Who knew?

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There are so many things I know so little about that I am constantly in awe of my own inadequate education. For today the case in point is ‘dried toad”.


Google only found 9,370 different web pages with that exact text on it (“dried toad”). When suspend is added the number decreases to only 451, many of which are replications or even parodies of each another.


When you take the word saint out of the equation there are only 94 results left. Apparently, dried toad was extremely popular with saints. If witches are removed from the search results 72 results and then removing any URL with the word devil leaves only 65 things I likely did not know about dried toad. If more than one toad is involved and the s is added to the search parameters then there are only 34 things left to peruse, so this could be a short post.


Oh so wrong, Obi Wan. I am driving around the block to park across the street.


It does not seem at all unusual that first on the list is a Google Book: A history of magic and experimental science By Lynn Thorndike. I went right to the first search parameter on a find on this page search for suspend. It was not what I was looking for because it was something else suspended besides dried toads.


The second result was: Legal Weed
Legal Bud
Legal Ways To Get High - Bufo Alvarius ... which also did not address dried toads suspended. I decided to enter neck into the search to see if I could find what I was looking for. That most certainly would be information on hanging dried toads from cords, ribbons or chains but to what end. I thought I had knowledge of people hanging dried toads around their necks to prevent or cure the Bubonic Plague. I am not expecting the Black Plague to come to a neighborhood near me soon but since I could find no reference to hanging dried toads around the neck in Wikipedia this could possibly be an opportunity to add something critical to the understanding of the medieval curse, cures and prevention. I could yell SCORE when my information was added to the impressive data base of knowledge that is Wiki.


I decided to add Wiki to the search line to see if there were any instances of dangling amphibians there that were not associated with saints, witches or devils. Off we go.


I am excited to report that all references in Wiki are related to the Chinese medicine. When this small group of Asians are excluded there is but one result left – http://nursemyra.wordpress.com/page/24/?pages-list – somebody else’s blog for “gimcrack hospital (PG) - Where the Nurses are Pretty and the Doctors are Pissed” which appears to be owned by an individual more warped than even I am.


From first impressions there is a lot of nudity and spanking for a PG site. The blog seems to be run by “nursemyra” who has some quirky thoughts, likes and dislikes. This might be further around the block then I had intended to go but it is where I have arrived even though I am more than a little disappointed that the incidence of appearance of "dried toads", suspend, Wiki and minus the words saint, witch, devil, Chinese do not appear on the limited number of WordPress pages the blog is permitted to display at one time. Toad definitely does not appear unless it is couched somewhere deep on another page amid the illustrations that are quite graphically enlightening.


At first I mistakenly thought nursemyra had tired of the entire blogging experience since the post Google pointed to was from November 18, 2009. I went straight to the heart of the matter and I am pleased to announce that nursemyra posted as recently as today, which is: ‘t shirt friday’. Although nursemyra has posted on her blog since February 2007 she seems to have a slight intermittent aversion to capital letters. I know in my heart that I do not want to search all of her blog posts for the occurrence of ‘dried toad’. That would be more like a drive around the country than the block. Since nursemyra does not have a FaceBook link on her page I will have to leave it up to others to like her in that way and not the ones she seems most curious about. However, nursemyra has several comments on today’s post so she does have something my blog is seriously lacking.


The thing that is difficult for me and obviously others is the fact that I almost frequently forget the original objective in many of my journeys. I decided to start all over and searched for “hanging dried toads” because I thought there would be few instances of dried toads being given the death sentence; after all, they were already dead. Google - No results found for "hanging dried toads". Dried toads around the neck without the quotes yielded a big score: About 396,000 results (0.31 seconds). The first hit was precisely what I had been searching for: Plague, arsenic, and a dried toad : The Lancet by EB Gilman – 2009 - "In the absence of any verifiable cause of the disease, much less any cure, the rival camps of Galenic and Paracelcian (“Empiric” or “Chemical”) physicians were moved to rancorous debates in print, divided as they were between the traditional view that the physician's task was to heal by correcting an imbalance in the bodies humors, and the radical new philosophy that advocated more aggressive interventions, such as the ingestion of metallic salts. Unsurprisingly, money bought the best (available) medical care. A good living was to be had if a rich patient could be persuaded to dose himself with a rare and potent remedy—“potable gold” was one—that could be had for a price. Elite “licensed” physicians of either school cast aspersions on the motives of their nearest down-market competitors, the barber-surgeons and apothecaries. They also warned against the quacks who hawked their nostrums in the open air, and they had nothing but scorn for the flood of cheap broadsheets offering recipes for sure-fire elixirs concocted from common household ingredients.


The lists of potions to be found in these publications are as bizarre as they are lengthy. They include the smoke of fragrant woods, vinegar-based air fresheners, floral pomanders, various pills and purges, unguents, poultices, concoctions of roots, seeds, leaves, spices, and much else, usually steeped in water or wine, and with a dash of sugar and lemon juice. Alternatively, one could hang a large dried toad around one's neck, since it was thought that as a poisonous creature, even in death, the toad would draw the noxious vapours out of the patient's breast and into its desiccated body."


The potable gold I was looking for was right under my nose. Now the huge question remains do I park the car? I was relatively certain people hung dried toads around their necks either as a cure for Bubonic Plague. I might have to find additional sources to buoy my contention if anyone might even care. After that I can post my findings in Wikipedia and make a contribution to the education and knowledge base of man.


And the point is?


Who knew if one put the right question before Google he could find the answer he was looking for? Or, when you put the wrong question out there it is not surprising to end up with more questions than answers with the net result of much wasted time. Even so, look at what I learned today . . . nursemyra has many more posts than I do and I am less interested in her subject matter than my lack of focus. Although, the letter from Harpo Marx to TS Elliot showed great promise and Harpo thinks a lot like I do; it must be time for my dose of potable gold.

© 09.23.2010 stevendphilbrick SR+ DakotaDawg