Swiss National Day

Every country has its own day for fireworks, it seems: November 5th in the UK, July 4th in the USA, July 14th in France. In Switzerland it’s today, 1st August, and anyone standing on the southern shore of Lac Léman tonight, in France, will look across to see firework displays taking place all down the long sweep of the Swiss shore. Today is the Swiss National Day*, when communities gather all over the country (and beyond, in the so-called “Fifth Switzerland” made up of expatriates) to celebrate their Swissness and the survival of their country despite all the obstacles that geography, language, religion and sometimes-aggressive neighbours have placed in the way of its unity. Here we look at some Swiss items in the Wellcome Library collections, and the links between Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

[*Of course, as a multi-lingual country Switzerland has not one but four names for the celebration, calling it the Bundesfeier (German), Fête nationale (French), Festa nazionale (Italian) or Fiasta naziunala (Romansch).]

The date of the National Day commemorates the first Federal Charter, dated “early August” 1291, although it has become conflated also with the slightly later Oath of the Rütli sworn between the representatives of the three original cantons, an event dramatised by Schiller in his play Wilhelm Tell (and re-enacted at a crucial moment in the country’s history, in 1941, when the 650th anniversary of the confederation was used to reaffirm a commitment to democracy and independence). Needless to say, history does not really provide a neat date and time at which the country was founded. Rather, the origins of Switzerland lie in a gradual coalescence of various communities, mostly of their free will, for mutual protection and self-determination. As the Middle Ages progressed, the original three “forest cantons” of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, clustered in the mountainous area around the Vierwaldstättersee, were joined by other similar areas, by imperial cities such as Zürich, Bern and Basel, by their subject areas, and by other loose confederations of mountain communities such as those that now make up the cantons of Valais and Graubünden, until by the early modern period the country had essentially the shape that it has today.

There have long been strong links between Switzerland and the United Kingdom, with the nineteenth century particularly important for these. The Romantics’ appreciation of Switzerland’s scenery – prior to the Romantic movement it had been more usual to see mountains as a nuisance – forged a trail that tourists followed, with an ever-expanding railway network (and travel agents like Thomas Cook) making it ever easier to get there. The names of hotels in holiday centres such as Interlaken are a testament to the British influence on Switzerland’s tourist industry. Politically, too, Switzerland was appealing to the nineteenth-century Briton. At a time when much of Europe was controlled by empires and other undemocratic régimes, this was a country whose foundation myths, of sturdy independent peasants banding together to resist oppression and decide their policies by democratic means, chimed well with Victorian ideas of ancestral Anglo-Saxon liberties and the evolution of the Mother of Parliaments. (In each case, of course, the foundation myth ignored many less democratic elements such as the unequal weighting that wealth gave certain citizens’ voices, and the complete absence of any voice for women.) The robust Protestantism of many Swiss would have been congenial, too. Here, a Victorian Englishman could have enjoyed foreign travel whilst feeling that the people around him were almost British themselves: sensible, sober people not given to continental vices such as riots, revolutions or too much gesticulation. One of the strangest survivors of this nineteenth-century kinship stands in the London district of Brixton, one of the capital’s poorer neighbourhoods: in the midst of a 1960s housing estate is a pub called “The Hero of Switzerland”, the sign showing the iconic scene in which William Tell aims his crossbow at an apple on his son’s head. The building is modern but stands on a site used for a pub of that name since at least 1901.

As one might expect, many of the Swiss items in the Wellcome Library relate to British travellers. In 1817 Joseph Jackson Lister (1786-1869), wine merchant, microscopist and later to be father to the founder of antiseptic surgery, was one of the British subjects flocking across the Channel to see the European sights that had been off-limits for a generation and were now finally opened to them by the victory over Napoleon. His travels are recorded in a tiny, neat diary, illustrated with pencil sketches and watercolours that track his journey across France to the Alps and then back to Britain down the Rhine (MS.6962).

Lister's journeys took him to the foot of the Gotthard Pass, into territory that was still quite wild and woolly for the average traveller. Later in the nineteenth century an expanding tourist industry had made the mountains more accessible, with mountain railways making it possible for ordinary tourists to reach summits previously thought of as the haunt only of ghosts and dragons. The surgeon Charles Brodie Sewell (1817-1900) visited Switzerland repeatedly from the 1860s to the 1890s and his detailed travel journals give an indication of how domesticated, comparatively, the Alps were becoming: photographs show us the rack-railway climbing to the summit of the Rigi, one of two that were built to this peak. Many other papers in the Library collections document similar holidays, up to the mid-twentieth century. The diary of Dr Forrest Leon Loveland, a general practitioner from Topeka, Kansas, documenting a trip to Europe in 1931, is particularly colourful, with photographs, cuttings and ephemera pasted into a large diary-cum-scrapbook (MS.7974). Shadows are cast on this tourist idyll, however, by one item Loveland includes: next to a painting of Zürich and photographs of the railway up the Pilatus is a monochrome newspaper cutting whose title declares "Germany's 100,000 on fighting edge", next to which a member of the Wehrmacht blows a purposeful bugle. Particularly poignant reminders of the world beyond the Alps come in the papers of the psychoanalysts Siegmund Heinrich Foulkes (originally Fuchs) (1898-1976) and Elizabeth Therese Fanny Foulkes (née Marx) (1918-2004). The couple collected postcards when on holiday, and their papers include blank undated cards from all over the world, Switzerland included. The Swiss cards appear to date from between the wars and it is probable that whichever of the Foulkes collected these (they were not married to each other at that time) would still have been a German citizen, since each was born German but was forced to emigrate to the U.K. by Nazi persecution of Jews.

We have focussed so far chiefly upon foreign visitors to Switzerland, but of course Swiss material is also present in the collection. Our manuscript medical recipe books include Swiss items such as MS.7908, a collection of medical recipes originally put together by a priest in Birmensdorf (canton Zürich) in the early seventeenth century. Perhaps the most striking of our Swiss holdings, however, are among the most recent. The Library's Iconographic Collections include a large number of Swiss public health posters, warning against AIDS and counselling condom use (as ill-luck would have it, AIDS arrived at about the same time that Switzerland underwent a large increase in intravenous drug use, making the problem even more pressing). The posters - available, of course, in various languages including those of immigrant communities such as Turkish, as well as the country's official languages - come in various styles, from the oblique to the downright startling and explicit. Backgrounds to the messages vary from nightclubs in, presumably, the grittier city neighbourhoods, to the chocolate-box Switzerland of Alps and meadows, in which a Heidi-milkmaid brandishes a condom and proclaims "Ohne? Ohne mich." (An idiomatic translation might be "Doing without [a condom]? Do without me."). In one particularly pretty series, the instantly-recognisable skylines of various Swiss cities are shown at night, lit only by the stars and a strange, pink moon that turns out on closer inspection to be a condom.

August 1st has provided us with a reason to dig out some of our Swiss holdings: but, of course, there are many more and they are available all the year round. All these and more can be consulted in the Library (and images of many Swiss-related items can be found on Wellcome Images). You are invited to come and explore, whether it that takes the form of rambling over Alpine meadows or looking at the many inventive uses graphic designers can find for the humble condom.

Images:
Aerial illustration of the Vierwaldstättersee (also known in Britain as Lake Lucerne), from the diaries of Dr Forrest Leon Loveland, general practitioner of Topeka, Kansas, documenting a trip he made to Europe with his wife Helen in 1931 (MS.7974).
Postcards collected on Swiss holidays, mostly showing the Berner Oberland, in the papers of S.H. Foulkes (PP/SHF/A/C/7).
Title page, MS.7908: 17th century recipe compilation.
"The Hero of Switzerland" pub, Loughborough Road, London SW9: image copyright Christopher Hilton, made available under Creative Commons via the Geograph website.
A square and fountain in Zürich, drawn by Joseph Jackson Lister in MS.6962.
The Vitznau-Rigi railway, from the 1885 travel diary of Charles Brodie Sewell (MS.4509).
AIDS-Hilfe Schweiz and Swiss Federal Office of Public Health: poster warning of the importance of condom use, 1990s.
AIDS-Hilfe Schweiz and Swiss Federal Office of Public Health: poster warning of the importance of condom use, 1990s.
Swiss Federal Office of Public Health: poster warning of the importance of condom use, 1990s, showing Luzern by night.

Run down, and needing rest and change?

Are you a nerve-exhausted town dweller? Dyspeptic, depressed, anaemic? Trying to think and just getting no response from your brain no matter how hard you press down on the accelerator?

Late July, and schools across the United Kingdom have closed for the summer. Departure lounges and roads to the south are clogged with families heading off on holiday, whilst back in the office even for people without children the atmosphere changes: we may not any longer be bound by the school timetable but prolonged exposure to it in formative years hammers home the message that the six weeks coming up are different in some way. One of the saddest discoveries of starting most jobs is the realisation that from now on, commuting will go on through much of August as well, and one may cling fondly to the idea that there will be at least some form of summer slow-down in blatant contradiction of the evidence.

Well, for most of us the long summer holidays of childhood are gone for ever; but to cushion the blow, we invite you to take at least a short weekend break courtesy of the Wellcome Library. The Library, as regular users will know, is rich in travel writing: wherever humans go, disease and injury follow them, so no matter how obscure a corner of the world one selects, the chances are that a doctor will be there recording his or her impressions. (See our guide to unpublished travel writings in the archives for an overview ; or, for some ripping yarns of medical men going into the unknown, come along to the next running of our “Around the World in 100 Years” Insights Tour.) This posting, however, is intended simply to be a quick weekend break to keep you going until your proper holiday, so we will stay closer to home and allow ourselves to be pampered at a good hotel rather than plunging into the unknown…

One of the frequently-used sources in the Library’s special Quick Reference Area is the Medical Directory (earlier volumes here), of which the library has a long and virtually complete run described in an earlier blog post. As a tool for biography and family history, a means of finding out about individual medical men and women, it is unrivalled. There is, however, a lot more to it: each annual volume represents a snapshot of the medical profession in the UK, listing not merely practitioners but also hospitals, medical societies, benevolent funds, dispensaries … and healing spas. In addition to the official Directory, too, there are advertisements for medical services and equipment, and here again spas and resorts occur. Using this material, we will treat ourselves to a weekend away at a spa in the years between the World Wars.

Spa treatment has been recommended over the years for a huge variety of ailments. In the Medical Directory advertisements, we see it indicated for bronchial complaints, tuberculosis, arthritis, scrofula, sciatica, alcoholism, obesity and constipation – to pluck some conditions completely at random. This blog, of course, cannot offer medical advice and we would urge anyone suffering from most of the complaints listed above to consult a doctor – we will concern ourselves with the more general, vague feeling, so common at this time of year, that there are better places to be than at one’s desk.

But where will we go? The range is huge. Health resorts occur in all corners of the country, linked by the thousands of miles of pre-Beeching Report railway (and, despite the founding of the Irish Free State some years before that gave Ireland her independence, the Directory also lists resorts in Ireland, such as Lisdoonvarna in County Clare). Some are spas in the strict sense of the world, growing up around a mineral spring with medicinal value, but others are health resorts in the broader sense, allowing one to relax and recharge in a pleasant environment. Sometimes this is the seaside, sometimes the mountains. Levels of activity vary: in many cases the sedate stereotype of the genteel watering-place is clearly appropriate, but in others it most certainly is not: the Directory lists Blackpool as a health resort, for example, and whilst that may or may not be true even its best friends could never call Blackpool sedate. Climate varies too, from one end of the country to another, and whilst one patient may need a mild climate for another a brisk breeze may be called for. There is clearly the need for an online flow-chart that will take people through the intricacies of choice and work out the precise spa that would be appropriate for someone suffering from lethargy and constipation but able to deal with chilliness and averse to sea-bathing – here, all we can do is set out some examples…

The resorts of the south and south-west, where winter is mildest, are recommended for people struggling to cope with the British climate. Torquay proclaims itself good for “delicate children of Anglo-Indian stock” and Ventnor, similarly, targets “delicate, Indian-born, children, weakly girls at puberty, and ... the infirm and aged who have no cardiac weakness.” The adjoining towns of Hastings and St Leonards, meanwhile, boast a winter climate notable for “mildness and equability”: there is “a fine sea-front where invalids can walk, sit or drive almost daily during the winter, and good sea-bathing in summer.” In general, although St. Leonards (to the west of Hastings itself) is less sheltered and “rather more bracing”, the two resorts form

“a harbour of refuge for those who are physically unequal to the struggle against the inclement, changeable and sometimes severe wintry weather experienced in other parts of the British Isles.”

As we all know, that inclement and wintry weather doesn’t have to happen in winter – it can come at any time, as much of June demonstrated! For most of us, however, summer is a time to look for something a bit more bracing. Here the Scottish resorts come into their own; latitude (and in some cases altitude) gives them a cooler climate akin to that some way up in the Alps, with the added bonus of the Northern summer's long days. Speyside – a chain of small towns centred on Grantown-on-Spey - offers air that is “singularly fresh and pure, and the atmosphere translucent and free from excess of humidity, owing perhaps partly to the formation of granitic rocks…” Further north still, Strathpeffer – Britain’s most northerly spa – makes similar claims:

“The climate of Strathpeffer is sheltered and sedative, but on the upper slopes the air is fresh and invigorating…. Strathpeffer is therefore eminently a tonic spa.”

All the Scottish spas offer golf, of course; other physical activities available might include walking on the hills or in the sheltered forests of the Spey valley, tennis or bowls. Permits for fishing can also be obtained (we are in the world of John Buchan and would expect no less) and Nethy Bridge, on the Spey, markets itself particularly to “the tired health seeker who is also a trout fisher.”

It all sounds wonderful and definitely one would expect it to have “a powerful restorative effect in many cases of nervous and mental fatigue and overstrain, insomnia, nervous dyspepsia and depression, especially in middle and later life” (as Speyside sells itself). One must, however, be careful not to overdo it – as Braemar counsels, “It should be remembered that the northern and stimulating air is an incentive (sometimes undesirable) to active exercise”, even if one has been ordered expressly to relax.

Strathpeffer, as well as golf and walking, offers also the unappetising prospect of the “one of the most highly sulphuretted waters in Europe”, to be quaffed medicinally by the residents. Downing vast stoups of something that tastes like someone else’s used bath-water is, of course, the downside to residence at many health resorts. No such drawbacks await you at Blackpool: the “chief watering place of Lancashire” takes its water externally, on the seven miles of sea-front. Emerging from the sea, one may amuse oneself in all sorts of ways: “the promenades and rock gardens, the covered colonnade and piers…cinemas, tennis, golf, bowling … the children’s playgrounds, sea and motor excursions.” However, as the advertisement coyly points out, “The annual number of visitors and excursionists is believed to be more than five millions, and Blackpool is not an invalid’s resort in the summer season” – which is certainly one way of putting it.

On the facing page, through the random action of alphabetical order, we find the more genteel resort of Bude in Cornwall. Here, there is sea-bathing, and for those unwilling to face the sea the Bude Canal can be pressed into service (built in the nineteenth century to carry fertiliser inland, by now the canal was curtailed to the bottom mile or so: its state today). Facing west, it receives strong Atlantic winds which make it less suitable than some resorts for the physically frail but

“In the early summer and the autumn months… the climate is very good for those who require a pure and invigorating air. Cases of bronchial catarrhs and early phthisis, anaemia, debility and ‘brain-fag’, are stated to respond favourably at Bude.”

“Brain-fag” …. we can all relate to that, can’t we? Jeeves, pack our bags and bring the Bentley round to the front; we’re off to to the seaside to recharge the bean.

Images: all from the 1933 Medical Directory.