poxblog

Daudet and Sherard

Reading Robert Sherard's biography of Daudet. I have a lovely first edition that cost $5 on Bookfinder. The pages were still uncut. Nice companion to Julian Barnes's translation of Daudet's journals, In the Land of Pain.

Fifteen years ago, at one of Flaubert’s receptions, those present noticed a pallor in Daudet’s hands. He recalled that the night before he had an attack of hemorrhage of the lungs. It frightened him; he must consult Potain. (415-16).

Oscar Wilde: syphilis pro and con

Finished a first draft of 1,250 words of article for OW journal, sent off to Ashley in Cape Town. He's on holiday, checking in Monday his time; he'll write an answer of similar length and we'll publish them together.

London Review of Books

Bert emailed that the 9/11 London Review of Books has a review of POX by Hugh Pennington, "eminence grise" of bacteriology from Aberdeen. Although he emailed me a copy (it's almost 3,000 words)-- it's so much more fun to read a review in hard copy. I found one in San Francisco at a smoke shop, the one that recently gave out an $88 million dollar lottery ticket, and I went next door to Pesce and had a cappucino and two delicious tapas dishes and read it on the page. "Pox breaks new ground by casting syphilis--up to a point--as a romantic pathogen, as tuberculosis was long seen to be." "Her approach is sensible and her choice of sufferers sensible." How nice.

Spirochetes, AIDS, MS and Alzheimers

The spirochete T. pallidum causes syphilis. Other spirochetes cause Lymes disease, yaws, bejel. The relationship between a past history of syphilis and AIDS is highly controversial. (Sometime I will post the key links about this debate.) The most startling information I've run into in a long time has to do with possible links between spirochetes and Alzheimers and spirochetes and Multiple Sclerosis. Judit Miklossy, in an article in NeuroReport in 1993, confirmed that in autopsies of 14 cases of confirmed Alzheimers Disease, spirochetes were found in the blood, spinal fluid, and brain tissue. No spirochetes were found in a control group. Now Colman Jones emails me another fascinating reference: a 2001 article in Infection showing spirochetal cysts in the spinal fluid of 10 out of 10 MS patients. Small samples, old research, but . . . did anyone follow up? Try to replicate it? It is certainly worth getting these articles and seeing where they led, if anywhere. Pertinent question: WHICH spirochetes did they find?