WORD BY WORD: HAPPY TO SAY HELLO TO AUGUST, SMELLING SALTS, AND HELLO TO HONEYBEE

Lorraine Norwood
Aug 5, 2025
4 min read

Woo! I don’t know about where you live, but here in the mountains of North Carolina, it’s been

hot, hot, and hot. And how hot is it, you ask? Well, close to 90 degrees with humidity around

84%. In case you’re not familiar with that combination, it’s like taking a shower, drying off, then putting on your clothes but needing another shower because you’re already sweating. And that would be sweatin’ like a horse, because as we all know, pigs don’t sweat. And that’s with air conditioning.

Lord knows what it must have been like 200 years ago with no electricity and women’s clothing voluminous and multi-layered. Or consider summertime 700 years ago when people (like the characters in my book) wore wool clothing year-round. Had I lived during that time, I would have been naked. Walking naked in the 1300s would get you thrown in the stocks or locked up in “Bedlam”, a notorious asylum in London. But I am very allergic to wool – I break out in hives.

Now let’s skip to the Victorian period in London. To get an idea of what a well-dressed woman

in 1870s London might be wearing, check out:

I got tired just watching her put on all her clothes. Is it any wonder women fainted (being so

delicate and prone to hysterics) and had to take a whiff of smelling salts? And what are smelling salts, anyway? Glad you asked.

What Are Smelling Salts?

Smelling salts, sometimes called ammonia inhalants or ammonia salts, are mixtures of ammonia and other chemicals used to revive people who've fainted.

Since ammonia is the main ingredient, the smell is like a wicked mixture of bleach and toilet

cleaner, irritating the inside of your nose. This triggers a reflex that causes you to breathe deeply and forces you out of your stupor.

Smelling salts have been known and used since Roman times when it was known as

Hammoniacus sal. In the 14th century, Chaucer mentions sal armonyak in “The Canon’s

Yeoman’s Tale”, one of The Canterbury Tales. Smelling salts were widely used to help women

recover during labor but were later used in Victorian Britain to revive women who fainted

(corsets anyone?). At that time, smelling salts were commonly dissolved with perfume in vinegar or alcohol and soaked in a sponge, which was then carried in a decorative container called a vinaigrette.

An ornate vinaigrette from Switzerland c. 1805 composed of intricately decorated gold and colorful enamel. Public domain. Courtesy, the Museum of Health Care, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

More recently, athletes have begun using smelling salts to boost performance, particularly for weightlifting, hockey, and

football. I was surprised to find smelling salts on Amazon, all packaged up and marketed in hot colors and stylized designs,

promising high performance.

Personally I can vouch for the whiplash, neck-slapping acrid odor of smelling salts – and no, I didn’t use it to boost my

weightlifting. When I was 14, my grandmother and I were shopping in downtown Asheville, NC when we came across a man at the entrance of a drugstore who was in the throes of a grande mal seizure. I had never seen this before and was horrified. The poor man was foaming at

the mouth and fitting while people gathered and watched. I don’t remember what I said to my

grandmother but she took one look at me and hustled me to the drugstore lunch counter where I fainted. A waitress shoved a bottle of something under my nose. Gad!! It was awful!! Smelling salts, my grandmother said. In my memory, I see the waitress pouring something into the Coke she handed me. Surely that can’t be true, but I swear the Coke smelled like ammonia. Anyway, the whole event was enough to convince me that I should change my plans for a nursing career.

P.S. I Googled “ammonia coke” and it’s a thing! Check out this link if you are feeling adventurous https://www.artofdrink.com/soda/ammonia-coke

HELLO TO HONEYBEE

After my dear sweet Sally died, I swore I was never getting another dog, especially a puppy! But

I have to admit that I missed Sally terribly, especially when I was writing. She had a bed behind

my chair where she snoozed and waited patiently for me to finish. So, when my daughter

announced she had found a dog for me at the Humane Society, I only half-grumbled.

Meet Honeybee, a six-month-old puppy who is 59.1% American Pit Bull Terrier, 11.4% Australian Cattle Dog, 5.9% Boxer, and 23.6% Supermutt (The Supermutt is American Staffordshire Terrier, Beagle, Lab, and German Shepherd.) She is sweet, smart, cuddly, and obsessive about putting everything in her mouth. I knew she would be a good fit when, on her first day with me, she jumped on the bed as the Zoom writing group met and sprawled out as if she owned the place. While I worked on my writing, she waited patiently or chewed on her toys (did I mention the mouth and the chewing?).

When I need a Labrador-fix, I can always turn to Olive and Mabel for comfort. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMasQuHzjJk