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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

Why bother with books when we can just vibe-feel "history", 'ey?

  Hence gout and stone afflict the human race;
  Hence lazy jaundice with her saffron face;
  Palsy, with shaking head and tott'ring knees.
  And bloated dropsy, the staunch sot's disease;
  Consumption, pale, with keen but hollow eye,
  And sharpened feature, shew'd that death was nigh.
  The feeble offspring curse their crazy sires,
  And, tainted from his birth, the youth expires.

~ Description of lead poisoning by an anonymous Roman hermit who failed to mention witchcraft, wrong gods, bad churches.

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But this is a description, not attribution.

So in 1829 a comedian presented it as a rhyming translation in their satirical book, but (AFAICT) they never told anyone what the original Roman text was?

I'm suspicious whether the original actually ever existed.

Apician Morsels; or, Tales of the Table, Kitchen, and Larder "a farrago of gastronomical curiosities published in 1829 under the pseudonym Dick Humelbergius Secundus" isn't exactly comedic, but you're right to question its sources.

AFAICT it draws from the same source pool as the more scholarly papers and articles on Sugar and Lead in the Roman Empire.

I cited that little ditty as it headed the USofA EPA May 1985 by Jack Lewis that I cited from above ( https://www.epa.gov/archive/epa/aboutepa/lead-poisoning-hist... ) that article in response to the "Did lead kill The Roman Empire" debate roaring back into life in 1983 after an article in the New England Journal of Medicine speculated that it did.

So, to defer to a clearer quote from Roman times about what was and was not known:

  "Water conducted through earthen pipes is more wholesome than that through lead; indeed that conveyed in lead must be injurious, because from it white lead [PbCO3, lead carbonate] is obtained, and this is said to be injurious to the human system.

  Hence, if what is generated from it is pernicious, there can be no doubt that itself cannot be a wholesome body. This may be verified by observing the workers in lead, who are of a pallid colour; for in casting lead, the fumes from it fixing on the different members, and daily burning them, destroy the vigour of the blood; water should therefore on no account be conducted in leaden pipes if we are desirous that it should be wholesome. That the flavour of that conveyed in earthen pipes is better, is shewn at our daily meals, for all those whose tables are furnished with silver vessels, nevertheless use those made of earth, from the purity of the flavour being preserved in them"

~ Vitruvius De Architectura (VIII.6.10-11) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvius )

We can be confidant that an Architect / Engineer born ~ 70 BC understood lead to be health hazard without appeal to any gods or witches.

The new version:

“I can’t go to sleep yet hun, somebody on the internet doesn’t learn the way I think they should!”

I'll read that as you having little to nothing of substance to add.

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