A prescription for “Whiskey” medicinal liqour… “take two shots before bed and call me in the morning.”

The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which banned the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors,” took effect on January 16, 1920. It became known as the National Prohibition or Volstead Act. This new law required physicians to obtain a special permit from the prohibition commissioner in order to write prescriptions for liquor. The patient could then legally buy liquor from the pharmacy or the physician. However, the law also regulated how much liquor could be prescribed to each patient. There were no provisions for the prescription of beer.

In the 1920s, alcohol was known as an ancient therapy that still held medical value with some physicians. It was widely used through the 19th century, although its scientific value was beginning to be questioned by the turn of the 20th century. Part of its popularity was due to its low cost and availability. It was used as a tonic, stimulant, preventive measure, and even as a cure for acute illnesses. Whiskey and brandy were used most often, but use generally varied considerably from physician to physician. Alcohol was prescribed for a variety of ailments including anemia, high blood pressure, heart disease, typhoid, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. Physicians believed it stimulated digestion, conserved tissue, was helpful for the heart, and increased energy. Patients of all ages used alcohol. A common adult dose was about 1 ounce every 2-3 hours. Child doses ranged from 1/2 to 2 teaspoons every three hours.

In addition to their right to prescribe alcohol for its therapeutic value, American physicians also united to protest the encroachment of Congress on their right as doctors to treat their patients with whatever means they deemed necessary. They were not fighting against prohibition, but against the government’s growing jurisdiction over their practice of medicine.

Although the medical community tried to win back their autonomy through numerous court cases, appeals, and resolutions, none of them were successful. Prohibition was finally repealed by the 21st Amendment on December 5, 1933.

This struggle over the Volstead Act marked the first time that the medical community had taken a stance against federal legislation. Previous laws concerning health and medicine had been largely supported by the nation’s medical community. The unsuccessful protest of physicians during prohibition began a new phase in government regulation of medical practice. Modern parallels can be seen in the debate about medicinal marijuana and mandatory health insurance. These laws, like the National Prohibition Act, will affect the interaction of physicians with their patients.

Sources:

Appel, Jacob. 2008. Physicians are not Bootleggers: The short, particular life of the medicinal alcohol movement. Bulletin of the History of Medicine82: 355-386.

Rothstein, William G. 1972. American Physicians of the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Blending the pre-made colored balls into the AlienTech.

Getting a basic shape…

Colors melting into each other.

The colors have blended well creating multiple layered sections.

Breaking Bad is on at all times to give us inspiration “Just let us cook!”…

Blowing out the section…into what? Watch and find out.

Starting to see a disc appear…

The Flattened out section.

Creating a hole in the middle – not as easy as you’d think.

A view of the basic concept, the AlienTech blends in greatly with the pre-made color patterns.

A Happy Ben after a hard day’s work!

We first got to work creating the perc and the main chamber, here you can see Ben connecting the bottom part to the rest of the chamber…

Alas we can start to see the basic shape come together, but we have a long way to go…

Here we can see Ben’s torch tattoo perfectly aligned with the torch in his hand, working hard to create entryway for the mouthpiece…

We take a break and Ben shows us a finished tube, adorned with flowers, marbles and greenery Ben insisted he was truly proud of it…

Another view point of this amazing vapor-ready tube…

An artsy up close picture… compliments of the Glass Otaku….

Back to work, prepping colored tubes to be resized, and re-shaped for future use…

The beginnings of a mouthpiece…

Fine tuning the mouthpiece, making sure it’s ready to be added to the rest of the rig…

Finishing the rest of the tubing leading up to the mouthpiece.

Fusion time!! adding our completed mouthpiece to our rig…

After some time in the kiln Ben adds the stemless appendage of the rig, complete with marbles and a male 14mm joint. Ready for globes and curves alike…

While our rig is back in the Kiln we begin working on some sea life for a larger tube Ben is making. Let’s start with a fun Seahorse as the focal point of the piece…

Once the Seahorse is finished we add it to the tube and throw it in the Kiln…Glasses off for a bit.

We can’t wait to see the sea life piece finished! We had a great time in the studio with Ben and hope to see him in the neighborhood soon! Being able to watch Ben at work was a rare treat and we couldn’t be any happier with the results, Ben is truly a humble individual and is always working with a smile on his face. We cannot thank him enough for giving us the opportunity to learn first hand just how intensive of a process glassblowing really is. The prep work, the constant heat and the long hours are just a few of the host of obstacles one must face when on the torch and Ben makes it all seem easy and fun to do.

“Tumbled Opals”

If you crack open an encyclopedia or better yet, Wikipedia and look up Opals you will find that it is their basic composition which gives them the properties needed for encasement in glass. Like glass Opal is an amorphous form of silica meaning that it lacks the long-range properties of a crystal. What makes amorphous solids different is that they have properties which when heated effect the matter in different ways, to put it simply this is why when glass is heated it becomes more liquidous. Thus with opal being formed of silicate much like glass has the ability to be cased within molten glass. Opals also have the unique ability to reflect every color in the visible spectrum, making them a sight to behold… especially on a beautiful glass pipe, pendant, or marble.

“Thank You” By Daisuke Saito

Often times people sneer at even the idea of synthetic opals, thanks to companies like Whole Foods and others trying to shove the whole “Organic Movement” down society’s throats people often believe across the board that natural is always better than synthetic. What we found is that this is not the case, The synthetic began with the discovery of the ordered sphere structure of precious opal which led to its synthesis by Pierre Gilson in 1974. The resulting material is distinguishable from natural opal by its regularity; under magnification, the patches of color are seen to be arranged in a “lizard skin” or “chicken wire” pattern. Furthermore, synthetic opals do not fluoresce under UV light. Synthetics are also generally lower in density and are often highly porous. Since Pierre’s breakthrough he has turned the creation of synthetic opal to an art form. Through his company Gilson Opal he and his team create the worlds premiere synthetic opals for jewlers, lapidary artists and of course, glassblowers.

Gilson Synthesized Opals!

Gilson Opals are the easiest to encase in glass due to their porus nature and their “crystaline” structure, making them less perceptible of damage when putting them under high-temperatures. Also since they are scientifically manufactured in a laboratory Gilson offers a brilliant array of colors and options of stone-shape. You can buy Gilson Opals in cuts just like a gemstone, ones like:

• Ovals
• Pears
• Rounds
• Trillions
• Hearts
• Squares
• Marquis
• Spheres
• Cubes
• Faceted
• Tumbled Opals – Meaning that they are tumbled for over 8 weeks thus removing all the gritty surfaces and other rough spots generally found on opal chips.
• Rough Opals
• Chips
• Chards
• Powder

Natural opals on the other hand are a bit more tircky to encase. This is because of their lack of a cyrstaline-like sturcture along with other natural impurities that may have formed over time. Due to this lack of a formalized molecular structure natural opal is very difficult to encase because it is not as heat resistant as synthetic opal. Their advantages lie in that their shaping is much more unique as well as the fact they flouresce under UV light. “Precious” opal, which is  is also rare and can be quite expensive making products like Gilson more enticing to glass artisans.

“The Galaxy Opal” The Largest Precious Boulder Opal Ever Discovered

Opals naturally come in a variety of different colors from white, black, boulder opals, clear hydrophane opals and finally crystal opals, but more commonly (natural and synthesized) they come in either black, white, and crystal. As far as color goes, its personal preference. Many people perfer black over white or crystal when glassblowing. All colors work the same in the glass. The darker colors reflect wonderfully and stand out alot. White or crystal blend into the glass and look wonderful in jewelry and sculpture.

All in all we are amazed by the opal, it’s glimmering colors make us entranced every time we look at them. So the next time you find yourself in an argument with some fellow otaku over opals, don’t be hesitant to use this as a quick reference.

Congratulations!! 

We found your photo to be especially original and creative, see here as this monster Mini-tube tells a bed time tale to the sleepy spoon.

Glass by Dr. Octopus

Honorable Mentions….

If you see your image here shoot us an email with your name and address and we’ll send you an IgniteMe StickerPak!

All names of contest winners have been removed for confidentiality purposes, if you won please email us ASAP so we can send you your prize. 

We celebrated the successful completion of the piece with a trip to Crispy’s favorite sushi spot Samurai Sushi in Henderson, NV which for those who don’t know is the small city just south of Las Vegas which sprang up into life during the last ten years. We had fun at the Sushi Bar interacting with the restaurants sushi chefs, Crispy is simply known as “Sushi Boy” as he walks through the door. Our meal consisted of a variety of sushi treats both traditional and new age, with my love of Onigiri (fish on rice) and his knowledge of the best artisan rolls at Samurai Crispy and I crushed it! Munching on crowd favorites like Maguro (tuna), Sake (Salmon) as well as Samurais signatures like Monkey Brains Roll wich featured crab, avocado, rice, and Banana’s deep fried! …Crispy has good taste!

All in all it was a great night out with an old friend. I can’t wait to see what we crush next!

“flatten it out”

“It’s good to be back in the glass garage”

“Raging Raffy!”

“Crispy getting technical”

“Precision Welds”

“All bout’ that hand torch”

“Crispy now has an entertainment system in the shop! Futurama is a calssic”

“Attaching legs is serious work!”

“Don’t make me use the clamps!”

“Side Profile”

“10mm dome”

“Chameleon Tail”

“Chameleon Tounge”

“What ‘chu lookin’ at?”

“Unagi, everyone’s favorite right?”

“Crispy gives Onigiri the stamp of approval”

“Maguro & Sake”

“Shrimp Tempura Roll”

“The Frying Jason”

“Monkey Brains”

Watch it here

In each of his 3 separate but intertwined shows Lilley tackles a score of different roles in a way that can only be done by him. Using a familiar documentary-based platform for his shows Lilley is given the chance to show off his talent of being able to create hilarious characters with a shocking level of humanity and realism. From playing a 42 year old woman looking to roll on her side from the city of Perth to Ularu to a world famous rapper looking to re-shape his image Lilley leaves nothing off the table it seems. Using heaps colorful language and a variety of topics that heavily infringe on the lines of political correctness his outrageous yet human comedy is the stuff of legend in his home country of Austriala, but with the release of his newest series Angry Boys  backed by the BBC and HBO he’ll be making his way across the pacific to a T.V. near you.

We Can Be Heroes: Finding The Australian of The Year (2005)

…Lilleys Nominee’s for the Australian of the Year Award…

His first endeavor We Can Be Heroes chronicles the daily lives of five unique Australians, who have each made a large achievement and been nominated by friends and family for the Australian of the Year award. Each nominee played by Lilley are from different parts of the country and represent the full spectrum of Australian society: young and old, male and female, urban and rural; native and emigrant. During the span of the series we fall in love with his characters:

• Daniel Simms – A 16 year old native of the small backroads town of Dunt, Daniel generously donated his eardrum to his hearing impaired twin brother in a world first transplant operation.
• Ja’mie King - A 17 year old private high-school student holds the national record for sponsoring 85 Sudanese children. Every week she undergoes a “40 Hour Famine” to raise money for the children.
• Pat Mullins – A 47 year old woman Pioneering the sport of rolling on her side on a mission to complete a record breaking roll from Perth to Ularu.
• Phil Olivetti – A 37 year old ex police officer who put his life on the line when he bravely rescued nine children from an unsecured jumping castle which blew into overhead power lines.
• Ricky Wong – A 23 year old chinese emigrant who has received international acclaim for developing a high efficiency solar panel yet he yearns to become a musical theatre star.

…Nathan and his twin brother Daniel…

The Hourglass from Ikepod on Vimeo.