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Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Ask The Past

Ask the Past gathers advice from the past and applies it obligingly to the questions of the present. Edited by Elizabeth Archibald, who has a Ph.D. in History from Yale University. Her research focuses on medieval education and the history of the book. Some advice offered are: How to impress girls at a Dance - 1530, how to change a diaper - 1612, how to wash your hair - 12th century, how to compliment a lady - 1663.
Here's an example from The Distaff Gospels (Les Evangiles des Quenouilles), an Old French fifteenth-century collection of popular beliefs:
How to keep your cat, c. 1470. If you have a good cat and you don't want to lose it, you must rub its nose and four legs with butter for three days, and it will never leave the house.

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