Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (80 page)

• Then the embalmers doused the body with a waterproofing substance similar to tar, which protected the dried body from moisture. In fact, the word mummy comes from the Persian word
mumiai
, which means “pitch” or “asphalt,” and was originally used to describe the preservatives themselves, not the corpse that had been preserved.

• Finally, the body was carefully wrapped in narrow strips of linen and a funerary mask resembling the deceased was placed on the head. Afterwards it was placed in a large coffin that was also carved and painted to look like the deceased, and the coffin was placed in a tomb outfitted with the everyday items that the deceased would need in the afterlife.

THE MUMMY GLUT

Pharaohs weren’t the only ancient Egyptians who were mummified—nearly anyone in Egyptian society who could afford it had it done. The result: By the end of the Late Period of Ancient Egypt in the seventh century A.D., the country contained an estimated 500 million mummies, far more than anyone knew what to do with. They were too numerous to count, too disconnected from modern Egyptian life to have any sacred spiritual value, and in most cases were thought to be too insignificant to be worthy of study. Egyptians from the 1100s onward thought of them as more of a natural resource than as the bodies of distant relatives, and treated them as such.

Well into the 19th century, mummies were used as a major fuel source for locomotives of the Egyptian railroad, which bought them by the ton (or by the graveyard). They were cheaper than wood and burned very well.

What country do Americans look up most often in the
World Book Encyclopedia
? Canada.

For more than 400 years, mummies were one of Egypt’s largest export industries, and the supply was so plentiful that by 1600 you could buy a pound of mummy powder in Scotland for about 8 shillings. As early as 1100 A.D., Arabs and Christians ground them up for use as medicine, which was often rubbed into wounds, mixed into food, or stirred into tea.

By the 1600s, the medicinal use of mummies began to decline, as many doctors began to question the practice. “Not only does this wretched drug do no good to the sick,” the French surgeon Ambrose Paré wrote in his medical journal, “...but it causes them great pain in their stomach, gives them evil smelling breath, and brings on serious vomiting which is more likely to stir up the blood and worsen hemorrhaging than to stop it.” He recommended using mummies as fish bait.

By the 1800s, mummies were imported only as curiosities, where it was fashionable to unwrap them during dinner parties.

Mummies were also one of the first sources of recycled paper: During one 19th-century rag shortage (in the days when paper was made from
cloth
fibers, not wood fibers), one Canadian paper manufacturer literally imported Egyptian mummies as a source of raw materials: he unwrapped the cloth and made it into sturdy brown paper, which he sold to butchers and grocers for use as a food wrap. The scheme died out after only a few months, when employees in charge of unwrapping them began coming down with cholera.

Note:
What happened when the supply of mummies became scarce? A grisly “instant mummy” industry sprang up in which fresh corpses of criminals and beggars were hastily embalmed and sold as real mummies.)

MUMMY FACTS

• Scientists in South America have discovered mummies from the ancient civilization of Chinchorros that are more than 7,800 years old—nearly twice as old as the oldest Egyptian mummy. And, just as in Egypt, the mummies are plentiful there. “Every time we dug in the garden or dug to add a section to our house, we found bodies,” one elderly South American woman told
Discover
magazine. “But I got used to it. We’d throw their bones out on a hill, and the dogs would take them away.”

Among many other things, Thomas Jefferson is the inventor of the calendar clock.

• The average Egyptian mummy contains more than 20 layers of cloth that, laid end-to-end, would be more than four football fields long.

• In 1977, an Egyptian scientist discovered that the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses II, more than 3,000 years old, was infested with beetles. So they sent it to France for treatment, complete with an Egyptian passport describing his occupation as “King, deceased.”

• What’s the quickest way to tell if an Egyptian mummy still has its brains? Shake the skull—if it rattles, the brain is still in there.

• The Egyptians were also fond of mummifying animals. To date, scientists have discovered the preserved remains of bulls, cats, baboons, birds, crocodiles, fish, scorpions, insects...even wild dogs. One tomb contained the remains of more than one
million
mummified birds.

• Some mummies have been discovered in coffins containing chicken bones. Some scientists believe the bones have special religious meaning, but (no kidding) other experts theorize that the bones are actually leftover garbage from the embalmer’s lunch.

CELEBRITY MUMMIES

Jeremy Bentham and his “Auto Icon.”
Bentham was a famous 19th-century English philosopher. When he died in 1832, he left instructions with a surgeon friend that his body be beheaded, mummified, dressed in his everyday clothes, and propped up in a chair, and that a wax head be placed on his neck to give the corpse a more realistic appearance. He further instructed that his real head also be mummified and placed at his feet, and that the whole arrangement be put on public display. The corpse and its head(s) can still be seen at University College in London, where they sit in a glass case specially built for that purpose.

Vladimir Lenin.
When the Soviet leader died on January 21, 1924, the Communist Party assembled a team of top embalmers to preserve his corpse for all eternity. Unlike the embalming processes of the ancient Egyptians, which prevented decomposition by removing body fluids, the Soviets
replaced
cell fluids with liquids that inhibited deterioration.

A column of air one inch square and 600 miles high weighs about 15 lbs.

This is dedicated to our good friend Pete McCracken. It originally appeared as an article in
Health
magazine. It’s written by Teo Furtado.

M
y wife and I sat crosslegged beside a litter of puppies. I knew what she was thinking. “We’re not taking one, no matter how cute he is,” I told her.

“That’s fine,” she said. “I don’t want one either. Just another animal in the house to train.”

And without another word, she selected a furrowed, sad-eyed, seven-week-old yellow Labrador retriever and placed him at my bare feet. The pup sniffed my toes excitedly and began to lick them. I was smitten. How could I resist a dog that actually liked the way my feet smelled? Ten years later, Boris still takes to my toes without the least hint of repugnance.

TRUE CONFESSIONS

Like lots of other people I’ve always been self-conscious about the bouquet of my feet. No wonder books on hygiene refer to smelly feet—
bromidrosis
, in medical jargon—as “the social disease” or “the unmentionable.” Funny, when I was growing up, no one in my family ever had trouble mentioning it.

My brothers and I were in a no-win situation. While watching TV, we weren’t allowed to put our feet up on the cocktail table with our shoes on. But taking our shoes off raised a loud...protest from my sisters. As they pinched their noses and gagged dramatically, they wiggled their toes in smug, odorless condescension.

IT’S THE SHOES!

Fortunately, we can take some comfort in the knowledge that the source of all this social angst isn’t our feet; it’s the shoes we wear. “There’s no such thing as foot odor,” says William Rossi, a podiatrist who’s written extensively on foot problems. “There’s only
shoe
odor. Just look at societies in which people go unshod. You never hear of foot odor problems.”

Yes, it’s civilization that’s to blame—never mind the fact that there are more than a quarter of a million sweat glands in a pair of feet. That’s more than in any other part of the human body, including the underarms.

If your dog has fleas, put flea powder in your vacuum cleaner bag. (Lots of flea eggs there.)

The glands release about one gallon of moisture every week, but there’s no problem so long as you’re roaming around barefoot, says Rossi: Most of the sweat simply evaporates when your feet go through the world au naturel.

IF THE SHOE FITS
...

All that changes when you confine a foot in a shoe. The buildup of sweat creates a nearly unlimited food supply for hungry bacteria, with salt, vitamins, glucose, fatty acids and lactic acid—nutritious stuff for the nearly six trillion bacteria that thrive on our feet.

With so much food and housing available, the organisms are fruitful and multiply. The food is digested; what’s not used is broken down and excreted.

“You mean that the smell is bacterial poop?” I asked Rossi.

“Something like that,” he responded.

THE CULPRITS

Researchers recently discovered that the main culprits in shoe odor are
micrococci
, bacteria that break sweat down into sulfur compounds that smell like rotten eggs or Limburger cheese.

How to attack them?

ODOR EATERS

There are plenty of over-the-counter remedies, but University of Pennsylvania microbiologist Ken McGinley advises some skepticism. It’s true that foot powders absorb sweat and antiperspirant sprays cut down on its production. But, says McGinley...neither product adequately reduces the offending microbe’s numbers because micrococci don’t need as much moisture as other bacteria to survive.

Before you make that trip to the drugstore, there are some simpler—and usually more effective—solutions to try. First, the Imelda Marcos approach.

“Avoid wearing the same shoes over and over again,” Rossi says.

Even if you don’t have a roomful of shoes to choose from, rotate the ones you do wear. Each pair should air out for at least twenty-four hours between uses, says Rossi.

The U.S. generates 30% of the world’s nuclear power. France is #2 at 17%.

That advice, I figure, partly explains why my sisters didn’t have bromidrosis: They simply changed shoes more often to match different outfits. The boys wore the same clodhoppers over and over again. Yet researchers say it’s particularly important for men to rotate their shoes, because—silly as it sounds—they have larger toes that often stick together, making it harder for sweat to evaporate.

PLAYING HARDBALL

If a favorite pair of shoes is excessively odoriferous, Rossi offers a tip to try before you toss them out: sterilization. Roll some blotting paper into a cylinder to make a wick, and insert it partway into a small jar of formaldehyde (available at any pharmacy). Then place the jar and the shoes inside a cardboard box, tape the box shut, and put it into a closet or garage for a day or two. After taking the shoes out, be sure to let them dry overnight before you wear them again.

Here’s a special list of dating tips from the 1950s, just for girls!

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF GOOD CONDUCT

1.
Be a teen with taste, dressing appropriately for the occasion.

2.
Act like a lady and he will treat you as such.

3.
Be able to enjoy an everyday date as well as the glamour occasions.

4.
Don’t hang on him too possessively.

5.
Don’t have him fetch and carry just to create an impression.

6.
Make up if you like, but do not try to make over what you are.

7.
Be popular with girls as well as boys.

8.
Learn to like sports—it’s an all-American topic in which boys are interested.

9.
Don’t be too self-sufficient; boys like to feel needed.

10.
Be natural.

The average cat brain is as big as a marble; the average ostrich’s eyes are as big as tennis balls.

Do you think all cowboys in the Old West looked like John Wayne? Here’s some info about at least one important difference.