#year: 1874

[designedandplated]

Wedding dress, March 1874.

[seethinglikeme]

i think sebastian would’ve grown up to be either a curse-breaker, healer, or professor. he came way too close to azkaban for him to realistically become an auror imo. my hc though is that he became the hogwarts dada professor and one of his students was dumbledore

[ad-astra-per-aspera-1389]

did...did this guy just google "weirdest classical music" and start playing them?? wtf are these techniques? so much glissando, lotta plucking, odd shifting random fucking high notes...what planet are we on rn

[andycmarshall]

Be an Ox

Which animal would you compare yourself to and why? As an individual born in the Year of the Ox, I’ve often found myself reflecting on the characteristics attributed to this delightful creature and how they parallel the life of a thriving artist. While the ox symbolises diligence, strength, and perseverance, these qualities are not only applicable to physical labor but also to the creative…

[cripplecharacters]

How would I handle writing this like missing limbs, wheelchair users, conjoined twins, serious burns, and hearing issues in a fictional/ medieval-fantasy setting were surgeries, prosthetics and other modern technologies are not available? I want my stories to have a lot of disabled and disfigured characters while also not falling into harmful tropes and stereotypes(motivations being solely about being disabled or the villain is evil because their disfigured etc.) but I’m not sure what my limits are when it comes to a specific time period we’re technology is extremely limited.

Hi asker,

In advance: this is a very long post.

The thing about disabilities is that they exist whether you have the technology for them or not. And the thing about surgeries and prosthetics is that they are very, very, very old.

Pretty much all the information in this ask is from Wikipedia, by the way. When it's not, I'll give you a link.

The oldest known amputation is 31,000 years old, and the next oldest known one is 7,000 years ago. 7,000 years ago is like 6000 BC, well before the medieval era, even if we're using medieval to mean the very very start of it in 500 CE. 6000 BC is, well, 6500 years before 500 CE. People were doing surgeries in Ancient Greece and Ancient India and Ancient Egypt and Ancient China. Were they less successful, on average, than modern surgeries? Yeah, definitely, considering infection risks and germ theory if nothing else at all. But surgery existed, and "surgeon" was an established title and job by the medieval era. A lot of technology is older than you think.

And in the same way, people with serious burns, missing limbs, and hearing loss have existed for a very long time.

I'll start with hearing loss because its inclusion in this ask surprised me the most. This doesn't affect someone's lifespan, and it doesn't require any technology to live with. Sign languages develop wherever deaf people are, because people want and need to communicate with each other, and if not that then things like pen and paper or drawing symbols. Some people today with different degrees of hearing loss & deafness exist without ever putting on a hearing aid or cochlear implant.

As to conjoined twins, they are very rare. Half are stillborn, a third of non-stillborn twins die shortly after birth. They have better survival rates today than in the past. And even then, there are reports of conjoined twins who are either older children or even adults, for a very long time. Here is a link to a paper called "The 3,000-year history of conjoined twins."

Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874) would likely have been successfully separated today, but they existed as conjoined twins in their time died at age 63. Earlier still, Lazarus and Joannes Baptista Collaredo (1617- at least 1646) were a case of conjoined heterophagus twins; Joannes Baptista was a parasitic twin and much smaller than Lazarus, and reportedly could not speak or move his body parts independently. But they still both lived until at least age 29. Older still, the oldest mention we have I think, Augustine of Hippo in 415 CE mentions what was likely conjoined twins. So they can exist.

When it comes to missing limbs, they don't have to affect lifespan. They can, but they don't have to. Missing limbs can be congenital, and congenital amputees don't necessarily need a prosthetic. Today, most upper limb amputees, congenital or not, straight up don't use a prosthetic. And limb differences exist regardless of if prosthetics do.

Even then, prosthetics are very, very old. The first one that we know of for a limb is around 1000 BC in Ancient Egypt. Pliny the Elder, born in 23 or 24 CE, talks about a prosthetic hand. The Capua Leg is from around 300 BC, and for a time was the oldest known limb prosthetic. For a non-directly-real example, how many pirates in movies have you seen with peg legs and hook hands? That's because people using both of those things have existed for a long time. François Le Clerc (died in 1563) was a privateer who had a peg leg. François de la Noue (1531-1591) was a captain who had his arm amputated and then had an arm prosthetic with a hook. (Big century for guys named François and prosthetics I guess lol.) Götz von Berlichingen (1480-1562) had two different prosthetics for the hand he got traumatically amputated.

Which goes into the point: survivable amputations are very old. Some are like von Berlichingen, and are lost in an accident, which the person survives. But some are surgical, like de La Noue above; his arm was injured by bullets and amputated later. Celsus described one as far back as in the 1st century. I mean, I'm sure they were miserable, what with no anesthesia, but they existed, and people lived. (Maybe your fantasy world has magical anesthesia?) Here is a paper called "On some paleopathological examples of amputation and the implications for healthcare in 13th-17th century Lithuania," which in the abstract alone mentions specifically that one skeleton showed signs of healing.

Wheelchairs are also very old, by the way. They aren't exactly like our wheelchairs today, but the first ones we know of are around 525 CE. Other things, wheelchair-adjacent but not quite, were used before that. I mean, as long as people who cannot walk have existed, they have needed to move to other places for whatever reason. Wheels getting involved is the easiest way to get that done.

Last but not least, burns. These are related to amputations, because a severe enough burn – 3rd degree or 4th degree – needs surgery as treatment so you don't die, and amputation is surgery. And, like mentioned above, surgeries, specifically amputations, have existed for a very long time.

If your world has magic, why can't this extend to burn care and amputation as well? I don't mean completely healing a 4th degree burn that goes right to the bone, especially because 4th degree burns just don't heal, there's not enough left, but perhaps magic helps prevent infection to nearby sites, or, again, works as painkiller when it comes to an amputation or promotes faster healing of the amputation itself.

But either way, if you survive a burn, even with significant functional impairment afterwards, then you are already alive, and you might make use of things we've mentioned above like prosthetics or wheelchairs.

Sure, if a technology isn't there then it isn't there. We don't have Leg Regrowing Technology, meaning some people who used to have legs and lost them don't still have legs. But that doesn't mean we don't have any way at all whatsoever to support said people, and the same can be said of any era.

Hope this helps,

mod sparrow

[geminimoonmadness]

✰NEPTUNE IN ARIES✰

A once in a lifetime astrological event!

©️GeminiMoonMadness

✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Neptune takes roughly 165 years to transit the whole zodiac and has been happily swimming through his own sign of Pisces since 2011. Neptune will transit Aries from 2025 to 2039, spending about 12 and a half years there in total, with a few dips in and out at either end. This represents the start of a new cycle of inspiration and change.

✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Here are the dates:

-Enters Aries on 30 March 2025

-Retrogrades into Pisces on 22 October 2025

-Re-enters Aries to stay from 26 January 2026

-Dips into Taurus on 21 May 2038

-Final visit to Aries from 21 October 2038

-Enters Taurus to stay on 23 March 2039

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Neptune was last in Aries from 1861 to 1875 and brought to light humanity´s impulsiveness translated into wars, the creativity to invent and the determination to discover.

As Neptune transits the signs, it reveals what we idealise and look to for redemption or salvation. In Capricorn (1984-1998) it fed the idealisation of corporations and big business and in Aquarius (1998-2012) it idealised science and technology. In Pisces (2011-2025), it appears to be idealising deception itself because we’re all drowning in fake news and propaganda in a crazy-making post-truth hall of mirrors.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

WHAT HAPPENED IN HISTORY THE LAST TIME NEPTUNE WAS IN ARIES?

60 – 73 CE

-In Rome Christianity was spreading fast

-In Palestine there was a Jewish uprising against the Romans in 66 and Josephus wrote his history of the Jewish War which became a major source on Jesus.

388 – 401

-Christianity had become the official imperial religion of the Roman Empire in 391

-Theodosius prohibited all pagan cults and worship.

432 – 419 BCE

-The ancient Greek city states were always having falling outs/battling.

-The Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta began and ran for decades.

879-892

-Alfred the Great created a small fleet of ships to fight naval battles against the Vikings.

1206 – 1219

-Genghis Khan began his conquest of Eurasia

-The Christian Crusades were in full swing

1370 – 1383

-The Hundred Years War between England and France was going strong, it started in 1337 and ended in 1453.

-The Catholic Church split in 1378 and there were two rival popes until 1417

-The Church came under attack from 1377 by John Wycliffe, an English theologian.

-John Wycliffe (as above) completed the first translation of the Bible into English in 1382.

-1370s, the story of Robin Hood began to circulate (a tale of a classic Aries character).

1534-1547

-Henry VIII broke from Rome and declared himself supreme head of the Church of England

-This led to the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 and the destruction of religious relics and churches, and endless fighting between Catholics and Protestants.

-In the 1540s Valerius Cordus wrote Dispensatorium, the first pharmacopeia covering medicinal plants, minerals and how to make drugs, published in 1546. He also discovered ether in 1540, which was used in pain relief for surgery – and for getting as high as a kite!

1697 – 1711

- Lots of fighting and rebellions in Europe over various things, including the War of Spanish Succession in which England took Gibraltar in 1704.

-England was getting tired of fighting the Scots, and in 1707 the Act of Union formed a new entity called Great Britain, unifying England and Scotland.

1861-1874

- American civil war commenced

- germ theory was invented

-Violence on the Australian goldfields

-Slavery

-Abraham Lincoln becomes president

-Franco-Prussian War

(Can you notice a trend?)

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

PREDICTION FOR 2025-2039:

Neptune in Aries could bring pioneering visions that reach into every part of society, with lots of new ideas and progressive thinking. There could be idealistic revolutions and social activism, visionary rebellions, crusades for truth and religious wars. Wars may be fought based on lies and deception (nothing new there then), or fought with bioweapons, chemicals and viruses.

At best, Neptune could inspire compassionate action and leadership that takes us away from the potential for war. But it could just as easily reveal the corruption and weakness of leaders that create power vacuums and trigger war by accident.

There may also be a massive loss of faith in leadership, a loss of belief in the nation or the system. People could turn away from the system out of disillusionment or even boredom, and lose themselves in escapist pursuits, like gaming or virtual reality.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

WHAT HOUSE IS YOUR NEPTUNE IN?

WHAT HOUSE IS YOUR ARIES IN?

WHAT DEGREE IS YOUR NEPTUNE?

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

[whencyclopedia]

Geronimo

Geronimo (Goyahkla, l. c. 1829-1909) was a medicine man and war chief of the Bedonkohe tribe of the Chiricahua Apache nation, best known for his resistance against the encroachment of Mexican and Euro-American settlers and armed forces into Apache territory and as one of the last Native American leaders to surrender to the United States government.

During the Apache Wars (1849-1886), he allied with other leaders such as Cochise (l. c. 1805-1874) and Victorio (l. c. 1825-1880) in attacks on US forces after Apache lands became part of US territories following the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Between c. 1850 and 1886, Geronimo led raids against villages, outposts, and cattle trains in northern Mexico and southwest US territories, often striking with relatively small bands of warriors against superior numbers and slipping away into the mountains and then back to his homelands in the region of modern-day Arizona and New Mexico.

He surrendered to US authorities three times, but when the terms of his surrender were not honored, he escaped the reservation and returned to launching raids on settlements. He was finally talked into surrendering for good by First Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood (l. 1853-1896), under the command of General Nelson A. Miles (l. 1839-1925), in 1886. None of the terms stipulated by Miles were honored, but by that time, Geronimo felt he was too old and too tired to continue running. Geronimo's surrender to Gatewood is told accurately, though with some poetic license, in the Hollywood movie Geronimo: An American Legend (1993).

Geronimo was imprisoned at Fort Pickens, Pensacola, Florida, before being moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Toward the end of his life, he became a sensation at the St. Louis World's Fair (1904) and President Theodore Roosevelt's Inaugural Parade (1905) as well as other events. Although one of the stipulations of his surrender was his return to his homelands in Arizona, he was held as a prisoner elsewhere for 23 years before dying in 1909 of pneumonia at Fort Sill.

Name & Youth

His Apache name was Goyahkla ("One Who Yawns"), and, according to some scholars, he acquired the name Geronimo during his campaigns against Mexican troops, who would appeal to Saint Jerome (San Jeronimo in Spanish) for assistance. This was possibly Saint Jerome Emiliani (l. 1486-1537), patron of orphans and abandoned children, not the better-known Saint Jerome of Stridon (l. c. 342-420), translator of the Bible into the Vulgate and patron of translators, scholars, and librarians.

Geronimo was born near Turkey Creek near the Gila River in the region now known as Arizona and New Mexico c. 1825. He was the fourth of eight children and had three brothers and four sisters. In his autobiography, Geronimo: The True Story of America's Most Ferocious Warrior (1906), dictated to S. M. Barrett, Geronimo described his youth:

When a child, my mother taught me the legends of our people; taught me of the sun and sky, the moon and stars, the clouds, and storms. She also taught me to kneel and pray to Usen for strength, health, wisdom, and protection. We never prayed against any person, but if we had aught against any individual, we ourselves took vengeance. We were taught that Usen does not care for the petty quarrels of men. My father had often told me of the brave deeds of our warriors, of the pleasures of the chase, and the glories of the warpath. With my brothers and sisters, I played about my father's home. Sometimes we played at hide-and-seek among the rocks and pines; sometimes we loitered in the shade of the cottonwood trees…When we were old enough to be of real service, we went to the field with our parents; not to play, but to toil.

(12)

After his father died of illness, his mother did not remarry, and Geronimo took her under his care. In 1846, when he was around 17 years old, he was admitted to the Council of Warriors, which meant he could now join in war parties and also marry. He married Alope of the Nedni-Chiricahua tribe, and they would later have three children. Geronimo set up a home for his family near his mother's teepee, and as he says, "we followed the traditions of our fathers and were happy. Three children came to us – children that played, loitered, and worked as I had done" (Barrett, 25). This happy time in Geronimo's life would not last long, however.

Continue reading...

[henk-heijmans]

An eight-year-old cranberry picker carries two pecks at a time in Brown Mills, New Jersey, 1910 - by Lewis W. Hine (1874 - 1940), American

[cdr-edwardlittle]

Edward Little's epitaph

Edward's parents, Simon & Sarah were buried in Green Street Cemetery (Section Roseville Street, Grave YY2, St Helier, Jersey) with their eldest daughter Elizabeth Jane. Following their epitaph, the family added a few words to commemorate Edward

It's the tombstone on the right, you can see the names if you zoom in, image in better quality here (For the story, I was scrolling throught random pictures of the cemetery when I zoomed in on this one with no reason in particular and well... it's theirs)

It reads :

"To the memory of Sarah, the beloved wife of Simon Little Paymaster RN who died 9th May 1847 aged 68 years,

Also of Simon Little, husband of the above, who died 20th July 1852, aged 84 years

And of Elizabeth Jane Little, eldest daughter of the above, who died 27th May 1874, aged 70 years,

Also of Edward Little, their son, Commander RN who was lost in the Arctic Expedition under Captain John Franklin RN, ?? HM Ship Erebus, 1847"

I've found better pictures on The Genealogist (under licence) and I could decifer most of what's written, except for the very last part. If anyone has a better picture with the rest of the inscription, I'd be happy to add it to the post !

[artsandculture]

Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (1892) 🎨 John Singer Sargent 🏛️ National Galleries Scotland 📍 Edinburgh, Scotland

Sargent’s dazzling and unforgettable image of Lady Agnew is one of the most famous of his many portraits of fashionable London society. For both the artist and his sitter, the painting was an instant success, establishing Sargent’s reputation as the portrait painter of choice for the London elite and immediately transforming the newly elevated Lady Agnew into a society celebrity.

Sargent was born in Florence and spent his childhood travelling across Europe with his wealthy American parents who restlessly followed the changing social seasons. In 1874 he entered the Paris studio of the stylish French portraitist, Carolus-Duran. The young Sargent combined the flamboyant style of his teacher with his study of old masters such as Rembrandt and Velázquez but was also influenced by Monet and Impressionism. His provocative and unconventional Portrait of Madame X caused a scandal at the Paris Salon exhibition in 1884; and, when Sargent settled in London in 1886, he initially found it difficult to find clients as his bravura, continental style of painting attracted suspicion. However, his dashing technical mastery and confident manner were ideally suited for aristocratic patronage and he soon won over his critics with his elegant, flattering portraits. When his portrait of Lady Agnew was shown at the Royal Academy in 1893, one contemporary observed: ‘London is at his feet … he has had a cracking success.’

The sitter was born Gertrude Vernon and married Andrew Noel Agnew in 1889. Her husband, fifteen years her senior, was a barrister and later an MP and deputy-Lieutenant in Wigtownshire; he succeeded his father as 9th Baronet of Lochnaw in 1892, shortly before Sargent embarked on this portrait. The exact circumstances behind the commission are not known, but the Agnews may have met the artist through mutual American friends. According to notes in her husband’s diary, work on the portrait progressed swiftly, and Sargent later recalled that it was painted in just six sittings.

Lady Agnew is shown seated in a Louis XVI chair against the backdrop of a Chinese silk hanging, both of which were standard props in Sargent’s studio. She is reported to have been of frail health; she recovered slowly from a severe bout of influenza in 1890 and was apparently still convalescing and suffering from exhaustion when she sat to Sargent, which may account for her slightly ghostly pallor in the painting. Lady Agnew fixes the spectator with an intelligent, faintly amused gaze but it is her elegant white silk dress and lilac sash that threaten to steal all our attention. There are brilliant passages of painting in the highlights, reflections and coloured shadows that show Sargent at his best as a painter of surfaces and textures, the ideal artist for a gilded, polished yet ultimately superficial society.

Sargent’s image of Lady Agnew helped her to become a leading light in fashionable circles, holding lavish salons in her London home. Ironically, the high costs of this hospitality meant that she was eventually forced to sell some family pictures including this portrait which was purchased by the Scottish National Gallery in 1925.

[g1rld1ary]

lifeguard!James Potter but its just him shamelessly flirting with reader whilst she stands there stunned.

lifeguard!james potter x reader 4

prev

wc: 1874

cw: horny again

anon i love you ur a genius. this kinda ran away from me lol but i will def be using this again so look out for future parts of flustered r if this isn't quite what u meant!!

the next time you saw james wasn't for a few days. there'd been a few days of colder wind coming from the north -- not enough to be cold necessarily, but unpleasant enough you didn't particularly fancy sitting by the pool.

after two days of mediocre, sunless weather, a real storm came in. rain beating down from the time you woke up, you spent breakfast pondering how to spend the day. you didn't particularly want to spend the whole day rotting away in bed doing nothing and so called up marlene, begging her to pick you up in her parent's car to drive everyone to the shopping village. she was easy to convince, and soon enough you were all packed into the much too small car, singing loudly to the songs on the radio.

the village wasn't anything special, most of the stores were uninteresting, but it was all undercover which was ideal for a rainy day.

the group of you had already wasted an hour in the oxfam, trying on the most ridiculous outfits you could put together. sirius had even managed to turn a truly hideous cheetah print belt into something that looked honestly cool on him, much to the annoyance of everyone else. he tended to do that, though, it meant you had to work even harder to give him awful clothing items. the only one he truly couldn't pull off was a horrendous orange hand-knitted cardigan.

that easily became boring though, and you could tell the cashier was getting annoyed that clearly none of you intended to buy anything. so you left, wandering aimlessly until lily pulled you all into the bookstore. it was warm inside so no one put up much of a fight, splitting up to find their preferred genre. peter went to the historical fiction, lily to literary fiction, remus dragged sirius with him to the classics, marlene to science fiction and mary to fantasy. that left you to wander over to the romances. you weren't much of a reader, preferring the lighter subjects to lily's more serious.

finding the brightly coloured covers you began browsing before catching a glimpse of a mop of dark curls over the next shelf and narrowed your eyes suspiciously. there was no way...

"are you following me?" you asked, no edge in your tone. james looked up with a start, breaking into one of his golden retriever smiles.

"you're the one approaching me," he said, closing the book he'd been checking out.

"touché." you grinned, looking around for the first time to observe what section you were in -- plays. "i didn't know you were a shakespeare nerd under all that muscle. doesn't seem fair you get brains and brawn."

"graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie." james looked much too pleased with himself and his shakespeare quotes, and you couldn't deny it was having some effect on your own 'pleasant fountain'. you stammered for a moment, lost for a response. no boy had ever quoted shakespeare to you before, and certainly not of such explicit content. truthfully, you didn't realise the world's most revered playwright wrote like that.

"what's that from?" you asked, desperate to get away from his innuendos before you did something you'd regret. plus, you really were curious, the only shakespeare you knew was from when you studied romeo and juliet in year nine and clearly that was becoming insufficient.

"venus and adonis, one of his poems. doesn't continue as happily, but i thought the line was nice enough."

"yeah," you managed through gritted teeth, "really nice." james only laughed at you, evidently enjoying having the upper hand in your banter. it was a testament to his goodness, though, that he didn't continue to hold it against you. instead, he settled down, going back to browsing and letting you hover next to him, answering whatever questions you had about the plays patiently. it was nice, you realised, looking over at him fondly before you caught yourself. you barely knew james, and just because he was a pretty face and a decent brain didn't mean you had to go boy crazy.

you stayed there for what felt like ages, quietly looking at the books until sirius came strutting around the corner.

"since when have you ever read a play in your life -- oh," he said, catching sight of james next to you. "who's this?" you could have sworn sirius gave him a flirty once over, but maybe you were just projecting.

"this is--"

"james," he finished, sticking out an enthusiastic hand. sirius raised an eyebrow, a flicker of recognition in his eye that made your stomach drop.

"james the lifeguard? the one you thought was, and i quote, 'hotter than robert plant i swear to god' and who you would 'pay to suck his dick'? nice to meet you mate!" you wished the ground would open up and swallow you whole as the boys shook hands, james looking significantly more confused than sirius (though not displeased).

"i hope you sleep with one eye open, black," you muttered, trying desperately not to make eye contact with either or let your blush show. you had an inkling you were failing.

"so james, you doing anything today?" sirius asked, and you could only feel the dread spreading throughout your body. james shook his head, quickly slotting the book he was holding back onto the shelf. when sirius invited him to spend the rest of the day with your friends your body had a physical reaction, an embarrassing half-flinch-half-jump that had both boys laughing at you.

you all reconvened outside the bookshop, only a few new books bought between you all. james had been introduced to remus and peter and the girls were all pleased to see him. it seemed like it was only you who was flustered, which seemed to be more common each time you saw him. you missed the first time you spoke when you had all the power.

sirius was the one who dragged you all to the record store, begging to check out their new stock.

"you know," james said as the two of you fell behind, "if you wanted to suck my dick you could've just asked, no payment required." this had to be the worst day of your life. you couldn't bear to look at james, already knowing the shit-eating grin you'd be met with.

"shut up," you mumbled weakly, "sirius is a dreadful dramatic."

he thankfully gave you a bit of a rest in the record store, taking the opportunity to talk to the boys as they perused the albums on offer. you definitely heard james and remus bonding over a love of bowie (not that it was a particularly niche interest) which made you smile.

while you were sure peter was being kind to james to his face, every time he turned away to look at something peter was quick to tease you, fanning his face like james was a supermodel or imitating a crude makeout. you responded with a firm middle finger, but it held no effect.

"i love that album," you said, pointing at the one james had picked up. it was bruce springsteen's born to run, a record you played in your room on repeat.

"i'm stupidly uneducated, i think i've only heard the singles. maybe we can listen to it together sometime, you can teach me his ways." you grinned, honest james was much easier to handle than flirty james.

"only if you're ready to listen to me fantasise about bruce," you said, "his eyes really do something for me."

"i have eyes," james said, pulling a giggle from both you and mary.

"guess so." it wasn't one of his better attempts at flirting, but it still drew a smile from you, so james didn't look too upset.

you didn't really talk to him again until you'd retired to the food court, all desperate for lunch. sirius had made sure you two were seated together, and you were suspicious of how much of a matchmaker he was being. you only wanted to jump his bones, you weren't looking to get married.

you'd just told an impeccable pun -- you knew it was good as the whole table began berating you -- and had caught james' eye by accident. he'd smiled at you in his lopsided way and rolled his eyes light-heartedly.

"i didn't picture you to have such terrible taste in jokes," he said, and you exaggerated a frown.

"and yet you're still talking to me," you countered, "so what does that say about you?"

"that i'm lucky." your mouth dropped open without your brain consenting. james had well and truly caught you off guard, an irritatingly perfect combination of earnestness and shameless flirting all rolled into one. you could feel yourself floundering, mouth opening and closing as you searched for anything to say. james was clearly enjoying his victory, cocky grin on display for anyone to witness. you couldn't bring yourself to look at him, flushed with embarrassment (and lust) and not a single inkling of thought in your head.

you'd ended up on james' lap. it started with marlene offering james a lift home, not wanting to leave him walking in the rain. that led to the realisation you had far too many friends for seats; five available in the car and eight people. sirius had dibs-d remus' lap before the rest of you had even caught up to his train of thought, and lily and mary teamed up together shortly after. you were consequently assigned to james by the others, marlene obviously driving and peter refusing to even take part. you had sympathy for james, only an hour or two into meeting half the group and already pushed into doing their bidding because of remus' easy "you don't mind, do you, mate?"

and so you were sitting on his lap, not uncomfortable but definitely nervous. you'd imagined your first time being in his lap being slightly more sexy and autonomous.

"i'm not too heavy, am i?" you asked, hating how insecure you sounded. james just laughed softly.

"weren't you the one pining after my muscles? have a little faith in me!" james was unbelievably confident today, even more so than you remember him being in your previous meetings. you were the opposite, never having felt so meek around him.

you figured you couldn't be the only one experiencing the torture and so rolled the window down, pushing your upper half out and into the wind, laughing as you felt the rain on your skin. whilst enjoyable for yourself, it also required you to shift your position on james' lap and stretch out your torso, giving james a good view of your bra from under your sloppily done, homemade crop top. the combination was clearly effective if the development in his crotch was anything to go off. plus the way he held your hips to keep you concealing his little problem was telling you all you needed to know. another little wiggle from you and his grip tightened to almost bruising, but far from unpleasant. maybe james could flirt, but you had tricks you weren't above using.

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

Leyendecker in 1895 (left) and with his lover, Charles Beach (right)

Joseph Christian Leyendecker was born in Montabaur, Germany, to a family of Netherlandic extraction, on March 23, 1874. The family immigrated to the United States in 1882, and settled in Chicago. From early childhood, Leyendecker drew images on any available surface, a tendency that his parents encouraged. As they were unable to afford private art lessons for their son, he was apprenticed at fifteen to a Chicago engraver, with whom he began his career by designing advertisements and book illustrations. During these years, Leyendecker also took night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. By the time he was nineteen, he showed a mature technical mastery of the illustrator's art and, with his younger brother Francis X. Leyendecker (1877–1924), he traveled to Paris to study at the Académie Julien. The brothers returned to Chicago in 1898 and established a studio there. Both soon gained numerous commissions for magazine and advertisement illustrations, and in 1899, J. C. Leyendecker produced his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post, one of the leading mainstream American publications. Leyendecker's association with the magazine continued for the next four decades. With his holiday covers for the magazine, he virtually created the popular image of Santa Claus and the New Year's baby that Americans know today.

Leyendecker's 1912 New Year's baby (left) and 1923 Santa Claus (right)

Suddenly in great demand, the Leyendecker brothers moved to New York in 1900. Their work, characterized by what might best be called a discreet male homoeroticism, typically portrayed handsome young men, particularly athletes, soldiers, sailors, and muscular working men, as heroic figures, recalling the classical ideals of the French Academy and the sinuous lines of Art Nouveau. By 1914, J. C. Leyendecker had accrued enough wealth to build an estate in New Rochelle, New York, where he lived with his brother, his sister Augusta, and his lover Charles Beach (1886–1952). Leyendecker met Beach in 1903, when the young model from Cleveland first posed for him. The artist was impressed not only with Beach's handsome face and physique, but also with his ability to hold poses for extended lengths of time. Their relationship lasted until Leyendecker's death. Over the next thirty years, Beach's image as the "Arrow Collar Man," as well as Leyendecker's other representations of him, became one of the most widely circulated visual icons in mainstream American culture. In this capacity, Beach became the symbol of American prosperity, sophistication, manliness, and style.

Beach was the main model for the "Arrow Collar Man," the advertising figure of the Arrow Collars and Shirts Company and an icon of urbane American masculinity

For forty-nine years, Beach functioned as Leyendecker's model, lover, cook, and business manager. The household was extremely careful in maintaining a strict, even secretive, privacy. Although Beach's features were much in the public's gaze, few actual photographs of him or the Leyendeckers are to be found. Beach, presumably at Leyendecker's instruction, burned virtually all correspondence and many art works after the artist's death. The last years of J. C. Leyendecker's life were overshadowed by financial concerns, as he had spent as lavishly as he earned at the height of his career. By the 1940s, the major magazines increasingly supplanted artist's cover illustrations with photographs. As a result, Beach and Augusta sold many of Leyendecker's art works, which now bring hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction, for a pittance. Leyendecker died at his home in New Rochelle on July 25, 1951. Beach followed him in death within months. (Full article)

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Do you have anything on writing the effects of Lobotomy?

Writing Notes: Lobotomy

Lobotomy - a surgical procedure historically employed to treat severe psychiatric conditions.

It is an incision into various nerve tracts in the frontal lobe of the brain.

Also called leukotomy, which is the surgical operation of interrupting the pathways of white nerve fibers within the brain.

Lobotomy was the name given to a prefrontal leukotomy in which the nerve fibers connecting the frontal lobe with other parts of the brain were cut.

Prefrontal (lobe) – the area of the brain at the very front of each cerebral hemisphere. This area is concerned with emotion, memory, learning, and social behaviour.

Lobotomy was primarily initiated by early 20th-century physicians who believed that disrupted neural connections in the brain were responsible for emotional and cognitive disturbances.

The original surgical procedure was called prefrontal (or frontal) lobotomy.

Introduced in 1936 by Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz (1874–1955).

Connections between the frontal lobe and other brain structures—notably the thalamus—were severed by manipulating a narrow blade known as a leukotome inserted into brain tissue through several small holes drilled in the skull.

A second procedure, called transorbital lobotomy, was devised in 1945. It involved:

the manipulation of a pointed instrument resembling an ice pick

driven with a mallet through the thin bony wall of the eye socket and into the prefrontal brain.

Both procedures were widely used to relieve the symptoms of severe mental disorder (including depression and schizophrenia) until the advent of antipsychotic drugs in the 1950s.

These operations did, on occasion, result in improved function for some patients, but others either died as a consequence of the surgery or suffered major personality changes, becoming apathetic and prone to inappropriate social behavior; some also developed a seizure disorder.

Such procedures have since been replaced by more sophisticated, stereotactic forms of neurosurgery that are less invasive and whose effects are more certain and less damaging.

SOME CONTRIBUTORS

Gottlieb Burckhardt, in 1890, is credited as being one of the first surgeons to perform a psychosurgery procedure on mental patients to address symptoms such as agitation and hallucinations.

Others, such as Ludvig Puusepp, in 1910, began to operate more specifically on the frontal lobes of the brain to help a group of patients suffering from manic-depression psychosis. The results of the surgeries were mixed, and Puusepp, like Burckhardt, concluded that the dangerous procedure was not worth the risks to patients.

Years later, in 1935, Portuguese physician and neurologist António Egas Moniz, working with surgeon Pedro Almeida Lima, revived the psychosurgery debate by performing a prefrontal leukotomy*.

In 1949, Egas Moniz became the first physician from Portugal to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on the development of the lobotomy.

Prefrontal Leukotomy*. This type of lobotomy involved:

drilling holes on each side of the top of the head, near the frontal areas, and then

inserting a leukotome, a needle that contains a small circular wire that can be deployed.

Once the leukotome was in position, the wire was released and

the instrument was twisted to cut the white matter of the brain, which contains primarily nerve connections from the frontal lobes to other areas of the brain.

EGAS MONIZ

Egas Moniz himself did not employ the term “lobotomy,” which was first used in 1936 by his American disciple Walter Jackson Freeman and became the standard designation for the operation in the United States.

The term that Egas Moniz coined for the operation was “leucotomy,” from the Greek word for white (because the nerve fibers are white matter, as opposed to gray matter, which contains nerve cell bodies); accordingly, the surgical instrument he employed was called the “leucotome.”

This instrument, the design of which was refined and modified by Egas Moniz and others, contained a retractable wire loop.

After the leucotome had been inserted into the brain, this wire loop was extended and the instrument was rotated. In the first leucotomy, one such rotation (or “core,” as Egas Moniz termed it) was made on each side of the brain; in subsequent operations, as many as 6 cores were made on each side of the brain.

Other physicians around the world also tested and refined the procedure developed by Moniz. Their different techniques were grouped under the heading “psychosurgery,” which Moniz had coined as an umbrella term for leucotomy, frontal lobotomy, transorbital lobotomy, and new variations on the same theme. Despite earlier experiences with brain surgery for mental disorders, Moniz was seen as the inventor.

THE FIRST LOBOTOMY. Long crippled by gout, Egas Moniz himself did not perform the operations; rather, he directed his younger colleague, the neurosurgeon Pedro Almeida Lima.

Initially, Egas Moniz used injections of alcohol to destroy nerve fibers in the frontal lobes. The first operation took place on November 12, 1935.

The patient was a 63-year-old woman with a long history of mental illness.

Two holes were drilled in the top of her skull and injections were made on both sides of the brain in the prefrontal area.

In the following weeks, Egas Moniz and Almeida Lima repeated this procedure with 6 more patients, steadily increasing the amount of alcohol injected.

With his 8th psychosurgical patient, however, Egas Moniz adopted a new method, cutting (or, at first, crushing) the nerve fibers.

This surgery, performed on December 27, 1935, may be called the first lobotomy.

INCREASE IN LOBOTOMY PROCEDURES. In the immediate postwar years, there was a dramatic increase in the number of lobotomies performed worldwide.

in the United States, lobotomies increased from approximately 500 per year in 1946 to 5000 in 1949.

When Egas Moniz received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949 for the development of the prefrontal lobotomy (he shared the award with Walter Rudolf Hess, a Swiss researcher recognized for his discovery of the function of the middle brain), the credibility of psychosurgery was further enhanced.

THE DECLINE. Within only a few years, however, by the mid-1950s, the number of lobotomies performed annually began to decline steeply. There were 2 reasons for this sudden turnabout:

Tranquilizing drugs such as Thorazine had been developed, and their widespread use was sufficient by itself to restrict lobotomy to exceptional cases; and

Serious concerns about the validity of lobotomy were being expressed in the medical community.

Some physicians had been opposed to lobotomy from the beginning.

But as more long-term studies of lobotomized patients became available, it became evident that proponents of lobotomy, like Egas Moniz before them, had not been objective in assessing the consequences of such surgery.

Although the operation as performed by Freeman and his colleagues became something quite different from Egas Moniz’s early attempts, lobotomy always involved radical injury to the frontal lobes.

Lobotomized patients frequently:

lost their abilities to plan ahead,

to think abstractly, and

to perform other vital functions.

In many cases, particularly in the treatment of patients suffering from schizophrenia, lobotomy was not only excessively costly in psychic terms but also generally ineffective.

In the 1960s and 1970s, growing public awareness of ties between the government and science and a new appreciation of the threat of various kinds of mind control led to the placement of further limitations on the use of psychosurgery, including some legislative restrictions.

Psychosurgery is still practiced in the United States on a small scale, with greater precision than ever before, thanks to technological advances and significant improvements in knowledge concerning the brain’s circuitry.

Despite such advances, resistance to psychosurgery remains high, both within the medical profession and among the general public.

SIDE EFFECTS ON PERSONALITY

Negative effects on personality were observed as early as the end of the 1930s.

In 1948, Swedish professor of forensic psychiatry Gösta Rylander, reported a mother as saying: “She is my daughter but yet a different person. She is with me in body but her soul is in some way lost.”

Hoffman (1949) writes: “these patients are not only no longer distressed by their mental conflicts but also seem to have little capacity for any emotional experiences – pleasurable or otherwise. They are described by the nurses and the doctors, over and over, as:

dull, apathetic, listless,

without drive or initiative,

flat, lethargic, placid and unconcerned,

childlike, docile, needing pushing,

passive, lacking in spontaneity,

without aim or purpose,

preoccupied and dependent.”

MOVEMENT AWAY from Prefrontal Leukotomy.

One year after Egas Moniz and Lima’s initial prefrontal leukotomy, American physician Walter Jackson Freeman II and surgeon James Watts began to modify the medical procedures. Freeman & Watts did away with the leukotome and started to:

drill holes on each side of the head, near the temples.

A blunt spatula was then inserted and

waved toward the top and back and toward the bottom of the head, effectively severing the neural connections between the frontal lobes and the thalamus.

This procedure came to be known as the Freeman-Watts standard lobotomy.

This procedure was believed to be more precise in its ability to selectively destroy connections between the frontal cortex and the thalamus and to produce better clinical results.

However, Freeman still did not like the fact it was a time-consuming surgery that involved drilling into the cranium and required an operating room.

In 1946, Freeman began to popularize a new version of the lobotomy called the transorbital procedure. Although this procedure had its beginnings in Italy in the late 1930s, Freeman altered the way that brain tissue would be destroyed. Freeman’s procedure involved:

taking a sharp metal instrument (he first used an ice pick; later specialized tools known as orbitoclasts would be developed) and placing it under the patient’s eyelid.

A mallet would then be used to tap the instrument until it broke through the thin bone behind the eye socket.

The instrument was then inserted a couple of inches into the head and moved back and forth.

Freeman perfected this procedure to the point that he could train another physician to complete it in ten minutes, without the use of a surgical room.

This simple transorbital procedure made it possible for lobotomies to be performed on a far larger number of patients.

Although Freeman himself performed about 3500 lobotomies during his career, it is believed that tens of thousands of lobotomies were performed worldwide.

One of the most famous cases has been that of Rosemary Kennedy who received a lobotomy (performed by Freeman and Watts) to control her "mood swings" and subsequently became incapacitated.

TREATMENT EFFECTIVENESS

Of Egas Moniz’s first 20 patients, 14 were reported to have recovered or to have substantially improved.

The remaining 6 were believed to have shown some improvement in that they had had more severe symptoms (hallucinations and delusions) before the surgery.

Egas Moniz was criticized, however, because he followed his patients for only a few days after the surgery. One follow-up study that was conducted 12 years later revealed that the results were not as positive as initially reported.

Freeman reported that patients, with the exception of those who were suffering from chronic schizophrenia and a limited number of other types of psychosis, generally benefited from the procedure.

Follow-up studies have found that it is difficult to determine who will benefit from a lobotomy and what kinds of detrimental effects the procedure will have on emotions and cognition.

Also, proselytizers of the procedure overstated the positive outcomes.

Despite some initial reports of patient improvement following lobotomies, subsequent evaluations revealed mixed results, and many patients experienced significant adverse effects on their emotions and cognition.

The operation was widespread during the 1940s and 1950s, but it became apparent that it could lead to serious personality changes.

By the mid-1950s, the advent of effective antipsychotic medications, such as chlorpromazine (Thorazine), began to transform the lives of residential psychiatric patients to the point that lobotomies became seldom used.

TODAY, lobotomy is considered a controversial and largely outdated practice, reflective of an era when options for managing severe mental illness were limited.

Lobotomies are no longer performed; however, psychosurgery, the surgical removal of specific regions of the brain, is occasionally used to treat patients whose symptoms have resisted all other treatments.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

You can find more details in the sources. Hope this helps with your writing!

[archivist-crow]

Gilles Garnier (1873) - French werewolf

Gilles Garnier, also known as "the hermit of St. Bonnot," was an ugly recluse shunned by others. He lived with his wife, Apolline, in an inaccessible, turf-roofed, and rudely constructed hovel near Amanges, France.

In autumn 1873 a werewolf was said to have carried off several small children in the area of Dole. The court parliament at Dole issued a proclamation authorizing the peasants to hunt the creature down.

Initially, Garnier was not a suspect, despite his odd appearance and manner. He had bushy eyebrows that met, a pale face with livid complexion, a long gray beard, and a stooping walk. He seldom spoke to others.

On November 8, 1873, a girl was attacked by a wolf. Her screams attracted some of the peasants. When they reached her, they saw a ferocious wolf and the wounded girl trying to defend herself. The appearance of the peasants frightened off the wolf, who ran into the forest. Several peasants said they thought they had recognized the features of the hermit in the creature.

A few days later, on November 14, a 10-year-old boy went missing. Garnier was arrested and put on trial. Both he and his wife confessed to his being a werewolf, and their testimony was corroborated by witnesses.

Garnier confessed to taking the form of a wolf and attacking and slaying a number of children. On the last day of Michelmas, he attacked and killed a 12-year-old girl. He carted her body into the woods, stripped off her clothing, and gnawed her arms and legs. He thought the flesh so tasty that he took some of it home to his wife for her enjoyment.

Eight days later, he seized another girl but did not kill her, for he was surprised by three persons, and he fled. But soon he attacked a 10-year-old boy and strangled him to death. He ate the arms and legs, tearing one leg completely off with his fangs, and also ate most of the boy's belly.

Garnier's next victim was a boy of 12 or 13, whom he seized and killed. He intended to take the body into the woods to eat, but once again the appearance of peasants frightened him off. Those men testified at Garnier's trial that they had seen him in human form and not a wolf form.

Garnier was convicted and sentenced to be dragged to the place of public execution, where he was burned alive.

Text from The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters (Checkmark Books, 2005) by Rosemary Guiley

[NOTE: it has come to my attention that Garnier lived 300 years earlier and died in 1574, not 1874. Unfortunately, the book from which I cribbed the text (above) made the same mistake several times.]

[pmamtraveller]

BERTHOLD WOLTZE - THE IRRITATING GENTLEMAN, 1874

The painting depicts a girl in mourning attire with a tearful face gazing at us with a resigned expression. The young girl, possibly in her teenage years, is dressed modestly in a middle-class style.

A persistent wealthy man is leaning over the wooden partition behind his seat to try to talk to the visibly uninterested young girl. Dressed in a flawless suit paired with a bow tie, adorned with glasses and a stylish hat, he leans in with an almost suggestive grin while holding a cigarette. The elderly companion he is meant to share his space with looks away, perhaps feeling uncomfortable about the man's clearly unsuitable attempt.

The young woman immediately grabs our attention, as she highlights that there is nothing amusing about this situation, in fact, it is quite the opposite. Her dignified expression conceals her suffering caused by the irritating gentleman's disrespect, showing the full seriousness of the situation. The young woman only shows her sadness through her face and nowhere else on her body. One could argue that Berthold Woltze's painting possesses a significant moralistic significance.

The Irritating Gentleman (Der lästige Kavalier in his native German) is the most famous painting by Berthold Woltze, a German genre painter and professor. This is his most notable work, which is what the general public mainly recognizes him for. It showcases the beauty of narrative genre painting through everyday scenes captured in a single snapshot.

[imoonblaze]

🌈Musa (OC) belong to @imoonblaze

✨Rise of the Guardians from Dreamworks

My new OC from Rise of the Guardians...

✨🌈Musa🌈✨

The guardian of imagination and creativity

✨Name: Musa, Prisma (alternative name)

✨Guardian of: Imagination and Creativity

✨Sex: Female

✨Age: 19 years (physical), 158 years (current)

✨Race/Species: Human/Spirit

✨Height: 1.63 cm

✨Weight: 50 kg

✨Date of birth: 1855

✨Date of death: 1874

✨Date of rebirth (spirit): 1880

✨Years as a spirit: 132 years (151 years including her previous age)

✨🌈About her🌈✨

Pale and radiant like a blank canvas, Musa is the guardian of imagination and creativity. She is the Guardian who protects the possibility of children letting their imagination and dreams flow.

Musa sees the world as a canvas, a world where every color is unique and every existing thing stands out in its maximum splendor, seeing his surroundings with an eye and with a form of understanding that other guardians might possibly not understand

She is quite charismatic and sometimes a bit of a joker, but she can also be cordial, chivalrous, helpful and loyal. Despite being very extroverted and full of expressiveness, she can also be mysterious and enigmatic, as she is a younger guardian.

Like any guardian, she seeks for children to have the freedom to imagine and think big without limits to create and ingeniously solve any problem, thus achieving their goals and dreams.

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After almost two weeks without posting anything due to some personal problems, I managed to get the energy to finish the design of my ROTG OC