Paste your essay iAva Honeycutt
Mrs. Pfaff
ELA
20 February 2018
History’s Weirdest Moments
When most people think of history, they think of boring, useless facts and dates. Like this important guy died, this war happened at this time. History wasn't all facts and dates like people think it was. Some of the weirdest stuff ever happened back then. Like gross diseases and their remedies for a cure, crazy fashions, and the wackiest traditions. History has some gruesome moments; sometimes I think how did the human race survive.
A wacky thing that played throughout history is the fashion. In the beginning, it was just animal hides to keep warm. But then people got creative. One of the first fashion findings was silk. One day an empress named Xilingshi was enjoying a cup a tea by a lovely tree. While sitting there, something fell in her cup. A silkworm cocoon! When the silkworm cocoon unraveled, it became a soft silk string. People immediately started using silk to sew their clothes, and it quickly became popular.
Another fashion trend happened 800 years after the dark ages. Buttons became the hottest new thing. The button was initially made to put on your sleeves to make it so you can't wipe your nose on your sleeve, but it soon became a fashion statement. King Francis, a French king, one time wore a suit that had 1500 useless gold buttons on it. Another trend that started during this time was a chin strap.
Back then the Catholic church controlled most of England. They decided what was good and bad. At one point in time, the Catholic church decided that ears were inappropriate and should not be shown. So people wore chin straps to hide their ears. Soon people decided the weather you were the bigger your chin traps is, eventually that fad went away. Something else the Catholic church encouraged was wearing horse hair shirts. People back then believed that being miserable pleased God so they would be as uncomfortable as they could be. Horse hair shirts were a way to please God. People wore the hairy spiky itchy shirts all day long. It was also a breeding ground for fleas which caused lots of flea bites and infections.
One of the coolest styles in the middle ages was wearing slashes on your clothes. It's like I survived a knife fight look. Beside this manly look people also started to wear collars called ruffs. People originally wore them to keep the oils in their hair from damaging their clothes. The ruffs got bigger and bigger till they were about the size of a wagon wheel. They had to make special spoons so that people could reach their mouth. Around the renaissance times, wide clothes were the fashion. Men put something called bombast in their jacket to make them look wider. Bombast is made up of bran, rags cotton, anything like that. Around this time woman started to wear farthingale. A farthingale was an undercoat that gave a girl hippo hips. A queen invented this because she was pregnant and didn't want anyone to know.
The next trend that happened was started by Louis the fourteen. Louis was a short guy and wore tall hair and high heels to give himself confidence this trend quickly spread and was the new best thing. Women around the 1800’s started to wear things to make their waist look smaller. One of these things is called a crinoline. This made your skirt stick out. With a crinoline, a girl would also wear a corset. These things were so tight around a girls waist that it could snap their ribs. A girl could be enjoying a nice party when all of the sudden her ribs snapped, and she’s in agonizing pain. When world war broke out all the metal from the crinoline was melted to make materials for war. People went back to wearing normal clothes.
Back then people had it bad, no Tv, air conditioning, or Top Ramen. But the people who suffered the most were babies and children. Back then during 1500’s, it was normal for a mom to have up to 14 children, sadly because of poor conditions most babies died at birth. If a baby does survive birth, life doesn’t get much better from there. Being one out of 14 kids can mean little attention. Most of the time, mothers die at birth so most likely the child is an orphan. If the baby survived and still had a parent, they would spend their first couple years swaddled. It was believed that if you kiss your baby too much, it will give them rickets, so moms would swaddle their babies so that wouldn’t happen, they also were swaddled so moms could work and not have to take care of the baby. Moms job was to protect the baby which was tough because the mom would accidentally kill the baby. One way a lot of babies died was by a bottle. When the first bottle was designed, the nipple part actually trapped bacteria which caused the baby to get sick and die.
Back then everyone was superstitious including moms. Moms would do everything to protect the baby from evil spirits. One way moms would protect their baby is putting him or her by the fire so she could see the evil spirits. A lot of times the baby would die of overheating because they were too close to the fire. If the baby survived babyhood, childhood wasn’t much better. Getting sick was the worst thing as a child back then. The medicines were wacky and had no science behind them. Back then people didn’t know that drugs were bad. If a kid was sick, they could be given big doses of strait opium or morphine, which caused many overdose deaths back then. But that was only the beginning; if you had a bad cough, a live frog would be put under a child’s tongue. Another famous medicine was leeches. Anywhere there was pain a child would get a leech to suck out all the bad stuff. Kids were also given strait wine as a cure. Besides horrible birth and childhood, kids also had to dress to impress. People at this time were obsessed with posture. Kids had to wear something called stays. Stays forced kids to have a perfect posture. Somes stays had spikes, so if the kids dare to relax for one second, they would get in a lot of pain. Being a kid sure sounded miserable so be thankful for what you have.
Through history, there has been many epidemics, pandemics, and every other kind of demic. Sickness and disease were everywhere. Some diseases almost ended parts of different countries. One of the biggest epidemics was black death. Black death is a terrible disease. The symptoms of black death are swollen nodes, diarrhea, vomiting nausea, and you would get painful sores on your body called buboes. Black death was first found in Egypt. It spread through the Nile. Eventually, it reached the city of Constantinople. 10,000 people a day were dying. By the time the disease passed. 40% of the city died. For the next few centuries, things were calm until the disease return in the 1300s. This time the disease was caused by a black rat. It traveled all throughout Europe killing thousands of people. Doctors didn't know how to cure the disease. They tried something called bloodletting. This is when doctors drain the blood of the place where the patient is having pain. Their philosophy was they are removing the bad blood. Of course, it did not work, and a lot of patients died of loss of blood. After a while, the disease went away, and things went back to normal. Even though half of Europe's population had passed. In the 1800s there was a place called Calcutta. This place grew way to fast. This caused a pandemic called Cholera. Cholera attacks your intestines and gives you the worst case of diarrhea. The disease was highly contagious and spread quickly. Eventually, that disease died down. Besides these two diseases, there has been much more throughout history. The disease may sound terrible, but the way they treated them is worse.
People were totally clueless when it came to medicine back then. Egyptians were the first to make some interesting medicines. They made laxatives from castor oil, antacid from peppermint leaves and carbonates. They made drugs for everything, some of which actually worked. Couple thousand years later during the middle ages, medicines had no science behind them and were wacky. The Europeans believed that to fix a disease you need to remove the bad blood. So doctors would nick people's veins to get all the bad blood out. Of course, it never worked so many people died of blood loss. In the 1800s people understood medicine and the human body a bit better, but not totally. Everyone in this day and age is familiar with the drink Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is not the same drink we enjoy today as it was in the 1800s. Coca-Cola was full of cocaine back then. It killed a lot of people. Eventually, a different guy bought the company and took all the cocaine out. Coca-cola wasn't the worst of it though. In the 1800s you could walk into a pharmacy and get yourself cocaine, opium, and heroin. Cocaine was used for toothaches. The heroine was used for a bad cough. And opium for a teething powder for babies. A popular cough cure from back then was filled with a good dose of Morphine, and Marijuana. People didn't know how bad these things were for you. Most medicined ended up killing people instead of helping them.
There was one medical breakthrough in the 1800s. A famous medicine still used today , vaseline, is very useful if you have a cut, burn, or even chapped lips. The guy you can thank for the invention of vaseline is Robert Chesebrough. One day a guy at his work complained that gross slimy stuff always gets on the machines at the factory. The man also said that it made his hands soft. This interested Robert, so he took some of that goopy stuff and took it home to explore and learn about. He cut himself and burned himself and then put the goopy stuff on him to see what would happen. The Cuts and burned healed extremely quick. Robert knew he found a great medicine, so he started selling. It was an instant hit. The vaseline was used for many things than just medicine. Robert loved vaseline so much that he would eat a spoonful a day and lived to the age of 96. Roberts invention was the start of helpful medicines. As people got smarter, the medicines got better. Thanks to some great people from back then, we can live a good healthy life.
In conclusion, it was a pretty rough life living back then. Almost dying every day of disease, there medicines, or even suffocating in a corset just to look good. People back then have been through some rough stuff. The modern-day flu now can be cured in a couple of days to a week, when back then a cough or flu could be lethal. It's pretty incredible that people are even here on this earth. Whenever I read about history, I think how did the human race survive.
Works cited
Stöppler, MD Melissa Conrad. “Plague Symptoms, Treatment & History of the Black Death.”
“History Of Silk.” Silk History: History of Silk Fabric; History of Chinese Silk; Silk Road History Silks History
Dhwty. “The Legend of Leizu and the Origins of Luxurious Chinese Silk.” Ancient Origins, Ancient Origins
“Farthingale.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Feb. 2018
“HistoHistory.com Staff. “Black Death.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2010ry of corsets.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Feb. 2018,
Oh, Yikes! History's Grossest, Wackiest Moments. Paw Prints, 2008
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