called
ullamaliztli,
which was played with a heavy, solid rubber ball. Like soccer, you couldn’t use your hands to control the ball, but neither could you use your feet. Instead teams batted the ball around with their hips and buttocks. What happened with the losing team? See above.
After ransacking a village, the Vikings would often resort to a game of tug-of-war to decide who got the plunder. The catch? The two teams would face off with a roaring fire between them. The winners would get the loot. The losers burned.
Pankration
was an ancient Greek wrestling match with a twist—there were no rules (or clothes). You could kick, scratch, wrestle, choke, tell your opponent to “Look at that pretty lady in Row B!” and then sucker punch him … whatever. It was considered bad form to kill your opponent.
Soule
was a popular game played by peasants in Normandy, Brittany, and Picardy from the twelfth through the nineteenth centuries. The rules were simple: Two teams of up to a thousand participants each had to get a large ball into the opponent’s net or onto their side. The game usually got violent and could last for several days—especially since the goals could be separated by miles of farmland, forests, meadows, rivers, etc.
Whip It Up
Imagine it’s the 1600s and you’re tutor to the heir to the throne. It’s a pretty good gig, but what in heaven’s name do you do if the prince acts up or decides not to finish his lessons? Because of the doctrine of the divine rights of kings, which stated that a monarch has ultimate authority over man (which he got directly from God), you couldn’t exactly spank the royal’s highness. One solution was to assign a whipping boy. This poor kid, usually of high birth, would be raised alongside the prince, and every time the prince acted up, the whipping boy would be physically punished in front of the prince.
Meanwhile, in Ancient Greece, if a natural disaster struck (such as a famine, disease, or invasion), they would choose a
pharmakos
to take the blame. The
pharmakos
would usually be a beggar or a cripple, and he would be cast out of the community, stoned, or beaten to death so that the disaster would go away.
Cure Nones
These days, the only thing truly scary about going to the doctor is the bill. However, the history of medicine and doctors is full of cures that did more to kill you than cure you. The ancient Egyptians, Africans, and Europeans all thought that epilepsy and mental illnesses could be cured by drilling a hole into your skull. This would release the demons from your head, and if you were lucky enough to survive, you got to keep the skull fragment they removed as a lucky charm. Back in the day, you could go to the barber for a haircut and a nice, healthy bloodletting, which was used to cure all sorts of maladies, such as fevers, colds, cancer, and of course, excessive bleeding!
In February 1685, we have what can be described as the worst cure ever. (And proof that peasants had a better chance at recovering from an illness than the aristocracy.) King Charles II of England suffered either a stroke or some sort of kidney dysfunction. All the royal doctors were summoned, and they immediately embarked on a treatment regimen that would have killed several healthy people. First, the bloodletting. Then they induced vomiting. Followed by an enema. When all that didn’t work, over the course of the five days it took the king to die, the good doctors filled his nose with snuff, let out some more blood, singed the king’s shaved scalp with burning irons, daubed his feet with pigeon poop, drilled a hole in his skull, applied heated cups to the skin (which formed blisters), applied more enemas, let out even more blood, fed him the gallstone from a goat, gave him a dose of forty drops of human skull, and more. And for all that, the king apologized: “I am sorry, gentlemen, for being such a time a-dying.”
What a Pig
Louis XI, king of France in the 1400s, liked animals.
ullamaliztli,
which was played with a heavy, solid rubber ball. Like soccer, you couldn’t use your hands to control the ball, but neither could you use your feet. Instead teams batted the ball around with their hips and buttocks. What happened with the losing team? See above.
After ransacking a village, the Vikings would often resort to a game of tug-of-war to decide who got the plunder. The catch? The two teams would face off with a roaring fire between them. The winners would get the loot. The losers burned.
Pankration
was an ancient Greek wrestling match with a twist—there were no rules (or clothes). You could kick, scratch, wrestle, choke, tell your opponent to “Look at that pretty lady in Row B!” and then sucker punch him … whatever. It was considered bad form to kill your opponent.
Soule
was a popular game played by peasants in Normandy, Brittany, and Picardy from the twelfth through the nineteenth centuries. The rules were simple: Two teams of up to a thousand participants each had to get a large ball into the opponent’s net or onto their side. The game usually got violent and could last for several days—especially since the goals could be separated by miles of farmland, forests, meadows, rivers, etc.
Whip It Up
Imagine it’s the 1600s and you’re tutor to the heir to the throne. It’s a pretty good gig, but what in heaven’s name do you do if the prince acts up or decides not to finish his lessons? Because of the doctrine of the divine rights of kings, which stated that a monarch has ultimate authority over man (which he got directly from God), you couldn’t exactly spank the royal’s highness. One solution was to assign a whipping boy. This poor kid, usually of high birth, would be raised alongside the prince, and every time the prince acted up, the whipping boy would be physically punished in front of the prince.
Meanwhile, in Ancient Greece, if a natural disaster struck (such as a famine, disease, or invasion), they would choose a
pharmakos
to take the blame. The
pharmakos
would usually be a beggar or a cripple, and he would be cast out of the community, stoned, or beaten to death so that the disaster would go away.
Cure Nones
These days, the only thing truly scary about going to the doctor is the bill. However, the history of medicine and doctors is full of cures that did more to kill you than cure you. The ancient Egyptians, Africans, and Europeans all thought that epilepsy and mental illnesses could be cured by drilling a hole into your skull. This would release the demons from your head, and if you were lucky enough to survive, you got to keep the skull fragment they removed as a lucky charm. Back in the day, you could go to the barber for a haircut and a nice, healthy bloodletting, which was used to cure all sorts of maladies, such as fevers, colds, cancer, and of course, excessive bleeding!
In February 1685, we have what can be described as the worst cure ever. (And proof that peasants had a better chance at recovering from an illness than the aristocracy.) King Charles II of England suffered either a stroke or some sort of kidney dysfunction. All the royal doctors were summoned, and they immediately embarked on a treatment regimen that would have killed several healthy people. First, the bloodletting. Then they induced vomiting. Followed by an enema. When all that didn’t work, over the course of the five days it took the king to die, the good doctors filled his nose with snuff, let out some more blood, singed the king’s shaved scalp with burning irons, daubed his feet with pigeon poop, drilled a hole in his skull, applied heated cups to the skin (which formed blisters), applied more enemas, let out even more blood, fed him the gallstone from a goat, gave him a dose of forty drops of human skull, and more. And for all that, the king apologized: “I am sorry, gentlemen, for being such a time a-dying.”
What a Pig
Louis XI, king of France in the 1400s, liked animals.
Similar Books
