Among the scientific news of the week:
- Merry hallucination: who little people come to
- Alchemy of sound: what is the secret of ancient violins
- The mummy that “survived” the death of Pompeii
Fairy tale or hallucination? Where did Jonathan Swift's midgets come from?
If you suddenly began to see little funny people around you, do not despair (and do not ask yourself too much), because you are not the only one who sees them. This is a normal hallucination.
Back in 1909, the French psychiatrist Raoul Leroy published a work in which he described a curious mental disorder in which people dreamed of Lilliputians (Leroy deliberately used the name coined for little people by Jonathan Swift). The psychologist himself had a chance to see these little people, whom he describes as tiny, multi-colored, very mobile and not devoid of pleasantness.
“In my hallucinations, I saw tiny men, women and children, gnomes and devils, often dressed as clowns, harlequins, dancers, soldiers, peasants and even Chinese officials,” Leroy described his experience.
Nowadays, the researcher Jan Dirk Blom decided to bring the basis for this psychological phenomenon, who carefully studied 226 documented evidence of observation of Lilliputians.
In most cases, people saw many, from several thousand to (in two specific cases) several million people, and, as a rule, the midgets behaved very mobile, jumping on chairs, dancing on tables, marching or performing acrobatic stunts.
Blom calls this reality-oriented projected hallucinations because they took place in three-dimensional space in a real environment and in full observance of the laws of physics.
The growth of the creatures ranged from one millimeter to one meter (on average 23 centimeters, if you need to know the average temperature in the ward), but sometimes real giants appeared in visions, like from the country of giants Brobdingnag (again, just like Swift, which suggests that the author himself could have had similar hallucinations).
Hallucinations also varied greatly in duration: from a few seconds to visions that have been visited by people for decades. In addition, Blom refuted Leroy's theory that such hallucinations are always pleasant to watch. According to his calculations, it turns out that only 36% of patients found them entertaining, funny and peaceful, while 46% called the visions frightening, threatening and tiring (the remaining 8% found it difficult to accurately define their feelings).
According to Blom's calculations, this kind of hallucinations are observed in 30-80 people for every 10 thousand patients in psychiatric clinics, which makes this phenomenon extremely rare for the general public, which is not registered in psychiatric dispensaries.
In addition, this deviation does not pose a real danger both for the patient himself and for those around him, since little people cannot escape from the hallucination into the real world.
- “I have been hiding for ten years that I have a psychosis.” The story of a man with hallucinations
The secret of Stradivari and Guarneri unraveled?
A real Stradivarius violin is the dream of any professional violinist (unless, of course, he prefers Guarneri)
Ancient violins, created by the masters of the Cremona school Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri in the 17th-18th centuries, are considered the best in the world, and so far no one has succeeded in surpassing the masters. It seemed that these violins had been thoroughly studied: the shape, thickness of the decks, the composition of the wood, lacquer, glue, but the secret of the unique sound still remained unrevealed.
And now American scientists believe they have made a breakthrough. They focused on the top, which is primarily responsible for the acoustics of the instrument.
“A new study found that Guarneri and Stradivari had their own unique wood processing method, which they attached great importance to,” says one of the study authors (published in Angewandte Chemie), University of Texas Agriculture and Mechanics biochemist Joseph Nagiwari. “These craftsmen must have realized in the process that the special salts with which they treated the wood gave it additional mechanical strength and acoustic advantages.”
Nagiwari and his colleagues have long been developing the theory that it is chemical processing that distinguishes Guarneri and Stradivari violins for the better from the works of other masters of Cremona, not to mention violins from other regions and countries. However, this time they tried to find out exactly what composition the masters had used for their violins.
Using a combined method of analysis, including spectroscopy, the team of scientists came to the conclusion that, among other things, the secret composition included borax (sodium tetraborate), zinc and copper sulfates, alum and lime water.
Together, these substances (and they were known and used since ancient times) were designed not only to better preserve wood, but also to give instruments a special sound.
The wood that was used to make the tool was covered with this composition not only from the outside, but also thoroughly soaked in it beforehand. There were other reasons for that.
“The presence of these substances suggests that violin makers worked closely with local pharmacists,” says Nagiwari.
Do not forget that in those days patents and copyright protection did not exist, and the Cremona craftsmen had to carefully hide their secrets, so they did everything so that it was impossible even by eye to determine what exactly the instrument was processed. That is why, most likely, the secrets of the old masters, who did not want to share them with others, were lost.
Today in the world there are only a few hundred violins created by these two kings of the violin business, they cost fabulous money, and even so, first-class musicians sometimes wait for years for their chance to acquire such a violin.
And although the Nagiwari team slightly lifted the veil of secrecy, there is no question of fully recreating the ancient technique of processing instruments.
- “Lady Blunt” and “Messiah” meet in Oxford
- Are “Stradivari trees” growing in Switzerland?
- Stradivarius violin sold in London for $ 15.9 million
Mummy surviving the death of Pompeii
Actually, to survive a catastrophe of a universal scale – and this is how the inhabitants of the ancient world imagined the eruption of Vesuvius, it was only possible if by that time, how to put it mildly, were already dead.
And for a dead man, this former resident of Pompeii, who died at the age of about 60 shortly before the eruption, is perfectly preserved: in the pictures taken by archaeologists, you can see a short haircut and even an ear.
The partially mummified body was found in a recently discovered crypt in the Porto Sarno necropolis, located near the city walls. Prominent residents of the city were buried there, including Mark Venus Secundius. Archaeologists found out some details of his life from the previously discovered “card index” (records on tablets) made by the Pompeian banker Cecilius Giocondius.
According to these records, Mark managed to be a slave in the temple of Venus, by the end of his life he received freedom and even the rank of a minister of a prestigious cult that glorified the memory of Emperor Augustus. So the former slave became a very wealthy and respected priest who conducted services in Latin and Greek.
Mark also took part in the so-called Augustalia – celebrations in honor of Octavian Augustus, which have been held since the victory over the army of Antony and included sports and musical competitions, and later the performances of Greek comedies.
By the way, according to the director of the museum in Pompeii, the inscriptions on the priest's sarcophagus became the first direct indication that the Greek language was used in theaters in the cities of the empire.
“The fact that performances in Pompeii were performed in Greek testifies to the vibrant and open cultural climate that reigned in the city,” emphasizes Gabriel Zuchtrigel.
Despite the many interesting details that archaeologists were able to learn about the life of Mark himself and his fellow countrymen, they still have many questions. And one of the main reasons is why the priest was buried, and not cremated, as was customary in those days in the Roman Empire.
Moreover, two urns with ashes were found in his tomb, one of which was marked with the name Novia Amabilis (The Good Wife). In addition, scientists still do not know whether they applied some kind of embalming technique to him, or whether the body was preserved so well due to natural reasons, including the fact that soon after Mark's funeral, the entire city was buried under a thick layer of volcanic ash. …
- An antique chariot was found during excavations in Pompeii. It is perfectly preserved
- A slave and his master. In Pompeii, the bodies of two victims of the eruption of Vesuvius were found
- A terrible find in Pompeii: a man who fled from the eruption was overtaken by a huge stone
