­ter, “a weird, made-for-TV device that is made express­ly for cook­ing eggs:”

Ewww, no, why is it like that? This is dis­gust­ing!!!

If you’re won­der­ing how that Rol­lie ® does with its intend­ed ingre­di­ent, Stanek’s got an answer for you:

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, oh my god, it looks like it’s in a con­dom. This is the most dis­gust­ing egg thing we have made all day…it tastes like bad seafood. I don’t know why, it tastes plastic‑y. This is hor­ri­ble!

Mean­while, those in long term rela­tion­ships with part­ners hold­ing dif­fer­ent views on the best way to scram­ble, fry or poach an egg may find them­selves feel­ing vin­di­cat­ed by this episode.

Either that or hor­ri­bly betrayed.

Oth­er than pota­toes and eggs, the only episode of the 10 in the Almost Every series not exclu­sive­ly geared toward cook­ing flesh is the one devot­ed to piz­za, which at 32 meth­ods, ties with chick­en breast. (Only whole chick­en, at 24 meth­ods, has few­er options.)

Veg­ans will like­ly feel unim­pressed, in addi­tion to left out, giv­en that there’s near­ly that many sug­gest­ed hacks for melt­ing plant-based cheese.

Per­haps a vis­it to Moon­burg­er, a meat­less Hud­son Val­ley chain where Stanek is Culi­nary Con­sul­tant and the shakes are dairy free is in order?

Those crav­ing ever more off­beat attacks, how­ev­er, will find them­selves enter­tained by Stanek’s efforts involv­ing an Easy-Bake Oven (yeah, nope, not good at all),  a Teenage Mutant Nin­ja Tur­tle Piz­za Machine (the whole cheese sitch looks a lit­tle bit demented…bummer, dude), and a crust that’s baked around a sil­i­cone cone, then filled with a “molten, dan­ger­ous slur­ry” of sauce and cheese (this thing looks demon­ic to me, like an ani­mal horn meant for a Satan­ic rit­u­al…)

If that’s not our cue to seek out a restau­rant with a wood burn­ing oven, per­haps it’s a sig­nal we should order out.

Watch a com­plete playlist of Bon Appétit’s Almost Every here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

10,000 Vin­tage Recipe Books Are Now Dig­i­tized in The Inter­net Archive’s Cook­book & Home Eco­nom­ics Col­lec­tion

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

The Recipes of Famous Artists: Din­ners & Cock­tails From Tol­stoy, Miles Davis, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, David Lynch & Many More

– 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.

The Five Graphs That Changed the World: See Groundbreaking Data Visualizations by Florence Nightingale, W. E. B. DuBois & Beyond

in Data, History | April 27th, 2023

Almost two and a half cen­turies after its first pub­li­ca­tion, Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Caus­es of the Wealth of Nations is much bet­ter known as sim­ply The Wealth of Nations. Had he writ­ten it today, the text itself, which runs between a for­mi­da­ble 500–700 pages in most edi­tions, would also be con­sid­er­ably short­er. It’s not just that writ­ers in Smith’s day went in for length per se (though many now read as if they did), but that graphs had­n’t been invent­ed yet. Much of what he’d dis­cov­ered about the nature of eco­nom­ics could have been expressed more con­cise­ly — and much more clear­ly — in pic­tures rather than words.

As it hap­pens, the kind of infor­ma­tion­al graphs we know best today would be invent­ed by Smith’s fel­low Scot William Play­fair in 1786, just a decade after The Wealth of Nations came out. “Data visu­al­iza­tion is every­where today, but when Play­fair first cre­at­ed them over 200 years ago, using shapes to rep­re­sent num­bers was large­ly sneered at,” says Adam Ruther­ford in the Roy­al Soci­ety video above.

“How could draw­ings tru­ly rep­re­sent sol­id sci­en­tif­ic data? But now, data visu­al­iza­tion has become an art form of its own.” There fol­low “five graphs that changed the world,” begin­ning with the map of water pumps that physi­cian John Snow used to deter­mine the cause of a cholera epi­dem­ic in 1850s Lon­don, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

We’ve also post­ed W. E. B. Du Bois’ “hand­made charts show­cas­ing the edu­ca­tion­al, social, and busi­ness accom­plish­ments of black Amer­i­cans in the 35 years since slav­ery had been offi­cial­ly abol­ished.” The oth­er world-chang­ing graphs here include Flo­rence Nightin­gale’s “cox­comb” that showed how unsan­i­tary hos­pi­tal con­di­tions killed more sol­diers dur­ing the Crimean War than did actu­al fight­ing; the so-called Kallikak Fam­i­ly Tree, a fraud­u­lent visu­al case for remov­ing the “fee­ble-mind­ed” from soci­ety; and Ed Hawkins’ more recent red-and-blue “warm­ing stripes” designed to present the effects of cli­mate change to a non-sci­en­tif­ic audi­ence. Using just blocks of col­or, with nei­ther num­bers nor text, Hawkins’ bold graph harks back to an ear­li­er gold­en era of data visu­al­iza­tion: after Play­fair, but before Pow­er­Point.

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Art of Data Visu­al­iza­tion: How to Tell Com­plex Sto­ries Through Smart Design

Flo­rence Nightin­gale Saved Lives by Cre­at­ing Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Visu­al­iza­tions of Sta­tis­tics (1855)

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries: From Kafka’s “Meta­mor­pho­sis” to “Cin­derel­la”

A Pro­por­tion­al Visu­al­iza­tion of the World’s Most Pop­u­lar Lan­guages

The 1855 Map That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Dis­ease Pre­ven­tion & Data Visu­al­iza­tion: Dis­cov­er John Snow’s Broad Street Pump Map

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy Visu­al­ized

W. E. B. Du Bois Cre­ates Rev­o­lu­tion­ary, Artis­tic Data Visu­al­iza­tions Show­ing the Eco­nom­ic Plight of African-Amer­i­cans (1900)

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.

Pussy Riot Sends a Powerful Message to Vladimir Putin: “You Have Already Lost. You Know It.”

in Current Affairs | April 27th, 2023

Speak­ing at TED, Nadya Tolokon­niko­va, found­ing mem­ber of Pussy Riot, has a pow­er­ful mes­sage for Rus­sians today: Resist­ing the author­i­ty of Vladimir Putin is an option. It’s a choice. Of that, Tolokon­niko­va has already pro­vid­ed ample proof. For more than a decade, the mem­bers of Pussy Riot have staged high-pro­file protests in Rus­sia … and paid the price, with time served in prison. As she puts it, “Courage is an abil­i­ty to act in the face of fear. And some of us have cho­sen to live coura­geous­ly.” That exam­ple is what makes her a threat:

The rea­son why I became a threat to the sys­tem, not because of any actu­al phys­i­cal pow­er that I have, but because courage is con­ta­gious. And any act of speak­ing the truth can cause incal­cu­la­ble trans­for­ma­tions in social con­scious­ness. And we all have this pow­er. It’s a moral act to use this pow­er. You may or may not achieve the results that you want­ed, but there is eter­nal beau­ty in try­ing to find truth, in risk­ing every­thing you’ve got for what’s right…

As always, she saves choice words for Putin: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, the Krem­lin walls became your prison walls. You have already lost. You know it. That’s why you’re so afraid. You lost in spir­it.” Now we just need Rus­sians at home, and Ukraini­ans on the bat­tle­field, to make the implic­it explic­it.

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 

A His­to­ry of Pussy Riot: Watch the Band’s Ear­ly Performances/Protests Against the Putin Regime

Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokon­niko­va Tells Pro­tes­tors What to Do–and Not Do–If Arrest­ed by Author­i­tar­i­an Police

Slavoj Žižek & Pussy Riot’s Nadezh­da Tolokon­niko­va Exchange An Extra­or­di­nary Series of Let­ters

Download Free Coloring Books from Nearly 100 Museums & Libraries

in Art, Books | April 26th, 2023

We here at Open Cul­ture hearti­ly endorse the prac­tice of view­ing art, whether in a phys­i­cal muse­um, in the pages of a book, or online. For some, how­ev­er, it tends to have one seri­ous short­com­ing: all the col­ors are already filled in. If you’re itch­ing to use your own col­ored pen­cils, crayons, water­col­ors, or oth­er tools of choice on draw­ings, paint­ings, and a vari­ety of oth­er works besides in the pos­ses­sion of well-known art insti­tu­tions, these past few months are a time of year to savor thanks to the ini­tia­tive Col­or Our Col­lec­tions.

Each Feb­ru­ary, Col­or Our Col­lec­tions releas­es its lat­est round of col­or­ing books free online, assem­bled from con­tri­bu­tions by the likes of the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France, Eton Col­lege, the New York Botan­i­cal Gar­den, the Toron­to Pub­lic Library, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co.

“Launched by The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine Library in 2016,” says its about page, it hosts an “annu­al col­or­ing fes­ti­val on social media dur­ing which libraries, muse­ums, archives and oth­er cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions around the world share free col­or­ing con­tent fea­tur­ing images from their col­lec­tions.”

The de-col­ored pic­tures you see here offer just a taste of all you can find in this year’s Col­or Our Col­lec­tions crop. Some of the par­tic­i­pat­ing insti­tu­tions pro­vide col­orable selec­tions from across their hold­ings, some stick to a cer­tain theme, and some con­tribute actu­al vol­umes, dig­i­tized whole or cre­at­ed for the occa­sion. Take, for instance, the Ol’ Med­ical Colour­ing Book from Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty Library, which promis­es hours of fun with pages like “ante­ri­or view of the skele­tal sys­tem,” “ven­tral view of the brain,” and “uri­nary sys­tem shown on the female form.”

These are some dis­tance from the bun­nies and but­ter­cups we col­ored in as chil­dren; so are the vig­or­ous nine­teen-thir­ties motor­cy­cle adver­tise­ments assem­bled by the Harley-David­son Archive, or the archi­tec­tur­al and archae­o­log­i­cal draw­ings from the Médiathèque de Châteaudun. But Col­or Our Col­lec­tions 2023 also con­tains a good deal of kid-direct­ed mate­r­i­al as well, includ­ing Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Library’s live­ly pack­age of ani­mal images from issues of Kodomo no Kuni, or The Land of Chil­dren — a mag­a­zine direct­ed toward the kids of Japan a cen­tu­ry ago, but then, some child­hood plea­sures know no cul­tur­al or tem­po­ral bounds. Enter the archive of 2023 col­or­ing books here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Col­or­ing Books from The Pub­lic Domain Review: Down­load & Col­or Works by Hoku­sai, Albrecht Dür­er, Har­ry Clarke, Aubrey Beard­s­ley & More

A Free Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book: While Away the Hours Col­or­ing in Illus­tra­tions of 35 Clas­sic Plays

The Dune Col­or­ing & Activ­i­ty Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Cre­at­ed Count­less Hours of Pecu­liar Fun for Kids

The Very First Col­or­ing Book, The Lit­tle Folks’ Paint­ing Book (Cir­ca 1879)

The First Adult Col­or­ing Book: See the Sub­ver­sive Exec­u­tive Col­or­ing Book From 1961

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.

Harry Belafonte (RIP), James Baldwin, Marlon Brando & Sidney Poitier Talk About Civil Rights, 1963

in History | April 26th, 2023

Note: Yes­ter­day Har­ry Bela­fonte, the civ­il rights activist, singer and actor, passed away at age 96. In his mem­o­ry, we’re bring­ing back a post from our archive, one that fea­tures Bela­fonte and oth­er leg­ends dis­cussing the March on Wash­ing­ton, back in August, 1963. The film above is now made avail­able by the US Nation­al Archives.

On the day of the his­toric “March on Wash­ing­ton for Jobs and Free­dom” (August 28, 1963), known today as The Great March on Wash­ing­ton, CBS aired a 30-minute round­table dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing Har­ry Bela­fonte, James Bald­win, Mar­lon Bran­do, Charl­ton Hes­ton, Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Sid­ney Poiti­er.

The whole seg­ment is fas­ci­nat­ing, even and per­haps espe­cial­ly because the speak­ers pur­sue their some­times diver­gent agen­das (Hes­ton speaks opti­misti­cal­ly about peace­ful dis­sent, Bran­do hopes the Civ­il Rights move­ment may lead to repa­ra­tions for Native Amer­i­cans, while Bela­fonte warns omi­nous­ly that the Unit­ed States has now reached a “point of no return”). But it may be Joseph Mankiewicz, the sharp-wit­ted writer/director of All About Eve, who pro­vides one of the dis­cus­sion’s pithi­est lines: “Free­dom, true free­dom,” he says, “is not giv­en by gov­ern­ments; it is tak­en by the peo­ple.”

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:

Noam Chom­sky & Har­ry Bela­fonte Speak on Stage for the First Time Togeth­er: Talk Trump, Klan & Hav­ing a Rebel­lious Heart

How Jazz Helped Fuel the 1960s Civ­il Rights Move­ment

How Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Used Niet­zsche, Hegel & Kant to Over­turn Seg­re­ga­tion in Amer­i­ca

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.

Watch Cab Calloway Actually Perform “Mr. Hepster’s Dictionary,” His Famous Dictionary of Jazz Slang (1944)

in English Language, Jazz, Music | April 24th, 2023

Who’s up for a good dic­tio­nary on film?

Col­in Brown­ing, assis­tant edi­tor of The Bluff, a Loy­ola Mary­mount Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent news­pa­per, has some kopaset­ic cast­ing sug­ges­tions for a hypo­thet­i­cal fea­ture adap­ta­tion of the “Mer­ri­am-Web­ster clas­sic.”

He’s just mug­gin’, of course. Still, he seems like a young man who’s got his boots on.

Dig?

…no?

In that case, you’d best acquaint your­self with the only cin­e­mat­ic dic­tio­nary adap­ta­tion we’re aware of, the Mr. Hep­cat’s Dic­tio­nary num­ber from Sen­sa­tions of 1945, above.

Musi­cal team Al Sher­man & Har­ry Tobias drew direct­ly from Cab Calloway’s Cat-ologue: a Hepster’s Dic­tio­nary, a lex­i­con of Harlem jazz musi­cians’ slang orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1938 ’ when choos­ing terms for Cal­loway to define for a young pro­tégée, eager to be schooled in “the lin­go all the jit­ter­bugs use today.”

In between, Cal­loway, lays some iron in white tie and tails.

By the time the film came out, Cal­loway’s Hep­ster Dic­tio­nary was in its sev­enth edi­tion, and had earned its place as the offi­cial jive lan­guage ref­er­ence book of the New York Pub­lic Library.

As Cal­loway wrote in the fore­word to the sixth edi­tion:

“Jive talk” is now an every­day part of the Eng­lish lan­guage. Its usage is now accept­ed in the movies, on the stage, and in the song prod­ucts of Tin Pan Alley. It is rea­son­able to assume that jive will find new avenues in such hith­er­to remote places as Aus­tralia, the South Pacif­ic, North Africa, Chi­na, Italy, France, Sici­ly, and inevitably Ger­many and wher­ev­er our Armed Forces may serve.

I don’t want to lend the impres­sion here that the many words con­tained in this edi­tion are the fig­ments of my imag­i­na­tion. They were gath­ered from every con­ceiv­able source. Many first saw the light of printer’s ink in Bil­ly Rowe’s wide­ly read col­umn “The Note­book,” in the Pitts­burgh Couri­er.

And now to enrich our vocab­u­lar­ies…

HEPSTER’S DICTIONARY

A

• A hum­mer (n.): excep­tion­al­ly good. Ex., “Man, that boy is a hum­mer.”
• Ain’t com­ing on that tab (v.): won’t accept the propo­si­tion. Usu­al­ly abbr. to “I ain’t com­ing.”
• Alli­ga­tor (n.): jit­ter­bug.
• Apple (n.): the big town, the main stem, Harlem.
• Arm­strongs (n.): musi­cal notes in the upper reg­is­ter, high trum­pet notes.

B

• Bar­be­cue (n.): the girl friend, a beau­ty.
• Bar­rel­house (adj.): free and easy.
• Bat­tle (n.): a very home­ly girl, a crone.
• Beat (adj.): (1) tired, exhaust­ed. Ex., “You look beat” or “I feel beat.” (2) lack­ing any­thing. Ex, “I am beat for my cash”, “I am beat to my socks” (lack­ing every­thing).
• Beat it out (v.): play it hot, empha­size the rhythm.
• Beat up (adj.): sad, uncom­pli­men­ta­ry, tired.
• Beat up the chops (or the gums) (v.): to talk, con­verse, be loqua­cious.
• Beef (v.): to say, to state. Ex., “He beefed to me that, etc.”
• Bible (n.): the gospel truth. Ex., “It’s the bible!”
• Black (n.): night.
• Black and tan (n.): dark and light col­ored folks. Not col­ored and white folks as erro­neous­ly assumed.
• Blew their wigs (adj.): excit­ed with enthu­si­asm, gone crazy.
• Blip (n.): some­thing very good. Ex., “That’s a blip”; “She’s a blip.”
• Blow the top (v.): to be over­come with emo­tion (delight). Ex., “You’ll blow your top when you hear this one.”
• Boo­gie-woo­gie (n.): har­mo­ny with accent­ed bass.
• Boot (v.): to give. Ex., “Boot me that glove.”
• Break it up (v.): to win applause, to stop the show.
• Bree (n.): girl.
• Bright (n.): day.
• Bright­nin’ (n.): day­break.
• Bring down ((1) n. (2) v.): (1) some­thing depress­ing. Ex., “That’s a bring down.” (2) Ex., “That brings me down.”
• Bud­dy ghee (n.): fel­low.
• Bust your conk (v.): apply your­self dili­gent­ly, break your neck.

C

• Canary (n.): girl vocal­ist.
• Capped (v.): out­done, sur­passed.
• Cat (n.): musi­cian in swing band.
• Chick (n.): girl.
• Chime (n.): hour. Ex., “I got in at six chimes.”
• Clam­bake (n.): ad lib ses­sion, every man for him­self, a jam ses­sion not in the groove.
• Chirp (n.): female singer.
• Cogs (n.): sun glass­es.
• Col­lar (v.): to get, to obtain, to com­pre­hend. Ex., “I got­ta col­lar me some food”; “Do you col­lar this jive?”
• Come again (v.): try it over, do bet­ter than you are doing, I don’t under­stand you.
• Comes on like gang­busters (or like test pilot) (v.): plays, sings, or dances in a ter­rif­ic man­ner, par excel­lence in any depart­ment. Some­times abbr. to “That singer real­ly comes on!”
• Cop (v.): to get, to obtain (see col­lar; knock).
• Corny (adj.): old-fash­ioned, stale.
• Creeps out like the shad­ow (v.): “comes on,” but in smooth, suave, sophis­ti­cat­ed man­ner.
• Crumb crush­ers (n.): teeth.
• Cub­by (n.): room, flat, home.
• Cups (n.): sleep. Ex., “I got­ta catch some cups.”
• Cut out (v.): to leave, to depart. Ex., “It’s time to cut out”; “I cut out from the joint in ear­ly bright.”
• Cut rate (n.): a low, cheap per­son. Ex., “Don’t play me cut rate, Jack!”

D

• Dic­ty (adj.): high-class, nifty, smart.
• Dig (v.): (1) meet. Ex., “I’ll plant you now and dig you lat­er.” (2) look, see. Ex., “Dig the chick on your left duke.” (3) com­pre­hend, under­stand. Ex., “Do you dig this jive?”
• Dim (n.): evening.
• Dime note (n.): ten-dol­lar bill.
• Dog­house (n.): bass fid­dle.
• Domi (n.): ordi­nary place to live in. Ex., “I live in a right­eous domi.”
• Doss (n.): sleep. Ex., “I’m a lit­tle beat for my doss.”
• Down with it (adj.): through with it.
• Drape (n.): suit of clothes, dress, cos­tume.
• Dream­ers (n.): bed cov­ers, blan­kets.
• Dry-goods (n.): same as drape.
• Duke (n.): hand, mitt.
• Dutchess (n.): girl.

E

• Ear­ly black (n.): evening
• Ear­ly bright (n.): morn­ing.
• Evil (adj.): in ill humor, in a nasty tem­per.

F

• Fall out (v.): to be over­come with emo­tion. Ex., “The cats fell out when he took that solo.”
• Fews and two (n.): mon­ey or cash in small quan­ti­ty.
• Final (v.): to leave, to go home. Ex., “I finaled to my pad” (went to bed); “We copped a final” (went home).
• Fine din­ner (n.): a good-look­ing girl.
• Focus (v.): to look, to see.
• Foxy (v.): shrewd.
• Frame (n.): the body.
• Fraughty issue (n.): a very sad mes­sage, a deplorable state of affairs.
• Free­by (n.): no charge, gratis. Ex., “The meal was a free­by.”
• Frisk­ing the whiskers (v.): what the cats do when they are warm­ing up for a swing ses­sion.
• Frol­ic pad (n.): place of enter­tain­ment, the­ater, night­club.
• From­by (adj.): a frompy queen is a bat­tle or faust.
• Front (n.): a suit of clothes.
• Fruit­ing (v.): fick­le, fool­ing around with no par­tic­u­lar object.
• Fry (v.): to go to get hair straight­ened.

G

• Gabriels (n.): trum­pet play­ers.
• Gam­min’ (adj.): show­ing off, flir­ta­tious.
• Gasser (n, adj.): sen­sa­tion­al. Ex., “When it comes to danc­ing, she’s a gasser.”
• Gate (n.): a male per­son (a salu­ta­tion), abbr. for “gate-mouth.”
• Get in there (excla­ma­tion.): go to work, get busy, make it hot, give all you’ve got.
• Gimme some skin (v.): shake hands.
• Glims (n.): the eyes.
• Got your boots on: you know what it is all about, you are a hep cat, you are wise.
• Got your glass­es on: you are ritzy or snooty, you fail to rec­og­nize your friends, you are up-stage.
• Gravy (n.): prof­its.
• Grease (v.): to eat.
• Groovy (adj.): fine. Ex., “I feel groovy.”
• Ground grip­pers (n.): new shoes.
• Growl (n.): vibrant notes from a trum­pet.
• Gut-buck­et (adj.): low-down music.
• Guz­zlin’ foam (v.): drink­ing beer.

H

• Hard (adj.): fine, good. Ex., “That’s a hard tie you’re wear­ing.”
• Hard spiel (n.): inter­est­ing line of talk.
• Have a ball (v.): to enjoy your­self, stage a cel­e­bra­tion. Ex., “I had myself a ball last night.”
• Hep cat (n.): a guy who knows all the answers, under­stands jive.
• Hide-beat­er (n.): a drum­mer (see skin-beat­er).
• Hinc­ty (adj.): con­ceit­ed, snooty.
• Hip (adj.): wise, sophis­ti­cat­ed, any­one with boots on. Ex., “She’s a hip chick.”
• Home-cook­ing (n.): some­thing very din­ner (see fine din­ner).
• Hot (adj.): musi­cal­ly tor­rid; before swing, tunes were hot or bands were hot.
• Hype (n, v.): build up for a loan, woo­ing a girl, per­sua­sive talk.

I

• Icky (n.): one who is not hip, a stu­pid per­son, can’t col­lar the jive.
• Igg (v.): to ignore some­one. Ex., “Don’t igg me!)
• In the groove (adj.): per­fect, no devi­a­tion, down the alley.

J

• Jack (n.): name for all male friends (see gate; pops).
• Jam ((1)n, (2)v.): (1) impro­vised swing music. Ex., “That’s swell jam.” (2) to play such music. Ex., “That cat sure­ly can jam.”
• Jeff (n.): a pest, a bore, an icky.
• Jel­ly (n.): any­thing free, on the house.
• Jit­ter­bug (n.): a swing fan.
• Jive (n.): Harlemese speech.
• Joint is jump­ing: the place is live­ly, the club is leap­ing with fun.
• Jumped in port (v.): arrived in town.

K

• Kick (n.): a pock­et. Ex., “I’ve got five bucks in my kick.”
• Kill me (v.): show me a good time, send me.
• Killer-diller (n.): a great thrill.
• Knock (v.): give. Ex., “Knock me a kiss.”
• Kopaset­ic (adj.): absolute­ly okay, the tops.

L

• Lamp (v.): to see, to look at.
• Land o’darkness (n.): Harlem.
• Lane (n.): a male, usu­al­ly a non­pro­fes­sion­al.
• Latch on (v.): grab, take hold, get wise to.
• Lay some iron (v.): to tap dance. Ex., “Jack, you real­ly laid some iron that last show!”
• Lay your rack­et (v.): to jive, to sell an idea, to pro­mote a propo­si­tion.
• Lead sheet (n.): a top­coat.
• Left raise (n.): left side. Ex., “Dig the chick on your left raise.”
• Lick­ing the chops (v.): see frisk­ing the whiskers.
• Licks (n.): hot musi­cal phras­es.
• Lily whites (n.): bed sheets.
• Line (n.): cost, price, mon­ey. Ex., “What is the line on this drape” (how much does this suit cost)? “Have you got the line in the mouse” (do you have the cash in your pock­et)? Also, in reply­ing, all fig­ures are dou­bled. Ex., “This drape is line forty” (this suit costs twen­ty dol­lars).
• Lock up: to acquire some­thing exclu­sive­ly. Ex., “He’s got that chick locked up”; “I’m gonna lock up that deal.”

M

• Main kick (n.): the stage.
• Main on the hitch (n.): hus­band.
• Main queen (n.): favorite girl friend, sweet­heart.
• Man in gray (n.): the post­man.
• Mash me a fin (com­mand.): Give me $5.
• Mel­low (adj.): all right, fine. Ex., “That’s mel­low, Jack.”
• Melt­ed out (adj.): broke.
• Mess (n.): some­thing good. Ex., “That last drink was a mess.”
• Meter (n.): quar­ter, twen­ty-five cents.
• Mezz (n.): any­thing supreme, gen­uine. Ex., “this is real­ly the mezz.”
• Mitt pound­ing (n.): applause.
• Moo juice (n.): milk.
• Mouse (n.): pock­et. Ex., “I’ve got a meter in the mouse.”
• Mug­gin’ (v.): mak­ing ’em laugh, putting on the jive. “Mug­gin’ light­ly,” light stac­ca­to swing; “mug­gin’ heavy,” heavy stac­ca­to swing.
• Mur­der (n.): some­thing excel­lent or ter­rif­ic. Ex., “That’s sol­id mur­der, gate!”

N

• Neigho, pops: Noth­ing doing, pal.
• Nick­lette (n.): auto­mat­ic phono­graph, music box.
• Nick­el note (n.): five-dol­lar bill.
• Nix out (v.): to elim­i­nate, get rid of. Ex., “I nixed that chick out last week”; “I nixed my gar­ments” (undressed).
• Nod (n.): sleep. Ex., “I think I’l cop a nod.”

O

• Ofay (n.): white per­son.
• Off the cob (adj.): corny, out of date.
• Off-time jive (n.): a sor­ry excuse, say­ing the wrong thing.
• Orches­tra­tion (n.): an over­coat.
• Out of the world (adj.): per­fect ren­di­tion. Ex., “That sax cho­rus was out of the world.”
• Ow!: an excla­ma­tion with var­ied mean­ing. When a beau­ti­ful chick pass­es by, it’s “Ow!”; and when some­one pulls an awful pun, it’s also “Ow!”

P

• Pad (n.): bed.
• Peck­ing (n.): a dance intro­duced at the Cot­ton Club in 1937.
• Peo­la (n.): a light per­son, almost white.
• Pigeon (n.): a young girl.
• Pops (n.): salu­ta­tion for all males (see gate; Jack).
• Pounders (n.): police­men.

Q

• Queen (n.): a beau­ti­ful girl.

R

• Rank (v.): to low­er.
• Ready (adj.): 100 per cent in every way. Ex., “That fried chick­en was ready.”
• Ride (v.): to swing, to keep per­fect tem­po in play­ing or singing.
• Riff (n.): hot lick, musi­cal phrase.
• Right­eous (adj.): splen­did, okay. Ex., “That was a right­eous queen I dug you with last black.”
• Rock me (v.): send me, kill me, move me with rhythm.
• Ruff (n.): quar­ter, twen­ty-five cents.
• Rug cut­ter (n.): a very good dancer, an active jit­ter­bug.

S

• Sad (adj.): very bad. Ex., “That was the sad­dest meal I ever col­lared.”
• Sad­der than a map (adj.): ter­ri­ble. Ex., “That man is sad­der than a map.”
• Salty (adj.): angry, ill-tem­pered.
• Sam got you: you’ve been draft­ed into the army.
• Send (v.): to arouse the emo­tions. (joy­ful). Ex., “That sends me!”
• Set of sev­en brights (n.): one week.
• Sharp (adj.): neat, smart, tricky. Ex., “That hat is sharp as a tack.”
• Sig­ni­fy (v.): to declare your­self, to brag, to boast.
• Skins (n.): drums.
• Skin-beat­er (n.): drum­mer (see hide-beat­er).
• Sky piece (n.): hat.
• Slave (v.): to work, whether ardu­ous labor or not.
• Slide your jib (v.): to talk freely.
• Snatch­er (n.): detec­tive.
• So help me: it’s the truth, that’s a fact.
• Sol­id (adj.): great, swell, okay.
• Sound­ed off (v.): began a pro­gram or con­ver­sa­tion.
• Spoutin’ (v.): talk­ing too much.
• Square (n.): an unhep per­son (see icky; Jeff).
• Stache (v.): to file, to hide away, to secrete.
• Stand one up (v.): to play one cheap, to assume one is a cut-rate.
• To be stashed (v.): to stand or remain.
• Susie‑Q (n.): a dance intro­duced at the Cot­ton Club in 1936.

T

• Take it slow (v.): be care­ful.
• Take off (v.): play a solo.
• The man (n.): the law.
• Threads (n.): suit, dress or cos­tume (see drape; dry-goods).
• Tick (n.): minute, moment. Ex., “I’ll dig you in a few ticks.” Also, ticks are dou­bled in account­ing time, just as mon­ey is dou­bled in giv­ing “line.” Ex., “I finaled to the pad this ear­ly bright at tick twen­ty” (I got to bed this morn­ing at ten o’clock).
• Tim­ber (n.): tooth­pick.
• To drib­ble (v.): to stut­ter. Ex., “He talked in drib­bles.”
• Togged to the bricks: dressed to kill, from head to toe.
• Too much (adj.): term of high­est praise. Ex., “You are too much!”
• Trick­er­a­tion (n.): strut­tin’ your stuff, mug­gin’ light­ly and polite­ly.
• Tril­ly (v.): to leave, to depart. Ex., “Well, I guess I’ll tril­ly.”
• Truck (v.): to go some­where. Ex., “I think I’ll truck on down to the gin­mill (bar).”
• Truck­ing (n.): a dance intro­duced at the Cot­ton Club in 1933.
• Twister to the slam­mer (n.): the key to the door.
• Two cents (n.): two dol­lars.

U

• Unhep (adj.): not wise to the jive, said of an icky, a Jeff, a square.

V

• Vine (n.): a suit of clothes.
• V‑8 (n.): a chick who spurns com­pa­ny, is inde­pen­dent, is not amenable.

W

• What’s your sto­ry?: What do you want? What have you got to say for your­self? How are tricks? What excuse can you offer? Ex., “I don’t know what his sto­ry is.”
• Whipped up (adj.): worn out, exhaust­ed, beat for your every­thing.
• Wren (n.): a chick, a queen.
• Wrong riff: the wrong thing said or done. Ex., “You’re com­ing up on the wrong riff.”

Y

• Yard­dog (n.): uncouth, bad­ly attired, unat­trac­tive male or female.
• Yeah, man: an excla­ma­tion of assent.

Z

• Zoot (adj.): exag­ger­at­ed
• Zoot suit (n.): the ulti­mate in clothes. The only total­ly and tru­ly Amer­i­can civil­ian suit.

That’s sol­id mur­der, gate!

If you’re not too beat, Jazz Night In Amer­i­ca builds on Calloway’s dic­tio­nary with some addi­tion­al vocab­u­lary in the video below. Watch it for the mean­ings of stank, ictus, swoop, and scoop, defined col­lec­tive­ly by drum­mer Ali Jack­son as the sort of col­lo­qui­alisms you use when you “don’t want every­one to know what you’re say­ing, but you want to express a point.”

Lis­ten to poet Lemn Sis­say’s BBC his­to­ry of Cab Calloway’s Hepster’s Dic­tio­nary here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Cab Calloway’s “Hep­ster Dic­tio­nary,” a 1939 Glos­sary of the Lin­go (the “Jive”) of the Harlem Renais­sance

One of the Great­est Dances Sequences Ever Cap­tured on Film Gets Restored in Col­or by AI: Watch the Clas­sic Scene from Stormy Weath­er

Cab Cal­loway Stars in “Min­nie the Moocher,” a Trip­py Bet­ty Boop Car­toon That’s Ranked as the 20th Great­est Car­toon of All Time (1932)

Watch a Sur­re­al 1933 Ani­ma­tion of Snow White, Fea­tur­ing Cab Cal­loway & Bet­ty Boop: It’s Ranked as the 19th Great­est Car­toon of All Time

– 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.

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.