THE Lowly Peon

The Secret Life of Your Home

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25 May 2010, 3:16am

An excerpt from Bill Bryson's new book, in which he looks at the history of simple domestic oddities.

A few worth noting:

We need salt. We would die without it. One of the mysteries of history is how early civilisations knew that, because the absence of salt in the diet awakes no craving. Yet ancient Britons doused sticks in the sea and scraped off the salt, and Aztecs acquired salt by evaporating their own urine. But why pepper? Nobody would die without spices, but plenty have died for them.

Beds were hard work, too. Turning and plumping mattresses was a regular chore – and a heavy one, too. A typical feather bed contained 40lb (18kg) of feathers. Support was on a lattice of ropes, which could be tightened with a key when they began to sag (hence the expression "sleep tight"), but in no degree of tension did they offer much comfort. Spring mattresses were invented in 1865, but didn't work reliably at first because the coils would sometimes turn, confronting the occupant with the very real danger of being punctured by his own bed.

An understanding of female anatomy and physiology was still a long way off. As late as 1878, the British Medical Journal was able to run a spirited and protracted correspondence on whether a menstruating woman's touch could spoil a ham. Judith Flanders notes that one British doctor was struck off the medical register for noting in print that a change in coloration around the vagina soon after conception was a useful indicator of pregnancy. The conclusion was entirely valid; the problem was that it could be discerned only by looking. The doctor was never allowed to practise again.