• Garlic-fried cockroaches for indigestion (1800s)
• Maggots used to clean wounds (shockingly, this is still done. see The Return of the Maggots)
• Mice sake (in China today)
• Mercury for syphilis (now known to be extremely toxic)
• Earthworm soup (in China, to reduce fever)
Be glad you were born when you were. On second thought, maybe it’s still just as bad. (see The Cure Will Kill You).
Pay for Pee, Pal
The Roman Emperor Nero taxed pee—and now we fine people who pee in public (otherwise known as taxation for presentation). On the other end of the scale, restroom users in fancy restaurants and clubs have to pay to pee. Or at least provide a tip (afterward, when someone hands them a towel).
Raining Rats and Dogs
Watching terrier dogs tear apart rats is a bizarre sport. In the 19th century, Europeans flocked to the pub to watch canines devour rodents in the pit.
No Pain, No Gain
Be glad you live in the time of anesthetic. In times past, often all you were given during an operation was a bit of brandy and a wood chip. How did the wood chip work? Well, instead of screaming, you just chomped down as hard as you could. Yowsers!!
Voodoo Catch-22
You might want to keep that Wicca book well hidden if you come across a time machine and find yourself growing up in 17th-century Salem, Massachusetts. Suspected witches were thrown in the ocean. If you drowned, that meant you were innocent. If you floated, that meant you were guilty—and put to death. Talk about damned if you do, damned if you don’t!
Friends Don’t Let Friends Shrink Each Other’s Heads
Head shrinking was a real thing. After killing an enemy, you chopped off their head, took out the brains, boiled the rest, and let it hang out to dry into this nice, neat little pinhead, the hair still intact.
Double-Cross Eyes
Talk about double vision—there was once a Chinese emperor with two pupils, in each eye! When he told a guest he’d like to see him again sometime, he wasn’t kidding. We wonder if he ever adapted Humphrey Bogart’s famous toast from the movie Casablanca. “Here’s looking at you, kid… And make it a double.”
Did You Know? Stonewall Jackson’s left arm received a formal military funeral. (But we want to know: What happened to the rest of him?)
Foot Bone Connected to the… Machine that Causes Cancer?
Up until recently, you could walk into a shoe store and stick your foot into an X-ray machine to check out the foot bones. Ask your grandparents about it. The little Main Street novelty went the way of the jelly shoe, when it was discovered that these machines emitted radiation. As late as 1981, the cancer-causing fluoroscope was in use in a store in West Virginia. Upon being alerted to the danger (and the fact that by then it was illegal), the store put their best foot forward and got rid of it.
IN THE KNOW
Jelly shoe: ask your parents about these. Made of PVC plastic, they hit the fashion scene in 1982 (at the World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee) and was all the rage in the 1980s, along with neon colors, layered socks, shoulder pads, and the leg bandana. Hmm…this is giving us an idea for a Gross-o-pedia spin-off.
Did You Know? Ancient Egyptians used crocodile poop for birth control!
Just a Little Trim—of My Hair!
After Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, you may have thought that you’d heard everything there is to know about butchering barbers. However, in medieval times barbers carried out many surgical procedures, often with little or no training. You could get your haircut and then get your gaping wound taped up.
A Brave Shave
You know those peppermint-striped poles in front of the local barbershop on Main Street? Those are old-fashioned and rather charming, aren’t they? Ummm, not if you know what they stand for. The peppermint pole is symbolic. Since back in the days of barber butchers—I mean, surgeons—your coiffeur might also be the one drawing blood. As such, red stood for blood, white stood for the tourniquet, and the pole itself symbolized the stick gripped by the patient to make the vein protrude to make the procedure easier.
Hang in There
Historians believe that Jesus Christ was nailed at his wrists rather than through the palm of his hands, as depicted in standard images of Jesus on the cross. If he’d been nailed in his palms, the nail would have cut through his body and he would have fallen off the cross.
I’ll Trade You One Dump…
Until the middle of the last century, human excrement was considered so valuable as fertilizer in Japan that it was often traded for eggplants and radishes.
“You’re a Leech.” “Thank You.”
Leech therapy may have started as early as 3,500 years ago. Given how many maladies they were used to address, we don’t know why “leech” became such a negative word.
You Are What You Eat
A fourth-century Chinese alchemist recommended eating gold—if you could get your hands on it—to attain purification.
Lend Me a Hand—for Good
Thankfully, humans are law-abiding creatures. The oldest known extant laws were drawn up by Hammurabi of Babylon around 1700 B.C. and called Hammurabi’s Code. A lot of the text seems quite reasonable, such as not blaming the victim, and so on. But certain parts are a little unnerving—for example, if a son hit his father, his hand would be lopped off. Not exactly a punishment that fits the crime, in our book.
Puke Cuke
King Sennacherib from ancient Assyria had some rather unusual bragging rights. About his enemies, he said: “I tore out their private parts like the seeds of cucumbers.”
“To Life!” (Just Not the One of the Guy Whose Skeleton I’m Holding)
Before the Romans converted them into man-made cups, the Gauls used human skulls to glug delicious mead. Bottoms—or in this case, heads—up!
You Look Good Enough to Eat!
Some scientists believe that all humans are descendants of cannibals, although the Catholic Church has never been fond of the idea. Instead, it prefers virtual cannibalism in the form of the Eucharist: eating a wafer and sipping wine to represent eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood. Apparently, Christ himself directed his followers to eat him, saying, “This is my body” and “This is my blood.” We always wondered what was on the menu for the Last Supper.
BOILS, FROGS, AND RIVERS OF BLOOD-OH MY!
When talking about gross stuff in history, why go back only as far as people burping and throwing up in the Middle Ages? There was tons of nightmarishly gross stuff going on before that. Who can forget the original top ten gross list in the Old Testament’s Book of Exodus? Remember how the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt and wanted to leave, but Pharaoh wouldn’t let them? Well, God went buck wild and started delivering these plagues until Pharaoh finally gave in and let the Jews get the hell out of dodge
Here they are:
1 Turning water into blood (rivers of the stuff—yuck!)
2 Frogs in the house, the bedchamber, the beds, the oven, and even the kneading troughs (then again, the French may not have minded that last one)
3 Lice (and the exact injunction was to turn dust into it, so get out those dust rags again, for more than just your skin cells this time!)
4 Swarms of flies
5 Diseased livestock
6 Boils everywhere!
7 Hail (this one, while inconvenient, seems pretty low on the ick factor)
8 Swarms of locusts (good for getting rid of tourists, see Hoarding Together)
9 Darkness (see #7)
10 Death of the firstborn (oh, whoops, okay. This just got into the not-funny-but-okay-to-joke-about-because-a-couple-thousand-years-have-gone-by category.)
Hey Gobble, Gobble
President James K. Polk had a dirty job to do—and not just running the country (wah, wah, wah). Before he got to the White House, you could find him in the chicken coop assisting with the artificial insemination of turkeys.
Do You Promise to Take a Shower
Soon? I Do.
Here comes the bride, carrying a lovely bouquet. What a nice tradition. Umm, not so fast. It actually comes from some nasty bit of history. In the old days, people only took a bath a couple of times a year, and maybe not even for their own wedding. Brides started carrying bouquets down the aisle to cover up their own…
Did You Know? A bouquet usually refers to a pretty collection of flowers, but it also means an odor.
Only the Nose Knows
If you think Attila the Hun’s massacres make for gruesome reading, did you ever hear how he died? Some say he drowned in his own nosebleed. In 2011, a British man died the same way. Doctors think that an intense nosebleed may have led to suffocation.
Left for Dead
Ever heard the expression “dead ringer” to mean someone who really looks a lot like someone else? Well, that sounds harmless enough, but many say the origin of the expression comes from a fear of being buried alive, which led to the practice of putting a bell inside a coffin. If you woke and realized that you’d been left for dead, you would ring the bell. Some say the expression “saved by the bell” originates here, too. Scholars don’t agree on those stories, but the fear that motivates them is not unfounded. Before modern medicine, being buried alive wasn’t all that uncommon, since people didn’t have the equipment we have today to determine when someone’s really kicked the bucket. (Although not having a pulse is a pretty good sign—or rather, a pretty bad one.)
Did You Know? President George Washington (see next page) and the composer Frédéric Chopin (see Jar of Hearts, pg. 223) both had a particular fear of being buried alive.
Declaration of Death
We knew the guy had patience ever since his stint at Valley Forge, so maybe it’s not surprising that George Washington, our country’s first president, waited 12 days after he died to be buried (to make sure he wouldn’t be buried alive). The American hero was willing to look death in the face; he just wanted to make sure he didn’t have to do it while still alive. (Then again, he’s got nothing on a tribe native to Malaysia. See You’ve Got All the Time in the World)
Oh, My Aching Head. If Only I Could Take a Chunk out.
No compendium of uncivilized history would be complete without a nod to trephination—the practice of drilling a hole into the head in order to remove part of the skull bone. Why would a doctor perform this procedure? Well, if you didn’t feel well—like, for example, you had a headache—early surgeons thought this might offer relief. Plus, apparently you got to make a necklace with the severed bone, so that was cool! Show-and-tell to end all show-and-tells. “I’ve got a headache this big. Oh, I mean, wait a minute.” (Move hands a little closer together.) “This big.”
You don’t need to venture far from your bed to find all kinds of stuff fit for your nightmares: cockroaches ready to crawl in your ear as soon as you fall sleep, pests mistaken for pets (millipede, tarantulas, and lizards—all popular in various countries), hidden animal parts in everything from plastic bags to toothpaste, and candles that smell like hamburgers. Oh, and let’s not forget the dust on the coffee table—most of it flaked off your skin. Come along for a tour through a house of horrors—your own.
Dead Skin Cells
Do you feel like your parents are constantly asking you to dust the furniture, even though you just did? (And shouldn’t you get an increase in your allowance sometime soon?) When you’re eye level with dust bunnies galore, you may find yourself wondering where all that dust came from, anyway. Well, four-fifths of it came from your body. So if your mom says you really should pitch in more, tell her you are, by letting your skin cells land where they may. You’re the one who created a lot of that mess in the first place—without even trying.
Sunny Sides up
How about scrambled eggs for breakfast? If you’re lucky, you’ll get one of the rare mutant eggs floating around that contain multiple yokes. A woman once found five of them in a single eggshell. Guess that egg-white-only diet is going straight out the farmhouse window.
Did You Know? If eggs are fresh, they sink in water. Throw away any eggs that float.
Snap, Crackle, Poof
It’s not an old wives’ tale. The gassiest foods are the notorious offenders: beans, broccoli, cabbage, onions, and brussels sprouts. Fruit and whole wheat produce their fair share of flatulence, too. Of course, those with lactose intolerance start the horn section after a simple snack of milk or cheese.
Did You Know? We love omelets as much as the next guys and gals, but we have to admit that this is kind of disturbing. The eggs we eat are technically chicken menstruation. The chickens kept for hatching eggs for human consumption don’t mingle with roosters; hence, there’s no danger of fertilization. Technically, it’s the same thing as when a female of our species has her period.
GROSS GIFT IDEAS (THESE ALL REALLY EXIST!)
• Squirrel-foot earrings
• Fetus-shaped cookie cutters
• Toilet-bowl mug
• Pooze—fart noisemaker (a kind of gooey clay that makes a sound like someone breaking wind)
• Underwear built for two (we don’t want to try to visualize this)
• A dead-rat thong
And, of course, there’s the old standby, the whoopee cushion. Instead of the usual gag of putting it on someone’s chair, why not try this variation. Keep the cushion under your shirt at the table at a dinner party. When the room is quiet, jump up and make a dash for the bathroom, bent over and complaining that your stomach hurts. Leave a trail of firecrackers as you go.
What Me Worry? I Scurry.
If you step on a cockroach, listen for the crunch (and sometimes a smell). Then watch it go running off again. They’re hearty little critters—after all, their ancestors survived whatever it is that wiped out the dinosaurs (see Planet of the Roaches).
Wiping around the World
Besides your everyday T.P. (toilet paper), the following objects have all been used to wipe someone’s nether regions at one time or another: seaweed, moss, mussel shells, grass, clay, stone, snow, corncobs, a bidet, a sponge on the end of a stick, wool. Many cultures still use the bare hand.
the number of pounds of toilet paper an average American flushes away every year.
IN THE KNOW
A letter in your mailbox: a polite way of saying you have a wedgie (which is a semipolite way of saying your pants are tucked into your butt)
Home Sweet Onion
When there’s no White Castle in walking distance and you just can’t get your hands on what you crave, maybe the smell alone will satisfy. In the spring of 2010, White Castle created a burger-scented candle in honor of National Cheeseburger Month. Proceeds went to…autism research? Hmmm, okay. Apparently the 10,000 red meat and onion smell delight sold so fast, they ran out.
Straight from the Cow’s Behind
Ah—that nice, woody smell of a fresh layer of mulch around the pine trees in the front yard. Just what is in that nutrient-rich material? All kinds of stuff—it could include leaves, bark, timber, and even manure. So your yard is covered with cow poop? It just might be.
Headless Roachman
Where’s my head? A cockroach may wonder that—for up to a month before he finally bites the dust. Then again, a headless cockroach sounds better to us than the intact variety. At least they can’t bite.
Grand Entrance
You emerge from the bathroom, your face positively radiant with your new rosy blush and shimmery lip gloss, only to have your pesky brother ask, “Hey, did you just fard?” What an idiot! Wait—maybe you misheard him. He said, “fard” not “fart.” Props to him for memorizing this week’s vocab list. Fard means to coat your face with makeup, from the German “faro,” meaning colored.
Did You Know? Most people use their left hand to wipe their bottom. (Aren’t you glad you shake hands using your right?)
Did You Know? There are 3,500 types of cockroaches on Earth. How many have you seen?
Got Roach?
Scientists beli
eve that cockroaches might bite you in your sleep if you lie still enough (maybe restless leg syndrome isn’t so bad after all). But it gets worse. If you have a sudden pain in your ear, it may not be your standard ear infection. Cockroaches have been known to climb into people’s ears while they’re asleep. Forceps are used to remove them. (Don’t try it at home.)
Ring around the Ringworm
Ringworms can really get under your skin, but some people swear by a fairly easy way to kill them—which is pretty gross, in our opinion. They trace around the infected area with a pen enough times that they block it from moving so that it eventually dies. But then how do you dig it out? Maybe the best thing to do is to see a doctor.
Be an Expert! Ringworm is caused by a fungus.
Old MacDonald Hid a Farm
You may have heard that animal bones are used in JELL-O™ and cornbread mixes, but did you know that animal parts are commonly used in plastic bags, fireworks, tires, fabric softener, shampoo, and toothpaste as well? (For more on secret ingredients, See Roses Are Red, and so Are Some Bugs)
Grossopedia Page 7
