 I... even by 19th century chemical standards that makes no sense. Here's another old textbook I've got in my collection and this one is Popular Errors by John Timms. It is going to be probably the oldest book I own for a while I think. Says here 1856 and I've got no evidence that this was made after so I think this is genuinely 150 years old so let's try not to break it. I don't really know much about John Timms, there's not a lot of detail on him apart from the fact he's an author and he wrote quite a few books like this. Curiosities, trivia books, misconceptions and a book called Things That Aren't Commonly Known. Basically kind of like maybe a 19th century QI or book of general ignorance type thing. So I don't know maybe you could think of this guy as like the Stephen Fry of the 1850s but we'll see. He had some wild, wild ideas. So this is just a book of just weird facts and misconceptions and you can probably see from the number of posts that I've added in. I've found quite a few interesting ones. So let's have a look at the back here for instance. We've got a pretty common one. This will pop up in trivia books. Wild beef eaters at the Tower of London called Beef Eaters and he's talking about whether they're named after the fact that they were paid in beef. Now the thing is we don't know whether that's true or not. A few others are really interesting ones. We're whalebone. This substance is improperly named since it has none of the properties of bone. Its correct name is baleen. Oh baleen, baleen. And yeah this is true. Whalebone is a very flexible thing. It has probably got about the consistency of maybe the plastic you find in a zip tag as whalebone was used in corsets and garments a lot and it's remarkably flexible. It's not this huge rigid, oppressive substance that you think of when someone says whalebone corset. But I'm surprised to see it in the 19th century when that substance was still common. Where else have we got here? Diamond. He's talking about the hardness of diamond and apparently there was a rumour or something that you could soften diamond by steeping it in goat's blood. He says that's not true. It kind of isn't. But he does say that diamonds can wear out, they are not indestructible. Obviously diamonds aren't indestructible. You can shine them and polish them down. That's what jewelers do. So where are we here? The sensation of heat this I think this is really good science this one because there cannot be a more fallacious means of estimating heat than by touch. Thus in the ordinary state of an apartment at any season in the air the objects which are in it will have the same temperature and yet through the touch they will feel warmer cold in different degrees. The metallic objects will be coldest, stewing and marble less so wood less so and carpeting and woolen objects will feel warm. In scientific terms we will think of heat and temperature being slightly different. Heat was really a energy or measuring energy transfer temperature would be kind of related to the internal state of the matter or the object. So an object that feels hot is transferring a lot of heat energy to your skin for your nerves to pick it up. You're certainly on the money there. Right let's have a look at some of the wilder ideas though. Let's see here. Air quality. Consideral error prevails respecting the cellular bill. Salibriti? I'll have to look that up. Of the air of our metropolis from ignorance of the fact ascertained by Mr. Cavendish many years since that there is no sensible difference in the constituent parts of the atmosphere under circumstances the most dissimilar. So the Mr. Cavendish he's referring to is obviously Henry Cavendish he figured out the constituent parts of air that being mostly nitrogen with some oxygen and then kind of this one percent leftover but in 1856 that one percent was not really well known. We suspected there was another element or another material making up that remaining one percent. It's mostly argon it turns out and what Tim's is referring to here with Cavendish is that constituent of air doesn't actually change the oxygen and nitrogen proportions in air really do not change appreciably anywhere on the planet. When it comes to human health it's that one percent that is really the problem that contains the carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and so on. Things that maybe in the 19th century they weren't able to appreciably quantify and that is very different between the country in the city. Probably one of the weakest bits he does is the citations at the bottom it's really hard to pick up on what they are and in this case he simply cites a fact to the doctor. A book which tracks people how to physique themselves or to be entitled every man is his own poisoner because it cannot possibly teach them how to discriminate between the resemblance symptoms of different diseases citation the doctor. So that's what we might call today the kind of when doctors get really annoyed that you're googling your own symptoms I suppose so some things haven't changed there. Thirst this one was weird it says imaginary thirst the development of a certain morbid feeling is often mistaken for thirst to which there is a great analogy such as caused by the vicious habit of frequently drinking and the desire to taste some liquids is brandy and wine nothing produces thirst so much as quenching it or grows more readily into a habit than drinking. If you drink ethanol it is a slight diuretic and it does make you feel thirsty afterwards and causes you to want to drink more and if you do indulge in it you will become an alcoholic but he's not going to be using those terms because alcoholism as a word was only invented a couple of years before this book it may not have been popular enough for tins to have come across it. It would have probably been under the previous medical term for craving drugs the Dipsomania which was the craving for alcohol and drugs that was coined like nearly 50 years before this book so maybe that's just a code of reference to being an alcoholic and it is true if you indulge in that it will get worse. This is of really interesting once so coal is more valuable than gold so he's trying to say the natural supply of coal Britain among the nations is the most singularly favored very 19th century isn't it much of the surface of the country conceals under it continuous thick beds of that valuable material thing now the exhaustion of British coal mines the importance of coal is in this as necessary of life and to the degree which our superiority in arts and manufacturers depend upon our obtaining supplies of it as a cheap rate has naturally attracted a great deal of attention to the question as to the period when the exhaustion of our coal mines may be anticipated he does write some very very long sentences even by 19th century standards but this this is a actually a key concern we know now we are running out of oil it is not going to last forever but his estimate here according to Mr Taylor and experienced coal owner the coal fields of Durham and Northumberland are adequate to furnish the present annual supply for more than 1700 years i don't think even if we were to extract all the coal it goes anywhere near that i would i would love to try and look that up but i'm pretty sure it's like 100 years okay i spent a while trying to get an answer to this one and obviously it's complicated because there's a big difference between the amount of coal that we think might be under there how much we definitely know is there and how much we could realistically recover and then you divide that by the rate of consumption which is currently being phased down to zero but has been significantly higher in the past in any of those cases we don't hit anywhere near 1700 years it is therefore quite idle either to prohibit or impose heavy duties on the exploration of coal on the ground of its accelerating the exhaustion of the mines yeah this this is where the kind of the mask is dipping about what this guy is on about he would you you could very much see him as kind of setting up one of those websites that says CO2 is green coal mine is great sod the environment it's all a con global warming is a myth you can you can kind of see him getting into that thing but 150 years early poor people and call oh yeah waste of fuel gilbert white has well observed that the very poor are always the worst economists and therefore must continue very poor the truth of which remark is strikingly evident in the mode at which the poorer classes use the fuel they have this is sounding very very familiar you put some of this behind your radiators it really works it makes the whole room nice and warm i just want to point out that this isn't actually true indeed poor poor persons make less of the little fuel they have than the richer classes still the poor must not be altogether blamed for the improvements in fireplaces by scientific men have done a great deal for the fireplaces of the rich but nothing for the habitations of the poor so you know at least he's blaming the poor for being terrible at fuel but he's least pointed out that they can only afford of the inefficient stuff okay let's go for the big one why don't we let let's have a look at this this is kind of hilarious um black skin strap in that the heat of the sun produces blackness of the integments is an opinion as all of the days are plenty buff on a search that climate may regarded as the chief cause of different colors of man and smithers of the opinion that from the poll to the equator we observe a graduation in the complexion nearly in proportion to the latitude of the country okay blooming back under the same impression devours to account for this black tinge by a chemical illustration somewhat curious he states that the approximate cause of dark skin is an abundance of carbon secreted by the skin with hydrogen precipitated and fixed by contact of the atmospheric oxygen our creals and the british inhabitants of india may have seen themselves particularly fortunate in not being subject to this chemical operation i i don't know even by 19th century chemical standards that makes no sense you have a darker skin because you secrete carbon and it reacts he's literally saying that they've burnt themselves black again we can kind of see it's here in the present days of boasted liberty it's more than probable that the benefits of the feudal system have been forgotten amid its abuses the system of servitude which prevailed in the earlier periods of our history was not that of unmitigated character that may be supposed no man in those days could prey upon society unless he were to war with it as an outlaw so basically if you are glorified slave labor for the local lord that's fine he and i'm not not convinced there's a lot of people who have have challenged whether the feudal system has been uh misremembered in some way and in the fabric of society as imperfect as it was the outline of rudiments of what ought to be were distinctly shown in some main parts now well now utterly effaced uh for anyone not remembering the feudal system was basically a no your place hierarchy kings barons lords and landowners and then workers who would basically be all locally governed and enthralled to those barons uh it is a very stratified system so moving between the barons and lords and and moving around the country was effectively impossible until the black death uh reduced the population so much that labor demands uh were really high and peasants could actually you know move around and get a better deal because they were in short supply for the work so the feudal system was kind of ended by that if one class were regarded in some respects as cattle they were at least taken care of oh it's very very good slave owners isn't it and while we're at it let's see the prophets of medical advisors it's a strange error to consider the prophets of medical attendance to be uncommonly extravagant because this great apparent prophet is frequently no more than the wages of labor okay so far so Karl Marx uh the skill of an apothecary is much nicer and more delicate matter than that of an artifice whatever and the trust is supposedly much greater importance his reward therefore ought to be proportionate to his skill and his trust for example the apparent extravagance of the charge of 18 pence for a draft file of medicine is obvious to many who do not reflect that the charge is in reality payment a professional skill the 18 pence may be fairly divided into two parts four pence for the medicine and 14 pence for the advice uh yeah so you basically he's defending massive medical markups on the ground that their doctors and they train a while fair enough but the medical markups he's talking about are huge basically it almost puts the american healthcare system to shame here in the 19th century you have to remember this is the uk this is pre-nhs this is even pre kind of the concept of medical insurance this is everything the worst medical system you can imagine for a society amplified up a little bit so this is uh this is common errors um a little bit well not a hundred percent accurate in terms of fact there's some screamers in here uh and also some weird kind of political motivation so he's clearly sat down and just scribbled his opinions down uh in a few ways we've got things on english gluttony uh carrying a dark lanth thorn the right of gleaning uh lots of laws and his opinions on laws it's kind of really weird to read through but fascinating insight into the mind of the 19th century