What are petechiae?Petechiae are pinpoint, round spots signaling the leakage of blood from capillaries, the tiniest blood vessels of the skin’s dermis. These often appear in clusters and may look similar to a rash.
More succinctly, petechiae are:
Small hemorrhages (bleeding) in dermis of skin
1-2 mm in diameter
Red, purple, brownish coloration
Usually feel flat (not raised)
Do not blanch (lose color) when pressed
What causes petechiae? Turns out there are lots of causes. Here are some general categories:
Strenuous coughing
Vomiting
Giving Birth
Lifting heavy weights
Infections/sepsis from bacteria, fungi, viruses
Reactions to some medications
Blood and immune disorders
Lack of vitamin C (scurvy)
Lack of Vitamin K ( needed for blood clotting)
Can petechiae appear elsewhere? Well, yes! Sometimes they appear on the linings of mouth or inner eyelids (palpebral conjunctiva)! The below image compares petechiae of the skin with those of the palpebral conjunctiva.
What else causes petechiae? The answer circles us back to Outlander!
Gah! Short drop hanging may cause petechiae. In this instance, the condemned sits astride a horse, stands on a barrel or some other support; the support is suddenly removed.
The ghastly short drop may be insufficient to snap the neck so the person slowly strangles to death. They struggle for breath, blood pressure rises in the head, and capillaries burst allowing small pockets of blood to accumulate in the skin and palpebral conjunctiva. Inhumane, for sooth! Roger!!! 😱
Just so we ken, a long drop hanging (e.g. from a platform) usually snaps the neck resulting in a quick and more “humane” death (if the hangman knows his ”craft”).
Read about Roger’s hanging and its horrific aftermath in Diana’s fifth large tome, The Fiery Cross:
On a rise at the far end of the meadow stood a huge white oak, its spring leaves bright in the slanting sun. My horse moved suddenly, dodging past a group of men, and I saw them, three stick-figures, dangling broken in the tree’s deep shadow. The hammer struck one final blow, and my heart shattered like ice.
Too late.
It was a bad hanging.Without benefit of official troops, Tryon had had no one to hand with a hangman’s gruesome—and necessary—skills.
See petechiae of Roger’s facial skin (red arrows) in Outlander episode 508, Famous Last Words. Slow hanging is a ghastly way to die! 😭
Not-So-Fun Fact: Today, we can be grateful that many countries have abandoned hanging as a means of execution. If you are interested, an excellent film is available on this topic: Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman. Bonus! Tobias Menzies plays Lieutenant Llewelyn in this engrossing movie!
Roger has a pair of the most prominent DLI I have ever seen! His are contracted at this moment in the Brownsville standoff, drawing his lower lip down and producing two very prominent ridges of his chin-skin. The red arrow marks his right DLI but the left ridge is also visible. Can you see both?
Try this: Stand before a mirror and strongly depress the lower lip. See if you can produce similar ridges in your chin skin.
Anatomists classify DLI as muscles of facial expression. Most humans have about 20 pair of such muscles. If you ever ponder how it is we have such mobile faces, it is due to a total of 40 or so muscles moving the facial skin to achieve our amazing range of facial expression. Fear, anger, distrust, frustration, joy, etc., are all non-verbal forms of communication produced by this group of muscles.
DLI are relatively small, thin and flat. Like all muscles of facial expression, structure can vary from person to person. These are also innervated by the same pair of nerves which is why serious injury to one of these nerves causes paralysis of the same side of the face.
Read about lips in Diana’s fifth big book, The Fiery Cross; they are referenced many times in this tome. This excerpt is from the Brownsville standoff:
“What did he say?” Mrs. Brown whispered to her sister-in-law. The older lady shook her head, lips drawn in like a pursestring. “Mr. Morton is alive and well,”
Roger translated for them. He coughed. “Fortunately for you,” he said to the male Browns, with as much menace as he could contrive to put into his voice.
See Capitaine Roger MacKenzie’s DLI muscles in action in Outlander episode 504, The Company We Keep! Splendid episode! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Season 5 blasts off in one month. I can scarcely wait! You? 🤗
Today, I post about my recent trip to North Carolina, the US state that is integral to the Outlander saga beginning with Season 4 and beyond.
Now, please dinna run away. This is truly interesting stuff!
I visited several sites that appear in the fifth big book, The Fiery Cross (TFC), the source for Outlander, Season 5.
You will remember at the end of Voyager book and S3, Jamie and Claire survived a hurricane to land in the Colony of Georgia.
Mrs. Olivier smiled indulgently. “You are not on an island at all. You are on the mainland; in the Colony of Georgia.”
“Georgia,” Jamie said. “America?” He sounded slightly stunned, and no wonder. We had been blown at least six hundred miles by the storm.
“America,” I said softly. “The New World.”
At the beginning of Drums of Autumn book, Jamie.com find themselves in Charleston, SC, and then they travel north to Wilmington. But, season four left out that bit of travelogue and opens in Wilmington, NC.
Out of the sun, with a large pewter mug of dark ale foaming gently in front of him, Jamie quickly regained his normal self-possession.
“We’ve the two choices,” he said, brushing back the sweat-soaked hair from his temples. “We can stay in Charleston long enough to maybe find a buyer for one of the stones, and perhaps book passage for Ian to Scotland on another ship. Or we can make our way north to Cape Fear, and maybe find a ship for him out of Wilmington or New Bern.”
I really wanted to see Wilmington for myself. So, hounding my son to drive me three hours to Wilmington was a must!
Yes, Wilmington, where Hayes met his sad fate at the end of a hangman’s noose!
Yes, Wilmington, where Brianna was handfast to Roger, on the most magical night of her young life.
Yes, Wilmington, where Brianna paid a horrific price for her mother’s iconic wedding ring, forged from the key to Lallybroch.
Why is Wilmington important beyond the Outlander story? When the Carolina region was divided in 1712, the line between North and South Carolina was established to ensure North Carolina received its own seaport, Wilmington.
Today, Wilmington is a lovely old city, a blend of modern and old including many beautiful homes boasting historic markers.
Wilmington straddles the Cape Fear River, which I filmed from the aft deck of the battleship USS North Carolina, as it (not the battleship 😉) flows toward the Atlantic Ocean. The battleship is permanently moored on this river!
I strolled along the Wilmington Riverwalk, a shop- and eatery-lined pathway following the river.
At Wilmington, the 200-mile-long Cape Fear River is large enough to accommodate sea-faring vessels, cargo crates and tugboats, as is befitting a true seaport.
The Cape Fear River collects water from streams and rivers of the Cape Fear Water Basin, a 9,000+ sq. mi. area stretching beyond Greensboro, the city I just left!
Water from this massive land area drains into the Cape Fear River, ultimately flowing past Wilmington and into the Atlantic a few miles downstream.
Do you see Fayetteville, NC, on the map below? It sits on the Cape Fear River but further inland than Wilmington.
Fun Fact: Did you know Fayetteville started life in 1756 as Cross Creek, the settlement nearest to Aunt Jocasta’s River Run plantation. Truth!
During the American Revolution, Cross Creek was a hotbed of wartime activity and home of divided loyalties, many of those conflicts involved Highland Scots! Its name was changed to Fayetteville in 1783.
Lastly, Cape Fear, might sound familiar to you because Martin Scorsese’s 1991 film of the same name was situated in this region. Cape Fear is a prominent headland jutting into the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Cape Fear River.
Aunt Jocasta’s splendid River Run plantation near Cross Creek (Fayetteville), most likely sat in the Cape Fear River Basin.
Moving on.
A couple of days later, my dear son drove me to the Alamance Battlefield. The Battle of Alamance was the final conflict in the War of Regulation, a rebellion in North Carolina over issues of taxation and control. Some historians and locals consider the Battle to be the opening salvo of the Revolutionary War!
The battleground is a beautiful, serene wooded site bordered by zigzagged split rail fencing and a few miles outside Greensboro .
The woods are quiet now but on May 16, 1771, the countryside rang with shots and shouts from Regulators and Tryon’s militia.
The image below shows where the Regulators held ground on the rise in the background. Tryon’s forces would have been about six miles in the opposite direction across Great Alamance Creek.
As faithfully recorded in TFC, Herman (Harmon/Hermon) Husband was a leader in the rebellion who left the battlefield early.
I wondered what brought Hermon Husband here—and whether he was being followed. He owned a farm and a small mill, both at least two days’ ride from the Ridge; not a journey he would undertake simply for the pleasure of our company.
Husband was one of the leaders of the Regulation, and had been jailed more than once for the rabble-rousing pamphlets he printed and distributed. The most recent news I had heard of him was that he had been read out of the local Quaker meeting, the Friends taking a dim view of his activities, which they regarded as incitement to violence. I rather thought they had a point, judging from the pamphlets I’d read.
Now one bit of history…. militia men did not wear uniforms; these were ordinary citizens on both sides of the conflict. We have all seen and speculated about Jamie Fraser appear in a redcoat in Outlander Season 5 footage. So why is he wearing that redcoat? Time will tell, but I wager it has to do with advancing the story at the expense of historical accuracy. 😉
Psst… whatever the reason, he looks mighty fine!
Spoiler! The battle was fairly brief and the loss of life modest given that Tryon had 1,000 militiamen and the Regulators, 2000. Tryon captured 13 Regulators: one was executed at camp and six were executed later in nearby Hillsborough. Hanging was the method of the day.
This bit of history is pertinent to Season 5, so ‘nuf said! 😉 😉
What a trip!
Thank y ou for joining me on my whirlwind tour of book 5 (excepting Fraser’s Ridge, an area I explored in 2015). This trip, I visited Wilmington, where Bree was handfast to Roger and assaulted by the dread pirate, Steven Bonnet! I walked the Cape Fear River into which most rivers and streams of the Cape Fear Water Shed drain and home to Cross Creek and River Run. And, I visited the Alamance Battlefield, the site where Regulators clashed with Governor Tryon’s militia.
