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Monday 29 August 2016

Nerves

The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates prescribed celery as a nerve soother.

The Native Americans believed the cranberry had special powers to calm the nerves.


Frederick the Great was in the habit of having his veins opened in battle as it soothed his nerves.

William Gladstone used laudanum to settle his nerves before parliamentary speeches and once glugged down so much he was forced to go to the spa at Baden Baden to recuperate.

Sigmund Freud's 1895 Studies In Hysteria with Josef Breuer was a landmark in the history of Psychology as it revealed the existence of the unconscious mind, (the root of nervous illness.)

Britain's first escalator was installed in Harrods' London store in 1898. Bill Lancaster in The Department Store: a Social History noted, "customers unnerved by the experience were revived by shopmen dispensing free smelling salts and cognac."

The title of Tennessee William's play Cat On a Hot Tin Roof comes from the American expression "as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof". The "cat" is Maggie, Brick's wife, who had frayed nerves.

During the scandal when Monica Lewinsky was accused of having sexual relations with Bill Clinton, the young White House intern learned to knit to calm her nerves

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