Oooo, we get to dress up, too? *digs out something heavy with beads, does hair in finger waves* I looove 1920s women's fashion (shockingly), but sadly in the current novel both my MCs are young men, who flat out don't notice/care about its details (except how good it looks on the girls, in the case of one of them, anyway). One of them does really care about his own fashion though, at least. I've had lots of fun looking at newspaper adds and noting the different colours advertised for various items of men's clothing in Toronto in 1927.... do you know neither suits nor hats even came in black? (except tuxedos).
And it carrys on in this way for pretty much the entire thing, which is pages long. It's taking the normal speech patterns of written words and turning it up to 9, versus what you see in something like Thomas Paine's Common Sense or a newspaper. Reading the 1765 Quatering Act and other acts passed by Parliment in regards to the colonies makes me want scream in frustration, until I realizes I could have to translate my documents first instead.
What are you doing for research right now?
Zzzzzzzzzz..... you have a pretty strong constitution to get through that!
I'm not doing intensive research for the novel right now, because I'm working on revisions, though yesterday I still ended up spending 45 minutes reading a medical textbook on lung disease from 1921 to learn about contemporary attitudes/treatment of asthma (one of my secondary characters in this novel has it, but it's (probably) not even mentioned in this work, will be in the next one where he's one of the MCs). There was a whole chapter on it and it was interesting. It's talked about very much as a progressive disease, which I guess it would have been in the days before control medications. It's also divided into types, one of which is described as "purely neurotic" and associated with a particular personality type--anxious and high-strung, though with tons of determination and quiet strength and a positive attitude. It doesn't surprise me at all people with asthma in the days before effective treatment would often become that type of person--lots of people today who have cystic fibrosis, a progressive lung disease that can only be somewhat managed, fit that profile--but the text seemed rather to imply the personality predisposed a person to asthma, rather than being the result of dealing with it. It also confidently declared asthma attacks never kill.... which even today is not true, so not sure how they got that.
My favourite part was the discussion of various methods of relief. I knew at the time there were asthma powders, which you would burn and inhale the fumes (which did have some anti-inflammatory ingredients, so would have helped), and even "asthma cigarettes", the same kind of thing in cigarette form, which may or may not also include tobacco (I can't imagine those in the former category would have helped much). This book discussed various of the commercial remedies available, one of which was found to contain cocaine as a major ingredient. The book didn't find this a huge deal, just cautioned that the product contained potent ingredients and should be used with care. Good ol' 1920s.