Lice

[Jib]

I would guess that we have a good number of garments in museums from the GAOP. I would also guess that the bodies of people who dwelt during these times have been exhumed for research. Any mention of lice? Imagine they were quite common.

[CaptainSatan]

Are you mad, woman? I haven't got fruit in my loins! Lice, yes, and proud of 'em!

~Captain Yellowbeard

[Jib]

Lice may have been so common as to not even be considered in documentation.

[CaptainSatan]

GAOP ( Golden Age of Parasites)

Edited May 27, 2009 by CaptainSatan

[Mission]

Lice may have been so common as to not even be considered in documentation.

That's what I've been told.

“Humans generally cope. People often get used to difficult situations or unpleasant experiences and no longer notice or comment on them. Those born into the roar and filth of the city would have become acclimatised to it during their childhood. Incomers gradually become habituated to the hustle and bustle of the urban environment. Bodies got used to their immediate surroundings in time – they became accustomed to particular tastes and smells…” (Emily Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England, 1600-1770, p. 241)

“It is difficult for us, nurslings of a soft age, to put ourselves in the old sailor-man’s place; to picture the life and turn of mind and thought of these unlettered fighters, starving or subsisting for weeks together on rotten meat and rum, flogged with a rope’s end at a tyrant captain’s whim, sore and bloated with scurvy and syphilis, scabrous with lice and the itch. The natural recourse of such men’s minds was drink, for that made merry men of poor tortured beasts. To see other suffer cannot have affected them that much, for what did they not continually suffer themselves; to see others die (how often had not they seen their own shipmates die?) of wanton cruelty, starvation, hardships and disease.” (Leo Eloesser, "Pirate and Buccaneer Doctors”, Annals of medical history, Vol. VIII, Issue 1, 1926, p. 52)

Kind of makes you wonder what we're not documenting about our own lives, doesn't it? Imagine trying to reconstruct history 300 years from now with nothing but our movies as references...

[Jib]

GAOP ( Golden Age of Parasites)

Satan you are frightening me.

But then again Satan always scares me.

Where did you find the picture?

[CaptainSatan]

Where did you find the picture?

By Gods that was several pints ago! I don't remember.

[Jib]

I always thought they were white (lice that is).

Creepy little buggers.

I can see now why when people removed a hat they turned the inside toward themselves.

[John Maddox Roberts]

Samuel Pepys mentions in his diary discovering that he had head lice, as if it wasn't something he was used to. Of course, a prosperous man like Pepys could afford to bathe frequently, have his clothing laundered (which involved boiling in those days) and could avoid physical contact with his social inferiors, as was expected. Even so, he had his hair cut off and made into a wig to prevent a recurrence. For sailors the problem would have been much worse, confined in crowded quarters under terribly unhygenic conditions.

[Story]

I generally serve them with soy sauce....

[Story]

GAOP ( Golden Age of Parasites)

Those are CRABS, you git! Don't you know not to mess with the trollops????

[Jib]

Crab lice or lice they are still creepy!

In the photo it looks as if they are on a hat... I think.

I would guess wigs might help the little critters spread.

[CaptainSatan]

The photo is a rolled down sock.