The Inspiration for Frankenstein?

[David Morris]

http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=humannews&StoryID=905274

LONDON (Reuters) - A real-life but little known Scottish scientist was the 
inspiration for author Mary Shelley's classic gothic novel Frankenstein, 
according to a theory published Wednesday.

A British PhD student believes that Scottish scientist James Lind -- the 
mentor of Shelley's husband the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley -- was the model 
for the fictional scientist who gave life to one of the world's best-known 
monsters.

Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, University of 
Newcastle student Christopher Goulding said that Mary Shelley became 
intrigued by Lind through tales of his experiments told by her husband.

"At the time, science was not taught at Eton and several people were chosen 
as suitable mentors for boys with an interest in science," Goulding said.

"Some details of the novel's origins were later to emerge in her 
introduction to the revised 1831 edition, where she describes how she was a 
'silent listener' to the philosophical discussions of her husband with Lord 
Byron," he said.

Lind, a physician and natural philosopher born in 1736, had a lively 
interest in science and was one of the first to demonstrate electro-medical 
experiments in England -- a process that makes dead muscles twitch with an 
electric current.




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