Things I Miss

If you want to go out for a quiet drink at any neighborhood bar that isn't full of frat rats and similar objectionable people, you'll likely find a bar populated entirely by old men and the occasional old lady.  None of these people will bother you, thus allowing you to relax a little.  But with old people it's inevitable that someone will bring up the good old days and how things were so much better back then - when girls were girls and men were men.


Searching Project Gutenberg for something that now escapes me, I stumbled across this little gem:

COOLEY’S CYCLOPÆDIA

OF

PRACTICAL RECEIPTS

AND

COLLATERAL INFORMATION

IN THE

ARTS, MANUFACTURES, PROFESSIONS, AND TRADES

INCLUDING

Medicine, Pharmacy, Hygiene, and Domestic Economy

by Arnold Cooley and Richard Tuson, as published in 1880

in which we find:

Treatment of persons struck by lightning. In case of any person being struck by lightning, immediately strip the body and throw bucketsful of cold water over it for ten or fifteen minutes; continued frictions and inhalations of the lungs must also be employed, and electricity should be tried if it be possible.

Note that last about trying electricity.  You know, were I ever struck by lighting back in the mid-to-late 19th century, I think I'd be happier to just die quietly, if that's alright.

I was going to look up a cure for the toothache, but I'm a bit afraid of what I'd find.