I have got to read this book..

[Houmes]

(08-26-2017 03:53 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Joan Chaconas has been keeping me updated on revisionist history. She has found an old book (early 20th-century, I believe) about a gentleman named Gould, who evidently had stories to tell related to characters in the Lincoln assassination story. I'll get more details and share them, but so far, here are a couple:

When the "Booth mummy" was supposedly making the rounds in the carnival circles, one of the couples who owned him apparently slept in their small carnival wagon - one on each side of the mummy. Given the toxic chemicals in that carcass at the time, I wonder what their ailments might have been?

This "factoid" I love! The book credits Dr. Mudd with discovering that mosquitoes carry the dreaded yellow fever strain. Walter Reed must be spinning in his grave.

1) Dr. Walter Reed can rest in peace. He found that the female Aedes mosquito was responsible for yellow fever transmission in 1901. Dr. Mudd noted was a hero treating yellow fever at Fort Jefferson, and noted southeastern Caribbean trade winds were a factor producing increased infections whenever there were breezes and rain from that direction. In a letter to his wife on October 27, 1867 wrote "...in the most eligible position for the spread of the poison, owing to the presence of the wind...varying only a few degrees."

2) The mummy was shuttled around carnivals when Finis Bates was unable to sell it. When Bates died his widow finally unloaded it in 1931 for $8,000 to carnival barker Johnny Harker and yes, both he and his wife slept every night beside the mummy. Pictures in Dave Taylor's BoothieBarn show his wife lecturing without gloves (Johnny took the tickets)--between cleaning the cadaver with Vaseline and combing his hair--in both Life and Life magazines.