A poisoned love story
QUESTION Does anyone recall a story in which a woman who has to tend poisonous plants becomes poisonous herself?
THiS is the short story, Rappaccini’s Daughter, by nathaniel Hawthorne, the u.S. author famous for The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of The Seven Gables (1851).
Rappaccini’s Daughter, an early Gothic tale, was first published in the December 1844 issue of The united States Magazine And Democratic Review.
Set in medieval Padua, italy, it tells the tale of Beatrice Rappaccini, the beautiful, but innocent, young daughter of a famous botanist, Dr Giacomo Rappaccini.
He has created a garden filled with poisonous plants in blind pursuit of scientific knowledge — the university of Padua is famed for its botanical garden, which was founded in 1545.
Beatrice has been isolated from the world by her father’s diabolic research. He has raised her solely to tend the plants, and in time poor Beatrice has become resistant to the toxins and poisonous to other people.
A young science student, Giovanni Guasconti, who is renting a room that overlooks the garden, becomes bewitched by the beautiful Beatrice.
Although he witnesses that Beatrice’s touch and breath are deadly to lizards, insects and flowers raised elsewhere, he becomes infatuated.
The pair share emotionally intimate exchanges in the garden, but no physical contact is made until one day when Beatrice grabs Giovanni to prevent him touching a poisonous flower. This leaves him with a painful imprint on his arm.
He suffers the consequences of his encounters with the plants — and Beatrice — when he discovers he, too, has become poisonous.
Mrs K. E. Alleyne, Farnworth, Lancs.
QUESTION There have been three plague pandemics in the past two millennia. One was the Black Death of the Middle Ages. What were the other two?
BuBonic plague is an infection of the lymphatic system, usually resulting from the bite of an infected rat flea Xenopsylla
cheopis and the transmission of the bacillus Yersinia pestis — although recent research has suggested human fleas and body lice are to blame for its spread.
it is named after the large swellings that appear under the armpit, in the groin or on the neck which are symptomatic of the (often fatal) disease.
The first great pandemic, the Justinian Plague of 541-542, named after Justinian i, Roman emperor of the Byzantine Empire, originated in Ethiopia, spread to Egypt in 540, then east to Gaza, Jerusalem and Antioch. it was carried on ships across the Mediterranean to constantinople (now istanbul) in autumn 541.
in his work History of The Wars, the Byzantine court historian Procopius of caesarea, wrote that the epidemic was one ‘by which the whole human race came near to be annihilated’.
in the spring of 542, there were 5,000 deaths a day in constantinople and the city lost a third of its population. Because christians could not be cremated, there were reports of corpses being stacked in churches and defensive towers.
The third pandemic began in the chinese province of Yunnan in 1855, spreading to Hong Kong and then Bombay by 1896.
By 1900, it had reached ports on every continent, carried by infected rats that managed to board the new steamships.
in Hong Kong in 1894, Alexandre Yersin identified the Yersinia pestis bacillus, while in Karachi in 1898, Paul-Louis Simond discovered the brown rat was the primary host of the disease.
The third pandemic waxed and waned, but did not end until 1959. in that time plague had caused more than 15 million deaths, the majority of them in india.
Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.
QUESTION I have seen two versions of the punk band Sham 69. Which other bands have split into two or more competing factions?
FuRTHER to previous answers, one of the best examples is Merseybeat outfit The Searchers. They had three Sixties no ones: Sweets For My Sweet, needles And Pins and Don’t Throw Your Love Away.
They had a very public split and are still performing to this day, with Frank Allen and John Mcnally in one band and Mike Pender in the other. Both bands are excellent, although i feel the voice of the Sixties Searchers belongs to Pender.
Gail Grindell, Southend, Essex.
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