Why the Beak?
It looks like something out of a steampunk dystopian nightmare, but it’s real: this is the outfit of a Renaissance plague doctor. It consists of a long coat of waxed linen and a mask with glass eyeholes, all to keep the physician free from contagion.
But why must he look like a hooded bird of prey? Is he trying to frighten his patients to death before the plague can get them? Nope. The beak of the mask is actually stuffed with herbs and spices and, one source says, vinegar. Since bad smells or miasmas were supposed to spread the disease, it was hoped that good smells near your face would ward off illness.
I don’t know what breathing vinegar fumes would do to your lungs, but I suppose the outfit as a whole might actually have provided some protection, at least from the airborne bacteria that spread pneumonic plague. It probably didn’t do much about the fleas that spread bubonic plague, but then I don’t know what would have.
This is the kind of thing you discover when you are researching historical pandemics. I really love writing nonfiction.
Read MoreA Pandemic Is Worldwide
HarperCollins is going to publish my new picture book, A Pandemic Is Worldwide! Pandemics through the ages, up to COVID-19. The research is a little grueling, but it’s quite remarkable to note how behavior patterns stay consistent from age to age. (Anti-masking prejudice, fyi, is not new….nor is anti-vaccine hysteria.)
Blast Off!
The Story of Neil Armstrong is now on sale! From building model airplanes to landing on the moon, the life of an iconic American…
…who, as his younger sister once said, “never did anything wrong. He was a Mr. Goody Two-shoes if there ever was one. It was just his nature.”
(Thank you, June Armstrong, for my favorite quote in the whole book.)
Read MoreWhat Gets Left Out
NASA’s fecal containment bag. Astronauts are true heroes.
One of the saddest things about writing nonfiction is that you just can’t fit all the cool stuff you find into one book. Thankfully, we have blogs for this sort of thing.
I’ve been hard at work on my biography of Neil Armstrong. Apollo 11 has just achieved the first moon landing and Neil, Buzz, and Mike are on their way back to Earth. But I only had a limited amount of words to describe this epic achievement, and one of the things that got cut for space was the fact that there were no bathrooms on any of the Apollo flights.
So of course you want to know how this was handled, don’t you? Alas, I do mean handled.
In classic NASA speak, the astronauts used “fecal containment bags.” Sad to say, they were not terribly well designed and sometimes did not do what they were supposed to do, leading to this immortal dialog, captured for history in the transcripts for Apollo 10 as it orbited the moon:
Commander Tom Stafford: Oh — who did it?
Command Module Pilot John Young: Who did what?
Lunar Module Pilot Eugene Cernan: Where did that come from?
Stafford: Give me a napkin quick. There’s a turd floating through the air.
Young: I didn’t do it. It ain’t one of mine.
Cernan: I don’t think it’s one of mine.
Stafford: Mine was a little more sticky than that. Throw that away.
A bit later on the same mission:
Cernan: They told us that–Here’s another *$*#@*@*#*$ turd. What’s the matter with you guys?
Stafford and Young: laughter
Cernan: A line of dialog which I shall omit, as I try to keep this blog rated PG-13
Stafford: It was just floating around?
Cernan: Yes.
Stafford: Mine was stickier than that.
Young: Mine was too. It hit that bag–
Cernan: When I stuck my finger in mine–mine was too soft. [The fecal containment bags had a “finger cot,” a sort of indentation where fingers could be inserted to, erm, encourage separation of the matter in question from the buttocks, as there was no gravity to help with this. Cernan was not actually sticking his naked finger in, you know.)
Young; Laughter
Cernan: I don’t know whose that is. I can neither claim it nor disclaim it.
I tell you, the stuff you can’t include in books just breaks your heart.
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Thomson focuses on newfound connection, magic, and suspense to conjure a fast-paced, heartwarming mystery. Thomson’s world is populated by resourceful protagonists, fanciful creatures, and quirky supporting characters.”
—Publishers Weekly