On Guinea Pigs

When it became clear that we all were going to have to head inside and separate ourselves from each other, I was struck with a sudden dread of isolation and loneliness. However, one of the few blessings of this pandemic ironically has been how I've reconnected with friends I've too long taken for granted. As Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, said "One sometimes finds what one is not looking for."

I've been friends with Rachel Woodhouse and Sarah Borzo for more than 20 years and for the last 10 or so, we'd be lucky to see each other for lunch once a quarter. We've been having semi-regular Hangout lunches and I hope they continue. Cooper Hubbell, a true original if ever there was one, and I have been swapping book recommendations for the last month. You've probably seen the name Stephanie Morain once or twice in this newsletter and that's because we've texted more since March than ever before, which has been wonderful. A few days ago Stephanie, who is a public health expert and an invaluable source of information, sent me this, the results of an annual contest of diaramas made out of Peeps, presenting scenes, historical or imagined, of public health in action. There's a little Peep United Nations (complete with a little Peep Donald Trump), there's a little Peep Charles Darwin sailing on the HMS Peep-gle, there's even a little Peep John Snow—no, not the emo ice prince of Game of Thrones but a Victorian doctor who was obscure to me but apparently has Elvis-like popularity among epidemiologists for stopping a cholera epidemic in 1854. The diaramas were submitted by children and a slightly concerning number of adults. I can tell you, not only is this contest a testament to man's ability to not care about getting laid, the winners are some of the most informative candy-based diaramas I've ever seen. 

One of the scenes shows a little Peep Ignaz Semmelweis, a figure I had never heard of but someone I have been honoring—and then some—often for about 10 weeks. Washing our hands seems like such an elemental activity that I was fairly shocked to find out that the medical practice of it is only about 150 years old. Ignaz Semmelweis, Iggy to his friends, was a Hungarian doctor in the 19th century. He couldn't help but notice that poor women attended by nurse midwives were dying at a significantly lower rate than wealthier ladies who were saw to by doctors. At the time, and anyone with two X chromosomes had better brace themselves for this next sentence, the doctors would go from the morgue directly to the obstetrics ward without washing their hands. Iggy's theory was that perhaps the wealthy women were dying because their intimate areas were being examined by hands that had just been touching deceased dead things and that that would stop some if the doctors simply washed their hands. If you've been incensed by stories of our fellow citizens breaking quarantine, willfully doing unhealthy things and undermining our collective efforts, you will  not be surprised that the doctor's reaction to Ig-Nasty's suggestion was not "Ah, that makes sense. Right-o, then" but was instead "Fuck you, there's nothing wrong with my hands, why don't you wash your head in the bottom of the Danube if you love water so much?" Semmelweis had discovered that water and soap had the ability to break down the fatty layer that surrounds germs and had thus promoted a public health practice that hygienists have scarcely improved upon since. Infectious diseases are by far the number one killer of human beings and most of them can be avoided with just a good scrub. For his efforts, Semmelweis was mocked and dismissed, causing a mental breakdown that saw him dead in an insane asylum at the age of 47. Humanity, everyone!

The word germ comes from the Latin germen which means "bud" or "sprout." It's an informal term for really any biological thing that causes illness including bacteria, which are cellular and can be treated with antibiotics, and, yes, viruses (they aren't all trick questions, you know) which are too small to have cells and are totally dependent on their hosts. Penicillin, for its part, is a mold which looks like it has little paintbrush-like arms under a microscope. It gets its name from penicillum, the Latin word for paintbrush (this is also the word that gave us pencil). 

Since we giving credit where it is due, it must be said that Sir Alexander Fleming did not discover penicillin. Bedouin people in North Africa have been using the mold for healing purposes for a millennia, a fact that a young French army doctor named Ernest Duchesne discovered in 1897. He conducted tests on the mold, identifying that it cured typhoid in guinea pigs and weakened E. coli bacteria. He submitted his research, asking for further study, to the Institut Pasteur, the leading research laboratory in France, which promptly threw it away believing that such miraculous discoveries could not have come from a 23-year-old unknown student. This is what is called in the medical field as "getting Semmelweised." Duchesne died of tuberculosis, which penicillin cures, in 1912. In 1944, Fleming independently rediscovered it. At least Fleming did say the quote I attributed to him earlier in this newsletter. Darwin, also mentioned here, did not coin the phrase "survival of the fittest," a contemporary named Herbert Spencer did, inspired by Darwin's research on natural selection. 

Alright, my little guinea pigs, that's it for this week. Except to say that guinea pigs, despite their role in penicillin's discovery, are very rarely used in experiments anymore. 99% of lab animals are rats and mice, even raccoons were once staples of the laboratory until scientists found them difficult to keep in their cages and out of the air vents (I can empathize). Nowadays, guinea pigs are mostly eaten. Bolivians, Colombians and Ecuadorians are all known to eat guinea pigs and the Peruvians take the cake (or the guinea pig cheek, which is apparently the best part), chowing down on 65 million a year. In a cathedral in Cuzco, Peru, there's a painting of the Last Supper in which Jesus is sitting down with his disciples to a meal of roast guinea pig. Divine.