THAT’S THE WAY THE COOKIE CRUMBLES (21 page)

Maybe it all started with lightning. Life, that is. At least that’s what a landmark experiment carried out by Harold Urey and Stanley Miller in 1953 implied. The two scientists placed a mixture of water vapor, hydrogen, methane, and ammonia in a flask equipped with a pair of electrodes capable of generating a stream of sparks to simulate lightning. Most people believed that these gases were the major components of the primordial atmosphere, and Urey and Miller wanted to see whether an electric discharge would cause them to react and form the molecules that characterize life.

After a couple of weeks of flashes, they were rewarded. The contents of the flask turned cloudy and brown. Something had obviously happened. Chemical analysis showed the presence of amino acids, molecules that are the components of one of the most important types of biomolecules: the proteins. Follow-up studies revealed that proteins themselves, along with a number of other organic compounds, can be generated in such a system. Urey and Miller’s experiments fell far short of explaining how such molecules could have organized themselves into living cells, but they did suggest a possible role for lightning in creating life.

During a summer thunderstorm, however, we are more concerned about lightning taking life. Indeed, Benjamin Franklin was a very lucky man when, in 1752, he flew a silk kite during a storm, hoping to demonstrate that lightning was a form of electricity. He had tied a key to the kite string, and he noted that “The electric fire would stream plentifully from the key on approach of your knuckle.”

The kite had developed a static charge. It’s fortunate that lightning never struck it; if that had happened, then Franklin’s epitaph, “He tore the lightning from the heavens, and the scepter from the hands of tyrants,” would not have included the second phrase. The great man would never have had the chance to play a pivotal role in the War of Independence. He would have been fried, like those foolhardy individuals who have since attempted to duplicate his classic experiment. Heat from lightning can exceed a temperature that is far hotter than the surface of the sun.

Franklin had actually begun experimenting with electricity six years earlier, after witnessing a demonstration of static electricity performed by a Dr. Spencer of Edinburgh. He immediately purchased Spencer’s equipment — a primitive version of the apparatus that makes kids’ hair stand on end, the one that we see today in virtually every science museum. At the time, static electricity was still a mysterious phenomenon, even though people had been observing it for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks observed that if they rubbed a piece of amber against cat fur and then tried to touch another object with it, then the amber and the object would repel each other. Indeed, our word
electricity
derives from “electro,” Greek for amber.

Before Franklin, demonstrations of static electricity were like parlor tricks. For example, in 1730, Stephen Gray achieved a degree of fame by suspending a boy on two silk ropes, rubbing his feet with a ball of sulfur, and drawing sparks from his face. Franklin studied such phenomena, along with lightning, concluding that we could explain them all as the result of the transfer of an “electric fluid” from one substance to another. Rubbing two objects together left one object with an excess of the fluid and the other with a deficiency of it. Pretty inventive stuff. Not too far from the modern explanation that charges are created by the transfer of negatively charged electrons from one material to another. The substance that loses electrons becomes positively charged; the one that gains them takes on a negative charge.

When we touch a substance that has an excess of electrons with a conductor, we may cause the electrical charge to be drained away. If we just bring the conductor near but do not touch the charged object with it, then electrons may jump the gap and generate a spark. This can be a minor problem, like the one we encounter when we have to touch a doorknob after walking across a nylon carpet on a dry winter day; or it can be major problem, like the one experienced by some IRA terrorists of the past.

Apparently, static electricity contributed to the deaths of several terrorists. Their job was to transport explosive devices by car; these devices were made from ammonium nitrate fertilizer and diesel oil, or from weed killer (sodium chlorate) and sugar. Their clothing, made of synthetic fabrics, would rub against the polyisocarbonate covering of the car seats, building up a large static charge. (This happens easily, because car tires provide good insulation from the ground.) Then these charged terrorists would come close to a conductor, such as a metal bomb casing, and . . . BOOM!

Had they attached a wire to the car that dragged on the ground, providing a path for the electrons to escape, they would have prevented the buildup of static electricity and spared themselves. Benjamin Franklin recognized this phenomenon after his kite experiment and suggested that people use lightning rods to protect their buildings. Some inventive designers even created hats featuring lightning rods connected to a wire that trailed behind the wearer.

It is hard to believe, but many people at first resisted using lightning rods. The Church opposed the idea: lightning was divine intervention, a response to some mortal sin, and we should not interfere with it. In early America, when lightning struck a house, firefighters would not attempt to put out the flames; they would only douse neighboring houses to prevent the fire from spreading. Gunpowder was commonly stored in churches because churches supposedly had divine protection. But, in fact, they didn’t; what they had were pointed steeples that drew lightning. Finally, in 1767, when a Venetian church exploded, killing some three thousand people, religious opposition to lightning rods disappeared.

Franklin himself had felt the wrath of the pious multitudes. In 1756, he was attacked by ministers who thought he was responsible for an earthquake in Boston. The ministers charged that Franklin’s lightning rods had stolen lightning from the Almighty and channeled it into the ground, where it had created the earthquake. Franklin cleverly retorted that protecting oneself from lightning with a lightning rod was no more sacrilegious than protecting oneself from rain with a roof.

Since today everyone regards such theological concerns as outdated, I can offer advice about protecting yourself against lightning without being accused of blasphemy. Here it is. Do not stand under a tree, because trees are about twenty percent moisture, and humans about sixty-five percent. Water conducts electricity very well, and the striking bolt will follow the path of least resistance; if it hits a tree, the bolt will jump from the tree to anyone standing under it before passing to the ground. Tents, golf carts, hills, swimming pools, lakes, and open spaces are unsafe. A car with closed windows offers excellent protection, because metal will conduct electricity to the ground. Contrary to popular belief, the protection has nothing to do with the rubber tires. A bolt of a few million volts is not going to be stopped by an inch of rubber.

If you’re stuck outdoors, your best bet is to crouch down with your heels together; do not lie on the ground. If you lie down and a bolt strikes nearby, the electricity may pass through your whole body. Not a happy event. Indoors, get out of the tub or shower, stay away from appliances, hang up the phone, and turn off the TV. Even if you’re bored, do not go outside and fly a kite.

I had a strange lunch the other day. A hot dog, a cracker with peanut butter, a wad of cotton candy, and an ice cream cone, all washed down with Dr. Pepper. No, I haven’t taken leave of my senses. I indulged in this nutritional fiasco out of a sense of history. These items, you see, have something interesting in common. They were all introduced to the general public at the same time and at the same place. The time was 1904, and the place was the St. Louis World’s Fair.

St. Louis can be brutally hot in the summer. For its inhabitants, ice cream has long been a popular cooling treat. In 1904, the stuff wasn’t new — Americans had been savoring it for over a hundred years. One day, one of the city’s fifty or so ice cream vendors ran out of the little dishes in which they served the frozen delight in. A neighboring Syrian pastry concessionaire came to his aid. Ernest Hamwi suggested that a rolled-up waffle would hold a ball of ice cream quite nicely. Indeed it did. The waffle also eliminated the need to wash dishes. The inventive Hamwi liked the idea so much that he founded the Cornucopia Waffle Company, which began producing waffle cones for ice cream by the millions.

While Hamwi popularized the cone, he didn’t actually invent it. In 1903, Italo Marchiony, an Italian immigrant who sold ice cream from a pushcart in New York City, had filed a patent for “a pastry cone to hold ice cream,” but he’d failed to capitalize on his idea. So what’s a cone made of? No big secret: flour, water, cornstarch, sugar, a little fat, soy lecithin (to prevent the fat and water from separating), ammonium carbonate (to release carbon dioxide during baking, yielding an airy texture), sodium metabisulfite (a preservative), salt, and coloring.

Ice cream was not the only sweet concoction available to World’s Fair visitors. There were plenty of cotton-candy stands about. A couple of Tennessee candy makers had invented an electric machine that was essentially a spinning, heated bucket with many small perforations in it. They poured sugar into the bucket; the sugar melted, and the rapid rotation of the bucket forced it through the tiny holes. As soon as the melted sugar hit the cooler air outside the bucket, it froze into streamers. The candy makers sold their Fairy Floss in little wooden boxes for the hefty price of twenty-five cents. Those customers who waited too long after purchase to get their sugar fix were disappointed. Sugar picks up moisture from the air very quickly, and the Fairy Floss would collapse as the sugar dissolved. That’s why today most cotton candy is sold in plastic bags. Heating the sugar can also be problematic, because the candy maker must take care to avoid caramelization — brown cotton candy does not have much appeal. Brown peanut butter, however, does. And that was also a hit at the St. Louis World’s Fair.

Peanut butter had existed since 1890, but few people knew about it. It was developed by a St. Louis physician who worried that some of his patients were not getting enough protein. In fact, they had such bad teeth that they couldn’t chew meat. So the good doctor experimented with grinding peanuts into a buttery paste, which his patients happily gummed down. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, of cereal fame, took out the first patent on peanut butter in 1895. And one of Kellogg’s former employees developed an efficient hand-operated peanut grinder. Now the world was ready to experience this gastronomic breakthrough. In 1904, it did just that. By then, C.H. Sumner had realized that one could greatly improve peanut butter’s taste by roasting the peanuts before grinding them. We still do it that way today. But we also take measures to ensure that the oil doesn’t separate from the solids in our peanut butter. Producers often add hydrogenated fats to increase the density of the oil, thus preventing it from rising to the top. Hydrogenated fats have a deservedly bad reputation, because they contain trans-fatty acids, which drive up blood cholesterol levels. But not as much as the fat in hot dogs, and there were plenty of those consumed at the World’s Fair.

Unlike peanut butter and cotton candy, wieners and frankfurters were very popular before 1904. Customers knew what they were getting from Anton Ludwig Feuchtwanger, a Bavarian peddler who had managed to set up a little food stand at the fair. He handed each customer a cotton glove with which to hold the greasy frank. But so many of them went off with Feuchtwanger’s gloves that he had to look for another solution to the greasy-hand problem. His brother-in-law, conveniently, was a baker. It was he who had the idea of sliding a frank into a bun, and an American tradition was born. What better beverage was there to wash the fatty dogs down than the popular new drink that was the talk of the town?

Charles Alderton, a young British pharmacist, invented Dr. Pepper in 1885. He was working at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas, where he doubled as a soda jerk. Here he put his chemical talents to use and came up with a blend of fruit juices (contrary to the rumor, prune juice is not one of them), which he flavored with sugar and colored with caramel. His customers liked the taste, and one of them suggested that he name it after Dr. Charles Pepper, the Virginia doctor who had given drugstore-owner Morrison his first job. At least that’s one version of the story. Morrison eventually marketed the beverage, which hit the big time after massive exposure at the World’s Fair.

Now you see that there was at least some method behind my madness as I dined on these seemingly unrelated delicacies. And do you know what? After that bizarre lunch, I didn’t feel like eating anything all night. Maybe there’s a market out there for the St. Louis World’s Fair Diet. Just kidding.

A small, modest gravestone in Pine Grove Cemetery in Lynn, Massachusetts, bears the simple inscription “Lydia Pinkham: 1819-1883.” A visitor would hardly guess that it marks the final resting place of the most famous woman in North America during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Lydia Pinkham wasn’t born into fame. She achieved it by finding a niche that needed filling. She became an expert on “female problems” at a time when many women were reluctant to consult male physicians about such things. Lydia was a nondescript schoolteacher who dabbled in phrenology, the bizarre study of the relationship between bumps on a person’s head and personality, and she prepared homemade remedies for various ills. One of her specialties was a concoction for female complaints — Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound — which she brewed for friends and neighbors. We probably would never have heard of this potion if Lydia’s husband hadn’t lost the family’s money through real estate speculation in 1873. The couple had to find some way to make a living. Why not try selling Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound to stores? Son Dan went out to drum up business, while the rest of the family stayed home and brewed a big batch. Sales were sluggish until Dan had an idea. What the compound needed was an instantly recognizable bottle design. In that era, the makers of patent medicines competed for customer attention by using elaborate product labels and making outlandish claims. Dan opted for an image of simplicity and friendliness: his mother’s face.

Soon, Lydia Pinkham’s smiling grandmotherly visage graced not only the bottle but also the ads that the family took out in newspapers across the country. “Trust me,” the sympathetic face seemed to say. And people did. Not only did they trust, but they also bought. I doubt that Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound did much for “nervous prostration” or “prolapsed uterus,” but it certainly solved one female problem: it cured Lydia Pinkham’s financial ailments. Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound made her the first millionairess in America.

What were people actually buying? A collage of licorice, chamomile, pleurisy root, Jamaica dogwood, life plant, dandelion root, and black cohosh. This last ingredient, derived from the rhizome of the
Cimicifuga racemosa
plant, already had a long history of use for “women’s problems.” American Indians valued it highly, drinking a brew they made by boiling the root in water. Its name derives from the Algonquin word for “rough,” because of the texture of its gnarled root.

Black cohosh, like virtually any other plant, contains compounds that at a high dose have physiological effects. Because black cohosh has a history as a treatment for menstrual problems, researchers have investigated its estrogenic potential. Their experiments have shown that an alcohol extract of the plant does contain compounds that bind to estrogen receptors in the uteruses of rats, but we lack human data. However, plenty of anecdotal evidence exists — women claim that the substance has rid them of excessive bleeding, irregular periods, delayed menstruation, severe menstrual cramps, or menopausal hot flashes. Menstrual cramps are apparently relieved by the antispasmodic effect of black cohosh; it reduces the intensity of uterine contractions.

The ingredient in black cohosh that has estrogenic effects is formononetin. Researchers rationalize that if a woman lacks estrogen, as many women do in menopause, then formononetin will stimulate her estrogen receptors. But when a woman has too much estrogen, causing cramping, formononetin can block the activity of her body’s natural estrogen. Along with other compounds in black cohosh, formononetin has been shown to reduce the levels of luteinizing hormone, which is linked to hot flashes.

At least one controlled clinical study suggests that black cohosh works. Researchers studied a group of women, all under forty, who had undergone hysterectomies. They gave some subjects estrogen supplements and others black cohosh to determine the effects of these substances on the women’s premature menopause. Black cohosh was as effective as the estrogen supplements, but it took longer to kick in.

Researchers have also investigated other potential uses for black cohosh. Its antispasmodic effect may be useful in treating sprained muscles as well as arthritic pain, which is made worse by muscle tightness. Black cohosh also has some sedative properties, and it may work against coughs.

There are some caveats, though. Nobody knows what effect black cohosh will have on pregnant women or those suffering from breast cancer. Nobody knows if it interferes with estrogen replacement therapy or with the birth control pill. Nobody has studied its long-term effects. It may intensify the effect of blood-pressure-lowering medications. And there is the question of dose. The current opinion is that for menstrual cramps, three to four capsules containing forty milligrams of root, standardized to 2.5 percent triterpenes, is appropriate. The triterpenes are not active ingredients, but we can measure them with relative ease. Since their concentration is proportional to that of the estrogenic components, they provide a convenient means of standardization. The limited number of studies that have been done indicate that the dose I just described decreases the frequency of hot flashes. Some generally available supplements — such as Remifemin — contain black cohosh. Remifemin is probably the best-studied preparation, and it comes in liquid form (the dosage is forty drops, two times a day) or tablet form (two tablets, twice a day). While some women experience an alleviation of menopausal symptoms in as little as four weeks, most have to wait six to eight weeks for the same result. If Remifemin hasn’t helped in twelve weeks, it is unlikely to do so.

Yet another ingredient of Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound may have helped ladies feel better: a hefty dose of alcohol. The original version had close to twenty percent alcohol by volume, and it delivered an “unusual degree of satisfaction.” And Lydia delivered satisfaction in another way as well. Ads and product labels invited women seeking advice on female matters to write to Lydia Pinkham. “Any woman,” the ads maintained, “is responsible for her own suffering if she will not take the trouble to write to Mrs. Pinkham for advice.” They wrote and wrote. And she wrote back. Lydia answered the letters herself, usually recommending an increased dose of her tonic. She was a prolific letter writer. Even death did not deter her. Although Lydia died in 1883, for years afterwards the letters that her loyal customers wrote to her continued to be answered — by “Mrs. Pinkham” herself! Maybe that vegetable compound really did have miraculous effects. There is one miracle it really did produce: longevity. Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound is still around. But don’t look for black cohosh in the modern version. Current hot sellers like vitamin E, vitamin C, and iron have replaced it. Don’t look for the twenty percent alcohol either. That’s been cut way down. There’s not much evidence that the present incarnation provides any benefit, but we cannot doubt that in its time, Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound made many women happy. And, according to a little song popular in the early 1900s, Lydia may have done more than communicate with her correspondents from beyond the grave:

Poor Lydia died and went to heaven.

All the church bells they did ring.

But she took along her vegetable compound,

Hark, how the Herald Angels sing!

I bet they did. And it wasn’t because of the black cohosh.