Dose of this, dash of that

To the editor:
I sent your recipe for "Balm of Life" to Michael Flannery, a professor of pharmacology, for his opinion on the abreviation "do," which you posited as a stand in for the word "dose" [see "Recent Acquisitions," Vol. 5, #2]. Dr. Flannery suggests that "do" stands for "ditto," and that the standard abbreviation for dose in the pharmacy world is "D." Therefore, the correction recipe, I believe, would call for "two teaspoonsful of camphor," as opposed to "2 doses of camphor," which makes no sense.

Barbara Mason, Curator
Pearson Medical Museum
Springfield

Editor's note: Dr. Flannery is undoubtedly correct, but given that Mr. Crea, who wrote the recipe, was not a pharmacist and liberal with his brandy and opium, we gave him the benefit of doubt.

Parlor talk

To the editor:
I was intrigued by Jon Austin's article "Death In the Living Room," since it was based in Washington County [See Illinois Heritage, Vol. 5, #2]. I know that his main thrust was to re-create the setting of the home funeral, but he seemed to lament the fact that there was no other information about Lona Brown and her death available. Naturally the Centralia Sentinel, being a daily paper serving a rather large area, would not have gone into great detail. However, the county papers are a different story. For the past year I have been working with the files of the Okawville Times and have access to the files of the now-defunct Nashville Journal. I have been sorting, arranging, taking notes, and binding the Times issues. In both papers I have found death notices for Mrs. Brown, and in the issues of the following week, lengthy obituaries giving circumstances of death, survivors, etc. Incidentally, the funeral was actually held at the Irvington Methodist Church. What we see in the photograph is the arrangement for the wake or home visitation, which isn't even mentioned in the papers. It was still so common in the Thirties to have the wake at home (in this area) that everyone would have known where to go, I suppose.

Warren Stieg, Curator
Heritage House Museum
Okawville

Cholera in Illinois

I really enjoyed the piece on the 1833 cholera epidemic [See "Plague on the Prairie" Illinois Heritage, Vol. 5, # 1]. I've been doing some research on the 1833 cholera epidemic in central Kentucky, so this article was of great interest to me. My great-great-great grandfather died from this in Shelbyville, Kentucky, which piqued my interest in the 1833 outbreak. Sad stuff.

Stuart W. Sanders
Perryville, Kentucky

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