John Harrison lived from 1693 to 1776. He was a self-educated carpenter and clockmaker. He is credited with the invention of the marine chronometer, a device that could be used to accurately estimate the East-West position or longitude of a ship at sea. His chronometer extended the possibility of safe long distance sea travel during the Age of Sail. Essentially Harrison’s chronometer was a clock that was precise enough to be used as a portable time standard. It had to be used in conjunction with a Sextant to measure the angles of a celestial body above the horizon. The navigational device can be used on the sun, the moon, a planet or one of 57 navigational stars whose coordinates are tabulated in the Nautical Almanac.

Most sailors prefer to use the sun for their regular navigational readings. This works, of course, only when the days are clear enough to see the sun. Clouds or fog can hamper the ability to measure the angles with the sextant.

Prior to the invention of the accurate chronometer, sailors measured the angle between the moon and another celestial body. This information was then compared with charts in the Nautical Almanac to calculate Greenwich time. Finding Greenwich time while at sea allowed the computation of longitude.

Harrison’s chronometers were expensive when first invented. It was into the early years of the 19th century before they became commonly accepted.

This is probably way more information than you need to understand that marine navigators made their measurements at night for nearly a century before they had a clock accurate enough to determine their position during the day. And that information is only background to the topic of today’s blog. Sailors, being bound by all sorts of traditions, formed two opposing camps – those who believed that the use of a chronometer was the best way to navigate and those who preferred the Method of Lunar Distances. The proponents of the use of the chronometer called the sailors who measured lunar angles and distances “lunatics.”

According to the United States House of Representatives such name-calling is out of place.

Around the turn of the 19th century, the Lunar Society of Birmingham was a dinner club and informal learned society of prominent figures who met regularly. The society fell into the practice of meeting on the nights of the full moon, as the extra light made the journey home safer and easier in the days before streetlights. The members of the club cheerfully called themselves “lunarticks,” a pun on lunatic.

According to the United States House of Representatives, they should find a different name to apply to themselves.

In his autobiography, published in 1913, Theodore Roosevelt wrote: “Then, among the wise and high-minded people who in self-respecting and genuine fashion strive earnestly for peace, there are foolish fanatics always to be found in such a movement and always discrediting it – the men who form the lunatic fringe in all reform movements.”

It makes good reading, but he would not be able to use that quote in a speech before the United States House of Representatives these days.

The use of the term lunatic to refer to those who are suffering from mental illness probably dates back to the 13th Century, although theories about the relationship of the full moon and certain behavioral issues abounded long before the term was coined. Both Aristotle and Pliny the Elder argued that the Moon induced insanity in susceptible individuals. Their theory was that the brain, which is mostly water, was affected by the Moon in a similar manner to that of the tides. If the moon were capable of increasing the sloshing of the water of the ocean, surely it could slosh the fluid in the brain enough to make an individual unbalanced. Their theory has since been discovered to be wrong, but the term persists.

The word probably comes from Old French, “lunatique.” It was commonly known as “moon-sickness” in English, though the word has had other meanings in our language as well. In the 1870’s lunatic was the term for a type of hairstyle worn over the forehead. In the 1930’s in Australia Lunatic soup was slang for an alcoholic drink.

But you won’t be hearing the word in the United States House of Representatives these days.

If you haven’t heard, you probably inferred from my blog so far that Congress has banned the use of the word “lunatic” in federal legislation. In a time of intense partisanship and divided votes, the vote wasn’t even close. A week ago Wednesday, the vote came in at 398-1 to strike the term from all federal legislation. The Senate had previously passed the legislation in May. The bill is on the President’s desk for his signature. He is expected to sign it.

When he does, federal laws governing financial activities of banks can no longer empower a bank to act as a “committee of estates of lunatics.” I’m feeling better already. Each time my bank sends me one of those multiple-page privacy policies or an explanation of the changes in the terms of my credit card, I wonder who writes those documents. I had been imagining that they probably have a “committee of estates of lunatics” who spent their days thinking up obscure language that they could use to prevent people from reading agreements before signing them. No more. Soon there will be no provision for a “committee of estates of lunatics” in federal legislation.

I don’t know about you, but I’m relieved.

Seriously, the legislation is long overdue. Federal legislation should reflect a more enlightened understanding of mental illness and disease. There is no place in our official laws for antiquated and misleading descriptions of the members of our communities. The biases and prejudices and stigma that surround mental illness are a stain on our society and I’m pleased that our legislators took time to clean up the inappropriate language in federal legislation. I have no doubt that I would have voted in favor of the legislation.

President Roosevelt did, however, warn us that “among the wise and high-minded people” who “strive earnestly for peace,” there will always be a foolish fanatic. He was, of course, right. Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas cast the single vote against the legislation. There’s one in every crowd. However, we will no longer call them the “(word deleted) fringe.”

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.