Q: What medicines were available in medieval times?

A: In the event of illness - any illness, from a high fever to a severed thumb -  the medieval barber covered his patient with leeches to ensure a good bleeding.

If the patient remained ill, the barber removed the leeches, then prayed.

If the prayer failed, he reapplied the leeches, restarted the bleeding and resumed his prayers.

If the combination of the prayer and the bleeding failed, the barber poured spirits over the patient's body and smacked him in the face with the Bible.

At this point, the barber had reached the limits of medical technology. If the patient remained ill, the barber set him on fire, seized his property as payment, claimed his wife as a concubine and enslaved his children as serfs.Then he would take the whole family to a local castle where they would drown their sorrow with mead,  watch knights joust, eat cornish hen, and try to forgot about the sudden death of their loved one.

In modern times, you can enjoy a similar experience by taking your family to a popular theme restaurant. That restaurant is called McDonald's.

You have to supply your own knights. And your own cornish hen. And your own mead.

McDonald's will supply the sorrow.

Q: What were the arguments against child labor laws during the Progressive era?

A: By preventing children from working long hours for little pay in factories and mines, we leave them no choice but to work as child prostitutes, flooding the market and putting randy gentlemen in the awkward position of having to chose between spending their money on an experienced lady of the evening or taking a chance and hiring a young, clean, naive boy.

There many have been other arguments against child labor laws, but none better.

Q: What feature helps ferrets survive?

A:  Some would say their teeth. Others, their cunning.

These people are wrong.

Ferrets survive for one reason only: Their shoulder mounted lasers.

That's how all my ferrets survive. I've been mounting lasers on the shoulders of my ferrets and sending them out into the wild for over a decade and I haven't lost one yet.

As far as I know. Designing, building and mounting lasers takes up most of my day, leaving me very little time to track my ferrets. But the lasers are pretty powerful. I assume they keep the ferrets safe. I haven't heard any complaints yet.