Spare Parts

by Carol Ann Rinzler

  In a “History of Male Fashions,” published in the London Chronicle in 1762, we, find that “surtouts have now four laps on each side, which are called ‘dog’s ears’; when these pieces are unbuttoned, they flap backwards and forwards, like so many supernumerary patches just tacked on at one end, and the wearer seems to have been playing at backswords till his coat was cut to pieces…. Very spruce smarts have no buttons nor holes upon the breast of these their surtouts, save what are upon the ears, and their garments only wrap over their bodies like a morning gown.” These dog’s ears may now be seen in a very meaningless state on the breasts of the patrol-jackets of our officers, and this is confirmed by the fact that their jackets are not buttoned, but fastened by hooks.

  In early times, when coats were of silk or velvet, and enormously expensive, it was no doubt customary to turn up the cuffs, so as not to soil the coat, and thus the custom of having the cuff’s turned back came in. During the latter part of the seventeenth and during the eighteenth century, the cuffs were very widely turned back, and the sleeves consequently very short, and this led to dandies wearing large lace cuff’s to their shirts.

  The pictures of Hogarth and of others show that the coat cuffs were buttoned back to a row of buttons running round the wrist. These buttons still exist in the sleeves of a Queen’s Counsel, although the cuffs are sewed back and the button-holes only exist in the form of pieces of braid. This habit explains why our soldiers now have their cuffs of different colours from that of their coats; the colour of the linings was probably determined for each regiment by the colonel for the time being, since he formerly supplied the clothing; and we know that the colour of the facings was by no means fixed until recently. The shape of the cuff has been recently altered in the line regiments, so that all the original meaning is gone.

  In order to allow of turning back with ease, the sleeve was generally split on the outer side, and this split could be fastened together with a line of buttons and embroidered holes. In Hogarth’s pictures some two or three of these buttons may be commonly seen above the reversed cuff; and notwithstanding that at first the buttons were out of sight (as they ought to be) in the reversed part of the cuff, yet after the turning back had become quite a fixed habit, and when sleeves were made tight again, it seems to have been usual to have the button for the cuff sewed on to the proper inside, that is to say, the real outside of the sleeve.

  The early stage may be seen in Hogarth’s picture of the “Guards marching to Finchley,”and the present rudiment is excellently illustrated in the cuffs of the same regiments now. The curious buttons and gold lace on the cuffs and collars of the tunics of the Life Guards have the like explanation, but this is hardly intelligible without reference to a book of uniforms, as for example Cannon’s “History of the 2nd Dragoon Guards.”

  The collar of a coat would in ordinary weather be turned down and the lining shown; hence the collar has commonly a different colour from that of the coat, and in uniforms the same colour as have the cuffs, which form, with the collars, the so-called “facings.”A picture of Lucien Bonaparte in Lacroix’s work on Costume shows a collar so immense that were it turned up it would be as high as the top of his head. This drawing indicates that even the very broad stand-up collars worn in uniforms in the early part of this century, and of a different colour from that of the coat, were merely survivals of an older form of turn-down collar. In these days, notwithstanding that the same difference in colour indicates that the collar was originally turned down, yet in all uniforms it is made to stand up.

  The pieces of braid or seams which run round the wrist in ordinary coats are clearly the last remains of the inversion of the cuffs.

  TROUSERS. — I will merely observe that we find an intermediate stage between trousers and breeches in the pantaloon, in which the knee-buttons of the breeches have walked down to the ankle. I have seen also a German servant who wore a row of buttons running from the knee to the ankle of his trousers.

  BOOTS. — One of the most perfect rudiments is presented by top-boots. These boots were originally meant to come above the knee; and, as may be observed in old pictures, it became customary to turn the upper part down, so that the lining was visible all round the top The lining being of unblacked leather, formed the brown top which is now worn. The original boot-tag may be observed in the form of a mere wisp of leather sewn fast to the top, whilst the real acting tag is sewn to the inside of the boot. The back of the top is also fastened up, so that it could not by any ingenuity be turned up again into its original position.

  Again, why do we black and polish our boots? The key is found in the French cirage, or blacking. We black our boots because brown leather would, with wet and use, naturally get discoloured with dark patches, and thus boots to look well should be coloured black. Now, shooting boots are usually greased, and that it was formerly customary to treat ordinary boots in the same manner is shown by the following verse in the ballad of “Argentile and Curan:”

  “He borrowed on the working dales

  His holy russets oft,

  And of the bacon’s fat to make

  His startops black and soft.”

  Startops were a kind of rustic high shoes. Fairholt in his work states that “the oldest kind of blacking for boots and shoes appears to have been a thick, viscid, oily substance.” But for neat boots a cleaner substance than grease would be required, and thus wax would be thought of; and that this was the case is shown by the French word cirer, which means indifferently to “wax” or to “polish boots.” Boots are of course polished because wax takes so good a polish. Lastly, patent-leather is an imitation of common blacking.

  I have now gone through the principal articles of men’s clothing, and have shown how numerous and curious are the rudiments or “survivals,” as Mr. Tylor calls them; a more thorough search proves the existence of many more. For instance, the various gowns worn at the Universities and elsewhere, afford examples. These gowns were, as late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, simply upper garments, but have survived into this age as mere badges. Their chief peculiarities consist in the sleeves, and it is curious that nearly all of such peculiarities point to various devices by which the wearing of the sleeves has been eluded or rendered less burdensome. Thus the plaits and buttons in a barrister’s gown, and the slit in front of the sleeve of the B.A’s gown, are for this purpose. In an M.A.’s gown the sleeves extend below the knees, but there is a hole in the side through which the arm is passed; the end of the sleeve is sewed up, but there is a kind of scollop at the lower part, which represents the narrowing for the wrist. A barrister’s gown has a small hood sewed to the left shoulder, which would hardly go on to the head of an infant, even if it could be opened out into a hood shape.

  It is not, however, in our dress alone that these survivals exist; they are to be found in all the things of our every-day life. For instance, anyone who has experienced a drive on a road so bad that leaning back in the carriage is impossible, will understand the full benefit to be derived from arm-slings such as are placed in first-class railway carriages, and will agree that in such carriages they are mere survivals. The rounded tracery on the outsides of railway carriages show the remnants of the idea that a coach was the proper pattern on which to build them; and the word “guard” is derived from the man who sat behind the coach and defended the passengers and mails with his blunderbuss.

  In the early trains (1838–39) of the Birmingham Railway there were special “mail” carriages, which were made very narrow, and to hold only four in each compartment (two and two), so as to be like the coach they had just superseded.

  The words dele, stet, used in correcting proof-sheets, the words sed vide or s.v., ubi sup., ibid., loc. cit., used in footnotes, the sign “&” which is merely a corruption of the word et, the word finis until recently placed at the ends of books, are all doubtless survivals from the day when all books were in Latin. The mark ^ used in writing for interpolations appears to be the remains of an arrow pointing to the sen
tence to be included. The royal “broad-arrow” mark is a survival of the head of “a barbed javelin, carried by serjeants-at-arms in the king’s presence as early as Richard the First’s time.” Then again we probably mount horses from the left side lest our swords should impede us. The small saddle on the surcingle of a horse, the seams in the backs of cloth-bound books, and those at the backs of gloves are rudiments, but to give a catalogue of such things would be almost endless. I have said enough, however, to show that by remembering that there is nihil sine causa, the observation of even common things of every-day life may be made less trivial than it might at first sight appear.

  It seems a general rule that on solemn or ceremonial occasions men retain archaic forms; thus it is that court dress is a survival of the everyday dress of the last century; that uniforms in general are richer in rudiments than common dress; that a carriage with a postilion is de rigueur at a wedding; and that (as mentioned by Sir John Lubbock) the priests of a savage nation, acquainted with the use of metals, still use a stone knife for their sacrifices just as Anglican priests still prefer candles to gas.

  The details given in this article, although merely curious, and perhaps insignificant in themselves, show that the study of dress from an evolutional standpoint serves as yet one further illustration of the almost infinite ramifications to which natural selection and its associated doctrines of development may be applied.

  About the Author

  Carol Ann Rinzler is the author of more than twenty books on health, including Controlling Cholesterol For Dummies and Nutrition for Dummies, whose first edition was named one of Amazon’s Ten Best Health Books of the Year and whose six editions have been translated into more than fourteen languages and have sold more than 150,000 copies in the English language alone. She holds a Master’s Degree in European History from Columbia University, has been named a New York State Senate Woman of Distinction for her political and civic work, and is the winner of the New York Society of Anesthesiologists’ First Patient Advocate Award. She lives in New York City.

  Endnotes

  Note: Each book noted under “Read more about it” offers an earlier, sometimes outdated, but always interesting view of the subject at hand. Each is still in print and available via Amazon.com and other booksellers.

  Introduction

  1. First published privately in 1904 by Darwin’s daughter Henrietta Litchfield as Emma Darwin, Wife of Charles Darwin: A Century of Family Letters 1796-1896.

  2. “The Great Debate,” Oxford University Museum of Natural History, http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/learning/htmls/debate.htm

  3. Marty, Christopher, “Darwin on a Godless Creation: ‘It’s like confessing to a murder,’” Scientific American, February 12, 2009er”http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/charles-darwin-confessions/

  4. Claes S, Vereecke E, Maes M, Victor J, Verdonk P, Bellemans J, “Anatomy of the anterolateral ligament of the knee,” Journal of Anatomy, October 2013, 223(4):321-8. doi: 10.1111/joa.12087. Epub 2013 Aug 1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23906341

  5. “Vestigiality,” Wikipedia, http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Vestigiality

  1. Hide & Seek

  1. “Ruptured appendix,” TV Tropes, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RupturedAppendix

  2. In the winter of 1998, while on duty for a year at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, as the station’s only doctor and cut off by the fierce weather, American physician Jerri Lin Neilsen developed breast cancer. With direction by phone from experts in the United States, Nielsen performed her own biopsies and then administered her own chemotherapy with medicines dropped by military planes. At the first hint of spring, she was airlifted out and later wrote Ice Bound: A Doctor’s Incredible Battle For Survival at the South Pole, now available in reprint and audio book on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Ice-Bound-Doctors-Incredible-Survival/dp/0786886994/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

  3. The Neolithic Period, starting around 6000 BCE with the introduction of farming and the cultivation of animals and crops and ending with the introduction of metal tool, is synonymous with Predynastic Egypt, the time before the reign of Menes, the first Pharaoh. Whether he was real or legendary, a combination of at least two and maybe more rulers, he or his personae are credited with creating a unified Egypt. Dunn, Jimmy, “Egypt: Who was Menes?” Tour Egypt.com, http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/menes1.htm#ixzz48Ad1LCmE

  4. Fletcher, Joanne, “Mummies Around the World,” BBCHistory, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/mummies_01.shtml

  5. Karoff, Paul, “The case of the rotting mummies,” Harvard Gazette, March 9, 2015, http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/03/racing-to-save-the-worlds-oldest-mummies/

  6. Gannal, J.-N, History of Embalming, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48078/48078-h/48078-h.htm

  7. “History of Burial Beliefs in Ancient Egypt,” http://historylink101.com/n/egypt_1/religion_mummification_history.htm

  8. Not only did the Egyptians notice the appendix, it seems that at least one “Egyptian mummy of the Byzantine era exhibits adhesions in the right lower quadrant, suggestive of old appendicitis.” Streck, Christian J., Maxwell, Pinckney J. IV, A Brief History of Appendicitis: Familiar Names and Interesting patients, The American Surgeon, February 2014, 80 (2), 105-108, https://cbc.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/02012014-AS.pdf

  9. Gannal, op. cit.

  10. Haggard, Howard W., Devils, Drugs and Doctors, (New York: Harper & Row, 1929)

  11. “Mummia,” Wiktionary, http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mummia#Latin

  12. Guinness World Records, http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-appendix-removed

  13. Full text of “A contribution to the pathology of the vermiform appendix,” Archive.org, http://archive.org/stream/acontributionto01kelygoog/acontributionto01kelygoog_djvu.txt

  14. “Appendicitis may be related to vital infections,” Science Daily, January 19, 2010, https://wwew.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100118161946.htm

  15. Streck, Christian J., op. cit.

  16. McCarty, Arthur C., M.D., “History of Appendicitis Vermiformis Its diseases and treatment, Presented to the Innominate Society, 1927,” Innominate Society.com, http://www.innominatesociety.com/Articles/History%20of%20Appendicitis.htm

  17. Williams, G. Rainey, “Presidential Address: A History of Appendicitis,” Annals of Surgery, May 1983, 197 (5), http://www.oumedicine.com/docs/ad-surgery-workfiles/williams_history-of-appendicitis-with-anecdotes-illustrating-its-importance.pdf, Streck op.cit., McCarty, op.cit.

  18. Ramachandran, Manoj; Aronson, Jeffrey K., “Frederick Treve’s first surgical operation for appendicitis,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, May 2011, 104 (5), 191-197, http://jrs.sagepub.com/content/104/5/191

  19. Willliams, op. cit.

  20. Prystowsky, Jay B.; Pugh, Carla M.; Nagle, Alex P., “Appendicitis,” Current Problems in Surgery, October 2005, 42 (10), 694–742, http://www.currprobsurg.com/article/S0011-3840(05)00107-3/abstract

  21. Rainey, op. cit.

  22. “Il ne faut donc pas dire que la résection de l’appendice est une operation simple et facile. Elle est parfois extrêmement pénible, et le chirurgien, en proposant l’opération, doit être préparé à toutes les difficultés et à toutes les surprises. C’est à lui, et aussi au malade, à peser les risques opératoires, et à les comparer aux risques que la maladie.” Charles Talamon, Appendicite et Perityphilite, (Paris: Rueff et Cie., 1892), page 239, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt/search?q1=simple;id=nnc2.ark%3A%2F13960%2Ft71v67s61;view=1up;seq=5;start=51;sz=10;page=search;orient=0

  23. Talamon’s book, translated by E.P. Hurd, Chairman of the Board of Health in Newburyport, Massachusetts, was published the following year in the United States, as Hurd notes, scarcely ten years after the introduction of the term appendicitis. Hurd, E.P., M.D., “Consumption in New England,” Boston Medical Surgery Journal, May 23, 1883, http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM188305241082101 & Talamon, Charles, Appendix and Perityphilitis, htt
ps://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.086262884;view=1up;seq=1

  24. By 1902, Treves had performed more than 2,000 appendectomies, but, as with so many other “firsts,” his claim to have initiated interval surgery was disputed, this time by those who insisted that English surgeon Charter Symonds had done it three years earlier, in 1885. McCarty, op.cit., & Glover, Warwick, “The Human Vermiform Appendix,” Answers in Genesis, April 1, 1988, https://answersingenesis.org/human-body/vestigial-organs/the-human-vermiform-appendix/

  25. Merck’s Manual, Fifth Edition (New York: Merck & Co., 1923); The Merck Manual, Seventh Edition (Rahway, N.J.: 1940); The Merck Manual, Eighth Edition (Rahway, N.J.: 1950).

  26. Kavic, Michael S.; Kavic, Stephen M.; Kavic, Suzanne M., “Laparoscopic appendectomy,” Society of Laparoscopic Surgeons, http://laparoscopy.blogs.com/prevention_management_3/2010/08/laparoscopic-appendectomy.html

  27. Addiss, D.G., Shaffer, N., Fowler, B.S., Tauxe, R.V., “The epidemiology of appendicitis and appendectomy in the United States,” American Journal of Epidemiology, November 1990, 132(5):910-25

  28. Minneci, Peter C.; Mahida, Justin B.; Lodwick, Daniel L.; Sulkowski, Jason P.; Nacion, Kristine M.; Cooper, Jennifer N.; Ambeba, Erica J.; Moss, R. Lawrence; Deans, Katherine J., “Effectiveness of Patient Choice in Nonoperative vs Surgical Management of Pediatric Uncomplicated Acute Appendicitis,” JAMA Surgery, Published online December 16, 2015, http://archsurg.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2475977

  29. “The Life of Churchill, Rising Politician 1920-1932,” The Churchill Centre, http://www.winstonchurchill.org/the-life-of-churchill/rising-politician/1920-1932/autumn-1922-age-48