Bryson History of life and private life. Brief History of Life and Privacy

Bill Bryson, 2010
Transfer. T. Trefilova, 2012
Edition in Russian AST Publishers, 2014

In the past times, privacy was understood at all like today. Even in the XIX century, to sleep with an unfamiliar man in the same bed in the hotel was commonplace, and the authors of the diaries often wrote, as they were disappointed when a late stranger arrived in the bed. In 1776, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams had to share the bed at the New Brunswick Hotel, New Jersey, and they quarreled all night because of whether to open the window or not.

The servants often slept in the population of the shopping bed so that you could easily fulfill any request of the owner. From written sources it becomes clear that the Chamber and the Shadmayster King Henry V attended the bedroom when the king slept with Catherine Valua. In the diaries Samuel Pips, the servant slept on the floor of his marital bedroom as a lively alarm in case of robbery. In such circumstances, the bedside table did not provide the desired privacy; In addition, he was a refuge for dust and insects, and drafts easily inflated him. Among other things, the bedside table could be firewood, as, however, the entire house is entirely: from the reed flooring to the straw roof. Almost every reference book for home economics warned that it was impossible to read when candles in bed, but many neglected this advice.

In one of his works, John Obry, the historian of the XVII century, tells a funny story regarding the wedding of the daughter of Thomas Mora Margaret and some William Roper. Roper came somehow in the morning to Moru and stated that he wanted to marry one of his daughters - it's like what. Then Mor brought Roper to his bedroom, where the daughters slept in a low bed, nominated from under the paternal. Furming, Ma deck took up "for the angle of the sheet and suddenly drove it from bed." Girls slept absolutely naked. Sleepy expressing displeasure by the fact that they were disturbed, they turned over to the stomach and fell asleep again. Sir William, who loved by the view, announced that he looked at the "goods" from all sides, and gently knocked her cape on the priest of sixteen-year-old Margaret. "And no harves with courtship!" - He is enthusiastically writes.

It is true that all this is unknown: the obsection described that the happened century later. Obviously, however, that in his time no one did not surprise the fact that adult daughters Mora slept next to his bed.

A serious problem with beds, especially in the Victorian period, was that they were inseparable from the most problematic classes of that era - sex. In marriage sex, of course, sometimes it is necessary. Mary Wood-Allen in the popular and influential book "What you need to know a young woman" assures his young readers in the fact that with her husband, it is possible to have physical proximity, provided that it is committed "with the complete absence of sexual desire." It was believed that the moods and thoughts of the mother during conception and throughout the pregnancy deeply and irreparably affect the fetus. Partners advised to have sex only with mutual sympathy, so as not to produce an infallible child.

To avoid excitement, women were asked to be more in the fresh air, not to deal with anything stimulating, including not reading and not to play cards, and above all - do not bother your brain over the necessary. It was believed that education for a woman is just a waste of time; In addition, it is extremely dangerous for their fragile organisms.

In 1865, John Reskin wrote in his own essay that women should be trained until they were "practically useful" for their husbands, and no more. Even American Catherine Becher, who was, according to the standards of that time, radical feminist, warmly defended the right of women for a full-fledged education, but requested not to forget: they still need time to put their hair in order.

For men, the main task was considered not to drop a drop of sperm outside the sacred bonds of marriage, but in marriage they should have been observed. As one respected specialist explained, the seed liquid, remaining in the body, enriches blood and strengthens the brain. The same who thoughtlessly spends this natural elixir, becomes weak and spiritually, and physically. Therefore, even in the marriage, you need to take care of your spermatozoa, since because of frequent sex, the cumsion is diluted and the sluggish, apathetic offspring is obtained. A sexual intercourse with frequency was not more often once a month was considered the best option.

Onanism, of course, was eliminated categorically. The consequences of masturbation were well known: almost all famous Havory medicine, including madness and premature death. Onanists are "unfortunate, trembling, pale creatures on skinny legs crawling on the ground," as the one journalist described them, - caused contempt and pity. "Every act of masturbation is similar to an earthquake, an explosion, a fatal paralytic strike," said another. Practical studies clearly proved harm masturbation. Medica Samuel Tesso described how one of his patients constantly let droach, Sukrovitsa flowed from her nose, and he was "practiced directly in bed, without noticing it." The last three words produced a particularly strong impression.

Moreover, the habit of masturbating is automatically transferred to children and reducing the health of the not yet born offspring. The most careful analysis of hazards related to sex was proposed by Sir William Acton in his work "Functions and diseases of reproductive bodies in children, young men, adults and old people, considered from the point of view of their physiological, social and moral relations", first published in 1857 . It was he who decided that masturbation leads to blindness. It is the acton that owns a frequently quoted phrase: "I must say that sexual experiences are almost inaccessible to most women."

Such ideas were surprisingly long dominated in society. "Many of my patients told me that for the first time they made an act of masturbation while watching a music show", - gloomy and, most likely, not without exaggeration reports Dr. William Robinson in his work of 1916, dedicated to sexual disorders.

Science has always been ready to come to revenue. In the book of Mary Roach, "curious parallels in science and sex" describes one of the means of dealing with the lust, developed in the 1850s, - a ring with spikes, which was put on the penis before bedtime (or at any other time); His metal is the tole of Penis, if he is wicked by swell. Other devices used an electric current, which is unpleasant, but effectively sobered the lustful man.

It is worth noting that not everyone shared these conservative views. Already in 1836, the respected French doctor Claude Francois La Mreluan published a three-volume study in which he connected frequent sex with good health. It was so impressed by the Scottish Medica George Drézdisl, that he in his work "physical, sexual and natural religion" formulated the philosophy of free love and unrestrained sex. The book was published in 1855 by a circulation of 90,000 copies and translated into eleven languages, "including Hungarian", specifically notes the "National Biographical Dictionary", who adores focus on trifles. It is clear that in society they have been eager for greater sexual freedom. Unfortunately, society as a whole adopted this freedom only after century.

Perhaps it is not surprising that in such a tense atmosphere, successful sex for many people was an inaccessible dream - for example, for the same John Reskin. In 1848, the Great Artistic Critic married the nineteen-year-old YFIMI Chalmers Gray, and they did not hold things from the very beginning. They never entered the marriage relationship. Later, Yfimia told that, according to Women, he imagined women not at all as they were actually, and that she made an impression on him on the first evening, and therefore he did not make her his wife.

Without the desired, Efphi filed to the court to the court (the details of her statement about recognition of marriage invalid became the property of the boulevard press of many countries), and then escaped with the artist John Everett Mill, with whom he lived happily and from which eight children gave birth to.

True, her escape was completely inappropriate, because Mill just wrote the portrait of the Woman in the Woman. Reskin as a person of honor continued to posing Mill, but two men never talked to each other again.

Symploying theresses, which was a lot, pretended that there was no scandal and in risen. By 1900, the whole story was successfully forgotten, and U. G. Collingwood was able, not blushing from shame, write his book "Life of John Reskin", in which there is not even a hint that the reskin was once married and that he was sometimes married In a panic ran out of the bedroom, seeing his hair on the female womb.

Reskin never overcomed her sore prejudices; Looks like he didn't try hard. After the death of William Turner, in 1851, the Kursin instructed to disassemble the work left by the Grand Artist, and among them there were several mischievous watercolors of erotic content. The awnings decided that Turner wrote them in the "condition of madness", and for the sake of the benefit of almost all watercolors, depriving the descendants of several invaluable works.

Meanwhile, Effi Reskin, breaking out of the unfortunate marriage, healed happily. It was unusual, because in the XIX century, the brackets were always solved in favor of her husbands. In order to get a divorce in Victorian England, a man was enough to simply declare that his wife changed him with another. However, a woman in a similar situation should have prove that her spouse made an incest, indulged as a lobby or any more severe sin, the list of which was quite short.

Until 1857, the divorced wife took off all the property and, as a rule, children. By law, such a woman was completely powerless; The degree of its freedom and non-volatility determined the husband. According to the great theorist in the field of the right of William Blackstone, the divorced woman refuses "himself and from his own individuality."

Some countries were slightly more liberal. In France, for example, a woman could divorce her husband if there was an adulter, but only under the condition that the betrayal was accomplished in a married house.

English legislation was distinguished by extreme injustice. The case is known when a certain woman named March Robinson beat a cruel, mentally unbalanced spouse. In the end, he infected her gonorrhea, and then seriously poisoned medicines from venereal diseases, without the knowledge of his wife, swaying her powder into food. Broken and physically, and morally, Martha was filed for divorce. The judge carefully listened to all the arguments, and then closed the case by sending Mrs. Robinson home and advised her to be more patient.

Belonging to the female semi is automatically considered a pathological condition. Men almost everywhere thought that when the sexual maturity, a woman was silent. The development of mammary glands, uterus and other reproductive organs "takes the energy that every person is released in limited quantities", according to one reputable specialist. Menstruation was described in medical texts as a monthly act of intentional negligence. "If a woman experiences pain at any moment of a monthly period, this is due to violations in clothing, nutrition, personal or social habits," wrote one browser (of course, a man).

Ironically, women, and indeed they often hurt, because the rules of decency did not allow them to get the necessary medical care. In 1856, when a young housewife from Boston, from a respectable family, with tears admitted to his attending physician, which is sometimes involuntarily thinking about her husband, but about other men, the doctor prescribed a number of harsh treatments, including cold baths, enemas and Careful dinge of drow, recommending exclude everything exciting - acute food, easy reading etc.

It was believed that due to a light spelling, a woman appears unhealthy thoughts and a tendency to hysterics. As one author signed gloomily, "young girls who read love novels are observed and premature development of genital organs. The child is physically becoming a woman in a few months or even years before the term appointed by nature. "

In 1892, Judith Flanders writes about one man who led his wife to check vision; The doctor said that the problem is to fall out of the uterus and that she needs to remove this body, otherwise the vision will deteriorate.

The catching generalizations were not always faithful, since no doctor knew how to hold the right gynecological examination. As a last resort, he gently told the patient under a blanket in a dark room, but this happened infrequently. In most cases, women who had complaints about the organs between the neck and knees, shyly showed their sick places on the mannequins.

In 1852, one American therapist proudly wrote that "women prefer to suffer from dangerous diseases, rejecting a full medical examination from scrupulility." Some doctors refused to impose tongs during childbirth, explaining that women with a narrow pelvis should not give birth to children, for such an inferiority can pass their daughters.

The inevitable consequence of all this was almost medieval disregard for women's anatomy and physiology by men doctors. In the annals of medicine, there is no better example of a professional champion than a famous case with Mary Torch, an ignorant Rabbit Women from Godalming, the county of Surrey, which in the fall of 1726 for many weeks fooling away authoritative physicians, including two royal therapists, assures everyone that can Give rabbits.

It became a sensation. Several doctors were present during childbirth and expressed full surprise. Only when another royal doctor, a German named Kiriakus Alers, carefully examined the woman and announced that all this was just a hoax, the NEF in the end confessed in deception. She was briefly sent to prison for fraud, and then - home, in Godalming; No one has heard more about her.

Before understanding the female anatomy and physiology was still far away. In 1878, British Medical Journal led a lively long discussion with readers on the topic: Can the kitchen touch, which is at the moment menstruation, spoil the ham?

According to Judith Flanders, one British doctor was excluded from a medical registry because he noticed in his printed work: a change in the color of the mucous membrane around the vagina shortly after conception is a reliable indicator of pregnancy. This conclusion was completely fair, but extremely indecent, because to determine the degree of change in the color, followed first to see it. The doctor was banned from practicing. Meanwhile, in America, the respected gynecologist James Platt White was kicked out of the American Medical Association for allowing his students to be present during childbirth (of course, with the permission of the feminine).

Against this background, the action of the surgeon Aizek Baker Brown seems even more extraordinary. Brown became the first surgeon-gynecologist. Unfortunately, they were led by obviously false ideas. In particular, he was convinced that almost all female ailments - the result of the "peripheral nerve excitement in the outdoor genital organs with the center in the clitoris."

Simply put, he believed that women would masturbate and it leads to madness, epilepsy, catalepsy, hysteria, insomnia and a variety of other nervous disorders. To solve the problem, it was proposed to delete the clitoris in a surgically, thereby excluding the possibility of unmanaged excitation.

Baker Brown was also convinced that the ovaries poorly affect the female organism and it is also better to remove them. Before him, no one tried to cut the ovaries; It was an extremely complex and risky operation. The first three patients Brown died on the operating table. However, he did not stop and operated on the fourth woman - his own sister, which, fortunately, survived.

When it was found that Baker Brown for many years cut out clitors without their knowledge and consent, the medical community responded violently and violently. In 1867, Baker Brown was excluded from the Society of Oposher London, putting an end to his practice. Doctors finally accepted how important scientific approach To intimate patient organs. The irony lies in the fact that, being a bad doctor and, apparently, a very bad person, Baker Brown, like no other, has highlighted the promotion of female medicine.

"A brief history of life and private life", of course, not a brief - 640 pages of a small font, - but fascinating from the first letter and to the last. It would seem anything special: the facts and stories associated with homemade everyday life. However, the love of the storytellor to the details, his way of filing information and the smooth outline turn a popular science book in extremely pleasant reading. "Brief history ..." - a kind of antipode of another science, "pinball effect" that I did not like for the fragmentation of information and throwing the author from one subject to another. Here the stories are remembered - however, some of them are also repeated, which is a little annoying.

The house is an amazingly complex object. To his great surprise, I found: no matter what happens in the world - discoveries, creations, victories, defeats, - all their fruits in the end, somehow turn out to be in our homes. Wars, Hunger, Industrial Revolution, Epoch of Enlightenment - You will find their traces in your sofas and chests, in the folds of the curtains, in the softness of the down pillows, in the paint on the walls and in water flowing from the crane. The History of Life is not just the history of beds, cabinets and kitchen stoves, as I was vaguely assumed before, this is the story of Qingi, Guano, the Eiffel Tower, bed bugs, the abductions of the dead bodies, as well as almost the rest that ever took place in human Life. The house is not asylum from history. The house is a place where the story will eventually lead.

Bryson takes the former housing of the English parish priest in the village of Norfolk County and travels around the rooms: Hall, Kitchen, Bofofing and Storage Room, Distribution Shield, Living room, Dining room, Basement, Corridor, Cabinet, Garden, Slice Room, Staircase, Bedroom, Bathroom, dressing room, children's, attic. Almost every object of the situation, he has a long story with a bias in previous centuries. Table? Well, for example: the dining table used to serve as a simple board, which was put on his knees dinner, and then again hung on the wall - since then, the word Board began to mean not only the surface on which they eat, but also the food itself. Bed? About medieval materials for packing mattresses, you can talk long and detail. And behind the strale and the list, the cable of the highest bloody and terrible stories stretches. But a remarkable description of how the tea drinking ritual appeared in the British Empire:

In the period from 1699 to 1721, the import of tea has increased almost a hundred times, from 13,000 pounds to almost 1.2 million pounds, and over the next thirty years, even four times. Tea with noise Bread workers and elegantly saved ladies. He was served for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was the first drink in history that did not belong to some kind of special class and, moreover, had his own ritual reception time called tea party. Prepare tea at home was easier than coffee, and especially well he was combined with another pleasant component, which suddenly became accessible to the townspeople of the middle hand - sugar. British, like no other nation, added to sweet tea with milk. Over the age of one and a half years, tea was the heart of the Ost-India Company, and the East India Company was the heart of the British Empire.

Tea is not all and did not immediately like. Poet Robert Sauti talked about a certain rural lady, which received a pound of tea as a gift from his city girlfriend, when this drink was still new. Not knowing what to do with him, she boiled him in a saucepan, put the leaves on sandwiches with oil and salt and served guests. Those bravely chewed an unusual treat, stating that his taste is interesting, although somewhat strange. However, in places where tea with sugar drank, everyone was satisfied.

The author, however, at times leaves in spheres that are not too connected with life. For example, talking about the comfort, he talks about Skara-Bray's settlement of Neolith, and in the chapter about the garden tells about the problem of burials. However, all themes are reinforced with each other: Private life is not only a house, it is also a person. And about the cemeteries in England 19 century. No less interesting to read than about the history of furniture.

... The cemeteries were so overwhelmed that it was almost impossible to dig up the ground with a shovel and not to pick up the accidentally someone decaying hand or other part of the body. The dead were buried in shallow divergers dumbfounded graves, and they often turned out to be in sight - their animals were filmed, or they themselves rose to the surface, as it happens with stones in flower beds. In such cases, the dead had to rejunate.

The townspeople who mourning their who had reversed loved ones almost never visited their graves and were not present at the funeral themselves. It was too hard and besides dangerous. They said that visitors scare the putrefacts. A certain Dr. Walker testified to the parliamentary investigation that the graveters before to disturb the coffin, drilled a hole in it, inserted a tube there and burned out gases - this process took up to twenty minutes.

Dr. Walker personally knew one person who had neglected this safety measure and immediately fell, "that was struck, as if a cannon core, poisoned from fresh graves with gases." "If you breathe this gas, not mixed with atmospheric air, Instant death will come, "confirmed the Committee in a written report, adding a grimly: -" Although even mixed with air, he leads to severe diseases that usually ending with death. "

"Brief history ..." everyone is good with the exception of one thing: there is no source list. Bryson, of course, indicates in some places of monographs and works, from where he learned the facts, and my fragmentary knowledge about some subjects suggest that his information is reliable, but still a little strange to see stories without references to the source data. Of course, if you bind a footnote to each little thing, then the book will double and will become completely unclear, but the list of at least the main literature in which the author produced excavations would be desirable.

In general, the "brief history of life and private life" is incredibly informative and useful - for the science, it is relatively easily perceived, without losing it in its nutritional qualities. So let the will curiosity: learn the story of various products and home furnishings, terrible the position of medieval servants and read about the former misconceptions on the theme of women and sex.

In the summer of 1662, Samuel Pips, at that time a promising young official of the Maritime Agency, invited his head, Commissioner of Admiralty Peter Pette, for his lunch to his home on Sizing Lane, near the London Tower. The twenty-one-year-old PIPS probably hoped to impress the boss, but when a plate with sturgeon was filed, he discovered in her a bunch of smoking small worms in her.

Pips almost burned out of shame: even at that time, people were rarely discovered in their plates so stormy manifestations of life. But they had to face quite often with the fact that food was stupid or suspicious in composition. Bad storage conditions led to the fact that the products were quickly spoiled or tinted them and diluted with hazardous and completely neappety substances.

Food falsifiers resorted to truly devilish tricks. In sugar and other expensive seasonings and spices often plucked gypsum, alabaster, sand, dust and other inedible things. Candle or pork fat was added to the oil. Tea amateur, according to various authoritative sources, could easily be self-suspecting, to drink infusion of anything, from wood sawdust to crumpled sheep's excrement. In one carefully looked batch of tea, Judith Flanders writes in his Book "Victorian House", the real tea turned out to be a little more than half, the rest of the cargo consisted of sand and land. In vinegar mixed sulfuric acid (for consumer sharpness), in the milk - chalk, in Jin - Skipidar. From the arsenide copper, vegetables were greeted, and jelly became brilliant. The chromate of the lead gave a golden hue of bread and feet, and mustard is brighter. The lead acetate was used to make drinks sweeter, and lead sulica improved the appearance of Gloucester cheese (although, of course, did not make it more useful).

It seems that there was no such product that the ear bears could not "improve" and should be reduced with various fraudulent manipulations. Tobayas Smalllett writes in his popular novel "Journey Humphrey Clinker" (1771):

No further than yesterday I saw a dirty merchant, my own saliva, washed off dust with Cherchers, and who knows some ladies from St. Gemian arrival puts into his gentle mouths of these cherries who came through dirty, and perhaps Shelivily fingers Saint-Jam Shopper. About some dirty mess, which is called strawberries, and nothing to say; It is shifted with harsh hands from one dust basket to another, and then served on a table with disgusting, mixed with flour, milk, which is referred to as cream.

Especially got bread. We will give the floor to Smalllet:

Bread that I eat in London is an inconvenient dough, mixed with chalk, alum and bone ash, equally tasteless and harmful to health.

Such accusations at the time were usually and, probably, they were expressed and much earlier (remember the line from the fairy tale about Jack and a legless stem: "I will open his bones and make myself bread"). The earliest mention of widespread methods for falsification of bread was found in an anonymous pamphlet called "Opened poison, or frightening truth", written in 1757. In the pamphlet on the face of a certain "doctor, our good friend", it was authoritative that "bags with old bones are often used by some bakers" and that "crypts with the dead are subject to a plunder in order to add unclean foods alive." Almost at the same time, another similar pamphlet was published - "The origin of bread, honestly and dishonestly manufactured", written by the doctor Joseph Manning, which argued that the bakers are usually added to the dough bean flour, chalk, lead Belil, haired lime and bone ash.

A similar idea of \u200b\u200ban old bread is even now, although more than seventy years ago Frederick Philby in his classical work "Food Food Products" (1934) proved that these accusations are unfair. Philby tried to bake bread, using the most unwanted impurities, those proportions and baking technology, which were described in exposure pamphletes. However, all the batons, except for one, or turned out to be solid as a stone, or did not proper at all. Most of them had a disgusting smell and taste. There are more time for baking some more time compared to the "right" bread, which means that falsification would actually be economically less profitable. No falsified loaf was edible.

The fact is that bread is delicate, and if you add the wrong ingredients to it, even in small quantities, it will immediately be noticeable. However, the same can be said almost about all foods. It is difficult to imagine a person who will drink a cup of tea and will not understand that the welding of half consisted of metal sawdust. Some frauds undoubtedly had a place, especially when it was about improving the color or giving the product of a more fresh species, but mostly described cases or are one, or fictional, and this certainly applies to all bread impurities (with the exception of quasans, about Which we will talk more about a little later).

It is difficult to overestimate the value of bread in the English diet of the XIX century. For many people, the bread was not just an important addition to dinner, but dinner himself. Up to 80% of the budget of the family, according to the testimony of the historian of Kristian Petersen's bread, went on food, and 80% of this amount took bread. Even representatives of the middle class two-thirds of their income spent on food (this figure is about one quarter), for the most part - on bread. The daily ration of the poor family, as evidenced by almost all sources of those times, presumably included several oz tea and sugar, vegetables, one or two slices of cheese and sometimes quite some meat. Everything else is bread.

Since the bread was a very important food product, there were strict laws regulating its composition and weight and threatening with severe punishments for their violation. A baker, who deceived his buyers, could finf by ten pounds for each Buckka sold or sentenced to a month of work. At one time, unscrupulous bakers threatened the expulsion to Australia. These laws were kept in constant voltage Bakers, since bread in the process of baking loses weight due to moisture evaporation, and easily allow a random error. To progress, the bakers were sometimes added one unnecessary loaf to each serviceable dozen, hence the expression of Baker's Dozen ("Chertov Dress").

However, the alum is another. This is a chemical compound, which is a double aluminum sulfate, was used as a fixer for paints, and also served as a clarifying agent in all types of production processes, including skin treatment. The alum perfectly whiten the flour and in this case completely harmless. The fact is that this requires quite a bit of the alum: only three or four tablespoons on a 280-pound bag of flour, and such an insignificant amount does not hurt anyone. Generally speaking, the alum is even added to food products and drugs. This is the standard component of the confectionery breakthrower and vaccine. Sometimes the alum due to their cleaner properties are added to drinking water. They make the flour of lower varieties - quite high quality from the point of view of edibleness, but not too attractive externally - quite acceptable for mass use, thereby allowing bakeries to more effectively use wheat existing ones. In addition, the alum performed the function of the "dryer" reagent.

Not always foreign components were added to products in order to increase the volume of the latter. Sometimes they turned out to be there by chance. In 1862, during the parliamentary check, Bakery was found that in many of them "full of web, which became severe from the puffy flour and hangs down long clams," ready to fall into the first cauldron or pallet. On the walls and table tops again insects. In the ice cream sold in London in 1881, it was possible to meet human hair, wool wool, insects, cotton fibers and similar inclusions, but it was rather a consequence of bad sanitation than a scam attempt to increase product weight. At the same time, one London pastryer was fined "for giving his candies a yellow shade, adding a pigment left in them after painting a cart." However, the fact that such incidents attracted the attention of newspapers, speaks of their exclusivity.

"Journey Humphrey Clinker" Smalllet is a long romance written in a series of letters. He draws a bright picture english life The XVIII century, so even now it is often quoted and used as a source. In one of the most colorful episodes, Smalllett says that milk in London streets are worn in open buckets,

where you get help that you splash out of doors and windows, spit and tobacco pedestrian chewing, splashes of dirt from under wheels and all sorts of rubbish, mooring with unsuitable boys for fun; Tin standings, evaporation of babies, are immersed in milk, selling it to the next buyer, and all sorts of insects from the rags of dirty packs are falling to the top of all in this precious meal.

The fact that the genre of this book is satire, and not at all a documentary prose, usually does not take into account. Smalllett wrote his novel, being outside of England: he slowly died in Italy, where he died three months after his publication.

However, I do not want to say that in those days in England there were no bad foods. Of course, there were, and the main problem was infected and rotten meat. Smithfield market, the main meat market of London, was famous for his mud. One eyewitness of the parliamentary check of 1828 told that he saw a carcass that expired with yellow muddy fat. " Cattle that was driven into the city from afar, often turned out to be exhausted, patients, nor for nothing. Sometimes the cattle was covered with ulcers. Sheep sometimes freshly fresh live. In the Smithfield market, so many spoiled goods were sold that Cagmag was even dubbed - a jargonal expression, which means "tucula."

Even if the thoughts of the manufacturers were clean, the products themselves were not always to the table with fresh. Deliver perishable products for remote markets in edible state was not so easy. Wealthy people have long been dreamed of seeing overseas or fruits on the table at the table, and in January 1859, almost all of America was hardly watched the ship, which in all the sails came from Puerto Rico to New England, having on board three hundred thousand Oranges. When the ship arrived at the port of destination, more than two thirds of the cargo rotted, turning into fragrant porridge. Manufacturers from even more remote areas did not even expect for such a result. In the endless pampas, Argentina passed the huge herds of cattle, but the Argentines had no opportunity to deliver meat to Europe or North America, so most animals were recycled on bone flour and fat, and the meat was simply discarded. Trying to help them, the German chemist Yustus von Lubih in the middle of the 19th century offered the technology of manufacturing a meat extract, a kind of broth cubes, subsequently called "Oxo", but it turned out to be not too much help.

It was necessary to find a way to preserve food fresh on a much longer period than the nature assumed. Even late XVIII century, the Frenchman Nicolas Francois Upper released a book called "The Art of Preservation for several years of animal and plant substance"; The book made a real exterior. The essence of the system of the UPPER was that the products were placed in glass jars, which were hermetically blocked, and then slowly heated. This method, as a rule, gave a very good result, but the sealing was not always reliable, sometimes air or dirt fell into banks, and as a result, buyers had gastrointestinal disorders and poisoning. Since the banks of the apopep did not guarantee complete safety, they were wary of them.

In short, before the food fell on the table, a lot of trouble could happen to her. Therefore, when a wonderful product appeared in the early 1840s, which promised to solve the problem of freshness, he was taken with great joy. Oddly enough, this product was good all familiar ice.

Publishing house AST, Moscow, 2014, T.Trefilov

Bill Bryson

Brief History of Life and Privacy

Jess and Whiteat

Introduction

Some time after we moved to the former home of the English parish priest in the idyllic, but faceless village in the County Norfolk, I rose to the attic - see where the source of unexpectedly found mysterious leakage. Since our house has no attic staircase, I had to take advantage of a high stepladder, so that, for a long time and unfinished, crawling into the ceiling hatch - that's why I didn't come there before (and then I didn't feel a big delight from such excursions).

Running finally in the attic and somehow rising to feet in the dusty darkness, I surprised to find a secret door in the outer wall, which was not visible from the courtyard. The door easily opened and brought me into the tiny space on the roof, a slightly more table tops of the usual table, between the front and rear fins. Victorian houses are often a cluster of architectural misuses, but this seemed completely incomprehensible: why did you need to make the door where there was no obvious need for it? However, a wonderful look opens from the site.

When you suddenly see the familiar world with an unusual angle, it always fascinates. I was feet fifty above the ground; In the central Norfolk, this height already guarantees a more or less panoramic overview. Right in front of me stood an old stone church (our house once served to her addition). Further, slightly under the slope, at some distance from the church and the pastoral house, the village spread out, which also belonged to both these buildings. During the other side, the Abbey of Wyimondham was crushed - the heap of medieval luxury, dominating the southern part of the horizon. Halfway to the abbey, in the field, the taranteel tractor, the drawing on the ground straight lines. The rest of the landscape was a serene and cute English pastoral.

I was particularly interested to look around, because just yesterday I wandered about these places with my friend Brian Aurz. Brian recently retired, and before that he served an archaeologist of the county and, probably, the rest of all the rest knew the story and landscapes of Norfolk. However, he never happened in our village church and very much wanted to look at this beautiful ancient structure, more older than the Cathedral of the Paris's Mother of God, and about the same age that cathedrals in Chartres and Salisbury. However, in Norfolk, full of medieval churches - as many as 659 pieces (their number per square mile is the largest in the world), so they do not pay attention to themselves.

Have you ever noticed, - Brian asked when we entered the church courtyard, - what rustic churches almost always seem to be buried in the ground? - The church building really stood in a shallow nizine, accurate cargo on the pillow; The foundation of the church was about three feet below the surrounding church cemetery. - Do you know why?

I admitted how it often happened in Bryan's society that I had no idea.

The point is not at all that the church is seated, - smiling, explained Brian. - It rises the church cemetery. What do you think people are buried here?

I wondered the evaluation view of the tombstone:

I do not know. Man eighty? One hundred?

In my opinion, you a little bit Mumane, - Brian responded with good-natured calm. - Think yourself. Such a rural parish has an average of 250 people, it means that about a thousand adults are dying, about a thousand adults plus several thousand little poor fellows, and did not have time to grow. Multiply this by the number of centuries that have passed the construction of this church, and you will see that there are no eighty and not a hundred deadhowers here, and thousands of twenty.

(All this, as we remember, happens in a step from my entrance door.)

- Twenty thousand? I am amazed asked.

My friend nodded calmly.

Yes, it is a lot. That is why the earth climbed three feet. - He paused a little, giving me time to digest information, then continued: - in Norfolk, a thousand church parishes. Multiply all these centuries of human activity per thousand, and it turns out that in front of us is a significant part of material culture. - He covered his hand in the arms in the distance in the distance of the bell tower: - From here you see ten-twelve other parishes, so in fact you look at a quarter of a million burials - and it's here in rural silence, where there have never been serious cataclysms.

Bill Bryson

Brief History of Life and Privacy

Jess and Whiteat

Introduction

I admitted how it often happened in Bryan's society that I had no idea.

The point is not at all that the church is seated, - smiling, explained Brian. - It rises the church cemetery. What do you think people are buried here?

I wondered the evaluation view of the tombstone:

I do not know. Man eighty? One hundred?

(All this, as we remember, happens in a step from my entrance door.)

- Twenty thousand? I am amazed asked.

My friend nodded calmly.

From the words of Brian, it became clear to me why in the pastoral and rarely populated Norfolk, archaeologists find 27,000 vintage items per year - more than in any other County of England.

People lured things here long before England became England. Brian somehow showed me a map of archaeological finds in our arrival. Almost every field something da found - the guns of the Neolithic era, Roman coins and pottery, the Saxon brooches, the burial of the bronze century, the estate of the Vikings. In 1985, the farmer passed through the field found a rare Roman phallic suspension near the border of our possessions.

I imagine a man in Toga standing at a very close to my site; He confused himself on top of Donism, finding that he lost a valuable decoration; Just think: his suspension has lacquered in the land of seventeen or eighteen centuries, survived the endless generations of people engaged in the most different activities, the invasions of the Saxons, Vikings and Normannov, the birth of the English nation, the development of the monarchy and everything else, before him picked up the farmer of the late XX century, probably a very surprised so unusual find!

So, standing on the roof of my own home and looking at the unexpectedly opened landscape, I was amazed by the oddities of our Genesis: after two thousand years of human activity, the only reminder of outdoor world The Roman phallic suspension remains. Century in a century, people quietly did their everyday affairs - ate, slept, they had sex, had fun, and I suddenly thought that the story, in essence, and consists of such ordinary things. Even Einstein spent most of his intellectual life on vacation reflections, a new hammock or an elegant leg of a young lady, descended from the tram on the other side of the street. These things fill our lives and thoughts, however, we do not attach serious importance. I do not know how many hours I spent at school to study the Missuria compromise or war scarlet and white rose, but I would never have allowed to pay for the same time of food history, sleep history, sex or entertainment.

I decided that it could be interesting: to write a book about the usual things with whom we are constantly dealing with, finally see them and give them a tribute to them. Looking around my home, I understood with fear and some confusion how little I know about the world around me. Once in the afternoon, when I was sitting at the kitchen table and automatically twist in my hands and the list, I suddenly wondered: why, in fact, with all the variety of spices and seasoning, we so much these two? Why not pepper and cardamom or, let's say, salt and cinnamon? And why is the fork four teeth, and not three and not five? Such things should have any explanations.

Dressed, I thought about why all my jackets on each sleeve had several useless buttons. On the radio, they were told about someone who "paid accommodation and table", and I was surprised: what kind of table is about? Suddenly, my house seemed to me a mysterious place.

And then I decided to go on a trip to the house: go through all rooms and understand what role each of them played in the evolution of private life. The bathroom will tell the history of hygiene, kitchen - cooking, bedroom - sex, death and sleep, and so on. I will write the history of the world without leaving home!

I confess, the idea came to my soul. I recently finished the book in which I tried to comprehend the universe and how it was formed, the task, how to say, was not the lungs. Therefore, I gladly thought about such a clearly limited, having the limits of the description object, like an old pastoral house in the English village. Yes, this book can easily be composed of home slippers!

But it was not there. The house is an amazingly complex object. To his great surprise, I found: no matter what happens in the world - discoveries, creations, victories, defeats, - all their fruits in the end, somehow turn out to be in our homes. Wars, Hunger, Industrial Revolution, Epoch of Enlightenment - You will find their traces in your sofas and chests, in the folds of the curtains, in the softness of the down pillows, in the paint on the walls and in water flowing from the crane. The History of Life is not just the history of beds, cabinets and kitchen stoves, as I was vaguely assumed before, this is the story of Qingi, Guano, the Eiffel Tower, bed bugs, the abductions of the dead bodies, as well as almost the rest that ever took place in human Life. The house is not asylum from history. The house is a place where the story will eventually lead.