The work of a surgeon aboard ship in the Great Age of Sail
was no picnic. Men were more often ill than injured; statistics kept by the
Royal Navy on their Jamaica
station from the late 18th century until the end of the War of 1812
bare this out. More men died of yellow fever than of any other cause. In war or
peace, men still managed to contract illnesses.
Until the mid-19th century, the essential
approach to such issues was one of “imbalance.” The humors, as originally
specified by Galen in the first century CE, had to be in perfect order for the
body to be healthy. Thus such treatments as bleeding and purging, incomprehensible
to the modern mind, were commonly applied to draw out the ill-humors and right
the body’s functions.
One of the most wince-worthy treatments of the time was
blistering, which is not as often spoken of as bloodletting but was equally
popular. This application was used to draw heat out of the body and was
therefore applied in the case of fevers, swelling and sepsis. If an area of the
body was red and hot to the touch, then it stood to reason – at least when
applying the theory of humors – that the heat needed to be taken away with a
form of like heat. Enter blistering.
Blistering agents, sometimes referred to as epispastics,
were generally made of a wax or lard base. The key ingredient in almost all
blistering plasters was cantharide beetles dried and then ground to a fine
powder. The beetles, often called Spanish flies, had an irritant in their
exoskeleton to discourage predators which would cause inflammation.
Along with use as a blistering agent, Spanish fly was also
sprinkled on food or in wine as an aphrodisiac. The painful result,
unfortunately, was an irritation of the urethra. Since this would sometimes
lead to prolonged erections both in the male penis and the female clitoris, the
use of Spanish fly has persisted into the modern era. (Don’t try that at home
kids; you can end up needing to be catheterized in order to urinate. Nobody
wants that.)
Mrs.
Child, in her 1830s publication The
Family Nurse, gives a straight forward recipe for a blistering ointment as
well as instructions for application:
The common blistering
plaster is made of fresh mutton tallow, yellow wax, resin of pine, cantharides,
or Spanish flies; equal portions of each. The flies are finely powdered and
added to the other ingredients previously melted together and removed from the
fire. Usually spread on soft leather or kid, somewhat larger than the hand. If
the surface be spread with powdered flies, it is more irritating. If this fails
to draw a blister, Venice
turpentine, powdered mustard and black pepper are sometimes mixed with it.
The
optimal result saw large blisters breaking out on the “cherry red” skin. Mrs.
Child goes on to up the teeth-gritting quotient by advising that, should the
blisters formed by the plaster refuse to pop in a timely manner, they should be
snipped “with sharp scissors” before linen is applied to absorb the desired
discharge. She does mention that one should go light on the cantharides in
plasters made for children.
The
generally soft-hearted and homeopathic-leaning Mrs. Child also gives a number
of ways to relieve the inevitable pain brought on by this treatment. These
include cabbage or plantain leaves soaked in milk and used as a “soothing
dressing.” It is doubtful that any navy surgeon would have troubled himself
with such coddling of a patient; one shudders to think of the application of a
blistering aboard a pirate vessel.
The
distasteful regimen of blistering fell out of favor by the late 19th
century, but a far less harmful remnant of the treatment remained. It is no
doubt that most of our great-grandmothers applied a “mustard plaster” to their sick
children. This smelly but harmless treatment was meant to clear up clogged
nasal passages. A form of such home-brewed medicine remains today in the
familiar application we know as Vicks Vapo Rub.
Header: Subtraction by H.
Heath via Wikimedia (it will take more than a blistering plaster to help those sailors…)
4 comments:
Acupuncturists still use a less gruesome cousin of blistering known as "cupping," where heat or simple suction is used to attach small cups to the skin. It's usually done to improve circulation.
It leaves large blisterlike marks that look pretty horrifying, but done correctly, it's not at all painful.
Thank you for the additional info, Undine.
I'm not familiar with cupping, aside from the off-handed mentions by Joan Rivers on "Fashion Police". Really just proving my ignorance, there...
I was going to mention "cupping" but Undine beat me to it... That post made me cringe several times, Pauline... Well done, indeed.
A certain argument could be made for the old saying "The cure is worse than the disease" originating with blistering, I think. Ouch.
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