Dear Pat,
I'm glad you liked this extract. As to your questions, concerning the first
one I have no idea about the earliest use for medicinal purposes. I can't
recall seeing anything that could be construed as mummy preparations in
writers like Celsus or Constantinus Africanus. But it wouldn't surprise me
if the Arabic physicians had got on to it. I would imagine its initial use
confined to the Mediterranean area; other places (e.g. Anglo-Saxon or
medieval England) might come to read about it but presumably the commodity
itself would be hard to obtain. Is there anybody else out there who could
throw light on this?
As to your second question about abortifacients, I see there has already
been a suggestion about the nature of "them pills", though it need not
follow that dear old T.S. himself knew what they were. He hardly strikes
one as a demotic person closely in contact with working-class culture, but
may merely have picked up an impression of what people did to get rid of an
unwanted potential economic burden, or a cause for shame if the child was
conceived out of wedlock. You might try looking at the writings of Dr Marie
Stopes, very influential, though infamous, at the time. Penguin Books in
1981 published a collection of the correspondence she had with a large
cross-section of the public on this and other topics: <Dear Dr Stopes: Sex
in the 1920s>, ed. Ruth Hall. Stopes wrote many other books too; she urged
the virtues of contraception but was rather against abortion.
Personally I think <The Waste Land> cannot be properly appreciated if not
viewed against the background of the work of people like Stopes, Havelock
Ellis etc. and the post-Great War discussions about eugenics. Anyway, I
don't want to get carried away into the realms of Lit. Crit. in a
discussion group like this!
I hope this proves of interest.
Cheers,
Brian Donaghey
Brian Donaghey - Dept of English Language & Linguistics - Ext 6291
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