Boatswains and Bacteremia : 1 of 4

Ancient Brain Surgery!

The above link leads to an article detailing how archaeologists have discovered what appear to be tools utilized in brain surgeries performed nearly 4000 years ago.

The obsidian blades have been found in the Black Sea province of Samsun in Turkey. Questioning of the archaeologists yielded some very interesting finds as detailed below:

What makes you think they were used for surgery?

We have found traces of cuts on skulls in a nearby graveyard. Out of around 700 skulls, 14 have these marks. They could only have been cut with a very sharp tool. At this time, 4000 years ago or more, it could only have been an obsidian blade. The cut marks show that a blade was used to make a rectangular opening all the way through the skull. We know that patients lived at least two to three years after the surgery, because the skull has tried to close the wound.

Have you uncovered any clues to why this surgery was performed?

There seem to be three main reasons. The first is to relieve the pressure of a brain haemorrhage; we found traces of blood on the inside of some of the skulls. The second is to treat patients with brain cancer, as we can see pressure traces from the cancer inside some of the skulls. And the final reason was to treat head injuries, which seem to have been quite common. The people of Ikiztepe got their copper from mines in the local mountains, and we think they had to fight other local people for access to it.

Are there any other examples of such early skull surgery?

A few skulls with cut marks have been found at other Bronze Age sites in this region, but other than these I have not found any parallel. There is a Neolithic skull found at a site in central Anatolia with a hole drilled into it. But the surgeons at Ikiztepe were cutting a rectangular opening. It is a much more sophisticated technique.

Thought this was interesting and worth passing along.

∞ Sep 2nd, 2010 at 10:00 pm / Comments

Friend of mine trying to publish…any ideas?

Stack of books A friend of mine has been working on a broad work of American History, and though much more work in the way of editing and finalizing needs to be done, I offered to ask here if anyone had published any similar type of historical work, and if so, which publisher they used?

Any information from anyone who has published similar work, or a dissimilar work but published somewhat independantly would be of great help.

Here is the list I have so far:

— Military History

Ø Osprey - http://www.ospreypublishing.com/

Ø Pen and Sword - http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/

Ø Casemate Publishing - http://www.casematepublishing.com/

Ø Vanwell Publishing Limited - http://www.vanwell.com/

— General History

Ø Heritage Books - http://www.heritagebooks.com/index.php

Ø Fulcrum Publishing - http://www.fulcrum-books.com/

Ø Ivan R. Dee, Publisher - http://www.ivanrdee.com/

Ø Greenwood Publishing Group - http://www.greenwood.com/

Ø Routledge - http://www.routledge.com/

Ø Globe Pequot Press - http://www.globepequot.com/index.php

Ø Perseus Books - http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/perseus/index.jsp

Ø Skyhorse Publishing - http://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/index.php

Ø Stackpole Books - http://www.stackpolebooks.com/cgi-bin/stackpolebooks.storefront

Ø Turner Publishing Company - http://www.turnerpublishing.com/

Ø Interlink Publishing - http://www.interlinkbooks.com/

Thanks!

∞ Aug 30th, 2010 at 1:30 pm / Comments

Carvings on whale's teeth

An extremely ornate pie crimper

Carvings made on walrus tusks

Some very impressive canes

Some amazing scrimshaw pieces from Mystic Seaport’s Voyages exhibit!

∞ Aug 25th, 2010 at 2:00 pm / Comments

Desk in the pharmacy

Display of medicines in the pharmacy

The Charles W. Morgan

Hmm...

Kiln on deck aboard C.W. Morgan

Uniform of Civil War era Navy seaman

Photos from our trip to Mystic Seaport!

∞ Aug 23rd, 2010 at 4:21 pm / Comments

Some pictures from Mystic Seaport

Image via Wikipedia

Just got back from our trip to Mystic Seaport. It was a great time despite torrential rain, and we really enjoyed seeing the tall ships and perusing the dank holds; it really gives you a sense of what these whalers and seamen had to go through on their months-years long voyages. There’s a great museum there that explores the ocean’s impact on American history complete with a Civil War era seamen’s uniform, which was an unexpected find, as well as a huge array of other artifacts (not to mention some amazing scrimshaw pieces).

The photos will follow in the next couple posts!

Has anyone been to Mystic Seaport recently? Any interesting exhibits attended?

I recently finished Joan Druett’s Rough Medicine, which explored the experience of the surgeon aboard both British and American whaling ships in the 18th and 19th centuries. She did an excellent job of conveying the conditions aboard, as well as the array of mishaps, dangers, and unexpected foibles that could (and did) often occur with such extended sea voyages. Going aboard the Charles W. Morgan, America’s last remaining whaling ship of its once large fleet, really made the book come alive. The renovations currently underway on the ship’s restoration should be finished sometime in 2012; I look forward to going aboard again when it can actually be called seaworthy again! When it does, it’ll be its first voyage in almost a century. Druett’s book is a great reference work as well, complete with an extensive tabulation of all the contents that could be found in none other than John Woodall’s medicine chest. If you’re unsure, he began the movement to maintain and regulate medicine aboard ships at sea during the Age of Sail with the compilation of his manual called, The Surgeon’s Mate. An invaluable book for all ships with or without a surgeon (as you might imagine, particularly without one).

Pictures to follow!

∞ Aug 23rd, 2010 at 4:11 pm / Comments

Commenting on posts…

Should anyone want to post a comment, this can be done by clicking on the number of comments shown below (i.e. 0 comments as shown below this post [sad]). It might be slightly less obvious than before so figured I’d mention it.

∞ Aug 19th, 2010 at 6:27 pm / Comments

miscellaneous

New blog layout is up at Tumblr!

Hello all, I’ve finally manages to (mostly) migrate my blog over to Tumblr complete with a new, somewhat streamlined layout as you can see. I’d love feedback on the new design! The web address and RSS feed should be exactly the same as the previous blog, requiring no effort on the part of the reader. In other words, you should not need to change a thing.

I have a trip to Mystic Seaport in Mystic, CT planned for later this week. I hope to take some photos and upload them here.

Also, I’ve just started a new book entitled, Six Frigates. It is written by Ian W. Toll and is very well written and so far very enjoyable. I hope to eventually write a review to be posted here and over at Fyddeye.com. Joe Follansbee does a great job over there, and anyone with an interest or passion for maritime history would do well to check it out and subscribe to his RSS feed. I’ve written a few works over there and have always had an extremely positive response from him.

I’m looking forward to returning to more regular posting now and hopefully some people stuck around. As always, comments welcome!

∞ Aug 18th, 2010 at 9:22 am / Comments

miscellaneous

New containment cap may have been created by “average guy”

Joe the Plumber (not that one) says he helped stop Gulf oil spill leak - CSMonitor.com

See the above link to the Christian Science Monitor’s article. My previous post(s) may have been more prescient than I anticipated! It seems that BP did indeed use about 100 ideas (of the more than 300,000) that were submitted to them in one way or another as they attempted damage control of the oil spill. The new containment cap’s design may have been influenced by a plumber from Kansas named Joe Caldart.

Caldart’s sketches, routed six weeks ago to BP and the Coast Guard through University of California petroleum engineer Robert Bea, are a near identical match to the design of a new containment cap lowered last week over the renegade Macondo well 50 miles off Venice, La.

“The idea was using the top flange on the blowout preventer as an attachment point and then employing an internal seal against that flange surface,” says Dr. Bea. “You can kind of see how a plumber thinks this way. That’s how they have to plumb homes for sewage.”The current design is “a steel cap, and underneath it is the internal plug and on top of that is a piston and the flow tube in the middle, and coming down the left side is the warm water inlet tube,” says Caldart. “I made that sketch on May 25th.”

∞ Jul 20th, 2010 at 9:05 am / Comments

Lessons From the Past: Longitude and the BP Oil Spill (part 2)

NOTICE: Written before the new cap was placed over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Time is to clock as mind is to brain. The clock or watch somehow contains the time. And yet time refuses to be bottled up like a genie stuffed in a lamp. Whether it flows as or turns on wheels within wheels, time escapes irretrievably, while we watch. Even when the bulbs of the hourglass shatter, when darkness withholds the shadow from the sundial, when the mainsprings winds down so far that the clock hands hold still as death, time itself keeps on. The most we can hope a watch to do is mark that progress.” (Sobel, pg. 34)
Many great thinkers, as early as the 16th century, were aware that the answer to the “longitude problem” was likely to be found in a mechanical timekeeper. In 1530, the Flemish astronomer Gemma Frisius stated, most assuredly, that the mechanical clock was a true player in the effort to find longitude. However, as stated previously, building a watch that could withstand the elements and the motion aboard a vessel was something that would not be possible until centuries later with the advent of John Harrison’s H1.
John Harrison was a carpenter in his youth. The story goes that, at the age of six, he was stricken with smallpox and confined to his bed for a period. His father gave him a pocket watch with which to amuse himself while bedridden, and John was immediately captivated by the timepiece. He spent hours disassembling and reassembling it and studying its moving parts. So began his fascination with clocks. He built his first working pendulum clock in 1713 at the age of 20. Though this was a great feat, it was particularly fascinating for one other reason: the clock is constructed almost entirely of wood, innards and all.
His gift with craftsmanship of timepieces would be further tested as he began his quest to discover a means to answer the question of how to properly measure longitude. He was hardly unique in this respect towards the end of the 17th century. Everyone was setting about trying to win fame and fortune by solving the longitude problem. One of the most “colorful” of solutions came in 1687, in the form of a substance called the “powder of sympathy,” presented by Sir Kenelm Digby. This powder was said to be able to heal any wound, and from any distance. All a person had to do to unleash its powers was to apply the powder to an article of the afflicted’s clothing, and they would miraculously be cured of all ailments. The cure was not painless though, and would thus cause a significant level of pain in the injured subject when the powder was used. This was of course nothing but quackery. You might be wondering how on Earth this could be related to measuring longitude. The idea was to bring a wounded dog aboard a ship setting sail for whatever destination, and to have someone apply the powder to the wounded dog’s bandage at home port when the sun was upon the Meridian in London. The crew could then deduce their longitude by measuring the time at their current position and adjust it to find the difference. Yes, this was indeed an actual idea of the time, and that is without saying anything about inhumane treatment of animals.

Another albeit equally ridiculous (though possibly more humane) idea that sprouted up was from a pair of mathematicians, William Whiston and Humphrey Ditton. The pair often engaged in discussion and debate. One of their discussions led them to the thought that sounds could be used as predetermined time signals by which sailors at sea could deduce their longitude by measuring the difference in time aboard their ship as compared to the time the sound was supposed to occur. These “sounds” came in the form of signal ships, stationed at specific intervals, whose sole purpose was to fire their cannons at a specified time. As you might imagine, this idea would call for a rather large number of ships, all of which would need to manned by a crew, and unlike most ships of the time, would be completely stationary. How would the health of the crew aboard these ships be maintained? How would they be fed? Paid? These were trivial details to the two mathematicians. Apart from that, there is the matter of how uncertain the seas can be. Weather conditions might cause the ships cannon to go unheard, or to possibly sink a ship without anyone knowing for some time. And the very fact that they must remain stationary was a cause for disbelief. The Atlantic has an average depth of 2000 fathoms, and with a fathom being 6 feet in length, this would necessitate some very, very long anchors. There were just too many variables to make this a practicable idea. It, of course, did not get very far.
John Harrison completed his first sea clock, H-1, in 1735. It was a monstrous thing, though exceptionally elegant in its complexity. As Sobel writes, “Built of brightly shining brass, with rods and balances sticking at odd angles, its broad bottom and tall projections recall some ancient vessel that never existed. It looks like a cross between a galley and a galleon, with a high, ornate stern facing forward, two towering masts that carry no sails, and knobbed brass oars to be manned by tiers of unseen rowers. It is a model ship, escaped from its bottle, afloat on the sea of time.” Despite its accuracy in sea trials, and its apparently warm reception by the Board of Longitude (the committee overseeing all bids to solve the riddle of measuring longitude) in 1737, Harrison still felt that he could do better. He asked for another two years of funding to complete a clock that he believed would be both smaller and more accurate (the clock has not erred more than a few seconds in a 24 hour period; a miracle by the standards of the time). He was granted his wish and began work on H-2.
Harrison’s presentation of H-2 to the Board in 1741 was somewhat of a repeat performance from the years previous. He was an absolute perfectionist, and it showed. He pointed only to the clock’s foibles and highlighted none of its improvements from the previous iteration. His goal, as he put it, was merely to receive the blessing of the board to try again. He set out to make H-2 smaller than the previous timekeeper, and did so. However, it was still quite large, weighing in at 86 pounds, however, it did sport a number of improvements over H-1. It had a device within which allowed a much greater acclimation to changes in temperature, passing all of the tests (heating and cooling) with flying colors. They even subjected it to violent shaking, much more than what might be seen on an oceangoing vessel, and yet it reliably ticked on. Despite these achievements, Harrison’s inner perfectionist would not allow him to give up at this point. He retired again to his workshop to begin work on H-3; a project that would take him nearly 20 years to complete. Meanwhile, his first clock, H-1 drew the attention of people from all around the world. The English artist, William Hogarth described it as “one of the most exquisite movements ever made,” in his Analysis of Beauty published in 1753.

As Harrison began work on his third device, H-3, his son William joined his father in the workshop and eventually took up the cause of creating the timepiece along with his father. William grew with the clock; passing through his teens and twenties while working on it, and continuing work on the next iteration, H-4, until he was 45 years old. Harrison introduced a device in H-3 known as the bi-metallic strip. This strip can rapidly compensate for any changes in temperature that might affect the rate of the clock. This device, though created well over 200 years ago, is still present in some thermostats. H-3 was also the leanest of the sea clocks, with a weight of around 60 pounds. Harrison’s other goal with H-3 was to reduce the friction inherent in the inner workings of a timepiece. To reduce this factor, he introduced the idea of cages ball-bearings, a component in most every machine with moving parts to this day. Though more satisfied with H-3 than his previous sea clocks, he had a revelation upon seeing the watch created by John Jefferys. It was within this watch that he saw what he must accomplish with his fourth and final iteration of a sea clock, and as such began work on his first truly portable timekeeper.
Work was completed on the watch in 1759. As Sobel writes, “Coming at the end of that big brass lineage, H-4 is as surprising as a rabbit pulled out of a hat. Though large for a pocket watch, at five inches in diameter, it is minuscule for a sea clock, and weighs only three pounds. Within its paired silver cases, a genteel white face shows off four fanciful repeats of a fruit-and-foliage motif drawn in black. These patterns ring the dial of Roman numeral hours and Arabic seconds, where three blued-steel hands point unerringly to the correct time. The Watch, as it soon came to be known, embodied the essence of elegance and exactitude.” (Sobel, page 106) Harrison was infatuated with this watch and expressed more satisfaction with it than any of the previous timekeepers combined. This watch was an absolute marvel, and a true masterpiece. Harrison’s H-4 did eventually win the Longitude Prize, however, not without much hardship and heartbreak. You see, there was another, stronger, and more influential faction proposing a much different (and less practicable) way of measuring longitude: the lunar distance method.

Several astronomers proposed this method as the key by which they might unlock the secret of measuring longitude accurately. If one can measure the distance between the moon and some other visible celestial body, this measurement, along with a nautical almanac, can then be used to calculate Greenwich Mean Time. A separate calculation is used to determine the apparent local time, leading to the determination of longitude without necessitating a chronometer. As one might imagine, this sect of astronomers was vehemently opposed to the idea of a clock being the most accurate means of measuring a ship’s longitude. They also held positions of status within the Board of Longitude, and one in particular, a Reverend Nevil Maskelyne, seemed to resent Harrison’s creation more than the rest. He forced Harrison’s timepieces to go through a variety of grueling sea trials, above and beyond what was necessary to determine their reliability. Despite these unfair tests, the sea clocks came out on top, however, not without much aging and accrued weariness on the part of John Harrison. The antagonistic relationship between Harrison and Maskelyne deserves a post of its own someday.
So what is my point? Well, with this somewhat long-winded story, I was hoping to illuminate a simple idea. And that is that despite the most brilliant minds and affluent wallets put to task in order to devise a method to determine longitude, it was a self-educated clockmaker who came up with the (eventually) winning idea. We can now fast-forward to present day, and view the BP oil spill within the same framework. BP, up until extremely recently (and hopefully this second cap will hold) was unable to devise a secure and workable method of sealing the oil geyser. Had they turned to the population in earnest, without the PR games and masked truths, might they have had more rapid success? Could they have found their John Harrison? I do not know, however, I often think that it is the most practical amongst us who often have the solutions that might have been so obvious as to escape those who are highly specialized and inundated within the field of interest (i.e. those who are so focused on their specialized skills as to miss a solution which was staring them in the face but required looking at the problem from a different, unique angle). It is an interesting thought, and with the second cap now in place, experts must now turn towards the actual Gulf itself, and devise a method of actually cleaning up all that oil without further damaging the ecosystem and wildlife. Perhaps they have a very good plan in mind (something in me doubts it) and are already underway with the planning stages, however, if they do not, perhaps they still have reason to reach out to the populace and find a solution that is far more workable than anything they have come up with as of yet.

∞ Jul 17th, 2010 at 9:58 am / Comments

18th Century Ship Found Buried in Lower Manhattan

18th Century Ship Found Buried at New York’s World Trade Center Site : Old Salt Blog – a virtual port of call for all those who love the sea

Old Salt Blog put out the above article detailing the remains of an 18th century ship found buried below ground in lower Manhattan. It always amazes me when I hear about historical artifacts or architecture found in areas that one least expects. I wonder what might be buried in my backyard, or perhaps below my house. If you live in an area of the world with many peoples having inhabited that area over time, you can often find wonders that are entirely out of place relative to the current state of the country.

It seems that the ship in the article above was used as an intentional landfill, and had been undisturbed for more than 200 years. Unfortunately, the exposure to air is now causing the timber to quickly deteriorate and as such, archaeologists are facing a race against time.
I thought this article was worth sharing, and apologies for not posting as regularly. Exams tend to limit the time for one’s creative side, unfortunately. I should have the second part of my John Harrison-BP oil spill article out in a day or two. In the mean time, let me know your thoughts on the above article!

∞ Jul 15th, 2010 at 8:56 am / Comments