Hold fast

st. george and the dragon (1908-9) - briton rivière / the vigil (1884) - john pettie / vanitas still-life (1705) - evert collier / david garrick as richard iii (1745) - william hogarth / micro sff stories tweet

A fey spirit both blooming and withering, neither living nor dead...

African-American cowgirl Nellie Brown, and her horse. Circa 1900 - 1915.

“Minors and Ageless Blogs DNI”, does that mean blogs that don’t publicly state their age (???) or like ancient formless horrors orthogonal to the concept of time itself?

so hard to find a decent exorcist these days :/

The Beast of Broken Boughs

There is a specific and terrifying difference between “never were” monsters and “are not anymore” monsters

“The thing that was not a deer” implies a creature which mimics a deer but imperfectly and the details which are wrong are what makes it terrifying

“The thing that was not a deer anymore” on the other hand implies a thing that USED to be a deer before it was somehow mutated, possessed, parasitically controlled or reanimated improperly and what makes THAT terrifying is the details that are still right and recognizable poking out of all the wrong and horrible malformations.

Relief from the Temple of Horus at Edfu

Hello! I did a thing for Nova and Mali's "Classics...but make it gay" art book! The pre-orders are closed at the moment but I think they'll reopen again in winter/fall so please keep an eye on their twitter page if you'll like a copy! Everyone in it is amazing and I am very thankful for being accepted for the project! I did a reinterpretation of Leighton's "God Speed" because I just want an excuse to paint two knights staring lovingly at each other haha > <

A crow with a halo. One thousand gems of genius in poetry and art. 1889.

Internet Archive

During the Bubonic Plague, doctors wore these bird-like masks to avoid becoming sick. They would fill the beaks with spices and rose petals, so they wouldn’t have to smell the rotting bodies.

A theory during the Bubonic Plague was that the plague was caused by evil spirits. To scare the spirits away, the masks were intentionally designed to be creepy.

Mission fucking accomplished

Okay so I love this but it doesn’t cover the half of why the design is awesome and actually borders on making sense.

It wasn’t just that they didn’t want to smell the infected and dead, they thought it was crucial to protecting themselves. They had no way of knowing about what actually caused the plague, and so one of the other theories was that the smell of the infected all by itself was evil and could transmit the plague. So not only would they fill their masks with aromatic herbs and flowers, they would also burn fires in public areas, so that the smell of the smoke would “clear the air”. This all related to the miasma theory of contagion, which was one of the major theories out there until the 19th century. And it makes sense, in a way. Plague victims smelled awful, and there’s a general correlation between horrible septic smells and getting horribly sick if you’re around what causes them for too long.

You can see now that we’ve got two different theories as to what caused the plague that were worked into the design. That’s because the whole thing was an attempt by the doctors to cover as many bases as they could think of, and we’re still not done.

The glass eyepieces. They were either darkened or red, not something you generally want to have to contend with when examining patients. But the plague might be spread by eye contact via the evil eye, so best to ward that off too.

The illustration shows a doctor holding a stick. This was an examination tool, that helped the doctors keep some distance between themselves and the infected. They already had gloves on, but the extra level of separation was apparently deemed necessary. You could even take a pulse with it. Or keep people the fuck away from you, which was apparently a documented use.

Finally, the robe. It’s not just to look fancy, the cloth was waxed, as were all of the rest of their clothes. What’s one of the properties of wax? Water-based fluids aren’t absorbed by it. This was the closest you could get to a sterile, fully protecting garment back then. Because at least one person along the line was smart enough to think “Gee, I’d really rather not have the stuff coming out of those weeping sores anywhere on my person”.

So between all of these there’s a real sense that a lot of real thought was put into making sure the doctors were protected, even if they couldn’t exactly be sure from what. They worked with what information they had. And frankly, it’s a great design given what was available! You limit exposure to aspirated liquids, limit exposure to contaminated liquids already present, you limit contact with the infected. You also don’t give fleas any really good place to hop onto. That’s actually useful.

Beyond that, there were contracts the doctors would sign before they even got near a patient. They were to be under quarantine themselves, they wouldn’t treat patients without a custodian monitoring them and helping when something had to be physically contacted, and they would not treat non-plague patients for the duration. There was an actual system in place by the time the plague doctors really became a thing to make sure they didn’t infect anyone either.

These guys were the product of the scientific process at work, and the scientific process made a bitchin’ proto-hazmat suit. And containment protocols!

reblogging for the sweet history lesson

Reblogging because of the History lesson and because the masks, the masks are cool

Humans, you all know historical medicine ain’t my Thang™, but if any of you have any interest about plague times or just want to understand these bitchin’ get ups, this post is for you!

— WENDELL BERRY, “A Meeting.”

there is a tendency with history, i think, because we're so far removed from it, to kind of forget that all of the people were people

a child 10,000 years ago left a handprint on a wall. they were fingerpainting. a viking climbs up a rock just to carve the words "this is very high" 10ft off the ground. somebody centuries... milennia... ago burned their dinner so thoroughly that they buried the ruined pot in the backyard rather than attempt to clean it. shakespeare got drunk and wrote dick jokes. tutankhamun was a little boy who liked ducks more than anything. a roman carves his name into a monument in another country saying "i was here". a prisoner, centuries ago, in the tower of london scratches lines into the wall as a tally marking the days. a medieval monk scrawls in the margins bemoaning the boredom of his work.

every human being across history has said "i was here. i lived. i loved. i made something. i laughed. i cried. please do not forget me"

most of us are not important enough that we will be remembered by name for more than a few decades. we are not kings or queens or great military leaders or innovators or influential artists, musicians, authors.

but all of us, every one, has a deep primal need to persist. we leave handprints on the wall, scratch our names into stones, carve initials into a tree, mark our growth as children on a wall, bury little time capsules. write in the margins of a book. hide notes behind the wallpaper.

reaching out into the future to some unknown human long after we're gone to say

"hello, you. i was here, once"

....

@peoplehood

After being greatly wronged, you seek out the Goddess of Vengeance to give you advice in your quest for retribution. When people told you tales of Her, you always imagined a powerful warrior, sitting atop a throne made from the skulls of Her enemies. Instead, you discover a kindly old woman tending to a garden outside of a cozy cottage in a peaceful meadow.

early modern beekeeper & plague doctor but make it cute 

@artemis-crimson