Special Guest Blogger: Anna Maria Helena

The best medical facilities in my day meant getting a splinter was enough of a reason to go scurrying around booking your own plot at the cemetery, ordering some tasteful wreaths from the florist and chiselling your own epitaph on a headstone before climbing into your own coffin, getting comfortable and sliding the lid shut which is why i came up with my own medical techniques.
My family were headed by Henry Baring of the bank fame and i married into the French aristocracy so we were astoundingly wealthy, owning houses in several countries including the South of France where we would spend our Winters because the English weather was awful and all those leaves just laying about were not healthy and i knew all about health matters.
Around that time vaccines were becoming popular and held up as the saviour against all manner of diseases but i told my doctor that was stuff and nonsense and i had heard some rubbish in my time, every time you open your mouth as a matter of fact, but sticking tiny needle in one's arm will stop them catching polio? Madness! I will stick to my tried and tested method of breathing in cows farts thank you very much.
Although you would never find it written in any medical journals, inhaling large doses of methane fresh from a cow's bum was the route to a long and healthy life so to that end, i kept a herd of cows outside of our bedroom so i could be sure to get the full benefits of their gas.
As well as bovine flatulence, dead squirrels tied around the head of a night prevented me getting wrinkles and used onions on doorknobs guarded against infection and nothing greets you in the morning like the smell of cow trumps, rotting squirrels and onions, thats the aroma of healthy living my friend.
Our only child died young, not enough cow pumps was not the diagnosis, but i knew different but one Autumn i saw a painting of a beautiful young peasant girl in a Paris salon and did the rational thing of purchasing the seven-year-old child for two bags of gold and the promise that she would receive an education and a standard of living that were superior to what her parents could have provided.
The child grew up into a beautiful and successful woman, thanks to only being allowed to drink milk from cows personally selected by me and her faintly smelling of cow butt never hurt.
I died in my 82nd year which is about 150 in today's years but on my death i left a large portion of my money to an orphanage for the daughters of clergymen because no matter how rich you are it sucks to fork over a large percentage of your estates finances to politicians who might use it to build roads, but also probably use it to buy whipped cream to cover prostitutes in it but it did come with some conditions obviously.
The girl's must drinking plenty of milk, study phrenology to ensure a firm spirit and conscientiousness and no girl under 10 should be taught Maths because unless they planned on sewing leather patches onto their cardigans and becoming Maths teachers, they will never actually use Pi, Calculus or Pythagoras and could be learning something more useful instead, such as how to turn a squirrel into a headband.