Sweating and dreaming
I think the “alternative suggestion” mentioned in ‘The Sweating Sickness’ [ FT394:13] doesn’t hold water. It appears that there were distinct outbreaks over more than 50 years, and then it died out, which I would suggest was due to the quick lethality of the disease – it ran out of victims too quickly to spread. Although medicine was undoubtedly primitive compared to today, and there were some quite bizarre practices, I don’t believe the doctors were systematically and inadvertently killing their patients. They would have had experience of fevers and other symptoms, and even if they were misguided, I think it is unlikely they would have caused their patents’ deaths in two or three hours. It also equally affected the poor, who quite possibly had no access to doctors, especially in that short timeframe.
• Regarding “Going Grey Overnight” (Medical Bag FT394:23), the stories about such happenings refer to the whole head of hair going grey or white through shock. It appears that scientists have simply confirmed that stress can in effect turn off the mechanism which creates hair colour, so that as the hair lengthens you see grey roots. That is not the same thing. As for Marie Antoinette’s hair going white overnight, I think it is quite possible that she used various hair products, and that when she was arrested she no longer had access to these, and her hair reverted to its more natural (ash blond) colour. However I believe the fashion in those days was to powder the hair so it appeared white anyway, so maybe this story is just a myth.
• Regarding the possibility that reality is being edited, I saw in one of the articles on memory in FT394 a comment on the fact that we often forget our dreams, but on going back to look for it afterwards, I can’t find it. Creepy! Anyway, I’ll press on with my comments regardless. I think the reason we tend to forget our dreams is possibly two-fold. Firstly, there is no context; it simply swims into your (un) consciousness for no apparent reason, so it is difficult to file it away. Secondly, there is no sensual input; the images and sounds haven’t come in through eyes and ears, and there are no associated smells, or background sights and sounds, so there are no triggers to assist with recall.
Dave Miles
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