Chapter 12: Summary
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Chapter 12: Summary |
Section one of this book, "Of What are Escagraphs Made" has been at pains to point out that escagraphs are made of written language and food, any kind. It goes on to name the varieties of escagraphs which exist today. It named three - the form given birth when sugar dominated our attention: the Sweet; the escagraph which owes its existence to bread and meat identification: the Lawful, and the sort that commemorates: Moveable Type, alphabet pasta.
One can not overlook the numbers of times in Chapters One and Two that food and writing are given the status of, what ancient practitioners would call, magic. The Venerable Bede's[1] assessment of Irish writing should slow us down in our assessment of writing's capacity to capture or create speech. He describes a cure for snakebite that makes use of Irish text, "...the scrapping of leaves of books that were brought out of Ireland, being put into water, and given them to drink, have immediately expelled the spreading poison, and assuaged the swelling."
Writing is not alone in its ability to carry human thought. Food has enormous potential as a carrier of meaning as the French semiotician, Roland Barthes, put it, food is "...a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations and behavior..." [2] - and by saying "system of communication," he is referencing a carefully worked out protocol.
Powerful words, sugar and gems stood ready to be used as healing agents in the 13th through the 15th centuries and sympathetic reasoning dominated medical practice. Because of their cost and rarity, pulverized gems were first brought to the sickroom in the hopes that they would have equal healing power (sympathetic reasoning) but, when the "diamond dust" he was drinking or having rubbed on him had no effect, the concoction was augmented with another costly agent, sugar. Sugar was assumed, again sympathetic reasoning, to have healing power due to its costliness, like gem dust. The addition of sugar not only completely failed but in some cases was deleterious. So yet another ingredient was tried, this one not because of its cost, it was free, but because it carried an aura of magic with it: language. For, could not the scribe repeat verbatim the text which the Monarch or Pharaoh had just spoken? We can follow the magical and healing qualities of language as they came to be used as amulets and charms.
In Jewish Magic and Superstition, [3] Trachtenberg writes that medieval Jews were aware of the need to bring written words into contact with the body when some form of healing was desired, and also notes that the words were as often as not swallowed by the patients.
In The Infancy of Medicine, McKenzie[4] tells us that it was of little importance how these charms were applied to the body. They could be worn around the neck or rubbed on the body or swallowed. He goes on to note that "...shrewd Arabian physicians, with admirable wisdom, used to write their prescriptions with a purgative ink." It was not rare for the written form of the prescription to be swallowed along with the prepared potion.
Because of a variety of sympathetic reasoning, we see the reason why sugar, consumed language, and gems (the impetus for sympathetic reasoning) came together. It was for the benefit of healing. Had we been more alert earlier, we would have suspected such a condition when the the Papyrus Ebers[5] drew so strong a parallel between scribes and healing. Now we nod in appreciation as a boars head is marched through the hall and we watch, knowingly, as 15th century chronicler Fabian[6], tells us about the sotelties gracing the banquet hall at the coronation feast of the seven year old Henry VI in 1429, and we even have a better, though far from complete understanding of the birthday cake.
This escagraph, the sweet one, has more varieties than the other two; some examples are the trademark/name (the most often encountered) - candy bars and cookies bearing the maker's or the product's name; shaped, for example, those escagraphs that are shaped in a recognizable form - conversation hearts and sotelties.
Of the three, the next two escagraphs are without sugar indicating a somewhat more stolid, no-nonsense kind of stage upon which to play out its role. Of the three, the next we shall examine is the one with law as its progenitor. There are two varieties - one which no longer exists, identification of bread and one which assures the purchaser that the meat has met with Government standards.
As long ago as the 13th century, English bakers, Paul Fahrenkoph[7] of the US Patent and Trademark office tells us, were required to put a mark (either their initials or some other registered mark) on the bread they baked and distributed for the purpose of identifying it as theirs in the event that is was light in weight or contaminated with unhealthful ingredients. Panscaar tells us that the practice of marking was discontinued in favor of branding by the end of the 19th century.
"The meat inspection act was a United States federal law that authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to order meat inspections and condemn any meat found unfit for human consumption."[8]. While a carcass must bear evidence ( a blue/purple stamp ) that it has passed US Department of Agriculture (USDA) standards, it is optionally graded to "Prime," "Select," or "Choice." Sometimes one can see, while carving your steak, remnants of the original approval stamp and it is to those letters and words on the fatty edge of the steak that I draw your attention. They are lawful escagraphs. And, we eat them without even looking at the fork. "It was not rare for the written form of the prescription to be swallowed along with the prepared potion," McKenzie[4] .
Reasoning is the cognitive process of looking for beliefs that underlay, conclusions, actions or feelings. To arrive at a reason sympathetically, as was the case with the medical example we are about to examine, was to assume that one descriptive marker, in the meaning frame for that word, was similar to another and would exert a similar effect. In more direct terms, to bring the power of diamonds to an ailment overlooks the fact that what it is that makes the diamond powerful is not captured in the diamond's molecular structure and will consequently have no molecular effect on the disease - but, that aside if the power of diamonds was good for a disease (and, it clearly was not - the power of lye to eat out the stomach lining and the power of cake to make hunger go away both have the quality of power but to different effect) then anything having a power similar to that of sugar or pulverized gems, will be appropriate. Sugar, we know from Mintz[9] and from pipe role records of Henry II was enormously influential.
Is this a case where similarity ( iconism ) has played us false? Do lye and cake both have power? The answer is yes but they are different enough powers that the careful user will regard the two as different kinds of power, and so, not regard them as icons of one another at all.
Nevertheless, the pharmacists of the late 12th and 13th through the 17th centuries used pulverized gems (for their perceived power) and added sugar and language to also drink down as part of the mixture. Adding language to the mix was more sympathetic reasoning based on the kind of pronouncements as the one we looked at from Bede. Consuming the prescription as well as what it prescribed soon became commonplace enough for McKenzie and Tractenberg to record it. It was only a matter of time before other disciplines than medicine were using medical healing formulas as curative elixirs.
And that is why, I will argue, we make a habit of swallowing language, especially at a friend's birthday party.
Finally, we shall look at moveable type escagraphs, in its primary form. Alphabet pasta was introduced at the end of the nineteenth century, when the country was endeavoring to further reduce its illiteracy rate for citizens under 14. There was a drop in illiteracy from 20% to 10,5% Campbell's soup - so I am told by the rival Ravarino & Freschi co - put alphabet soup on the market at that auspicious time.
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