Thursday Things: Rapiers and Roses Edition
27 October 2022. Vol 4 No 43 By Dan McGirt. #168
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“You have my attention. Make it quick.” Photo by James Sutton on Unsplash
Great moments in (topless) dueling
The bloody and often fatal custom of dueling to settle insults and other matters of honor has long since died out, but back in the 19th century dueling still an acceptable, and sometimes unavoidable, means of resolving disputes among gentlemen.
And sometimes among ladies. This fascinating item crossed my news feed in the last week. Dateline: Liechtenstein, 1892 — The Princess Pauline Pauline Metternich-Sándor and Countess Kilmannsegg fought a duel precipitated by the countess’s insulting comments about Princess Pauline’s “floral arrangements for the Vienna Musical and Theatrical Exhibition on whose committee they both sat.”
Oh no she didn’t!
The resulting duel took place in Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein, and was the first recorded "emancipated duel" in which all the participants - the combatants, the seconds and even the doctor - were women. The choice of weapons was swords and the duellists fought topless.1
Girl power!
Per a Pall Mall Gazette item on the affair, the “fearful quarrel” over the aforementioned flower arrangements got so out of hand that “The affair was regarded as so serious that it could only be settled by blood.”2
According to this web page, Princess Pauline was one of the most famous women in Europe in the 19th century:
The tall, bulldog-faced, loud-voiced, cigar-smoking, pheasant-shooting Austrian princess, known as "La Belle Laide" (the beautiful ugly) was an unlikely fashion icon. Yet as one commentator observed of her "She is not beautiful - and was never young .. but she is chic - and that's the worst of all."
I like her already. Princess Pauline was notable as a fashion critic and trend setter, thrower of fabulous balls and garden parties, friend of the Empress Eugenie (wife of Napoleon III), patron of music, and sponsor of that up and coming composer Richard Wagner. Which is great and all, but let’s get on with the duel!
The ‘emancipated duel’ was fought topless, so as to minimize the chance of any wounds getting infected. At least, that’s the official story. But we’ve all seen 19th century upper class women’s fashion and I seriously doubt dueling in a corset is a viable option. So topless rapiers at dawn it was!
The duel went a full three rounds before first, and second, blood were drawn. In the third round:
The Princess received a slight wound on her nose and the Countess on the arm, with the Princess being adjudged the winner.
After the mutual wounding, their respective seconds prevailed upon the blood-soaked combatants to “embrace, kiss, and make friends”. And that settled that.
Why this isn’t a movie already, I have no idea.
You can read more about the duel here, via Google Books: “Report of a Duel Between Two Ladies”
The lesson to learn here is if you don’t have anything nice to say about Princess Pauline’s flower arrangements, best to say nothing at all. Because Princess Pauline will straight up cut you down like a water lily in time for afternoon tea.
Princess Pauline chilling at the beach between duels. ‘Princess Pauline Metternich on the Beach’ c a. 1865–67, Eugène Boudin Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Go bananas, beat COVID?
This sounds almost too good to be true: A treatment effective against all known COVID variants and flu in animal testing AND it’s made of bananas? Inconceivable!
Treatment From Banana Protein Beats All Known COVID Variants and Flu
That’s what the headline says. And this report is from Greek Reporter, which I’ve never heard of, but can only assume is the most reputable and in depth source of cutting edge medical development news in all of Greece, if not the entire western Mediterranean region.
The COVID treatment worked in animal models whether delivered systemically or through the nose, either prophylactically or therapeutically, early on in the illness, the University of Michigan Medical School explains in a blog post.
The initial study, published in early January 2020, announced that a compound modeled on a protein found in bananas safely protects against multiple strains of the influenza virus.
“At the time, we thought MERS would be the big target, which we were worried about because of its 35 [percent] mortality rate,” said David Markovitz, M.D., professor of internal medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Michigan Medical School.
“When COVID-19 occurred, we of course wanted to study the therapy’s potential and discovered it was effective against every type of coronavirus, in vitro and in vivo,” Markovitz added.
Whoa, wait, back up — they published this in January 2020? Why am I only hearing about this banana-flavored miracle protein now?
Now, his team hopes to see the treatment go into testing in humans, as they envision a nasal spray or drops that can be used to prevent or treat coronavirus and influenza infections in seasonal and pandemic situations.
Banana nasal spray would be awesome! Which, again, makes me think this can’t be real. After all, we’ve been burned before, haven’t we? So … many … times.
But it checks out — here’s the blog post from University of Michigan, where the research originated:
Potential therapy derived from a banana protein works against SARS-CoV-2
On January 13, 2020, a paper touting the creation of a possible therapy that could be used to fight all known strains of the flu was published online.
One week later, the first laboratory confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 set off the two and a half year-long COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
Interestingly, prior to the arrival of the virus that temporarily shut down their work, the international study team behind the influenza paper had also investigated these banana-derived therapies for coronaviruses.
Oh, COVID hit and shut down the lab right after they announced their amazing banana-based results? Interesting. I smell a new conspiracy theory. And it smells like banana muffins.
If we go deeper down the rabbit hole, here’s the original January 2020 blog post from just before everything went off the rails:
Antiviral Compound Offers Hope Against Deadly Flu
In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Markovitz, first author Evelyn Coves-Datson, a M.D., Ph.D. student, Akira Ono, Ph.D., professor of microbiology and immunology and their team have shown that an engineered compound based on a banana lectin, a protein called H84T, has real potential for clinical use against influenza.
In their experiments, more than 80% of mice exposed to a form of influenza that is typically fatal were able to survive the disease after receiving an injection of the protein, even up to 72 hours after exposure.
Proving once again that mice get all the good stuff first.
Here’s the scientific paper behind it all: A molecularly engineered antiviral banana lectin inhibits fusion and is efficacious against influenza virus infection in vivo
I don’t pretend to understand all the details, but I’m going to eat another banana now, just in case.
They’re medicine muffins. Honest. Photo by Isabella on Unsplash
Cats hear you. They just don’t care.
Do you ever think your cat is ignoring you on purpose? According to science, you are right:
Cats Do Hear You When You're Talking to Them Sweetly (They Just Don't Care)
In a series of experiments on 16 house cats, researchers have shown feline pets know their owner's voice. They also behave differently when their owners are talking to them as opposed to another person.
At the sound of a familiar voice, the cats in the study often froze, tails flicking, eyes blinking, or ears twitching – but only when the words were spoken in a register reserved for a cutie pie fluff ball with li'l bitty paws and a big old tum-tum.
If the owner used their typical human voice to utter the same sentence, the cats seemed to sense the speech wasn't directed at them.
Higher-pitched, short utterances with repetitive sounds are common features of human speech when directed at infants or pets. Dogs, for instance, have been shown to sense both tone and meaning in their owner's voice….
Past research also suggests humans use a specific register to speak to their cats – introducing more sensual 'breathy' qualities to signal friendliness and closeness. (Though it's not clear whether cats care for it at all.)
Cats are also selective in which humans they pay attention to, if any:
Similar to dogs, researchers found cats can discriminate between speech directed at other humans and speech specifically addressed to them.
But this was true only when the sentences were spoken by a cat's owner. When a stranger spoke in the same, cat-directed ways, the pet did not show much interest. They simply went about their business as usual.
Cats are often too busy with important cat business to waste time on your petty human interruptions. Unless there is tuna involved. Because you know what is more effective at getting a cat’s attention than “cat-directed speech”?
The sound of a can opener. That’s just science.
“You talkin’ to me?” Photo by Erik-Jan Leusink on Unsplash
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https://www.acuriousinvitation.com/pauline.html
A Complete Bibliography of Fencing and Duelling, by Thimm, F. R. G. S., Carl A., p.492 excerpted at https://books.google.com/books?id=VntzdRfNnQ4C&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA492&dq=baroness+lubinska+duel&hl=en&source=gb_mobile_entity#v=onepage&q&f=false