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November 24
editUS clothing requirements circa 1914
editI'm reading about the California Impressionists circa 1914, and I can't get over the photos of these artists painting en plein air in full, three-piece suits. To my eyes in 2024, it seems absolutely ridiculous, but I am curious about the social conventions behind this. Was it considered improper for a "gentleman" to paint outside in a shirt and shorts? Why? And who was behind enforcing this? The whole thing makes no sense to me. Viriditas (talk) 21:02, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
- Appearing in your shirt without a jacket was definitely the mark of a labourer in the 19th-century. A saying was "From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" which meant that the wealth accumulated by one generation was likely to be squandered by their grandchildren. [1] This formality was a long time in passing; in the City of London office where I started work in the 1970s, a business suit was required for males and you were expected to put on your jacket if you were meeting a customer or even a manager (there was no air conditioning). Alansplodge (talk) 22:55, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
- This photo was taken in 1874. He's sitting in the full Hawaiian sun with a suit on. You can't really tell, but it looks like a wool suit to me. All of this forced discomfort because they don't want to appear working class? It's really hard to believe and wrap my mind around. "Let's be as uncomfortable as possible because other people might think we work for a living." Makes no sense, sorry. I get that these strange ideas are passed along from generation to generation, but at some point you have to just say, "this is crazy, I don't care what people think". So why didn't people do that? Viriditas (talk) 23:33, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
- There was a picture of Richard Nixon, from the late 1950s or so, showing him walking on a beach, while wearing a full business suit. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:03, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- This one? But you know I'm not too sure what he's wearing for a jacket there, it seems to have a zipper, and to be made of a different material. That's more apparent in color photos, such as this one where he is being troubled by a Yorkshire terrier. Card Zero (talk) 11:14, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- Those jackets are super comfortable. I went through a vintage clothing phase in the 1980s (it was a thing before it was a thing) and got to wear a lot of old clothing, from the 1920s all the way up to the 1970s, and those Nixon jackets were everywhere. I can't remember what they were called, but when you wore them, there was a military and sporty aesthetic involved. The only thing I don't like about those jackets is that every time you sit down or stand up from a seated position, the versions of that jacket with an elastic waistband tend to bunch up and you have to adjust the jacket. I can't tell if Nixon's has the elastic or not. Viriditas (talk) 19:48, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- The Picard Maneuver. (See section 3.2.) --142.112.149.206 (talk) 10:20, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
- I didn't even have to look; I've watched enough Trek to know exactly what you meant. Viriditas (talk) 10:43, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
- The Picard Maneuver. (See section 3.2.) --142.112.149.206 (talk) 10:20, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
- Those jackets are super comfortable. I went through a vintage clothing phase in the 1980s (it was a thing before it was a thing) and got to wear a lot of old clothing, from the 1920s all the way up to the 1970s, and those Nixon jackets were everywhere. I can't remember what they were called, but when you wore them, there was a military and sporty aesthetic involved. The only thing I don't like about those jackets is that every time you sit down or stand up from a seated position, the versions of that jacket with an elastic waistband tend to bunch up and you have to adjust the jacket. I can't tell if Nixon's has the elastic or not. Viriditas (talk) 19:48, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- This one? But you know I'm not too sure what he's wearing for a jacket there, it seems to have a zipper, and to be made of a different material. That's more apparent in color photos, such as this one where he is being troubled by a Yorkshire terrier. Card Zero (talk) 11:14, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- Cultural expectations are very powerful, much more so than mere laws. Not only does one feel pressure from one's peers to conform, and expect their disapproval if one were to break a cultural norm, one absorbs them at a subconscious level and feels internally uncomfortable at breaking them.
- I (born in the 1950s) was brought up in a culture (the UK) which expected male office workers at all levels to wear a suit (waistcoat optional) at work, and personally felt uncomfortable not doing so up until the mid 1980s, after which I transitioned to wearing (usually) a sports jacket given the choice, but several subsequent employers required me to wear a suit until around 2010, and expectation of a suit at, for example, job interviews are still widespread.
- One of the reasons one sees men of the pre-WW2 era wearing suits outdoors is (I suggest) that most of them probably didn't even possess any less 'formal' (by modern standards) wear designed specifically for wearing outdoors/in public. If one is acclimatised to always wearing a particular type of clothes, their feel becomes the norm rather than 'uncomfortable', and it might never even occur to one that another, unfamiliar style might be 'more comfortable.' One of the reasons that Lawrence of Arabia won the trust of the Arabs he worked with was that he, very unusually, adopted their (climate-appropriate) dress rather than sticking to English style clothing as almost all others did.
- L. P. Hartley wrote "The past is a different country, they do things differently there." I wonder how many things you, Viriditas, do today unthinkingly that people in the 22nd century will find ridiculous or inexplicable? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.211.243 (talk) 05:24, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- What I was getting at has more to do with the sense of Victorian morality and its influence on fashion. But you raise a good point about climate-appropriate dress. Why does it seem that form wins out over function until about the 1960s? Viriditas (talk) 09:47, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- We lack an article about Station (sociological concept). It used to hold a powerful psychological grip on people, rather like Face (sociological concept). In 1669, Samuel Pepys had a new suit with gold lace and a "coloured camelott tunique". He was "afeard to be seen in it", not because he'd look like an idiot, but "because it was too fine". He worries about it on May 1st, and again on May 2nd, and still doesn't dare wear it. About 150 years before that, a startup was a kind of shoe (not to be confused with booting). Wiktionary has an etymology based on its height up the leg: actually many examples were only ankle-high. But note that one of the quotes is from A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, and another meaning of the word is the same as upstart. These are shoes that a peasant maybe shouldn't wear, because they're slightly too nice, and above the peasant's station. Back in 1669, on May 10th, Pepys is vexed by remarks a friend makes about how fine his coach is, and this friend "advises me to avoid being noted for it, which I was vexed to hear taken notice of, it being what I feared and Povy told me of my gold-lace sleeves in the Park yesterday, which vexed me also", and so he resolves never to appear in the royal court with the sleeves, and in fact has them cut off. Presumably if he went around dressed above his station - tricky to calculate - he risks social shunning, and wouldn't get his dream job (for instance, starting the Royal Navy, becoming a member of parliament, and being president of the Royal Society). This is clearly a load of bullshit: such appointments shouldn't depend on wearing the right amount of gold lace. Round about 1800, men seem to finally grasp this, and we have the Great Male Renunciation, which is where the custom of wearing sober suits in muted colors begins. Note that they were functional and practical, at the time, compared to what went before. But men are still really stupidly worried about what their clothes are asserting about their station in life, even with all the gold ornaments taken off and the color subdued, and this continues for another hundred years, at least. On the one day he actually dared to wear his fancy suit, Sam Pepys records: "This day I first left off both [!] my waistcoats by day, and my waistcoat by night, it being very hot weather, so hot as to make me break out, here and there, in my hands, which vexes me to see, but is good for me." People thought suffering in hot weather was healthy? To quote the great sage Butt-Head, "I don't know, maybe they're stupid". Clothes denoted status because cloth was expensive, hence the ruff, a display of cramming as much cloth as physically possible around one's neck. And these status-through-amount-of-cloth-worn anxieties are very old, and go back to the social status obsessed Romans, and the voluminous toga. Card Zero (talk) 10:28, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
- Subscribe. Viriditas (talk) 10:45, 26 November 2024 (UTC)</ref>
- We lack an article about Station (sociological concept). It used to hold a powerful psychological grip on people, rather like Face (sociological concept). In 1669, Samuel Pepys had a new suit with gold lace and a "coloured camelott tunique". He was "afeard to be seen in it", not because he'd look like an idiot, but "because it was too fine". He worries about it on May 1st, and again on May 2nd, and still doesn't dare wear it. About 150 years before that, a startup was a kind of shoe (not to be confused with booting). Wiktionary has an etymology based on its height up the leg: actually many examples were only ankle-high. But note that one of the quotes is from A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, and another meaning of the word is the same as upstart. These are shoes that a peasant maybe shouldn't wear, because they're slightly too nice, and above the peasant's station. Back in 1669, on May 10th, Pepys is vexed by remarks a friend makes about how fine his coach is, and this friend "advises me to avoid being noted for it, which I was vexed to hear taken notice of, it being what I feared and Povy told me of my gold-lace sleeves in the Park yesterday, which vexed me also", and so he resolves never to appear in the royal court with the sleeves, and in fact has them cut off. Presumably if he went around dressed above his station - tricky to calculate - he risks social shunning, and wouldn't get his dream job (for instance, starting the Royal Navy, becoming a member of parliament, and being president of the Royal Society). This is clearly a load of bullshit: such appointments shouldn't depend on wearing the right amount of gold lace. Round about 1800, men seem to finally grasp this, and we have the Great Male Renunciation, which is where the custom of wearing sober suits in muted colors begins. Note that they were functional and practical, at the time, compared to what went before. But men are still really stupidly worried about what their clothes are asserting about their station in life, even with all the gold ornaments taken off and the color subdued, and this continues for another hundred years, at least. On the one day he actually dared to wear his fancy suit, Sam Pepys records: "This day I first left off both [!] my waistcoats by day, and my waistcoat by night, it being very hot weather, so hot as to make me break out, here and there, in my hands, which vexes me to see, but is good for me." People thought suffering in hot weather was healthy? To quote the great sage Butt-Head, "I don't know, maybe they're stupid". Clothes denoted status because cloth was expensive, hence the ruff, a display of cramming as much cloth as physically possible around one's neck. And these status-through-amount-of-cloth-worn anxieties are very old, and go back to the social status obsessed Romans, and the voluminous toga. Card Zero (talk) 10:28, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
- What I was getting at has more to do with the sense of Victorian morality and its influence on fashion. But you raise a good point about climate-appropriate dress. Why does it seem that form wins out over function until about the 1960s? Viriditas (talk) 09:47, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- Apparently, some Englishmen (with or without their mad dogs) emigrated to Hawaii. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:36, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- Let's help everyone out with a link. Viriditas (talk) 09:32, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- I think that you might get used to being hot because of lots of clothes. If you've been brought up wearing multiple woolen layers in the summer, then it would be normal, whereas modern children are used to running around in shorts and T-shirts.
- The French Army in both World Wars required their soldiers to wear a heavy woollen greatcoat all year around, which would be a lot hotter than a suit.
- Alansplodge (talk) 18:44, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- I think Laurie Lee mentions in Cider With Rosie that farm labourers would add an extra layer to keep the heat of the sun out. And I remember farmworkers wearing cardigans, jacket, and tie in blazing hot weather. DuncanHill (talk) 19:19, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- They still do in Hawaii. It's odd to see if you're not used to it. I may have some old photos somewhere. Viriditas (talk) 19:44, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- Let's help everyone out with a link. Viriditas (talk) 09:32, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- In the 1980s I worked for a small software house in Cambridge (the original Cambridge, not a foreign imitation) and we had no dress code (and, of course, people were responsible, and dressed appropriately if they were meeting visitors etc). We were acquired by a large US-based company, and I was posted to a facility near the headquarters for a few months in 1990. I knew that their dress code was shirt and tie, and that wasn't a problem. My first week there, they told me about dress-down Friday, and I honestly thought they were pranking me, because it was such a self-evidently bonkers idea. Either the management cared about your comfort or they didn't: what was the point of casual dress one day a week? ColinFine (talk) 11:59, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
- All of this forced discomfort because they don't want to appear working class? It's really hard to believe and wrap my mind around. "Let's be as uncomfortable as possible because other people might think we work for a living. I think even a lot of working-class people wore suits back in the day. Wearing a suit of that sort (even when it was uncomfortable or climatically inappropriate) was I think more just due to social conventions about what was respectable, than a way to demonstrate that you didn't work for a living. Iapetus (talk) 12:50, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
- Well, it's plausible that the "social conventions about what was respectable" began as a way to signal that one wasn't a labourer. See also blue-collar worker. Alansplodge (talk) 22:33, 28 November 2024 (UTC)
- There was a picture of Richard Nixon, from the late 1950s or so, showing him walking on a beach, while wearing a full business suit. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:03, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- This photo was taken in 1874. He's sitting in the full Hawaiian sun with a suit on. You can't really tell, but it looks like a wool suit to me. All of this forced discomfort because they don't want to appear working class? It's really hard to believe and wrap my mind around. "Let's be as uncomfortable as possible because other people might think we work for a living." Makes no sense, sorry. I get that these strange ideas are passed along from generation to generation, but at some point you have to just say, "this is crazy, I don't care what people think". So why didn't people do that? Viriditas (talk) 23:33, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
1930s leukemia treatment
editWere there treatments for leukemia in the 1930s? 86.130.15.246 (talk) 21:50, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the newly discovered X-ray was used to treat leukemia. Doctors found that radiation therapy worked best against chronic leukemias, but it was useless against acute types. X-rays could provide months or even years of remission for people with chronic leukemia, but the disease would always return.
The first medications for leukemia grew out of the horrors of World War I, when it was discovered that the chemical weapon mustard gas suppressed the production of blood cells.
- Wolpert, Jessica (April 28, 2021). "The History of Leukemia Explained". www.myleukemiateam.com. --136.56.165.118 (talk) 05:14, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- No. Mustard gas#Development of the first chemotherapy drug says it was trialled in 1942, and eventually (when?) entered clinical use as chlormethine. Card Zero (talk) 17:24, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- According to History of Radiation Therapy Technology, radiotherapy was first used on a leukemia patient in 1903. Alansplodge (talk) 18:36, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- According to Chlormethine § History the effect of mustard gas on bone marrow and white blood cells had been known since the First World War. Further chemical and biological research led in 1935 to the discovery of a related family of chemicals with nitrogen substituting for sulfur was discovered – the "nitrogen mustards" and the synthesis of chlormethine. World War II research led to clinical trials for use in chemotherapy. The research could only be published in 1946. There is no contradiction, but the path leading from the chemical weapon of WWI to the drug that became available after WWII is not straight. --Lambiam 18:38, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
- In The Waltons episode The Gift, Jason's best friend Seth was stricken with leukemia and had only a year to live. They mentioned there was no cure and did not mention treatments. 86.130.15.246 (talk) 22:37, 25 November 2024 (UTC)