SC - Reverse documentation (Was Cucumbers and the SCA)

[Jenne Heise]

> It's just better all around to research your sources first. Primary if you 
> can get them, secondary (with suspicion) if you must. Look first.

ARGH. This is another of my pet peeves. Primary sources must be looked at with JUST as
much suspicion as secondary sources-- more, because, if we looked at the writers of 95%
of our primary sources using the usual criteria for a reliable source, we'd just throw up
our hands in disgust. Remember Julius Caesar and the Celts? Remember the statements made
about life among the Irish? Thomas Hill's pest control recipes didn't work-- even when
they were invented by the Romans. We have no idea whether Digby ever tried a good number
of the things he suggests in _Delights for Ladies_. 

The case that sticks in my mind is the writer who said, basically, that none of the other
writers of antiquity that talked about obstetrics mentioned most of the superstitious
things that Pliny talks about as commonplace in obstetrics 'among the common people', so
the standard of care must have been wildly different for the wealthy and the poor in
ancient Rome. Pliny went around collecting all the superstitious nonsense he could get
his hands on-- some of it was probably made up just for him! It doesn't follow that the
superstitious behavior that he describes was commonplace among the poor in Rome-- after
all, he was an upperclass man, and he wouldn't know the difference...
 -- 
Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at mail.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
"He cooks eternally, imperturbably, suspended in the chaos of which the 
Master interprets the meaning..." Kipling, "With the Night Mail"