The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 274 No 7340 p302-303
12 March 2005

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Taking a trip down the treacle well more
Ethics, common sense and the secrets of scientific research more
Violent behaviour — looking at it from the entertainment angle more

Taking a trip down the treacle well

I was intrigued to come across a reference to a treacle well in a contribution by Dr J. T. Hughes in Pharmaceutical Historian for December 2004. This referred to an incident mentioned by Lewis Carroll in his ‘Alice’s adventures in Wonderland’, where the dormouse describes three sisters who lived at the bottom of a well and were accustomed to eating treacle.

The well from which Carroll took his inspiration was in the churchyard of St Margaret’s in Binsey, Oxfordshire. Alleged treacle mines have also been reported from Cumbria, Devon, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Norfolk, Surrey, Sussex and Wiltshire and the expressions “treacle mine” and “treacle well” have been widely adopted to denote a benevolent fraud and a ridiculous joke. Why there should be as many as 19 treacle mines in Oxfordshire alone perhaps reflects upon the strange sense of humour of university students.

The term treacle applied to a dark product of sugar cane dates only from the 17th century. The medicinal balm known as theriaca was long ago reputed to be an antidote to poisons, and its name became in Middle English tryacle or triacle. Theriaca was ranked among the five sovereign remedies, and was recommended by the Royal College of Physicians as an internal remedy when in 1665 the Great Plague ravaged London. Apparently Binsey is still ranked among the treacle wells, and it is claimed that children are encouraged to draw therapeutic treacle from its depths by means of a jar attached to a string.

Notable among other celebrated treacle mines is Dunchideock, near Exeter, featuring in the folklore reports of the Devonshire Association. Not far away is another at Tamerton, near Plymouth. The Dunchideock product is said to be produced in the red sandstone of the area, which exhibits fluorescence when irradiated with ultraviolet light. Crushed and extracted with organic solvents, the rock yields on distillation heavy dark oil. The high cost of extraction makes it uneconomic to exploit, but there is apparently a market for the treacle in the US. In any discussion of treacle mines, however, there is always the element of joking to be taken into account.

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Ethics, common sense and the secrets of scientific research

In the 11 February issue of Science, three doctors comment on the increasing control exerted by politicians over the conduct, funding, publication and public use of some results of scientific research.

Activists who judge some laboratory research as wrong and potentially harmful to society lobby parliaments to have it banned on principle, and there is a growing conviction that there are some things we should not know — particularly knowledge obtained through ethically unacceptable means, such as the experiments conducted under Nazi auspices on human beings without any attempt to seek permission. Some knowledge is considered dangerous to be published, such as the production of weapons of mass destruction, and may be prohibited by authorities of religious, secular or moral movements.

In a study to discover what constraints may affect the work of scientists, researchers from prestigious US academic departments of neuroscience, sociology, molecular and cellular biology, genetics, industrial psychology, drug and alcohol abuse and computer science were interviewed. They were asked to consider their practices for limiting scientific inquiry or dissemination and report which area of research in their own expertise had met with constraint. Nearly half found that formal and explicit controls by government regulations and guidelines issued by universities, professional societies or journals had been imposed, although they generally agreed that such restrictions offered important protection. However, any determination of which research was most dangerous to society, they thought, should be made by scientists acquainted with the topic, and not by political policy-makers.

Some lines of research were deterred by a mere threat of social sanction. There were some unspoken rules, for instance that no microbiologist ought to cultivate a virulent pathogen. In general, scientists were morally responsible for their work and knew that full and open publication of results could not always be justified where they opened a path to criminal abuse.

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Violent behaviour — looking at it from the entertainment angle

It is no new thing to seek in the world of entertainment the roots of violent behaviour by children and adolescents. An extensive review of the situation, from the University of Birmingham, appears in The Lancet for 19 February. This draws attention to the pronouncement of the World Health Organization to the effect that a public health approach is needed to the prevention of violence and the reduction of mortality and morbidity in societies.

It has been shown that there is much consistency in children’s television viewing habits in 23 countries. In urban or rural areas with electricity 93 per cent of children attending school spend more than half their leisure time watching television. In England, 46 per cent of children have a TV in their bedroom and only 43 per cent of parents monitor their viewing. But most parents believe that TV affects the way their children talk, dress and behave.

Less research has gone into the effects of violence on screen, but a study has shown a positive association between violent entertainment and aggressive behaviour. Boys are more susceptible to violence than girls, the greatest effects appearing in younger children. Music lyrics and videos may have passive effects. Violent video games are related to later aggressive behaviour and delinquency in older children and adolescents. Some children are more susceptible to violent entertainment than others. People with mental health problems or under the influence of alcohol or drugs may be susceptible to violent scenes. There may be genetic predisposition and neurological conditions may play a role. Family, social and environmental factors may affect the development of aggressive and antisocial behaviour.

There is evidence that violent imagery has short-term effects on arousal, thoughts and emotions, increasing the likelihood of aggressive or fearful behaviour, but perhaps only in younger children.

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