Research, Research, Research

Today I had to research some pretty bizarre things – Wookey Hole springs to mind instantly – one of which was the Queen’s Tower outside Imperial College.

This felt weird because whenever I looked at a piece of information I suffered the most powerful feeling of deja vu. I had already searched the MIMSY database, looking for an entry but there’s no Queen’s Tower anywhere. It was extremely odd and disconcerting.

Then, on the Tube, it struck me…I’d already researched it for this blog! Of course I used the same sources. Anyway, my version for the blog is here. My version for MIMSY, you can’t see but, apart from the format, it pretty much includes the same stuff.

At lunch time I popped up to the fifth floor – my favourite – for a poke around the medical paraphernalia. I came across this, which had me quite intrigued. Let’s see if you can figure out what it is – I’ll tell you at the end of this post.

From the Science Museum

It’s amazing that every time I go up to the fifth floor (and I think I’ve been up there about five times now) I manage to find something new. And it’s not just the thing above. I’d also missed the massive, full size birthing chair with the size 18 feet.

German birthing chair, favoured by midwives everywhere

Also called a parturition chair, they allowed a woman to give birth while sitting up. The wooden seat was removable and the feet were for her feet (obviously). They were quite prized items and would be handed down through a family. According to the card beside this beauty in the display case, even male midwives loved them. They just made life an awful lot easier for the people delivering the baby.

And then I spotted the eye models. These were made for teaching and were anatomically correct. It was a bit impossible to get a good enough photograph of most of them but then I spotted this one. What a little beauty.

You lookin' at me?

So I studied and researched and learned more than I needed to know about such diverse things as who used the world’s first ATM (it was Reg Varney from On The Buses…go figure) and how much the newest Witch of Wookey Hole is paid per year (£50,000 and all the spells she can cast), until it was time to leave for home.

Mirinda had been in Cambridge for a conference and I wasn’t sure that we’d meet for the usual train but, hurrah, we did. She was on a train from Euston as I approached from South Ken in a train. We met in the first carriage of the train home.

And what is that up there? Why, it’s George Washington’s denture, of course! It was made by John Greenwood who was George’s dentist. Apparently, Washington suffered from really, really bad teeth and had lost every single one of his own by 1796. Mind you, he only had another 3 years to live so I guess it wasn’t that bad…though it may explain why he chopped down the cherry tree. You accidentally bite down on a cherry pip and you’d know it if most of your teeth had gone and the rest were just waiting for the opportunity to escape.