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One can
discover so much about Fred browsing a bit here and scrolling a bit there!
„As a 15-year-old he suffered from jaundice,
with 28 he picked up a persisting form of malaria, which plagued him later again
and again with attacks of fever, cold shivers and fits of dizziness“, writes
Tilmann Bendikowski in his essay „The Eternal King“.
I thought: “What?
Malaria? In Prussia?? Where did he get that?“ The internet offered only the
Staufer Emperor Friedrich II (1194 – 1250), whose son had died of malaria. Then
I saw that Albrecht Dürer, Oliver Cromwell and Friedrich Schiller were ‘famous
malaria-victims”.
But nothing
about my Friedrich II.
Was the
author mistaken? (As I in my last post on Freddy: I spoke of his ‘Tobacco-colloquium’
– but that was the vice of his father, the “Soldier-King”).
Then I
found „fever of the marsh’ and ‚alternating fever‘ – (these words used in
novels I had never connected to malaria).
“In days gone by malaria was common also in
countries with temperate climate, among them Germany. (…) Into the 18th
century there were many epidemics. Great parts of Germany were hit hard, but
especially the marsh and moors at the coast. (…) Through river regulation and
colonizing of the moors numerous breeding places for gnats were destroyed. (…)
In the developing coastal landscape Anopheles maculipennis typicus ousted the
fever transmitting Anopheles maculipennis messea.” (Wiki)
In his
essay about Frederick Mr. Bendikowski wrote:
“Nobody could quite help Frederick, because he
developed also in medical issues the inclination to know everything better than
the experts. As an example: when drinking the vast amounts of coffee in the
morning he sometimes used to put some grains of mustard seeds into it – he thought
that best.”
After living
a few years on this beautiful earth I do agree with Freddy: one should not rely
on the“ experts“ only, but also use one’s common sense.
Coffee
belongs to the same plant family as Peruvian bark, a bark that was used by Peruvian
workers successfully against malaria fever, and brought to Europe in 1640 by the Jesuit Order in form of powder. The medicine fabricated out of Cinchonia
was later later called “quinine”. And grains of mustard seed were used by
alternative medicine in foot baths against fever – so maybe Fred was not that daft
by using them – though even a placebo-effect would be fine.
Today in
Europe malaria has been exterminated. But don’t let us rejoice to early!
In 1997 the
county council of the little German town Cuxhaven had to deal with the question
“Marsh fever – Are there possible risks in marsh counties?”, because they had found
in a cowshed a gnat of the family Anopheles atroparvus, one (!), which is a carrier for
malaria. (When you say 'to make a mountain out of a molehill' we say in Germany 'to make an elephant out of a gnat') As Europe is getting warmer it might create a warm and damp climate
that could encourage the spread of these gnats.
Well – there
helps only one thing, even if Mr. B. might blame me that I believe that I do know
everything better than the experts („I? Me?? Never !!”) :
Carefully I pour a Gin tonic into my glass.
That
should, as we all know, help against malaria through its content of quinine in
the tonic water - used regularly. (In India British people were forced to use
the tedious gin only to mask the bitterness of the quinine J.
Why has
Schweppes reduced the amount of quinine? Again a dark conspiracy of the
pharmaceutical industry??
Sláinte!
