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Friday, July 20, 2018
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My New Book: Courage 101: True Tales of Grit & Glory
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Monday, November 20, 2017
"Just and True"
"But see, think,
judge; do as the Lord our healer Shall direct you."
Bright red
flags went up over more and more front doors of Boston homes in 1721. Some had
the words "God have mercy on this house" emblazoned on them. Smallpox
had returned. The flags meant: "Quarantine. Do Not Enter."
The plague
had struck this thriving city of more than 10,000 colonists years earlier.
Remembering its horrors, more than 1,000 people fled to the countryside.
"This grievous Calamity of the Small-Pox has now entered the Town,"
wrote the prominent minister Cotton Mather (shown below). He called the disease "the
destroying Angel." Smallpox typically killed half of all the children and
old people who contracted it and about 15 percent of all other sufferers.
Mather had
a rare knowledge of smallpox. Five years earlier when a journal published one
of his essays, he chanced up an article in the same issue describing the
strange Turkish practice of "Inoculation" against the disease. The
report said that when liquid from the pox (or material from their resulting
scabs) was placed under the skin of those who had not had the disease, a great
number of the resulting cases were less severe than if the disease had been
contracted naturally.
“be WARILY proceeded in”
Mather had
evidence of this in his own home. Years before he had bought a slave and named
him Onesimus which means "Beneficial." How fitting it was, for
Onesimus told Mather that he had been inoculated and showed him the procedure's
scar.
He did
further research and learned that this strange ritual was performed among the
"heathens" and "'primitives" not only in Africa but also in
Asia and Russia. Mather then wrote a leading Boston physician. "How many
Lives might be saved by it, if it were practiced?" he asked and
recommended that it "be WARILY proceeded in."
When the
letter was forwarded to other doctors, none showed an interest—except the
surgeon Zabdiel Boylston. Perhaps the others were wary of being associated with
Mather. He had been a leading figure in the Salem Witch Trials, and his efforts
had led to 20 executions.
Boylston
was controversial, too. He had recently performed the first mastectomy in America,
cutting off a woman's cancerous breast. Other doctors were appalling, saying
that it was impossible to cure the disease that way. He had also removed bladder
stones from children, a practice associated with quacks.
He clearly
didn't care what others thought. He charged more than other physicians and had
no qualms about suing patients who failed to pay. He also had the weird habit
of changing his clothes and bathing after visiting patients. Perhaps worse, he
had not studied at Harvard.
“Ravings and Deliriums”
Boylston knew
first-hand what smallpox could do. He was a smallpox survivor. His case had
been horrendous and had left him with a ravaged pockmarked face.
Here is how
he described the symptoms of smallpox in the worst cases: "Purple spots,
the bloody and parchment Pox, Hemorahages of Blood at the Mouth, Nose,
Fundament, and Privities; Ravings and Deliriums; Convulsions, and other Fits;
violent inflammations and Swellings in the Eyes and Throat; so that they cannot
see, or scarcely breathe, or swallow anything, to keep them from starving. Some
looking as black as the Stock, others as white as a Sheet; in some, the Pock
runs into Blisters, and the Skin stripping off, leaves the Flesh raw….Some have
been fill'd with loathsome Ulcers; others have had deep, and fistulous Ulcers
in their Bodies, or in their Limbs or Joints, with Rottenness of the Ligaments
and Bones: Some who live are Cripples, others Idiots, and many blind all their
Days."
He had
another reason for wanting to pursue inoculation. None of his six children had
had the disease. He decided to perform the procedure on his adult slave Jack,
the slave's son, and Thomas, his six-year-old son. He could not expect
Bostonians to submit to the procedure unless at least one of his family members
had undergone it. As for his slaves—they were, in the thinking of the day, his
valuable property, and he did not want to lose them.
Mather
implored Boylston to proceed, writing him, "See, think, judge; do as the
Lord our healer Shall direct you."
Thomas and
the other child developed fevers and twitchings lasting more than a week before
the children regained full health, while Jack barely became ill.
When
Bostonians learned what Boylston had done, "the immediate reaction was
shock," one historian wrote. He published a statement saying he was on
solid medical ground because the accounts from far-away lands were "just
and true" and his three patients had survived without lasting ill effects.
“Infusing…Malignant Filth”
Boston's
leading citizens convened a hearing. Boylston suffered through its verbal
abuse. Its report declared that he was "infusing…malignant Filth" in
patients and that what he was doing was well known to have "prov'd the
Death of many Persons." Two days later Boylston was inoculating others.
Someone hurled
a firebomb into his home, according to one account. It failed to explode.
Another person wanted to embarrass Boylston by secretly spreading tar on his
saddle. The dirty deed failed when the vandal accidentally put the tar on
another man's saddle and "spoil'd his Breeches."
Over time,
Boylston inoculated 280 people. Only six died or 2.4 percent, far lower than
the usual fatality rate. Acclaim followed. Boylston wrote the book "An
Historical Account of the Small-Pox Inoculated in New England." He offered
a 15-step guide to performing inoculations, described each of his cases, and made
conclusions based on a statistical analysis (at a time when the word
'statistics' did not exist). He even proposed that tiny, unseen creatures
caused the disease by entering its victims via skin contact, respiration, or through
contaminated food or water.
Sometimes
it's courageous to get under people's skin, but it helps if you are a medical
professional.
MORAL: Your mother was right—
Wash your hands.
Wash your hands.
Buy the book "Courage 101: True Tales of Grit & Glory" at Amazon!
'Til Death
“All my present happiness is
more for what is to come.”
Spanish
composer Enrique Granados missed the boat. His greatest success forced him to rebook
his passage across the Atlantic, and his shining moment cost him his life and
that of his wife, yet they both died heroes, each trying to save the other's life.
He won fame in his homeland in the
late 1890s with his first opera Maria Del Carmen. His piano compositions were
regarded as among the world’s best. An English critic called them “the finest
piano music of the day.”
International
acclaim came in 1911 with his Goyescas, a suite for piano consisting of six
compositions based on the paintings of fellow Spaniard Francisco Goya. The
Paris Opera then commissioned him to write an opera based on the suite. It was
to have premiered in 1914; however, the rampaging First World War forced the
cancellation of the performances.
There was, nonetheless, good news.
New York’s Metropolitan Opera told Granados it wanted to stage his new opera, fixing it on its calendar for late January 1916. Granados was left with decidedly mixed feelings. He and his wife Amparo were honored that his work would be performed in New York City, and they sailed across the Atlantic to attend the opening. Yet Granados was also apprehensive. He had a morbid fear of dying a watery death and often had nightmares on
that theme.
"I am only now beginning..."
The
financial successes he achieved in America delighted him. The Met handsomely paid
him, and he was well compensated for piano-roll recordings and private recitals in New York. In a review of one of his solo performances, The New York Times' music critic wrote, “Mr. Granados.…played with brilliance and power:
there were also the languor, the smoldering fire, the tenderness and passion
which belong in this music, by which it is marked with Spanish character.”
Until
this time, Granados, 50, had been a struggling artist. Now he was out of debt. His financial future looked promising.
“I am only now beginning my work,” he
wrote a friend from Manhattan. "I am full of confidence and enthusiasm about
working more and more….I am a survivor of fruitless struggle [due] to the ignorance
and indifference [in my] country. All my present happiness is more for what is
to come than for what I have done up
to now.”
New York critics gave his new opera mixed reviews, yet word of its performance reached the White House. Out of the blue, Granados received an invitation to perform a private recital for President Wilson who had said that music was “a national need” in time of
war. His daughter was a semi-professional singer and may have arranged the
invitation.
The resulting delay meant that
Enrique and Amparo missed the embarkation of a Spanish ocean liner bound for Spain. Instead, they
booked passage to England on the Dutch liner Rotterdam. They night before
they embarked, terror gripped Granados. “Never again will I see my children,”
he wept to a friend on the telephone. “This is the end.”
Yet
a week later the Rotterdam arrived safely in England. From there they boarded
the French ferry S.S. Sussex which also served as a mail boat. At one p.m. on March 24, 1916, the Sussex left Dover for the four-hour trip across the English Channel
to Calais. Onboard were 378 passengers and crew. German U-Boats had orders to conduct “unrestricted
submarine warfare” on any target. The ferry had no military escort.
No U-Boat had ever attacked a cross-Channel ferry.
A lovely day
It was a lovely
day. The sky was clear, the sea calm. Two hours into the voyage,
Granados was seen playing the piano in the ferry’s smoking room, according to an eyewitness. It's said he may have even been improvising something.
At least one passenger saw a periscope jutting out of the waves. The
captain of the Sussex spotted a torpedo, and he ordered his ship hard
to starboard. Had he seen it a few seconds earlier, his ship's evasive action
would have caused the torpedo to whiz by harmlessly. Instead, it hit near the bow, exploding
with devastating force.
“A
moment of silence, then Hell let loose,” wrote an American survivor.
Terrified
passengers leapt into the water, whether or not they were wearing life jackets.
Because the U-Boat threat was not taken seriously, the ferry did not have
enough vests onboard. Many it did have were so old they were
rotten and fell apart
“The
scenes around us were harrowing,” the survivor wrote. “The water was full of
men and women, swimming, sinking, drowning, clinging to spars, boards, and
other bits of wreckage, crying out in the agony of the last hold on life.”
In
the panic and confusion, the Sussex’s radio operator sent out the wrong
location for his ship, causing French destroyers to search 20 miles away. The first
rescue vessel did not reach the Sussex until midnight, nine hours after the
attack.
In
a bizarre twist, the Sussex broke in half. The forward part of the ship sank,
while the stern remained afloat and was later towed to shore. As a result, somewhere between only 50 and 100 passengers and crew died. The Granados’ cabin was in the stern. Had they been there at the time of the attack, they might have survived.
The
captain begged passengers not to abandon ship. A friend of Enrique and Amparo
also implored them not to go into the water. Both husband and wife considered
their chances and leapt into the sea.
Passengers
still onboard the Sussex watched in horror as Enrique became separated from
Amparo, who was a better swimmer. Accounts differ. Some eyewitnesses saw Amparo
struggling to keep Enrique afloat. Other saw both floating on a raft in the
frigid water. Amparo slipped over the side. Seeing her fighting to keep her head above the water,
Enrique jumped in to rescue her, and both went under the waves, leaving their six children orphans
In
Europe and America, musical organizations held fund-raising concerts to benefit
the children. In May 1916 at a benefit at the Met, pianist Ignace Paderewski
performed Chopin’s ‘Funeral March.’ The audience stood in silence. All lights in the theatre were extinguished, except a
lone candle on his piano.
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