MDMD2: The Great H

[Dave Monroe]

"'Tho' your weapon put me under some Handicap,' points
out the Dog, 'in fairness, I should mention my late
feelings of Aversion to water? Which may, as you know,
signal the onset of the Hydrophobia.  Yes!  The Great
H.  And should I get in past your Blade for a few
playful nips, and manage to, well, break the old
Skin,-- why, then you should soon have caught the
same, eh?'  Immediately 'round the Dog develops a
circle of Absence, of about a fathom's radius, later
recall'd by both Astronomers as remarkably regular in
shape." (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 23)

"Hydrophobia" = Rabies

Okay, skipping ahead, getting in some quick ones, so's
I can stop hauling around certain esp. ungainly texts,
such as ...

>From Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (Ed.
Holbrook Jackson, New York: NYRB Books, 2001 [1621]),
Pt. 1, Sec. 1, Mem. 1, Subs. 4 ...

"Hydrophobia is a kind of madness, well known in every
village, which comes by the biting of a mad dog, or
scratching, saith Aurelianus; touching or smelling
alone sometimes, Sckenkius proves, and is incident to
many othr creatures as well as men: so called because
the parties affected cannot endure the sight f water,
or any liquor, supposing they still see a mad dog in
it.  And which is more wonderful, though thy be very
dry (a in this malady they are), they will rather die
than drink...." (pp. 141-2)

Which would be a Very Bad Thing Indeed, of course,
Fop, Macaroni, or Lunarian, Grape Person or Grain
Person or otherwise.  But to continue ...

"... commonly, saith Heurenius, they begin to rave,
fly water and glasses, to look red and swell in the
face ... to lie awake, to be pensive, sad, to see
strange visions, to bark and howl, to fall into a
swoon, and oftentimes fits of the falling sickness. 
Some say, little things like whelps will be seen in
their urines." (pp. 141-2)

And that IS "urines" here.  Follows, by the way--and,
quite logically, I suppose, at least for the time--the
entry for "Lyncanthropia," lycanthropy, werewolfism
(and cf. not only that "loup garoo" in Ch. 14 of V.,
but also "castoranthropy," "werebeaverism" later in
M&D) ...  

Anyway, on a VERY slow, very tenuous connection here,
so I'll let you all look up the current medical wisdom
on rabies.  All I know is, from that episode of "The
Brady Bunch" (which was apparently part of Pynchon's
regular viewing during its run), you get rabies, you
either get very long needles in your belly, or you die
...


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get email alerts & NEW webcam video instant messaging with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com