HTSS: Day Four, Corporal Cure-all

9:18pm "Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb."

It's still hot--damned hot!--and I've been sitting outside on the porch hoping for a breeze while my husband has a cigarette. I'm feeling much better than I was just a week ago, so it's interesting still to be tempted to light up. Perhaps I need a more potent remedy. Maybe a cup of tea? Or maybe a little flogging?

"Many curious anecdotes have been from time to time related of the medicinal powers of the Rod. Flagellation as a remedy was supposed by some physicians to re-animate the torpid conditions of the capillary or cutaneous vessels, to increase muscular energy, promote absorption, and favour the necessary secretions of our nature. But an eccentric writer goes much further than this, and regards the Rod much in the same light as Dr. Sangrado looked upon cold water and blood letting: according to him there is nothing like the Rod; it is a universal specific--it stirs up the stagnating juices, it dissolves the precipitating salts, it purifies the coagulating humours of the body, it clears the brain, purges the belly, circulates the blood, braces the nerves; in short, there is nothing which the Rod will not accomplish when judiciously applied!"*

I could do with having my juices stirred up and my salts dissolved, the nicotine purged from my synapses and my lungs reinvigorated. Perhaps this is the stop-smoking remedy we've all been looking for!

*William M. Cooper, Flagellation & the Flagellants: A History of the Rod in All Countries from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Fredonia Books, 2001; reprinted from the original edition of 1869, or thereabouts, I can't find it on the title page), p. 204.**

**And wouldn't you love to know why I'm reading this particular book, eh?

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