This collection comprises recordings of 17 historic speeches given to the UK House of Commons between 1628 and 1956. Readings are of speeches origninally given by parliamentarians including Oliver Cromwell, Edmund Burke, William Wilberforce, William Gladstone, Keir Hardie, Winston Churchill and Aneurin Bevan.
This work tells the history of smoking in England from the social point of view. Thus it does not deal with the history of tobacco growing or tobacco related manufacture, but is rather the story of how smoking has fitted in with the fashions and customs throughout the ages, and the changes in the attitude of society towards smoking.
This collection comprises recordings of seven historic speeches given to the UK House of Lords between 1641 and 1945. Readings are of speeches origninally given by the 1st Earl of Strafford (Thomas Wentworth), the 1st Earl of Chatham (William Pitt the Elder), the 6th Baron Byron (the poet Lord Byron), the 1st Duke of Wellington (Arthur Wellesley), the 3rd Earl of Lucan (George Lord Bingham) and the 3rd Earl Russell (the philosopher Bertrand Russell).
Numerous theories have been proposed for the causes of dancing mania, and it remains unclear whether it was a real illness or a social phenomenon.
One of the most prominent theories is that victims suffered from ergot poisoning, which was known as St Anthony’s Fire in the Middle Ages. During floods and damp periods, ergots were able to grow and affect rye and other crops. Ergotism can cause hallucinations, but cannot account for the other strange behaviour most commonly identified with dancing mania.
Many sources discuss how dancing mania, and tarantism, may have simply been the result of stress and tension caused by natural disasters around the time, such as plagues and fl...