Post mortem: Essays, historical and medicalMacLaurin, C. (Charles)
History
Post mortem: Essays, historical and medical
MacLaurin, C. (Charles)
Biography; Pathology
[3] To pause for a moment, probably the element of human sacrifice may
have entered into the hair-cutting episode, as it did in the action of
the women of Carthage during the last siege; and possibly there may
have been some shamefaced reserve in the attributing of the fashion
to the example of an egregious “Buster Brown” of New York. To my own
memory the fashion was first called either the “Joan of Arc” cut or
the “Munitioner” cut. The “Buster Brown” cut came later, and seems to
have been seized upon by the English as an excuse against showing deep
feelings. It is pleasanter to think that Joan of Arc was really at that
time in the hearts of English women; the cult of semi-worship that
so strengthened the Allies was really worship of the qualities which
mankind has read into the memory of the little maid of Domremy. As she
raised the siege of Orleans, so her memory encouraged the Allies to
persevere through years of agony nearly as great as her own.
[4] We can see from the statues of Jeanne d’Arc how near akin are the
sex-complex and the art-complex. I do not refer to the innumerable
pretty statues scattered throughout the French churches, which are
merely ideal portraits of sainted women. The magnificent equestrian
statue by Fremiet in the Place des Pyramides, Paris, is a portrait of a
plump little French peasant-girl trying to look fierce, and succeeding
about as well as Audrey might if she tried to play Lady Macbeth. But it
is essentially female, and, in my idea of Jeanne d’Arc, is therefore
wrong, for we really know nothing about her beyond what we read in
the trials. Even more female is the statue of her by Romaneill in the
Melbourne Art Gallery, in which the artist has actually depicted the
corslet as curved to accommodate moderate-sized breasts, a thing which
would probably have shocked Jeanne herself, for she wished to make
herself sexually unattractive. The face, though common, is probably
accurate in that it depicts her expression as saintly. No doubt when
she was listening to her Voices she did look dreamy and ethereal. But
we have no authority for believing that she was in the slightest degree
beautiful--if anything, she was probably rather the reverse.
[5] I hate to suggest that these specks before the eyes may have been
the result of toxæmia from the intestine induced by confinement and
terror.
[6] Grotius was the Dutchman who could write Latin verse at the age of
nine, and had to leave Holland because of fierce theological strife. He
began the study for his great work on the laws of war in prison, from
which he escaped by the remarkable loyalty of his wife. Like so many
romantic episodes, fiction is here anticipated by fact.
[7] Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell, _The Cloister Life of Charles V_.
[8] It has been thought that she suffered from
“phantom-tumour”--“pseudo-cyesis” in medical language.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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