Popular Culture
In Catch-22, the medics are portrayed as using gentian violet on feet and gums as a panacea. This may be because of the fact that in World War I American soldiers returning after a leave were irrigated with Gentian violet to prevent sexually transmitted disease.
In Picnic at Hanging Rock, the orphan Sara recounts how she was once punished by an orphanage's matron, who 'painted my head with gentian violet'.
Engineering students in Canada use gentian violet to dye their skin and jackets, a tradition started by Queen's University engineering students and known colloquially as 'purpling'.
Read more about this topic: Crystal Violet
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)