[ SECRET POST #3318 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3318 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 026 secrets from Secret Submission Post #474.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

05. http://i.imgur.com/FQHBGJ5.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

I think you're exaggerating how easy it is to find accurate and easy-to-understand information on 19th century medicine. I mean, I get very irritated by people who don't do their research; but I don't think that your given examples are that outrageous.

[sarillia]

I was thinking the same thing. It's a pet peeve of mine when people talk of others not bothering to spend [absurdly short amount of time] Googling. Maybe it is that easy to find the answers when you already know them and know the proper search terms and sources but that doesn't make it that easy for people starting from nothing.

[(Anonymous)]

Proper search terms and sources? You can google "how did the victorians treat a fever" and get some basic resources. That's well within most peoples' capabilities. With internet access, research has never been easier.

[(Anonymous)]

(SA) I find, these days, that it only really annoys me if the writer turns whatever incorrect thing they're writing about into a running joke.
Like, there was one Harry Potter fic I read many years ago, where present-day characters were sent back to the time of the founders, and there was a running joke about one of the present day characters not knowing which was the right fork to use at the dinner table. And... they were about five, six hundred years too early for there to be ANY forks at the dinner table? Let alone multiple?
And in another one, a Japanese character is at Hogwarts for crossover reasons, and is really depressed about the lack of rice. Well, I don't know what the writer thinks British people eat, but rice has been a staple of boarding school meals in the UK for a pretty long time. Like, probably at least a century.

...wow, that turned out a lot longer than I meant. TL;DR - I, like OP, can get very het up about people not doing their dang research; but generally only if they keep coming back to wave their ignorance in my face and expecting me to laugh. Otherwise I shrug and live with it.

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.victorianlondon.org/cassells/cassells-17.htm
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/h/health-and-medicine-in-the-19th-century/
http://historicaltidbits.blogspot.com/2010/02/scarlet-fever.html
http://imaginationlane.net/blog/victorian-edwardian-cold-and-flu-remedies/
http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/science/addiction/addiction2.html

It took me longer to cut and paste those URLs than it did to find them via Google. But that's kind of beside the point. You don't have to be an expert on Victorian medicine to realize that they wouldn't be spouting the exact same (almost clichéd, really!) advice you hear in the 21st century.

[sarillia]

But how long would it take you to actually read all of it, make sure the sources are trustworthy, and learn the information well enough to write it in the context of a story and maybe dialogue rather than sounding like a history book? I'm betting it's significantly longer than five minutes.

[(Anonymous)]

"Researching is HARD and takes too long!"
"Here are a bunch of resources I found using Google that took less than a minute."
"But reading all of that would take too much time. Like, way more than five minutes! And writng is HARD."
"Not if you actually look at the helpful index at the top of the page that clearly marks out the relevant section. Then you could practically cut and paste the pertinent info into your fic."

*crickets*

"Um... Well maybe you can't trust the information you found so easily, so HA!"

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

[(Anonymous)]

There's accurate and there's "good enough for fanfic writing", IMO. You don't have to do much in depth research to come up with something better than the OP's example, which sounds too modern even to my inexpert eyes. I dislike it when people who write historical fiction don't at least try</I for some level of accuracy. I don't expect people to nail every single thing, but that particular era of Victorian London is extremely well documented.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah it takes a little more than five minutes to find this kind of information, especially since technology was developing rapidly in all industries around that time period. Honestly, you'd have to look at several fields of medicine to get it right too, depending on the characters. So unless this is like, your major or something it isn't really all that intuitive and would take time just to research the right terms.

[(Anonymous)]

It might be tricky for other characters, but it's not at all difficult for Watson. We know what time period he was operating in, and his precise location and a few details about his background. Someone else in this thread has already googled about Victorian medicines and come up with a bunch of info, which isn't surprising because Victorian era London is something historians know quite a lot about. The topic has been researched and written about extensively, perhaps more so than many other time periods, in fact.

[tweedisgood]

The importance of fluids in fevers was known then, actually (genuine historian here). I agree about the "juice" though, as fruit juice wasn't widely produced or much used outside explicitly vegetarian circles.

I did have to gently point out to a person whose ACD Holmesfic I was beta-ing that they didn't have antibiotics in the 1890s....

[skeletal_history]

I like your choice of typeface, anon, and the overall design of your secret.

[(Anonymous)]

I loved that the Grenada series remembered that Watson is a doctor, even though they didn't go into a lot of detail with him doing doctor-y things. I particularly loved that on that show he did part-time medical/forensics consultation for Scotland Yard while Holmes was "dead."

[diet_poison]

I'm actually kind of surprised if it turns out to be true that Victorian-era people had no idea that drinking lots of water helps one to not be sick.

[(Anonymous)]

Sometimes the water was the problem!

[diet_poison]

Oh yeah, true!

[(Anonymous)]

To be fair, sometimes the water and unclean water was the culprit, such as outbreaks of cholera. It's not that they had no idea that liquids were helpful, but they usually recommended tea, various broths, and gruel, which had plenty of water in it.

[diet_poison]

This is true. Good point. And broth was and is often a good option for people who are sick.

[(Anonymous)]

It isn't true, OP has assumed that they knew nothing about anything that we know now, which is a very common trope in itself. Clean water was hard to come by though. Small beer (very weak ale) would probably have been the resort.

[(Anonymous)]

The secret didn't say that Victorians had no idea drinking liquids was helpful, just that Watson would not phrase his medical advice that way, which is true. Also, you seem to be thinking of the Middle Ages. The Sherlock Holmes stories were set in Victorian times, and small beer or ale was not necessarily recommended to treat an illness.

As for beverages in general, Victorians did drink beer, but they had plenty of alcoholic options including gin, port, wine, sherry, brandy, alcoholic punches at parties, etc. Then there was tea, coffee and chocolate.

[solticisekf]

I want my Watson to know what he's doing and to be able to treat (and diagnose) all illnesses and perform surgery and be an excelent shooter. I don't want to read about how he prescribed arsenic to Mrs Hudson to treat her insomnia or something. I'm all for modern medicine Watson and screw realism.

[(Anonymous)]

As far as I recall, ACD never describes Watson as prescribing arsenic for anyone. He was a good doctor who didn't go in for quack medicine. You don't need to dispense with realism entirely in order for Watson to be a competent professional. I would not want to read a fic crammed with anachronisms. There's no need for it.

[(Anonymous)]

This whole thread has been seriously WTF for me, especially the people who assure themselves that this sort of research is super hard, but who clearly haven't attempted even a quick Google, or they'd realize that no, it's really not. If you don't want to research, don't research. But don't make silly excuses for why you can't possibly do it.

[(Anonymous)]

The WTF is the OP here assuming that Victorian medicine was utterly ignorant about hydration. It wasn't. Basic care was arguably better for some things, as they didn't, because couldn't, just reach straight for the antibiotics. Not everyone died for lack of 'modern medicine'