Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (53 page)

 

THE LEGEND:
There’s a secret underground network of people who produce, collect, and enjoy “snuff films”—films that depict actual murders.

HOW IT SPREAD:
In 1969 Charles Manson and his “family” were terrorizing Los Angeles with bloody murders and other violent crimes. At one point, they stole an NBC news truck and were known to be in possession of a few Super-8 cameras. In the 1971 documentary
The Family
, filmmaker Ed Sanders claims that Manson’s followers used the equipment to make “brutality films” of their victims. Ever since, rumors of various serial killers recording their crimes, as well as police discovering these tapes, have surfaced.

THE TRUTH:
No law enforcement agency in the United States, Europe, or Asia, has ever actually discovered a genuine snuff film. Very convincing fakes have been reported and turned over to authorities (in 1991 actor Charlie Sheen saw a Japanese movie called
Flower of Flesh and Blood
that was so convincing that he thought it was real and gave it to the FBI). But a real one has yet to surface. As for the Manson tapes, those are a legend, too. The Super-8 cameras and the NBC equipment was later recovered; there were no films of murders.

 

THE LEGEND:
The name of the band is KISS, not Kiss. It’s in all capital letters because it’s an acronym for “Knights In Satan’s Service”—in other words, the band worships the devil. And it’s all there in their stage show: bassist Gene Simmons spitting fire, spewing blood, and dressing up as a character called “The Demon.”

HOW IT SPREAD:
In 1974, shortly after the release of KISS’s debut album, Simmons did an interview with
Circus
magazine. He jokingly said he wanted to know what human flesh tasted like. This, Simmons believes, is what started the devil-worship rumors. But Simmons is probably just as responsible—whenever he was asked outright if he worshiped the devil, he was noncommittal because he thought it was good publicity and made the band seem more dangerous and interesting.

THE TRUTH:
KISS singer Paul Stanley thought up the name. He thought it summed up early ’70s glam rock pretty well, and was good for marketing because it was a simple word that was understood worldwide. It was in all capitals to look good on stage, rendered in giant lights—it’s not an acronym for anything. And Simmons, who has a degree in theology and was an elementary school teacher before he started KISS, isn’t a Satan worshipper.

Uncle John found a book called
Slang and Euphemism
, by Richard Spears,
with strange (and risqué) expressions from all over the world, some
dating back centuries. Here are a few that we can print.

For years we’ve done “Dustbin of History” stories about people who were famous in their time but are now forgotten. Here’s a variation on that theme:
theories
that were once widely believed, but that modern science has since discredited.

 

CONCEPT:
Phrenology (Medicine)

WHAT IT MEANT:
Developed by 18th-century Austrian anatomist Franz Joseph Gall, phrenology was a pseudoscience that held that 1) different personality traits were located in different areas in the brain, and 2) the shape of an individual’s skull was influenced by the size and shape of these areas of the brain. By carefully measuring different parts of the skull, especially the bumps, phrenologists believed it was possible to gain insight into an individual’s personality traits, even to the point of evaluating their fitness for a particular occupation, suitability as a potential mate, and potential for criminal behavior. Though it was never taken seriously by the scientific community, phrenology remained popular throughout the 19th century and still has a handful of adherents today.

 

CONCEPT:
Blending Inheritance (Biology)

WHAT IT MEANT:
The hereditary characteristics of the father and mother are averaged or “blended” in their offspring. For example, if a tall man has children with a short woman, the children will be of medium height. The problem with this theory is that if it were true, in relatively few generations the features that distinguish one person from another would fade away, and everyone would be the same. Yet over the thousands of years that humans have been on Earth, it hasn’t happened. The theory of Blending Inheritance fell out of favor as botanist Gregor Mendel’s theory of dominant and recessive genes gained acceptance at the turn of the 20th century.

 

CONCEPT:
Humorism (Medicine)

WHAT IT MEANT:
A person’s health and personality are determined by the proportions of four basic substances—blood, phlegm,
yellow bile, and black bile—in the body. When the four humors were in balance, the person was healthy; when they were out of balance, the person was sick. Diet and physical activity of various kinds affected the balance and could make it better or worse; treatments such as bloodletting, inducing vomiting, and purging the bowels were administered to sick people to restore proper balance of the humors. Humorism dates back to 400 B.C. and persisted well into the 1800s, when advances in medical research led to a more accurate understanding of human physical and mental health.

 

CONCEPT:
Diluvialism (Geology)

WHAT IT MEANT:
Many geological features—such as fossils of sea creatures found on mountain tops and deposits of boulders, sand, and clay found in the valley floors of many parts of Europe—can be attributed to the great Flood or Deluge described in the Bible. Diluvialism was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries but was displaced by the theory of Uniformitarianism, which held that rock formations could be explained by
natural
forces such as erosion and volcanic activity rather than
super
natural forces like Biblical floods. (Science may have discarded Diluvialism, but some religious groups still accept it as true.)

 

CONCEPT:
The King’s Touch (Medicine)

WHAT IT MEANT:
A sort of royalist equivalent of faith healing, this was the belief that the touch of a king or queen, who ruled by divine right, could actually cure diseases. The theory dates back to the 1200s in Europe and persisted for more than 600 years. The royal touch was thought to be especially effective in curing
scrofula
, a form of tuberculosis that causes swelling of the lymph nodes in the neck. Scrofula sores can disappear without treatment, which likely explains why the King’s Touch was thought to be so effective with this particular ailment.

“The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

—
Eden Phillpotts