“The Dry Gripes or the Comforts of a Hot Summer”, by The Trustees of the British Museum, HERE.
Dry Gripes, the Cholica
Pictonum, or the Caribee Colick...
An excerpt from An Essay on the West-India Dry-Gripes, etc., by Thomas Cadwalader, page 1.
The
“dry gripes” was a notorious malady which was epidemic during the 18th
and early 19th centuries, in both England and in North America. The primary symptoms of the “dry gripes”
were severe abdominal cramps or colic, without any associated dysentery, and
extreme fatigue and apathy, sometimes with a weakness of the hands and feet. Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Benjamin
Vaughan, written on July 31, 1786, wrote of it and called it a “Dry-Belly
ache”1. These symptoms of
severe and griping abdominal pain have been written about since the times of
the Greeks and the Romans, when they were called “Saturnism”, and
depending upon the time and where they occurred, were known by different names,
such as “Colica Pictonum” (Colic of Poitou), “Caribee Colick”, “Devonshire
Colic”, or the “London gout”, to list a few.2 The one thing that all of them have in
common, is that the severe abdominal pains that they are describing are
symptoms of lead poisoning, and these symptoms were generally followed by even
more severe symptoms of lead poisoning.
Lead poisoning...
An excerpt from An Essay on the West-India Dry-Gripes, etc., by Thomas Cadwalader, page 28.
Today
lead poisoning is known as “plumbism”, and unfortunately, lead poisoning
and its effects have been with humankind for millennia, as lead was one of the
first metals to be refined and used by early societies. Lead has been used since ancient times for plumbing,
for lining storage containers, for glazing pots and making paints, for making
pewter dishes and utensils, for making distilling equipment and even for
sweetening3 or “fortifying” wine! Lead can enter the body in the foods you eat
or drink, dissolved in water, milk, wine, vinegar, cider, alcohol, or acid
foods that have been stored in leaden containing vessels. It can also be absorbed through the skin or
breathed in as dust.
Today,
modern Americans, usually have less than 20 ppm of lead in their bones, which
is an indication of lifetime exposure, and levels below 50 ppm do not cause symptoms
of lead poisoning. The wealthy during
the 18th and early 19th century usually had the highest
exposure to lead, since they were the only ones who could afford to buy
expensive wines and to eat and drink from pewter dishes, pewter being an alloy
made by mixing lead and tin. This is evidenced
by Colonel Joseph Bridger, who died in 1686 and who, while he was alive, was
one of the ten wealthiest of Virginia colonists, he had a bone lead level of
149 ppm, when his remains were tested in 2007!4
But
everyone had some exposure to lead during the 18th and early 19th
centuries, since all but the very poorest of people, who ate out of wooden
bowls, ate and drank from lead-glazed pottery.
Lead
poisoning was also a disease of the workplace effecting miners as “miner’s
colic”, painters as “painter’s pallor”, and potters as “potter’s disease”,
and with the beginnings of industrialization more people were afflicted. Even Benjamin Franklin experienced symptoms
of lead poisoning, when in 1724, he worked in London as a compositor at the printing
house of a Mr. Palmer. He noted that at
that time he experienced the “Dangles”, which is a palsy or weakness of
the wrists or ankles, and which causes the hands and feet to drop and
dangle. This was frequently an
additional symptom of the “dry gripes”, which was experienced on top of
the belly pain: in Benjamin Franklin’s particular case it appears that it was
caused by his handling of lead type.
.svg.png)
“Symptoms of lead poisoning”, by Mikael Häggström, from Wikimedia, HERE.
So,
if everyone was exposed to some lead during the 18th and early 19th
centuries, just what caused the epidemic of “Dry-Belly aches” in the
Americas and Great Britain during this time?
In a word, alcohol, and the brewing and distilling process by which it
was made.
“...against New England Rum,
that it poison’d their People giving them the Dry-Belly ach, with a Loss of the
Use of their Limbs. The Distilleries being examin’d on the Occasion, it was
found that several of them used leaden Still-heads and Worms, and the
Physicians were of Opinion that the Mischief was occasiond by that Use of Lead”, Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Benjamin
Vaughan, July 31, 1786.
On
September 3, 1723, the Massachusetts Colony passed “An Act for Preventing
abuses in Distilling of Rum and Other Strong Liquors with Leaden heads or Pipes”,
in response to the epidemic of “dry gripes”. Apparently, the Massachusetts rum distillers
prior to this act, used pewter or lead heads as covers and pewter or lead worms
or pipes, to produce rum from molasses and the lead from the distilling
equipment ended up in the rum. Maybe
this explains why it was known as “kill-devil” rum in England at this
time!5.
“Moonshine still recently confiscated by the Internal Revenue Bureau photographed at the Treasury Department”, 1921, annotated by the Author, from Wikimedia, HERE.
Additionally,
England signed the Treaty of Methuen in 1703 which allowed for the importation
and sale of “fortified” wines, from Portugal, Spain, the Canary, and the
Madeira Islands. Fortified wines, such
as port or sherry, were often made with a brandy that was distilled using pewter
or lead containing equipment, and it might have been stored and shipped in
wooden
barrels with lead-lined lids or lead fastenings6. In fact, Milton Lessler reported that English
port bottled between 1770 and 1830 contained up to 1900 mg of lead per liter.
Hard
cider was also a dangerous drink, as the apples were squeezed with lead pounds
and presses and then the cider was left to ferment and harden in lead-glazed
earthenware pots, from which it rapidly became infused with lead. This was a particular problem in Devonshire
during the harvest, where the cause of the “Devonshire Colic” was
discovered in 1767 by physician Sir George Baker, to be lead in the cider.
All
three of these alcoholic drinks with the beginning of industrialization and
mass production became cheaper and more easily available during the 18th
and early 18th centuries, and all would have contained enough lead to
a cause of belly ache, the “dry gripes” and lead poisoning.
Using a poisonous plant to
cure a poisoning...
A painting by Charles Frederick Millspaugh, 1887, in American Medicinal Plants, from Wikimedia, HERE.
Medical
science being what it was, in the 18th and early 19th
centuries, people resorted to some rather extreme measures to relieve the pains
in their bellies caused by the “dry gripes”.
An excerpt from Medicine in Virginia in the eighteenth century, by Wyndham B. Blanton, M.D., page 216.
One remedy was made from mayapples, podophyllum
peltatum, is a plant that is
almost entirely toxic, all parts of the plant, except the ripened berry contain
podophyllotoxin, an alkaloid, which is highly poisonous! For more on Mayapples read “Mayapples...They
Aren’t Really Apples ©”, HERE. During the 18th and early 19th
century, in North America, the roots of this plant were used to make a cathartic
medical tonic to purge a patient and relieve constipation and to induce
vomiting.
An excerpt from The Family Nurse, by Lydia Child, page 105
So
next time you enjoy an alcoholic drink, be glad that there is no lead in it and
that you don’t get to enjoy a mayapple purgative as a chaser.
Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Could You Survive: There
is 30 Minutes of Daylight Remaining ©”, where we will talk about what the
survival experts recommend that you do when you realize you are “misplaced” and
there is only thirty minutes of daylight remaining.
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE. Don’t forget to follow me on both The
Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE,
and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free
to leave a comment on either site. I
announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at
bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.
That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1 From
“Benjamin Franklin Experienced Symptoms of Lead Poisoning from Typesetting
During his Apprenticeship”, by Jeremy M. Norman.
2 From
“Lead and Lead Poisoning from Antiquity to Modern Times”, by Milton A. Lessler,
table 3, page 80
3 In
Roman and Greek times , wine was sweetened or fortified by adding “sapa”,
an artificial sweetener, which is a syrup that is prepared from freshly pressed
grape juice, or “must”, (from the Latin phrase “vinum mustum”,
meaning ‘young wine’), that has been boiled and concentrated in a lead
container. Wine that had “sapa”
added to it resisted spoiling and tasted sweeter due to the lead acetate (Pb(CH3COO)2),
also known as “sugar of lead”, a salt that strangely enough has a sweet flavor.
4 Skeletal
lead content reflects lifetime exposure. Lead levels in bone are expressed as parts per
million (ppm) -- micrograms of lead per gram of bone ash, and a very high lead
content in 17th, 18th or early19th -century bone
indicates a person of means.
From
“Pottery, Pewter and Poison”, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian
Institution.
5
From “Lead and Lead Poisoning from Antiquity to Modern Times”, by Milton A.
Lessler, table 3, page 80
6
From “Sack and sugar, and the aetiology of gout in England between 1650 and
1900”, by Christopher Rivard, et al.
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.svg){kind=link}
_(17534042604).jpg){kind=link}
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