This is Improbable Too Read online

  The Smell of Danger: Marking Sensory Contexts

  The Fragrance of Virtue: Reordering Olfactory Experience

  Sanctity and Stench

  Asceticism: Holy Stench, Holy Weapon

  At least one other soul is spreading the word about Scenting Salvation. Brent Landau, a doctoral student at Harvard Divinity School, published an appreciative essay in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review. ‘Wake up, fellow scholars!’, he virtually shouts. This book ‘will be a valuable and provocative resource for scholars working on ancient conceptions of the body, the history of science, ritual studies, asceticism, and Syriac Christianity, among other topics’.

  Professor Harvey is not the first to savour early Christian smells, Landau reminds us. But ‘her book represents the most comprehensive work on this subject. If there is a watchword that characterizes [Harvey]’s research, it is most certainly “ambiguity”; for not only do odors themselves straddle the line between corporeal and incorporeal, but the judgment of what makes a given smell “good” or “bad” changes drastically for Christian interpreters depending upon the circumstances.’

  Modern scholars do not work in hermetically sealed rooms. In addition to writing the book, Harvey gives talks about her work at academic conferences. Among the topics and locations, these have included: ‘The Odor of Faith’ in Chicago in 1994; ‘Sanctity and Stench: When Holy Fragrance Turns Foul’ in Michigan in 1994; ‘Why the Perfume Mattered: the Sinful Woman in Syriac Exegetical Tradition’ at the University of Notre Dame in 1999; later that year, ‘On Holy Stench: When the Odor of Sanctity Sickens’ in Oxford; and ‘Making Sense of Scents: Olfactory Guides for the Late Antique Christian’ at Yale in 2006.

  She also publishes titbit-packed specialized studies. One of them, 1998’s ‘St. Ephrem on the Scent of Salvation’, tells how, in the fourth century, odours delivered both Good News and Bad News: ‘Ephrem emphasizes the experience of smell as the means by which the believer encounters the divine … and learns God’s favor or disfavor.’

  The study of Christian olfaction once was lost, but now is found. Harvey tells us that, in the fifth century, Christian writers regularly wrote about ‘an olfactory dialogue in which human and divine each approached the other through scent’. Professor Harvey has started a dialogue about that dialogue about smells.

  Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (1998). ‘St. Ephrem on the Scent of Salvation’. Journal of Theological Studies 49 (1): 109–28.

  Landau, Brent (2007). ‘Review: Scenting Salvation’. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2: n.p., http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2007/2007-02-44.html.

  Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  Research spotlight

  ‘Celebrating Fragmentation: The Presence of Aristocratic Body Parts in Monastic Houses in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century England’

  by Danielle Westerhof (published in Citeaux Commentarii Cistercienses, 2005)

  A measured look at chalk

  At long last, after millions of students in thousands of classrooms have freely and incautiously breathed trillions of breaths, there’s a report about the question: how much chalk dust enters the air when a teacher uses a blackboard?

  The study, ‘Assessment of Airborne Fine Particulate Matter and Particle Size Distribution in Settled Chalk Dust during Writing and Dusting Exercises in a Classroom’, was done by Deepanjan Majumdar, D.G. Gajghate, Pradeep Pipalatkar and C.V. Chalapati Rao of the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute in Nehru Marg, India.

  The team weighed each piece of chalk before and after using it. They collected chalk dust from the air, and also the dust that fell on to a long sheet of paper laid over the base of the blackboard.

  Their experiment featured three kinds of chalk, one blackboard, an eraser, an aerosol spectrometer (to measure and record the amount of dust floating in the air) and a Cilas model 1180 particle-size analyser.

  The researchers tried to ensure maximally pure conditions for the measurements. ‘All the windows and the only door were closed airtight’, the ‘fans present in the classroom were not operated’, and ‘personal movement in the classroom was completely restricted during the experiment to minimise resuspension of dust from floor’.

  The report explains that in schools that still use chalk, teachers brave the greatest direct risk: ‘During teaching, entry of chalk dust in the respiratory system through nasopharyngeal region and mouth could be extensive in teachers due to their proximity to the board and frequent opening of mouth during lectures and occasional gasping and heavier breathing due to exhaustion.’ As per current state of knowledge on particulate matter vis-à-vis chalk dust, it ‘may remain suspended in air for some time before settling on the floor and body parts of the teachers and pupils’.

  The scientists acknowledge that chalk and chalkboards these days are being supplanted, in many schools, by whiteboards and other more modern, less intrinsically dusty technology. But chalk still enjoys wide usage in many countries.

  The study, published in the journal Indoor and Built Environment, ruefully concludes: ‘Though real-time airborne chalk dust generation was found to be low in this study … and did not contain toxic materials, chalk dust could be harmful to allergic persons and may cause lacrimation and breathing troubles in the long run and certainly is a constant nuisance in classrooms as it may soil clothes, body parts, audiovisual aids and study materials.’

  Majumdar, Deepanjan, D.G. Gajghate, Pradeep Pipalatkar and C.V. Chalapati Rao (2011). ‘Assessment of Airborne Fine Particulate Matter and Particle Size Distribution in Settled Chalk Dust during Writing and Dusting Exercises in a Classroom’. Indoor and Built Environment 21 (4): 541–51.

  In brief

  ‘Does Sitting on Your Hands Make You Bite Your Tongue? The Effects of Gesture Prohibition on Speech During Motor Descriptions’

  by Autumn B. Hostetter, Martha W. Alibali and Sotaro Kita (paper presented at the annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2007)

  The authors, who are at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Birmingham, report: ‘Participants in the hands restrained condition were given a 25 x 60 x 2 cm wooden board to place across their laps. On the top of this board, there were several strips of Velcro. The participants were also given cotton gloves to wear that had the opposite side of the Velcro attached to the palms and fingers. They were asked to place their hands on the board, so that the two sides of the Velcro adhered. In this way, they were discouraged from moving their hands during the task without being forcefully restrained … It seems … that sitting on your hands does influence your tongue, though it does not make you bite it completely.’

  The piercing sounds of science

  The sounds of science are in some cases surprising. Or annoying. Or both.

  BANG. One of history’s most stimulating experiments – stimulating for the volunteer research subjects, at least – was carried out by W. Dixon Ward and Conrad Holmberg of the University of Minnesota. Their summary report, ‘Effects of High-Speed Drill Noise and Gunfire on Dentists’ Hearing’, appeared in a 1969 issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association.

  The Ward-Holmberg paper is a pleasure to read. It begins: ‘A high-pitched, whining noise can be most annoying …’ Concerned that constant exposure to the whirr of a dental drill might be dangerous to the dentist’s hearing, Ward and Holmberg decided to investigate.

  Their report specifies that ‘most of’ their testing was done on volunteers. It also mentions that ‘two elderly men could not be induced to respond properly to [the] testing procedure.’ The scientists also allude to ‘a misunderstanding’ in eleven cases, wherein data seems to have been gotten from the dentists’ wives, rather than from the dentists.

  Ward and Holmberg concluded that ‘there is only scant evidence that high-speed drills have much influence on the hearing of dentists in Minnesota, especially in comparison to the effects of gunfire.’
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br />   BOOM. Margaret Bradley and Peter Lang of the University of Florida meticulously exposed people to what they called ‘naturally occurring sounds (e.g., screams, erotica, bombs, etc.)’. These various sounds – there were sixty of them altogether – included beer, cows, a roller coaster, bees, a growling dog, a ticking clock and lovemaking. The volunteers were also shown pictures, including photos of a lamp, an owl, a cow and a burn victim. Drs Bradley and Lang say for the most part their volunteers responded emotionally to sounds pretty much the same way as to pictures. But their report, published in the journal Psychophysiology, does note that ‘larger startle reflexes were elicited when listening to unpleasant, compared with pleasant, sounds’.

  HISS. Some research subjects get a less meaningful, less sharply defined listening experience. In 2002, Tetsuro Saeki, at Yamaguchi University in Ube, Japan, and several colleagues published a report called ‘A Method for Predicting Psychological Response to Meaningless Random Noise Based on Fuzzy System Model’. The title speaks for itself. Details, for those who cannot infer them, can be found in the journal Applied Acoustics.

  YIKES. To the non-specialist, some of this research may sound surprising, annoying or even meaningless. But for someone, somewhere, such reactions may themselves sound like something worth studying.

  Ward, W. Dixon, and Conrad J. Holmberg (1969). ‘Effects of High-Speed Drill Noise and Gunfire on Dentists’ Hearing’. Journal of the American Dental Association 79 (6): 1383–7.

  Bradley, Margaret M., and Peter J. Lang (2000). ‘Affective Reactions to Acoustic Stimuli’. Psychophysiology 37 (2): 204–15.

  Saeki, Tetsuro, Shizuma Yamaguchi, Yuichi Kato and Kensei Oimatsu (2002). ‘A Method for Predicting Psychological Response to Meaningless Random Noise Based on Fuzzy System Model’. Applied Acoustics 63 (3): 323–31.

  Monkey, floss

  Monkey flossing became a formal practice, at least experimentally, in the late 1970s, thanks to a dentist named Jack Caton. Twenty years later, a physician named David C. Sokal, inspired by the monkey flossing, patented a top/bottom flossing-reminder and floss-dispensing device for humans. Monkeys themselves apparently began unassistedly flossing themselves not long afterwards. But likely those animals did so on their own, not influenced by either Dr Caton’s experiment or Dr Sokal’s invention.

  Caton became the world’s foremost monkey flosser in 1979, when he published a small study in the Journal of Clinical Periodontology. Based at the Eastman Dental Center in Rochester, New York, he worked with six Rhesus monkeys, all of whom had ‘gross amounts of plaque and generalized moderate to severe gingivitis’. (‘Gingivitis’ is dental lingo meaning ‘inflamed gums’.)

  Caton tested several methods to improve the monkeys’ oral condition. Flossing, brushing and mouthwashing all helped, he reported. No matter what the treatment, the healthiest result came from doing it at least three times a week.

  Years later, Sokal saw the Caton recommendations (which, he points out, ‘proved adequate for Rhesus monkeys’), weighed them against other research findings, and concluded that cleaning teeth every second day is ‘satisfactory’.

  But humans sometimes need reminders. So Sokal invented what he calls a ‘floss dispenser with memory aid for flossing upper and lower teeth in separate sessions’.

  ‌‘Floss dispenser with six floss cutters’, one for almost every day of the week

  Unlike conventional dental floss dispensers, Sokal’s has two different clips to slice the floss and hold it in readiness for next time. One is labelled ‘Lower teeth – Monday Wednesday Friday’, the other ‘Upper teeth – Tuesday Thursday Sat/Sunday’. The patent offers variations: electronic day and jaw indicators, and as many as six floss clips (Saturday and Sunday share a single clip).

  Monkeys can themselves be inventive. The August 2007 issue of the American Journal of Primatology features a report entitled ‘Long-tailed Macaques Use Human Hair as Dental Floss’. Written by scientists at Kyoto University, in Japan, and Ubon Rajathanee and Chulalongkorn universities, in Thailand, it builds on a report from the year 2000 that ‘two individual Macaca fascicularis monkeys in Lopburi, Thailand, used human hair as dental floss’.

  The researchers observed similar behaviour with many monkeys, who plucked from sometimes-willing humans. They also learned that, if given human hairpieces, the monkeys in effect used them as floss dispensers, plucking out strands and spinning them into floss. These various monkey achievements are impressive, say the scientists: ‘Utilizing women’s hair as dental floss is not a simple task; the monkeys need to sort the hair, make a string with it and hold it tightly with both hands to brush their teeth when they feel that pieces of food remain … It was interesting that some monkeys appeared to remove only a few pieces of hair as though they understood that there was an optimum number of hairs required for use as dental floss.’

  To see monkeys teach their young how to floss, visit http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8n4o3_monkeys-teach-young-to-floss-their_fun#.Udq-RlOxOUk.

  Caton, Jack (1979). ‘Establishing and Maintaining Clinically Healthy Gingivae in Rhesus Monkeys’. Journal of Clinical Periodontology 6 (4): 260–3.

  Sokal, David C. (1998). ‘Floss Dispenser with Memory Aid for Flossing Upper and Lower Teeth in Separate Sessions and Method’. US patent no. 5,826,594, 27 October 27.

  Watanabe, Kunio, Nontakorn Urasopon and Suchinda Malaivijitnond (2007). ‘Long-tailed Macaques Use Human Hair as Dental Floss’. American Journal of Primatology 69 (8): 940–4.

  May we recommend

  ‘Gagging during Impression Making: Techniques for Reduction’

  by Sarah Farrier, Iain A. Pretty, Christopher D. Lynch and Liam D. Addy (published in Dental Update, 2011)

  The authors, at Cardiff University, Wales, report: ‘In everyday dental practice one encounters patients who either believe themselves, or subsequently prove themselves, to be gaggers.’

  Cured, therapeutically

  A 2011 medical study recommends a method called ‘nasal packing with strips of cured pork’ as an effective way to treat uncontrollable nosebleeds.

  Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin at Detroit Medical Center in Michigan treated a girl who had a rare hereditary disorder that brings prolonged bleeding. Publishing in the Annals of Otology, Rhinology, & Laryngology, they pack the essential details into two sentences: ‘Cured salted pork crafted as a nasal tampon and packed within the nasal vaults successfully stopped nasal hemorrhage promptly, effectively, and without sequelae … To our knowledge, this represents the first description of nasal packing with strips of cured pork for treatment of life-threatening hemorrhage in a patient with Glanzmann thrombasthenia.’

  They acknowledge a long tradition of using pork to treat general epistaxis, i.e. nosebleed. The technique fell into disuse, they speculate, because ‘packing with salt pork was fraught with bacterial and parasitic complications. As newer synthetic hemostatic agents and surgical techniques evolved, the use of packing with salt pork diminished.’

  In 1976, Dr Jan Weisberg of Great Lakes, Illinois, wrote a letter to the journal Archives of Otolaryngology, bragging that he, together with a Dr Strother and a Dr Newton, had been ‘privileged’ to treat a man ‘for epistaxis secondary to Rendu-Osler-Weber disease’, an inherited problem in which blood vessels develop abnormally. For their patient, the period of hospitalization was ten days and the patient was discharged with salt pork packing still in his nose.

  In 1953, Dr Henry Beinfield of Brooklyn, New York, published a treatise called ‘General Principles in Treatment of Nasal Hemorrhage’. Beinfield explains: ‘Salt pork placed in the nose and allowed to remain there for about five days has been used, but the method is rather old-fashioned.’

  In 1940, Dr A.J. Cone of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, praised the method in a paper called ‘Use of Salt Pork in Cases of Hemorrhage’. In Cone’s experience, ‘it has not been uncommon in the St. Louis Children’s Hospital service to have a child request that
salt pork be inserted in his nose with the first sign of a nosebleed … Wedges of salt pork have saved a great deal of time and energy when used in controlling nasal hemorrhage, as seen in cases of leukemia, hemophilia … hypertension … measles or typhoid fever and during the third stage of labor’.

  Way back in 1927, Dr Lee Hurd of New York published a big thumbs-up in ‘Use of Salt Pork to Control Hemorrhage’ in the Archives of Otolaryngology. Hurd enthused: ‘It is hard to say just what the action of the pork is, since several factors are present, namely, pressure, salt, tissue juices and fat… Usually I do not use any outside dressing to hold the pork in place…’

  Humphreys, Ian, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin (2011). ‘Nasal Packing with Strips of Cured Pork as Treatment for Uncontrollable Epistaxis in a Patient with Glanzmann Thrombasthenia’. Annals of Otology, Rhinology, & Laryngology 120 (11): 732–36.

  Weisberg, Jan J. (1976). ‘Rendu-Osler-Weber Disease – Is Embolization Beneficial?’. Archives of Otolaryngology 102 (6): 385.

  Beinfield, Henry H. (1953). ‘General Principles in Treatment of Nasal Hemorrhage: Emphasis on Management of Postnasal Hemorrhage’. Archives of Otolaryngology 57 (1): 51–9.

  Cone, A.J. (1940). ‘Use of Salt Pork in Cases of Hemorrhage’. Archives of Otolaryngology 32 (5): 941–6.

  Hurd, Lee M. (1927). ‘Use of Salt Pork to Control Hemorrhage’. Archives of Otolaryngology 4 (11): November 1927, p. 447.

  An improbable innovation

  ‘Internal nostril or nasal airway sizing gauge’

  by Louise S. MacDonald (US patent no. 7,998,093, granted 2011)