Research – Page 2 – Ouyang’s Desk

Makeup in SCA Period

I was talking with one of my Wards (she’s almost 16) about an event we were going to today and this happened.

And now I think she wants to research period make-up. So that’s a win.

Oh man. Oh man oh man. 😀

A Roman Woman’s Medicamentum: Creating the look of Roman Cosmetics with Modern Products
My A&S Paper on makeup (and the philosophy/cultural intricacies of cosmetics in Ancient Rome)

Chinese Cosmetics in the Tang Dynasty
Another paper, similar to the one on Roman cosmetics, but on Tang Dynasty makeup and styling.

Stefan’s Florilegium has a couple of articles on period cosmetics and perfumes, which I can’t seem to link directly to – but just do a search there for “cosmetics” and you’ll be happy.

Be wary of the “Encyclopedia of Cosmetics” type books, because if they do talk about SCA period, it’s super quick and tend to not be cited well. And if you’re looking at non-western European makeup…yeah.

ANYWAY, I’m a period cosmetics dork. 😀

The Maishu and the Yinshu

[More 100 Days of Arts and Sciences, featuring “Manuscripts as sources in the history of Chinese Medicine,” by Unschuld and Zheng, in Medieval Chinese Medicine.]

Two medical manuscripts dating from the Han Dynasty were found in Zhangjiashan grave number 247, in Jiangling, Hubei province, i, n 1983. These are the Maishu (脈書, Book of the Mai [vessels/channels]) and the Yinshu (引書, Pulling Book).

The Maishu was composed no later than the middle of the 2nd century BCE (there was a surge in medical development at the end of the 3rd century BCE). The Maishu consists of 6 texts, which were named by Donald Harper as follows:

Ailment List
Eleven Vessels
Five Signs of Death
Care of the Body
Six Constituents
Vessels and Vapour

The content is a mix of pre-medical healing techniques and the foundations for medical practice. The same connection between human physiology and natural structures is present here, especially in the Six Constituents.

The Yinshu contains a three-part text regarding macrobiotic techniques intended to pull qi (vapor) in and through the body. This is accomplished via gymnastic exercises, seasonal regimens, daily hygiene, and sexual practices.

The Maishu and the Yinshu was originally published on The Eastern Gate

PDF vs EPUB for Comfortable Researching

I need to replace my Kindle.

It’s a first generation Kindle Fire which my husband bought for me for my birthday several years ago. I love it. I never thought I would like a Kindle, but I used my Fire all the time to read, watch Netflix, and even play the occasional stupid game. I even loaded PDFs for school onto it so I could do my readings on my lunch break without having to lug around a bunch of printed out PDFs.

The trouble with PDFs on a Kindle is that you have to move around the screen in order to read everything, especially if the text is formatted into columns.

After talking with Mistress Una the other night, I got the idea that it was probably possible to convert PDFs to EPUB, which is a much friendly format for e-readers. This would mean that you could read your journal articles and other PDFs (like the free MOMA books) in comfort wherever you read other things on your preferred e-reading device.

A quick Google search turned up a Digital Trends article, How to Convert a PDF file to EPUB, which offers a few different options. I played around with ePUBator on my phone, but if there is a way to tell it where to save the converted file for easy retrieval, I haven’t figured it out yet. I’ve used Calibre for other e-book management features, so I’ve got that flagged as the next one to try.