I Might
Likewise Add, The Delicate Custom Of Taking Vomits At Each
Other's Houses, When They Were Invited To Dinner, Or Supper, That
They Might Prepare Their Stomachs For Gormandizing; A Beastly
Proof Of Their Nastiness As Well As Gluttony.
Horace, in his
description of the banquet of Nasiedenus, says, when the canopy,
under which they sat, fell down, it brought along with it as much
dirt as is raised by a hard gale of wind in dry weather.
- Trahentia pulveris atri,
Quantum non aquilo Campanis excitat agris.
Such clouds of dust revolving in its train
As Boreas whirls along the level plain.
I might observe, that the streets were often encumbered with the
putrefying carcasses of criminals, who had been dragged through
them by the heels, and precipitated from the Scalae Gemoniae, or
Tarpeian rock, before they were thrown into the Tyber, which was
the general receptacle of the cloaca maxima and all the filth of
Rome: besides, the bodies of all those who made away with
themselves, without sufficient cause; of such as were condemned
for sacrilege, or killed by thunder, were left unburned and
unburied, to rot above ground.
I believe the moderns retain more of the customs of antient
Romans, than is generally imagined. When I first saw the infants
at the enfans trouves in Paris, so swathed with bandages, that
the very sight of them made my eyes water, I little dreamed, that
the prescription of the antients could be pleaded for this
custom, equally shocking and absurd: but in the Capitol at Rome,
I met with the antique statue of a child swaddled exactly in the
same manner; rolled up like an Aegyptian mummy from the feet. The
circulation of the blood, in such a case, must be obstructed on
the whole surface of the body; and nothing be at liberty but the
head, which is the only part of the child that ought to be
confined. Is it not surprising that common sense should not point
out, even to the most ignorant, that those accursed bandages must
heat the tender infant into a fever; must hinder the action of
the muscles, and the play of the joints, so necessary to health
and nutrition; and that while the refluent blood is obstructed in
the veins, which run on the surface of the body, the arteries,
which lie deep, without the reach of compression, are continually
pouring their contents into the head, where the blood meets with
no resistance? The vessels of the brain are naturally lax, and
the very sutures of the skull are yet unclosed. What are the
consequences of this cruel swaddling? the limbs are wasted; the
joints grow rickety; the brain is compressed, and a
hydrocephalus, with a great head and sore eyes, ensues. I take
this abominable practice to be one great cause of the bandy legs,
diminutive bodies, and large heads, so frequent in the south of
France, and in Italy.
I was no less surprised to find the modern fashion of curling the
hair, borrowed in a great measure from the coxcombs and coquettes
of antiquity.
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