<\/p>\n
Several weeks ago, when I talked about the diary of a 19th century farmer and cattle dealer of Winslow, I asked for information about what were called shoes to move buildings. That information was soon supplied by aged Winslow resident Charles Wixson. Mr. Wixson says that those shoes were long, peeled logs, some 30 feet in length, on two of which the building was placed and then slowly pulled over the ground by oxen and horses. A team was ‘attached to each log, and together the two teams pulled those logs with the building on it. Mr. Wixson once drove such a team to move a schoolhouse in Winslow.<\/p>\n
Most people know that one of the oldest kinds of publication, older even than most newspapers, is the almanac. Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanac” became even more famous than his Pennsylvania Gazette. In these highly sophisticated days of the 1960’s it sometimes gives one a little comfort to peruse an almanac of simpler times more than a hundred years ago.<\/p>\n
Like most almanacs, the one I speak of now was distributed free by a merchant. The year was 1849 and the merchant was Seth W. Fowler, who designated himself an importer and dealer in drugs, medicines, chemicals and foreign leeches. But the almanac was produced by still another man of drugs and medicines, a certain Dr. Wistar, who in 1849 was putting out the 53rd edition of this annual almanac with what he called the “absolutely trustworthy astronomical calculations” made by him through more than half a century. The 1849 almanac called special attention to eclipses of the sun. It said that one such eclipse would not be visible in the United States, but could be seen in Russian America. That, of course, meant Alaska, which in 1849 was still a possession of Russia.<\/p>\n
As I have said, the astronomer Wistar was himself a medicine man. On one page of his almanac we read: “This almanac, introduced for gratuitous circulation through dealers, is more than worth the price usually paid for such works at the book store. Along with the usual astronomical features, the pamphlet contains a number of valuable recipes for the cure of certain ills that human flesh is heir to. A considerable portion of the work is devoted to the merits of Wistar’s Balsam of Wild Cherry, in support of which it arrays the certificates of many persons high in the esteem of the community.”<\/p>\n
Here’s another plug on still another page of the almanac: “Beware of imitations. The unparalled and astonishing efficacy of Wistar’s Balsam of Wild Cherry has caused many unprincipled counterfeiters and imitators to pass off spurious mixtures of similar name and appearance for our genuine balsam. Look well to the marks of the genuine, with the words ‘Dr. Wistar’s Balsam of Wild Cherry’ blown in the glass of the bottle. The price everywhere is one dollar per bottle, six bottles for five dollars.”<\/p>\n
I won’t bore you by quoting any of the many endorsements which Dr. Wistar published to convince customers. I am sure you are familiar with such, statements. If one could believe half of what the glowing endorsements in this 1849 almanac said, there would never have been any need to build a sanatorium for tuberculosis.<\/p>\n
That cherry balsam wasn’t Dr. Wistar’s only remedy. He produced also Dr. Wistar’s Gentle Purgative Pills, a sort of forerunner of Ex-Lax. The ad urges people to stop taking strong laxatives and try these milder, gentler pills, which the ad tells us performed their task without interference with the patient’s work or pleasure.<\/p>\n
Long before anyone ever heard of calories, this old almanac presented a table of what it called measurements. It stated the number of nutritious parts in each thousand parts of various foods. Grain came out best, with 900 out of a thousand nutritious parts for wheat, corn and oats. Ordinary leavened bread from wheat flour produced 800 parts. Lowest on the list was cucumbers, with only 25 parts out of 1,000 doing any good. Meats ran from 250 for pork to 290 for mutton, with beef in between.<\/p>\n
Another table told readers how long it took to digest certain foods. Salted beef, the kind most people got except at slaughter time, took 5t hours to digest, while fresh beef required only three hours. Fresh roast pork took as long as salted beef, and chicken took four hours. Quickest digestion came from boiled rice one hour. Raw apples were digested in an hour and a half. A raw oyster required only two hours, but when it was stewed it was not digested in less than four hours.<\/p>\n
Of course there were items in this 1849 almanac designed especially for the farmer. He was told what was the equivalent sustenance for his livestock in terms of 100 pounds of hay. That amount of hay was equal to 275 pounds of fodder corn, to 200 pounds of potatoes, and to 500 pounds of turnips. But hay was inferior to the major grains — wheat, oats and dry kernel corn.<\/p>\n
Strangely this old almanac contains no weather predictions, but I venture to say that its readers would have felt better if such predictions had been included.<\/p>\n
In 1849 everybody respected an almanac’s foresight about the weather. The makers of those almanacs knew very well that, in the middle of the 19th century, meteorological science made possible no accurate weather predictions beyond 24 hours. Only in very recent years have newspapers and television carried the five-day predictions. And no one is astonished to find those often inaccurate for a specific locality. But in 1849, or even 1749, the maker of an almanac designed for New England readers knew very well that thunder storms would come in July and August, that some frost would occur before the middle of October, and that there would be a big snow storm in February. If he was a week or so off as to exact dates with such predictions, people soon forgot. And if he hit a date exactly, by pure accident, of course, his reputation was made.<\/p>\n
If Dr. Wistar made no attempt to forecast the weather, he did fill the twelve pages, each devoted to one month of the year, with historical events commemorated on particular days. We learn, for instance, that Martin Van Buren was born on December 6, that the Pilgrims landed on December 22, and that Simon Bolivar, the South American patriot, died on December 17.<\/p>\n
A much venerated man of early America was Timothy Dwight, President of Yale. This almanac tells us that he died on January 11, 1817. But others of the almanac’s honored names have now been forgotten. Who was Silas Hicks, who died on February 27, 1830? Who was the Putnam who died in May, 1790, and the Bainbridge in July, 1833?<\/p>\n
Interesting is this almanac’s dating of the discovery of America. It gives the date as October 11, not October 12, as now celebrated. This is the way it gives the information: “Bahamas discovered by Columbus, October 11, 1492.”<\/p>\n
Naturally the almanac commemorates events in which people were interested in 1849, not what interests us today. So we read in this old volume of the birth and death of Benjamin Franklin and James Monroe, of the birth of Queen Victoria, who was only thirty years old when this almanac was published. We learn the death year of the poet Alexander Pope as 1744, because in 1849 some of the most widely read English verse was in the rhyming couplets made popular by Pope. In 1849 also folks wanted to remember battles of the Revolution that most of us have forgotten all about, even if we once read of them in the school histories. In 1849 people still talked about the Battle of Monmouth of 1778, and the fighting at Brandywine. But even we have not forgotten the Marquis de Lafayette, who is fondly mentioned in Dr. Wistar’s almanac.<\/p>\n
It is interesting to turn from the year 1849 to a time a quarter of a century later, 1873. Here we have another volume called the Centaur Almanac, and the issue that came to my attention was distributed right here in Waterville by J.H. Plaisted & Co., druggists. Like the Wistar almanac, the Centaur was devoted to the promotion of remedies for human ills. The leading product was Centaur Liniment, and the claims for it were just as extravagant as were those for Wistar’s Wild Cherry Balsam. Listen to this: “Centaur Liniment is effecting results which until now physicians have considered impossible. During the ravages of small pox in New York last winter Centaur Liniment was used in many hospitals, and in those not a single patient was lost. In fact many came out without a scar. We were not prepared for miracles, but we have seen Centaur Liniment effect cures which are as wonderful as the cleansing of Lepers in the New Testament. So we say to the sore and the lame, to the stiff-jointed and the rheumatic, throwaway your crutches. Arise and walk.”<\/p>\n
After Biblical language like that, the next sentence strikes us a decided anti-climax. It says: “There are two kinds of Centaur Liniment — the white wrapper for the human family and the yellow wrapper for animals.”<\/p>\n
Between 1849 and 1873 the United States had suffered the agony of a great civil war, and memories of that war filled the almanac’s pages. Here are some dates that the editor wanted his readers to remember: “January 1, 1865, U.S. abolishes slavery. March 4, 1861, Pres. Lincoln inaugurated. March 11, 1862, McClellan organizes the Union Army. April 9, 1865, Gen. Lee surrenders.”<\/p>\n
Besides Centaur Liniment this almanac advertised Pitcher’s Castoria, saying: “When Pitcher’s Castoria is used, paregoric and castor oil will never be used again. Every mother who has a crying baby can put it to sleep with Pitcher’s Castoria.”<\/p>\n
And right now, before I put you to sleep with talk about old almanacs, I am going to say goodbye until next week.<\/p>\n
Year: 1967<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #742, Broadcast on November 12, 1967<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[752,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8752"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}