Tag Archives: masks

Maybe it’s misinformation

Sparks from Science and Society, The Handel Seminar Continues, ,

Handel blog 6*

From Katherine: If you watch television, some sources say do wear a mask.  Others say it is unnecessary, just a recommendation.  Some say find that malaria medicine; it will cure the virus.  Doctors say nothing has been proven to work against COVID-19.  Some news sources say things are starting to turn around.  Others say the worst is yet to come.  How do you know which sources to trust?  How did people get accurate news stories in Handel’s day?  Journals, letters, and newspapers were a lot slower than today’s television, Internet, and other media.  Notwithstanding their slowness, were eighteenth-century sources more accurate?  Could you trust them?

Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year was written in 1722, 57 years after the Great Plague of London in 1665.  Critics still debate over what to call Defoe’s work.  Is it history, historical fiction, a novel?  In our discussions of Lydia’s letters to Handel, we, too, wondered about the source of one story she mentioned—a piece of news that reached London before Handel had returned from a 1750 trip to the continent.  There had evidently been a carriage accident near Harlem in the Netherlands in which Handel was injured.  Peter commented: “Actually, as Brad suggested, it was odd that this incident was reported among Handel’s friends in London.  Obviously Handel himself was not the one sharing the information, maybe a newspaper story instead.” (p. 478) How did people in London know?  Was it a rumor?  What did they know?  Handel’s friends must have wondered and worried as they had only vague secondary sources on the incident until Handel himself came home and set the story straight. 

From Ross:  I don’t know much about it, but I know there is a source people can use today to help them decide whether the news we hear is reliable.  In Handel’s day, the sources were fairly limited, but today there are countless sources of varying quality.  You can get an app called Newsguard that is supposed to give an evaluation of news sources derived through a set of criteria and applied by professional journalists.  The idea is simply to give a grade to the source itself, not to dissect any given news item. 

From Angela:  Forella wanted me to mention that we have been watching one of those Great Courses Plus series of lectures, this one titled Fighting Misinformation.  So far, it has been pretty interesting, and I think they did mention that Newsguard app as well.

From Clara:  Well, this is all very interesting, but I was expecting someone to comment on the movie about Farinelli, but since we haven’t moved in that direction, let me suggest a movie you should all watch while you are sheltering in place.  It’s Teacher’s Pet—the 1958 version with Clark Gable and Doris Day, not the newer one.  It’s about journalism, and to me anyway, what we are really trying to grapple with here is a major change in journalism from earlier times.  Watch the movie and let me know what you think.  You can read some info on it here.

From Katherine:  Thanks Clara.  Teacher’s Pet is one of my favorite movies, and you are right.  It raises many questions about the role of journalism then and now.  A good suggestion for something to watch this evening.  Stay safe, everyone.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.

Coronavirus masks

Sparks from Science and Society, The Handel Seminar Continues,

Handel blog 3*

From Katherine:  Well, we talked about the Plague song “O du lieber Augustin” last time.  I’ve seen quite a few songs popping up on social media—either parodies that reference the coronavirus or sometimes simply old songs meant to distract us from our worries.  But today I wanted to bring together comments some of you have made about masks—the surgical masks now in such demand in so many public contexts.  I’ve seen several articles commenting on the beak-like “doctors’ masks” that were seen as a symbol of the Plague in the early 1700s.  The “doctor’s mask” was even used as a clue in the 2017 Disney movie Beauty and the Beast—a sign that Belle’s mother had died of the plague.  I expect the Handel-era doctor’s mask served a different purpose than the surgical masks we have today.  What do you think?

Circa 1656, A plague doctor in protective clothing. The beak mask held spices thought to purify air, the wand was used to avoid touching patients. Original Artwork: Engraving by Paul Furst after J Colombina (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

From Rebecca:  Masks have been connected with healing in cultures throughout the world—think of the stereotypical witch doctor wearing a colorful mask.  But there are much more serious meanings associated with the use of masks.  I find it interesting to hear some of the beliefs about the wearing of protective masks today.  And there is even a kind of folk craft springing up—people making their own masks or producing some to help out with the shocking shortage of face masks here in the US.  You can read about some of the information on making masks here.

From Peter:  I did a little research on the doctor’s mask we associate with the Great Plague.  By the time Handel was living in London, from the early to mid-1700s, the beak-like doctor’s mask had fallen out of use, but interestingly some of the reasons for its emergence in the first place remained a part of the culture.  It seems the beak protuberance part of the mask was actually filled with various herbs or spices that supposedly protected the wearer from illness—well, THE illness, the plague.  I assume the spices did at least smell better then whatever the doctor was encountering where ever he went.  Anyway, along with that tie to the mask itself, there was also a general belief among physicians and their patients that certain smells carried medical benefits.  What we think of as perfumes today were regarded as a kind of medicine back then.  One article I read said this about such cures in the 1700s: “Recipes in pharmacopoeias confirm that physicians believed in the medicinal properties of perfumes.”  You can read about it here.

From Katherine:  That is fascinating, Peter.  It brings to mind the more modern practice of aromatherapy with its use of essential oils.  You can read about aromatherapy here.  But it also made me think of Handel and one of the last people who saw him before he died—his friend and neighbor James Smyth (see p. 57 in The Handel Letters). James Paul Smyth was a perfumer.  My guess is that he was there as both a comfort and a kind of Hospice health care worker, bringing the oils and perfumes that represented this medicinal part of his trade.  Handel was clearly grateful for Smyth’s services.  He left James Smyth a substantial bequest in his will. 

I think that is it for today.  Stay well.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.