Civil War connections to everyday life

[BobbyHughes]

Re: Civil War connections to everyday life

2) Shafter, the city just to the south of me is named after Maj. Gen. William Shafter.


Not to mention Fort Shafter in HI, as well as Wheeler AAF and Schofield Barracks.

In the area of Pharmacology.. Eli Lilly commanded an Artillery battery

Everyday I drive past the location of the New Manchester Mfg Co. at Sweetwater creek state park. Its a mill that was burned during the Atlanta Campaign.

and those little products that come up every once in a while for the fair ones in our lives... named after the barrel plug... or "Tompion";)

[Hank Trent]

Re: Civil War connections to everyday life

and those little products that come up every once in a while for the fair ones in our lives... named after the barrel plug... or "Tompion";)

Are you saying that "tampons" were named after "tompions" used on guns in the Civil War?

The word "tampon" was in medical use, both as an object and as a word, long before the use of tompions in the Civil War. I'd guess that both tampon and tompion probably came from the same French root word, but one wasn't derived from the other.

Tampon referred to lint or sponge or other absorbant material, inserted into the vagina (typically) or elsewhere, to arrest unusual hemorrhage, not generally for normal menstrual bleeding. For example, from 1834: "Since her last period, the drain of flood has been incessant, for ten or twelve days, and the hemorrhage often, so immediately alarming, with frequent syncope [fainting], that I was in every instance, constrained to plug up the vagina, with a tampon of fine sponge..."

I still recall the one and only time I got to use the word "tampon" at a Civil War reenactment. :D Picketts Mill, 2001. A sleazy sutler was selling a sort of quack medicated plug as a remedy for dysentery. I was portraying the regimental assistant surgeon, and a soldier who'd purchased one asked for my medical opinion whether I thought such a thing would work, and we were discussing whether the supposed benefit was due more to the mechanical action of the plug (like a tampon!), or the medication on it.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net