Monthly Archives: April 2021

By Dorsey Armstrong, Ph.D., Purdue UniversityThe 46 masters of medicine at the University of Paris produced one of the most important scientific works concerning the Black Death. (Image: Morphart Creation/Shutterstock)

If Florence was the most densely populated city in the medieval world during the late Middle Ages, Paris was the largest metropolis, with about 200,000 inhabitants. It might seem logical to think of Paris as the capital of the medieval nation of France.

What is more important about Paris during the first wave of the Black Death is that it was the site of one of the first universities in the medieval world, and it had, by the standards of the day, an impressive medical faculty whom the French king called upon to figure out just what was going on.

The 46 masters of medicine at the University of Paris produced one of the most important scientific works concerning the Black Death, the Compendium de Epidemia per Collegium Facultatis Medicorum Parisius, which is fascinating for the emphasis it places on how earthquakes, floods, unseasonable weather, planetary conjunctions, and bad air contributed to the plague outbreak.

The Compendium is a very lengthy tract, comprising multiple books, and while it provides a fascinating insight into medieval medical theory, it was basically useless for those who were suffering through the Great Mortality, a fact that becomes especially clear considering that almost all of the authorities who worked on the Compendium died of the plague themselves.

This is a transcript from the video series The Black Death: The Worlds Most Devastating Plague. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

Its estimated that between 1348 and 1350 there were some 24 plague tracts written by a variety of people, and some of these were decidedly quirky by modern standards.

One medical treatise was even written in poetic verse. An English medical authority named John Colle, taking the Paris medical facultys statement about bad air as a starting point, theorized that the best way to counteract bad air that carried infection was with more bad air.

This led to the totally bizarre sight of people gathered around public latrines inhaling deeply, thinking that this bad smell would act as protection against whatever other bad smell was carrying the plague with it.

As noted, the majority of Pariss population did not flee the city. But theres an exceptionthe French king, Philip VI, took a page out of the Florentine playbook and hightailed it out of there, moving around the countryside in a sort of bizarre game of hide-and-seek with the Black Death. He escaped the plague, dying of natural causes in 1350, but his queen succumbed to the plague.

Learn more about Europe on the brink of the Black Death.

Those who remained in Paris chronicled the horrors of the epidemic. The chronicler Jean de Venette recounted how the hospital of the Htel-Dieu was particularly hard hit.

Seeing as its population was made up of those who were already ill or elderly, and the quarters were pretty closemultiple patients sometimes shared a single bedand once the Black Death had a toehold there, there was no stopping it.

Learn more about the epidemiology of plague.

But in a few places, a response is encountered that seems awfully like tempting fate. One of these episodes is recounted in the Grandes Chroniques de France, or Great Chronicle of France, kept by the monks of Saint-Denis, just outside Paris.

In this particular account, the chronicler talks about two monks from the abbey who were traveling through the countryside at the behest of their abbot when they encountered a village where all the people were dancing to the music of drums and bagpipes. This seemed an odd celebratory moment in the midst of so much grim death, so the monks inquired as to what was happening.

We have seen our neighbors die, and are seeing them die daily, the villagers explained, but since the plague has not entered our town, we hope that our merrymaking will keep it away, and this is why we are dancing.

On their way home, the monks passed through the same village, and everyone seemed very sad. What happened? they asked.

Alas, good lords, the wrath of God came upon us in a hailstorm, for a great hailstorm came from the sky and fell on our town and all around, so suddenly, that some people were killed by it, and others died of fright, not knowing where to go or which way to turn.

The merrymaking response to plague would show up throughout the medieval world as the Black Death made its way across the continent, as would a sort of intersection of that impulse and the resignation that everyone was going to die.

A few communities figured since they were going to die, they might as well enjoy an orgy of hedonism. On other occasions, people turned the opposite way and, in acts of religious devotion, sought to further punish and humiliate their flesh in the hope that this would appease the wrath of God.

The Compendium de Epidemia was written by 46 masters of medicine at the University of Paris. It was not that helpful for those who were suffering from the plague.

Some people gathered around public toilets inhaling deeply, thinking that this bad smell would act as protection against whatever other bad smell was carrying the plague with it.

The chronicler Jean de Venette recounted that, The mortality was so great that, for a considerable period, more than 500 bodies a day were being taken in carts from the Htel-Dieu in Paris for burial in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents.

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The Plague in Paris: Hedonism, Resignation, and the First Scientific Response - The Great Courses Daily News

Its been called the summer of hedonism. Travel experts are predicting record PTO requests. A lot of people are finally going to get married. Its a wildly imperfect analogy, but Summer 2021 already feels like V-J Day in Times Square come to life: a sunny, splashy, season-long block party. It isnt just a return to normalcy, its a leap to the best and wildest of all those things we once loved.

Can it possibly deliver on all that hype? TBD. But either way, its perfectly understandable if youre currently checking yourself out in the mirror and unsure whether youre emotionally prepared to start taking your shirt off in front of people again. One American Psychological Association survey found that 61% of Americans experienced undesired weight gain during the pandemic. The quarantine 15 wasnt just an early-pandemic quip: consumption of processed foods and alcohol skyrocketed over the last 12 months while people adjusted to a more static, hunkered-down lifestyle, devoid of gym memberships or daily commutes.

So, now more than ever, its natural to want to shed weight or build mass ahead of beach vacations, weddings and family reunions. (This summer is essentially all three wrapped into one.) But the mania of event-oriented wellness has long been problematic. My friends and I have a running joke, whenever we book a trip to head somewhere in a few months: [Insert destination here] bods start now!!! Might we actually fit in a few more trips to the gym, ahead of a trip to Austin or Miami? Sure. But its tongue-in-cheek, purposely on the nose. We know we probably wont look very different by the day of our flight, and prepping for one weekend of fun wont lay the foundations for a lifetime of fitness.

Summer is coming to a town near you. Its okay if youre preoccupied with preparing your body for it.

Federico Giampieri/Unsplash

Speaking recently with Mens Health, celebrity trainer Jeff Cavaliere offered an excellent quote on the concept of summer-specific sculpting: Maybe you talk about a summer cut, but summers eventually going to turn to fall. Then what happens? Oftentimes, we find ourselves going back to exactly what we did to put ourselves in the situation where were looking to get in shape again for the next event.

Hes right. As we march into our first proper summer in two years, with most of us eager to make an impression or, at least, to not make an upsetting impression its natural to fantasize over quick, dreamy results, an Adonis frame by way of Amazon Prime. We owe this to a culture of comparison. There was a fascinating study a few years ago that confirmed that men stare at each others chests more often than women stare at mens chests. This has been going on for a while, and as long as men walk around with exposed pecs, biceps and calves, its only going to continue.

The New York Times once referred to this psychological phenomenon as beach body tyranny. Its body dysmorphic disorder, just hyper-seasonal. You start to fixate on perceived aesthetic inadequacies, and how you feel finishes second to how you look. Our responses in these sorts of situations are always personal, but there are some identifiable patterns. Think: overexercise (especially at the expense of sleep), eating disorders, increased anxiety, social phobias.

Which all sounds supremely antithetical to a summer for the ages, no? Who needs that kind of pressure? Shouldnt our collective reentry just be about reestablishing relationships and making memories? Do you really need to lose 20 pounds by the Friday before Memorial Day? Or put up 200 pounds on the bench press in time for the Fourth of July? From a fitness perspective, whats the correct way to approach these coming months? Is it even possible to reconcile your need to look a certain way with the very real mental health concerns that spring from that pursuit?

This year, the answer is yes but a heavily qualified one. You should feel absolutely free to dream (and even stress a little bit) about achieving your perfect beach bod ahead of a perfect summer. Goal-oriented fitness is fraught, but so is living life without any goals at all. Consider: the medical community has recently turned its attention to a concept called languishing, a nascent clinical term that describes those who are neither depressed or flourishing. These people find themselves bopping around in lifes aimless middle, indifferent to projects they quit or hobbies they drop, unwilling to work harder for a promotion, incapable of getting excited about travel plans.

The pandemic has been a bona fide bonanza for languishing. As constructive, feel-good objectives have slowly lost their meaning, so many of us have struggled to retain a sense of purpose, which has slowly eroded our sense of self. This whole thing started with pledges to bake bread and build home gyms, but over time, you may have found yourself, say, reading and cooking less while spending too much time on the phone or in bed.

A dedicated fitness plan with lofty intentions, then, can be a positive thing to help you regain a sense of routine ahead of your reintroduction into polite society. And vitally, it doesnt have to mean trying to lose weight or build up your chest. Think about some of those back and side doors available to you, which can help you fine-tune your wellness over the next couple months. Schedule a steady outdoor activity that you enjoy, like hiking, tennis or golf. Take a constitutional in the middle of your workday. Eat less meat. Eat less at the end of the day. Head to bed earlier. Make lists. Mind your desk posture. Schedule your meals. It all counts.

This stuff is boring. It doesnt square with the oiled-up, six-week six-pack programs mens rags have promoted for decades. And, FYI, tackling these things alone will probably not get you exactly where you dream to be. But theyre all going to help theyre going to organically assist and augment every run, cycle and strength-training session that you attempt ahead of summer. Counting these small victories will help you get where you want to be again, physically and mentally.

Cavaliere is right: fall is also on the horizon, and by that point, springs sprint for summer could feel very far away. But peppering your scramble for a better beach bod with sustainable decision-making is your best shot at making the whole operation worth it.

This pandemic has taken so much from us. Its become one long, inexplicable dream, which we fortunately dont have to explain to anyone everyone gets it. But with light (literally, and a lot of it) at the end of the tunnel, allow yourself to feel inspired again. Its okay to imagine something better for your body, and this year especially, to peg that ambition around a time we actually hope to never forget.

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This Is the Only Year That It's Acceptable to Dream About Your Perfect Beach Bod - InsideHook

Mutual seduction is the most intimate of performances. Wahr and Cummings portray it with humour, emotional intelligence, and downright sexy stage chemistry, as the conversation roves from the poetry of Rilke to traumatic personal revelation, from the history that haunts the German capital to its hedonism and bohemian allure.

And yet, their meeting was not by chance. Tom has an ulterior motive and, the next morning, the play takes a tormented and polemical turn as the hungover couple reckon with the shadows of the past.

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To reveal more in a review would be impolite, though you can easily anticipate the twist from early on. The thriller is less interesting and less plausible than the setup, and some of the emotional logic of the play gets sacrificed to the imperatives of genre.

It still carries you along, despite a notable shift from meticulously crafted characters with a life of their own to figures who feel like mouthpieces for the playwrights ideas.

And it does remain a moody and sumptuously realised production, with Iain Sinclairs sensitive, tightly focused direction, and a dream design team Christina Smith, Niklas Pajanti, Kelly Ryall supporting the vitality and intimacy of the performances.

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Vital, intimate and sexy: MTCs Berlin is a smart romantic thriller - Sydney Morning Herald

The sun shines on the prime minister, despite everything.

The mood of the people soars as the YouGov mood tracker finds nearly half happy, up from just 20% in early January. Many more are optimistic or content. Everywhere the talk is of pubs, hairdressers, relief at schools being open, hope for summer holidays and the joy of vaccinations.

See how the news favours the government. Take this week: the unpopular European Super League collapses after government threats, Hiring picks up in sign of recovery, Businesses report strong trade, PM aims to supercharge hunt for Covid treatments and Johnsons ambitious green target all this in one days Financial Times, no Johnson fanzine. Sidestepping the sleaze, the government is micro-managing the news ahead of the 6 May elections. Naturally those stories are not all they seem. But how wise it has been to abandon that 2.6m newsroom where reporters would be daily shouting out rude words such as Greensill, Arcuri and food banks.

Most people, most of the time, think and talk about politics very little. The election expert Prof John Curtice says only a third, at most, are interested. There is a correlation between an intense interest in politics and unhappiness, which is all too familiar to Labour supporters. But out there most people are happily emerging from the greatest national trauma of our lifetimes, many with overflowing bank balances to spend. Rishi Sunak has deliberately set the property market booming, as his reckless stamp duty holiday causes a 16-year high in sales, gifting house owners an average 8.6% boost in property value. Yes, its disgusting that Foxtons estate agents took almost 7m in support from the taxpayer yet is giving its chief executive a monster bonus. But, hey, this is hedonism time, the perfect fit for Boris Johnsons persona. Theres no luckier time for local elections in just two weeks. Polling puts the Tories nine percentage points ahead, with Johnson riding high.

In his first election outing, Keir Starmer is cast as a killjoy, pointing to all the reasons not to be cheerful and there are plenty. Expectations of election results are low: Labour and Curtice predict as many losses as gains. Because of last years postponement, these elections will be complex to deconstruct, as they relate to seats won and lost last time in different years. For example, Labour entered the 2017 local elections as much as 19 points behind, so could make gains in some places. But in places with elections last in 2016, pre-Brexit, Labour was just three points behind, so may now take losses. Labours best hopes are the Tees Valley, West of England and West Midlands mayors, and maybe a couple of counties, Derbyshire and Lancashire, even if the party trails in the country overall. While the sun shines, stories of sleaze may take time to permeate through to politics avoiders. In the 1990s John Major set himself up for a fall with his back to basics campaign. Yes, bad behaviour is priced in with Johnson, but how much sleaze will be tolerated for how long?

Starmer has heaved Labour back from a 20-point abyss, and done well at skewering the governments deadly Covid blunders, but any opposition party would have been silenced by vaccine success. After these elections, Labour will be forced into a serious confrontation with the elemental shape-shift in British politics, a gradual evolution that suddenly exploded into Brexit. There is no going back to the old certainties of left and right or geography, warns Curtice.

Johnsons tanks are parked on acres of Labours old lawns, with his levelling up and left behind talk and his shameless towns fund bribes to newly won northern seats. The danger is that all thats left for Labour is to defend poor and disadvantaged people, who dont vote much anyway: Labours high score for caring doesnt earn many votes. The party founded to represent the working class reels in shock at losing seats in places long considered working-class heartlands. Labour may wish Brexit would vanish down a memory hole, but Curtice warns it remains the key electoral divide and Johnson plans to make extolling Brexit benefits a centrepiece in the next election. As 80% of Labours vote now comes from remain supporters, the only realistic choice open to the party is to craft an appeal that will maintain and enhance its support among remain voters, be they working class or not, writes Curtice.

A majority in the 2019 election, 52%, voted for parties backing a second referendum: Labour must come to terms with its new nature as the party backed by the urban and suburban, young, skilled, graduates and ethnic minorities. It needs to win seats like Londons Bromley and Chislehurst, which Curtice tells me would take Labour into a majority and thats not impossible, as young, well-educated people spread out to old Tory suburbs. Can Labour cope with such an identity change?

It will be more at ease contemplating the Johnson governments likely fall from grace by next spring. As last months budget made cuts in virtually every department, Britain will be deep in a new austerity, for all Johnsons promises. The NHS has nothing like the money or staff to cope with unprecedented waiting lists, nor have schools a fraction of what it takes to help children catch up. Youth unemployment will be worse and local councils poleaxed again. The Tory party will be riven between fiscal old-timers demanding cuts to the deficit, and Johnsons desire to splash out on eye-catchers.

Cassandra-like doom warnings wont get Labour elected but there will be an urgent yearning for it to paint a picture of a far better country, with Joe Bidens boldness and borrowing suggesting the way ahead. The current euphoria will fade as people tire of Johnsons sleazy salesmanship. There will be no Tory levelling up, as his tanks on Labour lawns will be exposed as cardboard disintegrating in the austerity rain.

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Johnson should make the most of his popularity, because it wont last - The Guardian

Where did the "devilhorns" hand gesture originate? Who invented it?

The sign of the horns,also known as devil horns or metalhorns, is ubiquitous in heavy metal, hard rock and beyond. Music fans, especially concertgoers, come across it frequently. They throw it up themselves in return, the expressionpassing from onegroup oflistenersto the next. But where did it come from?

It turns out that tracking down asource for the symbol can get murky, especially since the handsignitself has a history that precedes heavy music.

But wait, some readers might think, I thought Ronnie James Dio first flashed the devil horns.But is that right? Or was it Black Sabbath's Geezer Butlerwho brought the gesture to early metal? MaybeGeneSimmonstrying totrademark a version of the horns in 2017 had somegiving KISS' The Demon the claim.

Yet, it would appear that the devil-horned truth goes beyond any of those musicians. Though that's not to say thoseperformers' championing of the gesture didn't help popularize it in music.

Regardless, we wanted to know the honest truth about the devil horns. Who started the gesture? Is there an artist or bandthat can legitimately take credit for first making the hand motion in rock and metal?

To getanthropological, one should know that the hand gesture metalheads identify as the devil horns can mean other things todifferent cultures and religions. If you're in Italy and you extend your index and little fingers while holding the others with your thumb, a local might think you're trying to ward off bad luck or insult them, as CNN has documented. It can be regarded as an offensive sign elsewhere in the world, as well.

And the gesture's historyextendsfurther still, especially in a spiritual capacity. The irony is that thesignala metal fan makesto indicate some mix of loud music, hedonism and possibly devil worship often is used to expel demonsin Buddhism (the Karana Mudra). It's yoga'sApana Mudra, said to bring health and strength or even clear up gas and indigestion.

There are other examples now it's the Texas Longhorns' "Hook 'Em Horns," it's an emoji. The point is the physical gesture itself was usedlong before it was tied tometal or even music. That said, the horns symbolisnot precisely the same as those ritual motions, where the middle and ring fingers lightly touch the tip of the thumb. With the horns, the thumb typicallycovers one or more of the fingernails.

But that's not what we really want to know, is it? We want to know if an artistor bandcan lay claim as the horns' originator in music.Alas, that's where the conversationbetween a handful of rockersabout the gesture's provenance can make things blurry. Still, if one carefully looks over the available info, it's doesn't seem too difficult to conclude who likely threw 'em up first.

To reach a confident conclusion on who invented music's devil horns, however, one must weed through the list of artistsattached as its inventor over the years. (Amazingly, evenThe Beatleshave skin in this game.) As plenty of metalheadare no doubt aware, that list almost always starts with Ronnie James Dio.

In his lifetime, though, Dio played it down.

"I doubt very much if I would be the first one who ever did that," Dio told Metal-Rules.com in 2001. "That's like saying I invented the wheel, I'm sure someone did that at some other point. I think you'd have to say that I made it fashionable. I used it so much and all the time and it had become my trademark until the Britney Spears audience decided to do it as well. So it kind of lost its meaning with that."

That seems quite the sensible statement from the late Dio and Black Sabbath singer. Plus, it shows that the rocker most often connected to the metal horns was wellaware it had infiltrated pop music (and thereby, pop culture at large) by the turn of the millennium.

But back in 1979, according to a retelling of the legend by The Florida Times-Union, Dio wanted a signalthat would differentiate him from the departing Ozzy Osbourne when he replaced the singer in Sabbath. Ozzy was known for holding up double peace signs, so Dio started doing dual devil horns on stage with the band.

The rest, as they say, is history. But if Dio didn't claim to have invented the devil horns, is there someone else who does? The most visible suggestion of that of late is probably the one from Simmons, the KISS icon and businessman who made headlines attempting to trademark it. But the plain and simple fact is that the symbol he was trying to harness legal power over isn't the devil horns, but the American Sign Language sign for "I love you." (Yes, the two are very close.)

Then there's Butler, the Black Sabbath bassist who just this year said he was the one who showed Dio the devil horns in the first place. There's a 1969 band photo of Sabbath floating around with Butler flashing the sign, although it's tough to track down what, if any, materials the image appeared on at the time. After the fact, listeners were said to have found it in theliner notes of a2002 CD retrospective,Symptom of the Universe: The Original Black Sabbath 1970-1978.

For his part, Dio maintained that the devil horns "was [a] symbol that I thought was reflective of what that band was supposed to be all about."

He added, pointing to its incorporeal origins, "It's NOT the devil's sign like we're here with the devil. It's an Italian thing I got from my grandmother to ward off the evil eye or to give the evil eye, depending on which way you do it. It's just a symbol but it had magical incantations and attitudes to it and I felt it worked very well with Sabbath. So I became very noted for it and then everybody else started to pick up on it and away it went. But I would never say I take credit for being the first to do it. I say because I did it so much that it became the symbol of rock 'n' roll of some kind."

So then, who started it? Again, the duplicity of the devil horns rears its head. Dio's family used the symbolto keep evil away. But the most likely early instigator of the devil horns' popularity in heavy metal, the occult-driven '60s and '70s rock actCoven, seemed bent on using the devil horns for the devil's purpose.

It might seem silly now, but if you take Coven's 1969 debut Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls at face value, the Chicago-based doom rockers' primary aim was indeed to spread the word of Satan. Of particular note is that the Mercury Records album's opening songis called "Black Sabbath," and that here we go some of the band members are blatantly holding up the devil horns on the back cover.

"With the 'evil' prayers during 'Coven in Charing Cross,'" AllMusic's Joe Viglione writes of Witchcraft'smusic itself, "Coven get a bit heavy-handed; the group goes over the top trying to push the black magic stuff. 'Pact With the Devil' is written 'Pack With the Devil' on the label, and the 13-plus minute 'Satanic Mass' is more of a curiosity piece than [a] musical adventure."

The tunes notwithstanding, in 2017, Coven threatened to take legal action against Simmons if he insisted on continuing his trademark bid. Coven claimed the devil horns hand sign was "grandfathered in" for the band, saying they'd been photographed doing the gesture as far back as 1967.

To wrap things up, it looks like Coven have the best claim for being heavy metal's devil horns originators. Doing the math isn't hard Black Sabbath, newly formed in 1968, were still called Earth until August 1969, when they changed their name to the more famous moniker. Coven's Witchcraft came out that same summer, and, again, the opening track of the doomy prog and psych-rock set is titled "Black Sabbath."

Not to mention, what happened to Simmon's trademark quest after Coven got involved? He dropped it.

Still, the feeling of mystery surrounding the sign of the horns will probably never go away. It might even bewhythe symbol still feels so powerful when concertgoers hoist their arms and make the motion at rock and metal concerts all over the world.

So the next time you toss up the gesture and it could be soon, with many festivals and eventscoming back this summer after a concert-less 2020 remember the wicked witch rockers who most probably gave life to the storied devil horns.

Horns up!

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Where Did Metal's 'Devil Horns' Hand Gesture Really Come From? - Loudwire