Avast, wench! For ye birthday booty, ye get today's Fergotten English, ahoy!

cucurbitula
A glass vessel which, having its air rarified, gives room for that contained in the part to which it is applied to expand itself, and bring with it such humours as it is involved in.

--Daniel Fenning's Royal English Dictionary, 1775

The curcubitula cruenta is designed to draw blood. The cucurbitula sicca is for dry-cupping, and is a local vacuum apparatus. The cucurbitula cum ferro is armed with iron.

--Edward Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, 1895

Feast Day of St. Januarius,
an Italian patron of phlebotomists, who attained sainthood after it was reported, on this date in 1389, that a vial of his coagulated blood had liquefied and bubbled. Under the definition of phlebotomie in An English Expositor (1616), John Bullokar offered this ludicrous explanation for the practice of bleeding: "Phisitions, as it is written, learned this practice first of a beast called hyppopotamus, living in the river Nilus, which being of a raucous nature and therefore often overchared with much eating, is wont to seeke in the banks for some sharp stub of a reede; upon which pricking his leg he thereby easeth his full body, stopping the bleeding afterward with mud."

Well, I'll be keelhauled. Does sirfox know about this?

-The Gneech, me hearties

PS: Avast, ye scuppers! It's D. H. Laarrrrwrence's berfday as well!

"Okay, I've got a question for you then," Brigid said.

"Oh?" said Greg. "Fire away, young porcupine."

"Well, I've always wanted to know just what it means to strike like thunderball. I gather it's something that people who look at this world and want it all do ... but that's as far as I get."

"Oh!" said Greg. "Well ... it's ... um..."

"You don't know either," Brigid said.

"Certainly I do!" said Greg. "Don't be ridiculous!"

"Well then what is it?"

"It's ... er..."

"Yes...?"

Greg blinked, moistened his lips and thought for a long moment. "No," he finally said, tossing a hand into the air. "You're right. I haven't a clue. It's utter gibberish as far as I can make out. A complete non sequitur."

Brigid nodded. "That's what I thought."

"Still," said Greg. "Tom Jones. That's got to be worth something."

"Absolutely!" Brigid replied. "That part was never in dispute."

-The Gneech

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That is all.

-The Gneech