Monday, April 5/2010

We'd thought of Easter Monday as a public holiday observed more in the public than the private sector - as in Canada - but it's more widely observed here. Thus the planned engineering works disrupting the underground continue, the Barbican is pretty well silent and the streets in The City, commercial heart of London, are deserted.

But not the museums, so we spend a couple of hours in the Museum of London, a favourite. The pre-historic section includes bison horns and spears thrown as an offering into the Thames. There's also a presentation in the medieval gallery. A woman in period dress talks about medieval medicine. She's done quite a bit of reearch and it's interesting, and frequently disgusting, e.g. sitting in a bath of pigeon dung to cure a fever or tasting urine for diagnostic purposes. Some odd things did work. Rubbing chicken brains on the gums of a teething infant worked because it softened the gums.