The Saturday briefing
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Is there anything you’re yearning to know? Send your questions, on any subject, to the contacts given below, and we will do our best to answer them...
Q How does a dock leaf stop nettle rash?
Dave Kelly,West Malling, Kent
A Nettles sting to protect themselves from predators that may eat them.Their stems and heart-shaped leaves are covered in trichomes – tiny, glass-like hairs – loaded with toxic histamine, formic acid and serotonin. If touched, the top of the hair snaps off, injecting these irritants, giving that familiar burning sensation.
It’s a very common plant, found in gardens, hedgerows, fields and woodlands. Dock leaves are often found growing nearby and used as a rescue remedy, sometimes with an extra helping of spit.
Some people claim the leaves soothe the sting because their alkaline sap neutralises the nettle’s formic acid. But dock leaf sap is acidic too, so this can be ruled out.
The cooling sensation of the sap evaporating from the affected skin, or simply the spit, could relieve some of the burning feeling, or it may simply be a placebo effect.
Applying alkaline products such as milk, soap or a dilute solution of baking soda might help.
Nettles are not just a pest, they are a food source for caterpillars, aphids, ladybirds, chaffinches, sparrows, hedgehogs, frogs, toads and shrews.
They can also be made into tea, beer, pesto and beer – when nettles are cooked, dried or processed, the trichomes are destroyed.
During the First World War, to cope with the cotton shortage following Allied blockades, Germany used stinging nettles as an alternative fibre, which was rolled out on a large scale to make soldiers’ uniforms.
Q
I’ve always wondered about the origin of “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”.
Andrew Fairfoull, Lymm, Cheshire A One of our oldest proverbs, this means what one person finds enjoyable, another may find distasteful or harmful.
It was already hackneyed at the start of the 17th century, when English playwright Thomas Middleton referred to it as “that ould moth-eaten Prouerbe”. The Roman poet and philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus, known as Lucretius, coined the expression in the first century BC. In his philosophical and scientific poem, On The Nature Of Things, he wrote that what is food for one man may be bitter poison to others, to highlight the importance of understanding and accepting differences to coexist in harmony. The poem covered everything from desire and death to atoms, and includes other
pearls of wisdom, such as that fear and greed are the human soul’s most dangerous emotions.
It is claimed Lucretius was driven insane by a love potion, and killed himself at the age of 44.
Q
Why do you not see public information films on TV any more? We need some warning children about online dangers.
Tim May, Halifax,WestYorks A Up until 2011, public information films (PIFs) were produced by the government’s Central Office of Information.
These short films, on such topics such as stranger danger, foot and mouth disease and decimalisation would educate, inform and often frighten the public.
The earliest PIFs appeared during the Second World War. Commissioned by the Ministry of Information, they usually starred former doctor Richard Massingham, who told us “coughs and sneezes spread diseases”.
As PIFs were supplied to broadcasters free of charge, they were seen on the BBC and in cinemas. From the 1950s they were used on ITV as advertisement break space-fillers.
During the golden age of the PIF, from the Sixties to the Eighties,
countless campaigns warned of everything from pickpockets to the dangers of returning to lit fireworks.
Many were fronted by celebrities such as Basil Brush,Alvin Stardust, and the cast of Dad’s Army. Some animated PIFs had characters such as Jo and Petunia, and Charley the cat, voiced by Kenny Everett.
Perhaps the most memorable PIFs were the most unnerving, for example the ghostly Spirit Of Dark And Lonely Water, voiced by Donald Pleasence, the AIDS: Don’t Die Of Ignorance campaign narrated by John Hurt, and the Protect And Survive campaign, set up in the Seventies to prepare the British public for nuclear war.
The COI closed in 2011. PIFs are still produced though, including road safety films by THINK!, and NSPCC campaigns.
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