Season 3: Episode 16 - Muddy Jim & Progressive Era Health Nursery Rhymes

In this episode of A Tisket-Tasket Podcast, host Gina Zimbardi returns after a long break to discuss her research presented at the American Folklore Conference in 2025. The focus of her presentation is on the 1940 book 'Mother Goose’s Safety Rhymes' by CM Bar Truck and its connection to the progress of public health education in America. Gina delves into the historical context of the Progressive Era, discussing the public health challenges of the time, such as overcrowded cities and infectious diseases. She highlights the contributions of key figures like Emil Berliner and Dr. George Kober in promoting health through educational children's literature. The podcast also explores various poems from the book 'Muddy Jim,' emphasizing themes like cleanliness, peer pressure, and the importance of pasteurization. For more information, visit atiskettasketpodcast.com or email info@atiskettasketpodcast.com.

Transcript

1:01

Hello and welcome to A Tisket-Tasket Podcast podcast. I'm your host, Gina Zimbardi and today we are taking a look at. Basically my presentation to the American Folklore Conference in 2025. Thank you so much for waiting patiently. While I've taken quite a large break, I've been researching, I've been writing, I've been sick, I've been living life, but I'm back now and I wanted to do a quick podcast episode about my presentation. This includes. Most of what I'm presenting as well as some asides. As I go through, it's really hard to talk about exactly what I'm presenting because it's so based on visual rhetoric. But I'm gonna try my best. But again, thank you for listening and I appreciate your time. But let's go ahead and get started. How this project began was that I found this book, mother Goose's Safety Rhymes by CM Bar Truck, and it was illustrated by Marjorie Peters. It was published by Albert and Co in 1940, and it was actually sponsored by the US government. The book claims to teach children health and safety lessons in quote, the most dangerous streets and highways the world has ever known. Yeah, right. Interesting. However, like later on the book it says more straightforward that the purpose of this book is to teach little children correct safety habits through the mother goose rhymes and characters. This book is free to look at. You can look on library of Congress's website. It's amazing. I also have the reference. If you cannot find it, just contact me. The illustrations are gorgeous. And throughout the book, it uses very standard mother gooses rhymes. So for example, the Three Little Pigs, little Miss Muffet, things like that. And then rewrites it to be more based on health and safety, specifically safety around new inventions at the time. So. More car safety, like looking both ways before crossing the street and not touching hot electrical wires and things like that. And that really captured my interest. I was really, really curious about it and I hope to find more about it however. The more I delved into it, the more I realized that this type of literature wasn't new in the 1940 as I expected. And in fact I found that it really began in the American progressive era. So that's between 1890 and 1920. But as the 20th century progressed, the United States became known as an industrial powerhouse. Thus came revolutionary inventions in groundbreaking industrial techniques. As I've mentioned with this, however, came downsides, overcrowding in industrial cities, deadly workplaces, and the rapid spread of infectious diseases. You have to understand at this time, post American Civil War, more than 50% of the American population now lived in urban areas, which was a lot different. We have the great urban migration, especially from African Americans, from southern states. Two northern cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, et cetera. And so this really sparked my interest, and of course, this was a ripe breeding ground for literature on health and safety. Right? As I delved into this research, I found something peculiar. Books like these really began much earlier than expected. Books on safety and especially public health, really exploded in publication from 1890 to about 1920. As I mentioned, an era notice, the American Progressive era. Because this is my podcast, I can actually spend a little bit more time talking about the historical context. You have to understand America at the turn of the century between the 19th and 20th century, so the 18 hundreds and 19 hundreds, it was a wildly different time. There were very little rules, regulation and laws on things like health and safety. Very little rules regulation and laws on education. Medical field was much different at the time education field at the time, so germ theory was popularized in Europe. In the mid 18 hundreds, however, it did not make its way to the United States until later, and at the turn of the 20th century, you had these infectious diseases just decimating the population, and people were looking at why I cannot recommend highly enough John Green's. Everything is tuberculosis. If you, if you can follow him on TikTok or other social media. In there, he talks about how everything is connected to tuberculosis from the raising of women's skirts to the cowboy hat. Super interesting. The book is a really great read. It's really easy to read. I knocked it out in a day because it was just absolutely so fascinating. But people were trying to figure out why everyone was dying and it wasn't just, neglected populations. It was also rich white people. And so there became this really interesting focus on health in a much scientific way that was a lot different than the 18 hundreds. And we have a, a lot of the, the new, we have a lot of European scientists thank for that, which I will get to, but. Europe was much different than America at the time. Europe at the time were creating international committees to combat diseases, to combat infections, to try to understand what was going on. At the time, they had this thing called the filth theory, which they thought that diseases were spread by bad smells. So we think of the miasma theory from decaying matter and sewage. However, that was kind quickly changed. Through scientists like Pastor Ka and Le whose ideas on germ theory and cleanliness kind of came to the forefront. But Europe created these sanitation committees to try to combat these issues and to get to the bottom of these infectious diseases. Tuberculosis was a really, really big focus at the time. I find it very interesting. I kind of make a joke in my presentation that I think if Pastor was less charismatic than he was, I don't think germ theory would've become as popular or as quickly as it was in the United States, but it jumped across the pond as it were, into the American public health, and we really do have pastor to thank for. A lot of things, and I'll get to the reason why that is in a minute, but let me go into the background of the two people behind the nursery arm artifact that I've looked at, and I'm going to read directly from my script because I have a pretty comprehensive background on them. The story begins with two German American immigrant geniuses, Emil Berliner and Dr. George Cober. First was Emil Berliner, born in 1851. Berliner settled in Washington DC in 1870 where he began his lu illustrious career as an inventor. He invented a whole bunch of things, including the gramophone, gramophone record, the bits and pieces of audio equipment that go into telephones and speakers, and my favorite, the first iteration of the helicopter engine. In fact, his son created a company that created a bunch of helicopter motors up until I think World War ii. I posit that the only reason he's not a household name like Edison is that he had a worse PR team. He seemed very humble in my opinion. But he was absolutely brilliant. Fellow runner was a strong advocate for public health, and after being concerned with the high infant mortality rate in DC due to gastrointestinal diseases, he lost one child to this and almost another at the time, 27% of infants died before they reached the age of one. And a lot of this had to do with gastrointestinal diseases. And Berliner set off to do something about this. One of the things he felt very, very strongly about was this newly discovered intervention called pasteurization. Unfortunately, the American Pediatric Society opposed this idea, and I think there's a lot of reasons why I think lobbying was one of them. I think that tradition was another, but I could sit here and talk about this all day and I won't. Berliner uses own influences money to create the society for the prevention of sickness in 1901. Now it's really important to note that Berliner. It wasn't one just to talk, to hear his own voice, and he understood that while his ethos would get people to listen to him, he really wanted science behind him. So this society wasn't just noted celebrities, rich people or public influencers. Berliner understood the importance of rigorous scientific testing instead about changing the face of public health forever, and I truly mean forever. He did this by rigorous public propaganda and education. His first step was publishing a bulletin in the Washington Post every Sunday, the first appeared on June 15th, 1901, and began with the following. Milk is notoriously one of the best soils for the germination in multiplication of disease germs. Many epidemics of typhoid, scarlet fever and diptheria have been traced to infected milk, not to speak of tuberculosis from the same source. Beyond writing in the local newspaper, Berliner understood that change meant educating early, and that meant reaching public school children. Berliner worked with our second genius, Dr. Cober, to and distribute Mari Jim, which is the artifact. I will be talking about. He directly influenced the writing and distribution of other children's literature regarding health and hygiene practices. Originally for my presentation, I wanted to look at two or three artifacts. I just didn't have time. I just have so much information to get through in 30 minutes that I just didn't have time to look beyond Money gym. But the more research I did, the more I realized that Berliner had his fingers in a lot of pies with tuberculosis societies across the country and tuberculosis societies. There's one in Kentucky, for example, that published their own. Nursery rhyme book and use Berliner ideas as its basis. It's really interesting. It's on my blog if you're interested. In any case, Berliner used this incredible ethos to establish public health in the United States. This is most amazing fact due to his direct efforts in public health campaigning, the infant mortality rate went from 27% in 1900 where milk was unpasteurized, very commonly drank that way to 7.5% in 1924. Can you believe that? From 27 to seven, a 20% decrease in 1924. 97% of the public milk supply was pasteurized in Washington dc I mean, isn't that absolutely amazing that one man had such a huge influence on this? I just, I think it's wonderful and I will have to make a side note here to get political. RFK is doing destructive and very dangerous things to our country, and he's a big advocate for drinking raw milk I personally believe that if we see the repeal of pasteurization laws in this country, we will see infant mortality rate shoot up again with these gastrointestinal diseases that could be prevented very easily through pasteurization. And I could rant about that all day and I won't. But anyway, let's take a look at our second genius. In my humble opinion, Dr. Cobert. Should be a recognizable household name associated with public health like Pastore Lister. And more recently, Dr. Fauci essentially invented what we now call industrial or occupational medicine. Shout out to osha in the us. He was born in 1850 in Als Field, Germany. His father was on the wrong side of a leading political faction, and thus sent as many of his sons as he could to the United States to escape the whole German revolution thing that was happening at the time, under Willhelm the fourth when he arrived in the United States. In 1866, Cobra met up with his brother, Charles and Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, where he joined the Army and became a hospital attendant. He was really fascinated with medicine and quickly fell it under the tutelage of Doctor of Joseph Wright and Dr. Robert Burns, who were both big civil War doctors and big names in medicine. They kind of forced him through general medical school. His medical genius was noted even then, and he was shipped off to study medicine more. More prestigious in DC in 1871 under the Surgeon General, Dr. John Woodworth and the Medical School of Georgetown University. You know, just a small university. This is important to the story later, but apparently medical schools at the time were considered jokes in, even Cobra described it as being made up of quote, ambitious governmental clerks, and I just imagine cobra like roaming the halls sneering at rich white boys. But in any case. Even then, Cobra was recognized by his dedication and observation, and in 1872 attended special classes given by Woodward and Dr. Chauffer, a renowned doctor of urology at the Army Medical Museum because this isn't my presentation and I don't have to cut for time. This is really cool. The Army Medical Museum was housed at the Ford Theater. This is 1872. What other major political event happened at the Ford Theater less than eight years before? Oh, I don't know, perhaps the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. That's right. So I guess the government. Took ownership of the building and then made it the Army Medical Museum. Can you just imagine being a student in this building where the president was murdered less than a decade before? That just blows my mind in any case. Moving on. After graduation in 1873, Cobra attended postgraduate classes and wrote a thesis on the importance of concise, reliable, and replicable laboratory guides guess what guys? This was like the first of their kind. That may be common sense to you and me. Now, certainly wasn't in 1870, but why am I taking the time to talk about Cobra's education when this presentation is supposed to be about juvenile literature, nursery rhymes. It is because historically speaking, it's really important to understand that America at the time really had crap medical programs. As Cobra described, the doctors in this era were really upstart, rich, white boys who wanted the respect of the colleagues. Those upstarts would go on to practice bad medicine and give bad, sometimes deadly medical advice. If you don't believe me, look at the history of Kellogg's brand flakes and that whole crazy story. It's nuts. So bad medical advice was, was just flying at the time. Cobra had a genius to recognize this as a problem where he could have used his privilege to be like, yeah, no, that's cool. And he spent his life fighting for change in both medical education and public health education, and I really, really respect that. To articulate how passionate Cober was about his Ideals. When he headed Georgetown University's Public Health and Hygiene Program, he was the chair of the committee on Social Betterment of the President Holmes Commission in 1908 following the request of President Theodore Roosevelt for a report on social welfare and health. Theodore Roosevelt was big on this. Cobra writes. The question of health is intimately connected with the physical, social, and moral welfare of the human race and places an important role in the prosperity of countless numbers of our fellow beings whose only income is the product of their daily labor. It will be readily conceded that health is the chief asset of the working man and that no greater calamity can befall him than when his earning capacity is impaired or arrested by reason of sickness or disability. It means in many instances the utter financial ruin of the family and is doubtless one of the most potent cases of want in poverty. Again, this is a well off white male with a lot of privilege, but he really cared about the everyday man regardless of race. Well asterisk there, but he really cared that people be healthy. Let's bring these two geniuses back together, right. I found through the National Medical Library, a bunch of letters between these two men. And I'm in the process of transcribing them from cursive so I can read them. So I don't exactly know when they became friends. I'm gonna guess that they became friends through their connection between tuberculosis and their interested in. In that. In any case, these two geniuses collaborated to create Muddy Gym in 1919 when Berliner was the president of the Tuberculosis Society of Washington DC, and Dr. Cobert was the dean of the Georgetown Medical School. Muddy Gym is organized in 11 core tenants outlines. By Dr. Cober. In fact, in some of the full publications of Money Gym, and you can look up Money Gym in the Library of Congress, it's all there. It's gorgeous. There's an insert by Dr. Cober that contains excerpt from 1908 Book of Industrial and Personal Hygiene, which is part two of, I believe, his Presidential Homes Commission work. I'm not entirely sure you'll double check there, but these core tenants really emphasize public health mindset of the time. And his 11 rules are as follows. I only have 10 here. That's not good. Anyway, his 11 are cleanliness as a means for preserving health, fresh air and sunlight for foes of disease, germs, the danger of household dust. What is a cold milk and model food in model breeding ground for disease germs. The beauty in value of good teeth, a cool draft of pure water. One of nature's choices, gifts. Avoid tobacco and sportiness in general. We are all our brothers keepers. The reward of good health when serving your country, the effects of cheerfulness and kindness. Kindliness, I have to look and see what 11 is. I don't have it in my notes. I don't know what happened to it, but I'll have to find it in any case. We can now move on to money Gym. Itself. If you've been around on this podcast, you've heard me talk about Oppi and Oppi in the Oxford dictionary of nursery rhymes. And when I'm presenting this on Saturday, I'm gonna talk about kind of these core tenets that Oppi and Ope talk about. So in Muddy Gym, there are 11. Nursery rhymes and I'm actually gonna go through them one by one'cause I can, but they kind of fall under some tropes that I've seen and that is peer pressure, what I call mother knows best, or that is like a parental figure teaching a child religion. Anachronistic or wrong info, current events and policies, morality, health and safety in whimsy. There's also some patriotism thrown in in there, but it's not really enough to like make its own category. The very first image we have is the cover image. And the cover image is, I cannot express how beautiful the illustrations are. All I know is that the illustrator is JA Whiteford, and I cannot tell you anything more than that. And in fact, I've only seen her name pop up here and there, and I can't find anything about this person. So I am going to do some more research, but I just haven't had a chance yet. But the cover image of Money Gym is so picture, if you will, a street scene. You have a young boy, maybe between eight and 10, and he's standing there kind of in the foreground and he's in typical, I guess, turn of the century clothing, which is I think these are, short pants. Is that what they're called? Before, like boys became men and had to wear long pants. But anyway, they're like. Capris, I would call them. And then you could see his stockings, except stocking is down around his ankle. And he just looks very disheveled. His shoes are dirty, his jacket is torn and dirty. His white shirt underneath the jacket Is dirty and kind of disheveled His face is dirty, his hair is unkept his hands, which are by the way dirty. holding a hooping stick. So obviously he's been playing and he's looking to the left and he's looking very forlornly at two, beautifully made up girls. And the girls are probably the same age. on the left there's one in and a blue frock. And beautiful clean white stockings Mary Jane's, and she's in makeup and her hair's all curled, and next to her is a quail looking girl in pink again. Her hair's made up. her outfit is immaculate. She's in the contrast of pink and white and the street behind it is. Brilliantly white, unnaturally white, because I'm guessing that no street in 1919 looked like this, but in this illustration it does. And so this beautiful tableau of this cleanly white background and these two beautifully made up clean girls, and they're looking at this boy like, oh, you peasant, we want nothing to do with you. And so this very first image really. Shows this idea of peer pressure, which comes up again and again and again in this book. And from a visual rhetoric standpoint, you can't get anything more brilliant than the this. It is just a feast for the eyes, and I definitely recommend looking it up if you get a chance. But that's the cover image and that is the image for Muddy Jim. Muddy Jim. The poem reads as follows. A lad was muddy Jim. He hated soap and water. Nice little girls wouldn't speak to him, though he wished and thought they ought to. He didn't bathe, but once a month, his nails, he didn't trim his hair. Un combed. Oh, what a dnce was. Naughty. Muddy gym. So again, you have this idea of peer pressure because if a boy wanted girls to look at them, obviously they, he needed to bathe more than once a month. He needed to trim his nails. He needed to comb his hair. He needed to be a, a, a nice clean, clean boy for girls to take, to take notice of him. But this was the rhetoric to get kids to, to be clean and to be healthy. And so that is the very first poem of From Money Jim. The second is the busy sun. And I'll talk about its illustration here in a moment. In summertime, we play outside fresh air and sunshine, bless us indoors. With windows opened wide, good health is always with us. Then winter comes at home. We work, we love it, warm and jolly, but if our rooms are closed or dark, we'll suffer. Suffer from our folly because those tiny little germs, which make us weaken, sickly in darkness, there are lots of them, but fresh air knocks the spots off them, and sunlight kills them quickly. So this goes back to this idea, this. Of wrong information. Scientists were trying to figure out what was up, right? They just discovered germs. Well, not really, but germ theory was just popularized at this time, and it was common belief that sunshine killed germs directly in that fresh air. Killed germs. And in fact, if you look at advertisements in tuberculosis, newsletters,'cause that's something I do now in my free time, there are these crazy inventions where the idea was like if you let your kids sleep outside on the balcony, then they wouldn't get tuberculosis. And so fresh air was a huge proponent of healthiness at the time. The image of this one is one of my favorites. On one of the panels there is a magnifying glass and looking through the magnifying glass, there's these little doodles of devils. And they're like little stick figure devils and sun. There's a beam of sunlight that's killing'em. And oh my goodness, I love it so much because at the time no one really under, like the general popula didn't know what germs looked like. They barely believed in germs and so what could kill you? Well the devil was evil and so therefore must have control of germs. So what a great image. to promote germs was this evil, these evil devils and it's great. But another image is a man that looks a lot like pastor looking through a microscope. There's galy dressed children dancing in a circle, and brother and sister playing, I think checkers, it looks like in front of a roaring fireplace in the winter. Number three this goes through again anachronistic and wrong information, and it's one Liza sweeps. It is wrong. When Lizza sweeps the floor to whirl up dust where people live, it makes them cough. Their throats get sore. Household dust means germs, which sickness gives, instead of carpets tightly nailed. Use rugs, which you can clean out doors. The dust which might have been inhaled, can then be wiped off from the floors. So this is the another wrong idea that germs actually lived or were germinating. In dust. And so the idea is that if you inhale dust, it made you sick. And this is actually an idea that John Green talks about in his book, that one of the reasons why skirts got shorter after the Victorian era is that people believe that you brought in tuberculosis in from street dust. And so if hems weren't dragging on the ground, therefore it couldn't bring in tuberculosis. The image is the scene of a 1920s inside of a house, and it's a young maid sweeping, and there's like all these piles of dust wafting into the face of a young mother and her baby, and the mother's holding her hand out as if to ward off germs. If you're really interested in history, again, this is wonderful to look at as well,'cause you get the idea of what the inside of a, I'd say, middle class, upper middle class house might look like. Next is the horde fly. Mother, will you tell me why we are told to swat the fly? Yes, my dear. Because it brings dirt disease and filthy things when it walks on things we eat, germs drop from its sprawling feet, little germs, which mighty quick could if swallowed, make us sick. When foods exposed to flies or dust then full of germs, get skin and crust, wipe them or wash them or cook, you must. So again, it's this idea That flies carry germs and walk on your food and transmit germs. So in his book, John Green says that this is not true. However, when I looked it up, scientists do say that they transmit germs, but I cannot find any modern scientific data that proves this from what I'm reading, sounds like the idea that germs like spontaneously were created on flies rather than flies. Carrying germs. But again, I'm not sure, but this was definitely something I learned as a kid. Like flies will carry germs and kill you. The image is a young girl in a polka dotted dress, swatting flies at the dinner table over what looks to be a Boston cream cake. It looks good. And then there's a little girl in a pink dress and an awesome hat buying fruit for 5 cents to be peaches. And there's a bunch of flies. And, you know, she's picking it up and she goes home to wash them. The next is the gentle cow, and this really has to do with pasteurization, which I talked a little bit about the beginning half of this podcast episode, and it reads when milk is raw just from the farm, it's full of germs, which may do harm but safe. It is highly prized when it is boiled or pasteurized. Ice cream cheese and butterfat come from milk. You all know that made from raw milk, we can see they might harm both you and me. So again, it's no wonder that there's a pasteurization jingle here. Both Cobra and Berliner felt very passionate about pasteurization and teaching children. You should drink pasteurized milk, and I hate that this has become relevant again today. Like, don't drink raw milk kids. It'll make you sick. It could kill you. Don't do it. The image on the top. Third is a very pastoral scene of a farmer milking his cows, and there's flies around, so it's very pastoral, but it's also indicating that this could carry germs. In the bottom is a mom cooking raw milk on a stove top, which it's crazy to me that you could buy raw milk at the store. But there weren't laws, you know, against it, obviously. And then there's an infant who's literally reaching for, I guess, like a pasteurization machine, like reaching for a bottle from it. And it kinda makes me laugh'cause the kid's like, Hmm, milk. The next is Snaggle Tooth Susan, which talks a little bit about peer pressure as well as mother knows best. This idea, as mother knows best. Her teeth did Susan never brush. She washed and dressed all in a rush. Her mother used to scold her and soon her teeth became decayed. They chipped and broke. Sad to relate. And snaggle tooth, they called her. Poor Susan suffered awful pain. She promised not to miss again to use her brush and powder. That's all I know about her. So early iterations of toothpaste was of course, powder. And here we have peer pressure because if you don't brush your teeth, then little kids are gonna call you snaggle teeth and gonna make you feel terrible. And of course, mother knows best. You know, if you listen, just listen to your mom the first time, then you're not gonna have a toothache. The image, oh, it's so gorgeous. so it's, again, it's cut in the third and the first third is this. Really angry, non attractive looking girl. She just looked mean, right? Her hair's all a mess and her bow's askew and her dress is a little dirty and her teeth are all gross. And right next to it is presumably her. And she just has a bandage around her jaw and it's like, oh, my tooth hurts. And then the bottom are the most angelic looking girls. They're of course made up hair curls in beautiful dresses, and they're brushing their teeth. So here we have peer pressure. Here we have, again, a visual rhetoric showing this. Next is the farmhouse. Well, pure water should. Of all the drinks receive our commendation, but impure water sickness brings, remember this among the things to mind when on vacation. Beware of water in a well. That's near a place to soil it. In Brooks and ponds and wooden Dell, it's water that you cannot tell. And when it's doubtful, boil it. And again, the image. Is a pastoral farm scene of a young woman going to a, well, there are pigs in lop right next to it, so presumably don't drink that. If you're interested in learning more about wells and the spread of disease, you should definitely look up John Snow, if you're thinking of Game of Thrones and his wonderful work on epidemiology and tracing cholera in wells in London, it's really, really fascinating. Again, a tenet of don't drink dirty water. Next is my absolute favorite and it's called king nicotine tobacco's called king nicotine because they say it has within a poison by that name in poison, be it understood, can never do you any good. Don't care from where it came, my boy, I give you this advice. What's sporty isn't always nice. Don't be. A smiling scoffer because your body should be pure if poisoned, then you may be sure someday twill make you suffer. So there's a lot to say about this, and I'll get to the image here in a minute'cause it's my favorite image in the whole book. But whenever I think of like the 1920s, I think everyone smoked, like kids smoked. And so it was a shock to me reading about temperance. Of tobacco and that they knew like even in the 1890s and earlier than that, that tobacco contained poison that could kill you. Furthermore, if you are interested in learning about temperance or prohibition movement in the United States, I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend Ken Burns documentary on prohibition. Any of Ken Burns documentaries are amazing. But from that, I learned that the women's Temperance Union, or Women's Christian Temperance Union really interesting group of women, they were just brilliant, first of all, but they, really helped usher in women's suffrage movement in the United States because if you did not know, women did not have the right to vote in the United States until 1920. But they also ushered in prohibition laws, which maybe wasn't the smartest thing, but came from a good place. Women saw and understood that alcohol a, was deadly, and b, there was a real fear of domestic abuse after drinking. There was a whole bunch, whole, whole lot of things going on, but I hadn't realized that temperance. Was not only just from alcohol but from tobacco. So tuberculosis, leaks as well as temperance leaks were very vocal and behemoth against not only alcohol, but also tobacco. And we see this propaganda, and I say propaganda in kind of a positive way in this, in muddy gym. The image is amazing. It is a very gaunt man standing on the bottom step of a dais. Right. And sporty in this instance doesn't mean like sport as in football or, or whatever, but sportiness means being cool and he, so this very gaunt man is smoking a cigarette and he looks about two steps away from death. He's looking at this devil figure. And he's all red and he's in kind of a gesture or court outfit and who's smoking a big old pipe and smoking smoke rings and he's sitting on a throne made of cigars and cigarettes. It's gorgeous. And his foot rest is a, is a pack of cigarettes. And just like the more you look at this image, the more you can pick out from it. It's just gorgeous in so many ways. And I could talk about it all day, but I've got other things to cover. Number nine is polite care. Don't put things into your mouth, which may not be clean. And when eating, let no dirt on your hands be seen Germs to scatter in the air is far from polite. He who does it sadly wrongs gets them into people's lungs. Sure that isn't right. And again, I haven't even talked about, you know, the flu epidemic. Of 1912 that came before this and people were wearing masks then. And we can all remember in 2020 of the COVID pandemic, you know, these ideas aren't And the imagery. Also reflects kind of this peer pressure that I talked about. The first image is a boy being scolded by his mom'cause he's really dirty. But in the background, the girl, you know, of course the girl, she's cleaning herself up. Look how you know moral she is, she's healthy and clean, whereas the boy is like, you're dirty, you can't eat. Go clean up. And then the bottom image is a boy sneezing into a handkerchief and he's. Turning away from some young ladies as if to be like, I'm not blowing my germs on you. And then there's a boy in short pants who's brushing out his jacket outside to not get the dust indoors. Number 10 is Uncle Sam md and here's the patriotism I was talking about. Soldiers lead a healthy life marching with their drum fife drilling on parade, chest high. That's fine. Forward march and keep your line orders be obeyed. Halt, relax, stand and repose. Arms up high. Rise on your toes. Breathe in deeply through your nose. That's how health is made in Uncle Sam's brigade. But beware and take care. Bulging muscles are a snare. Once the tortoise beat the hair in athletics, there's no gain. if the heart you strain. So the image is, a teenage boy who is standing tall with his hands up in the air breathing deeply. And in the background there's a line of soldiers carrying an American flag. and this is perfect. This is right after World War I patriotism is high. And what's a better way to promote health? By saying, look who's healthy soldiers are. And they do that by breathing correctly. And so patriotism is yet another way to sell. Good health here. Next is thoughts and health. Healthy thoughts make healthy blood To be kind is to be good. If we do all that we should, joy will be our share. Evil thoughts, pay sin, toll, poison, body, mind, and soul. Cheerfulness. You must enroll if good health would be your goal. Sometimes say prayer. So this talks a little bit about religion. But more importantly, it talks about this really alarming idea that morality has something to do with health. And this seems to be an undercurrent with Lin and Cobra that like if you do not grow up healthy, then you're gonna grow up to be immoral. Or alternatively, if you are immoral, you're gonna die or be unhealthy. And as a disabled and chronically ill person, It makes me mad. But this was a common thread. I noticed a lot in these health literature, is that morality was connected strongly with health. The image here is a young boy scout walking an old lady across the street in front of a horse-drawn carriage. Then there's a mom looking over her baby sleeping in a bassinet. There are school children feeding pigeons in a park. And then there's a young girl who is. Praying in her mother's lap. So religion here has something to do with health. And then finally, we have the silent healer. Sleep is nature's medicine. Gives us health and vigor every time the children sleep. Nature makes them bigger When awake, we work and play. Use up brain and muscle. Oh, there is no better way to live than learn and hustle. Tired the head at even tied. Free from Sinin Sorrow. Through the world of dreams, we glide through the mist where hope abides shines the sun tomorrow. And this is another beautiful image. It's a young girl with beautiful girls asleep and she's dreaming of this gorgeous chariot of this blonde Amazonian woman drawing this chariot that's drawn by butterflies and there's little cherubs in it and it's just a gorgeous image. And I feel like. A lot of times in academia with nursery rhymes, whimsies not taken into consideration. And I think whimsy, for whimsy sake is, is important to talk with. Nursery rhyme rhymes, and this is just a beautiful whimsy look and illustration. Of course, the poem itself talks about sleep as health, and of course that's important, but I guess the image is just so pretty. So those are all the rhymes in the book. Just the illustrations are so. Absolutely gorgeous. So please take a look at the Library of Congress. Just look at Muddy Gym and it'll come right up. It's public domain, of course. And take a look for yourself and read up more about this. There's just so much to learn about public health in nursery rhymes during this era that I kind of wanna write a book about it, but that's kind of the most, the scariest thing I can think of, honestly, is writing a book on it. It's just a lot, but there's just so much information and. If you're gonna listen to my presentation or have listened to my presentation, understand that I only have 20 or 30 minutes to get through this and this. This itself is gonna be like an hour long podcast because I get to ramble about everything, but there's just so much more I would cover. First of all, there's so much more to understand about the context in Europe at the time and how that influenced what was going on in the United States at the turn of the century, and then. To understand historically what was going on in the United States, and then after the quote, Spanish Flu and World War I and tuberculosis itself is, its own topic, obviously, to consider. And there's other health rhymes from the era. There's also newspapers from Sanatoriums where they would send people with tuberculosis, and that is full of awesome literature. There's more to even talk about Dr. Cober and Berliner. Dr. Cobra, oh my goodness, he was such a brilliant man. He published over 200 books, articles, monographs, et cetera, on health from everything from. The American Civil War and venereal diseases and soldier health to pollution and tenement like health tenement. And he was just a brilliant man. He lived until, I think both of them lived until their eighties. Cobra worked at George Washington University I think up until his death. But both, there's just so much to talk about both of the men too, and I didn't even get like drop in the bucket. So this podcast is the extended, extended view of my presentation. And if you're interested in learning more or you have questions or concerns, please email me at a TKI task at info at a tki task@podcast.com or find me on my website, or if you are listening to this at the af s conference, find me at the conference. I love talking to people. But it's just so utterly fascinating and I hope that you found it interesting as well. In any case, I dunno how many more podcast episodes I will be publishing. It's a lot of work with a little gain. And I'd like to spend some more time if I'm going to be working on folklore more writing. But we shall see. If you're still interested in listening to podcast episodes, let me know. In any case, thank you for listening and I hope you. Have a wonderful afternoon or evening or whatever time it is, wherever you're listening. Thank you.