Common people

In 1656 a book called The Art of Simpling by William Coles claimed, "The common people formerly gathered the leaves of Elder on the last day of April, which to disappoint the charmes of witches, they had affixed to their doores and windowes. I doe not desire any to pin their faithes upon these reports, but only let them know there are such which they may believe as they please." It is said that for this reason, elder was planted outside Westminster Abbey. 

Wilkinson indicates that he considers social cohesiveness to be an epiphe-nomenon. The evidence shows that where income differences are greater, violence tends to be more common, people are less likely to trust each other, and social relations are less cohesive. However, the impression that social cohesion is beneficial to health may be less a result of its direct effects, and more of a marker for the underlying psychological pain of low social status . He believes that the biological causal pathways are Likely to center on the influence that the quality of social relations has on neuroendocrine pathways (Wilkinson, 1999, p. 48). 

A common problem in Anglo Saxon England, as well as much of contemporary Europe, was the way cloth merchants could so easily cheat the common people. At a market, it was all too easy to ask for a yard of cloth, to see it measured against the merchant s yardstick, and pay for the cloth only to get home to learn just how short the merchant s stick was. Paying for 10 yards and coming home with only 9 yards was common, it seems and the problem was not restricted to just cloth, but also to leather and timber. 

So how is insomnia treated Most commonly, people self-medicate their insomnia with over-the-counter medications such as Tylenol PM , Sominex , Unisom , or other drugs such as antihistamines (discussed in Chapter 3). Other people try natural remedies such as melatonin (see Chapter 4). When such medications don t work, people often ask their doctor for a prescription sleep aid, which is usually a type of medication called a benzodiazepine such as Halcion or a related type of drug such as Ambien or Sonata (see Chapter 6 for more on these types of drugs). 

It (sal) is found in the ashes of all plants, in the calces of stones, in the hones of animals and in all things. Therefore the wise have called it the silver of the common people, (silver) on account of its whiteness, and of the common people because all men have need of it.. . . He who knows salt and its solutions and its solidifications knows the hidden secrets of the wise in alchemy. It whitens and cleanses and resolves bodies, and the spumus melts and also solidifies and preserves them and protects from burning by fire. 

The odors in the house surprised me. Somehow I had never connected Mrs. Flowers with food or eating or any other common experience of common people. There must have been an outhouse, too, but my mind never recorded it. 

Walt Whitman was a nineteenth-century American poet whose free verse poems often broke with conventional style and subject matter. Some of his most famous poems, including Song of Myself," Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, and Passage to India, extol the virtues of the common people and stress their unity with a universal spirit. This poem was published in 1865. 

Concerns for the living conditions of the poor common man, and the limited possibilities of poor and common people to procure required medicinal ingredients prompted authors to enter the marketplace with books promising to communicate simplified cures instead of complicated, more expensive procedures. An important book in this regard is the Public and Private Apothecary (1622), written by a doctor of medicine in Silesia named Martin Pansa. What makes Pansa s volume so interesting is the way that certain medicaments are reserved for certain social classes, with chemical medicaments appointed for use among the upper social echelon. In other words, chemical medicines had become specialized medical commodities appropriate to social and economic advantage. 

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