Science at the hinge of history

Abstract

How happy we are to be able to live a comfortable, warm, wealthy life in the modern age of today. Grateful to science we may not be but just the same we know, if we ever stop to think—which we seldom do—that we ought to be. Spinsters no longer have to spend hour after hour spinning to make the thread to weave the sheets we sleep between. As a matter of fact, no one has to labour in the boggy fields to grow flax any more to produce the linen which, once upon a time, had to be grown before even those few rich people who could afford linen sheets could have them. As it happens, making linen is a disagreeable smelly business. The flax has to be cut down and left to rot in the fields so that the fibres can be beaten out of it. This rotting process—so called, wretting—is probably the second most disgusting process of the pre‐scientific age, exceeded in disagreeability only by the tanning of leather in which the hides have to be soaked for weeks in a slush of dog manure which, strangely, is the richest source of the particular enzyme which most effectively softens the skins. Those whose fortune it once was to live down‐wind of a tannery can confirm the primacy of its potent effect on what once was called the atmosphere, now known as environment.

Citation

Pyke, M. (1976), "Science at the hinge of history", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 28 No. 8, pp. 256-265. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb050561