Dark Banquet - Bill Schutt [31]
Even more important, although local scientists in places like Trinidad and Brazil had been aware of it for years, it wasn’t until the very end of the twentieth century that the mainstream scientific community began looking at each of the three vampire bats as separate and quite unique. Thanks to researchers like Farouk Muradali, Wilson Uieda, and the late Arthur Greenhall, vampire bats are currently being studied with an eye toward variation rather than presumed similarity. By avoiding our tendency to lump things together, these scientists have increased our knowledge about these fascinating creatures and shifted the focus from flamethrowers and cave destruction to systematic control and, in the case of Diaemus and Diphylla, conservation efforts. Additionally, a better understanding of vampire bats has helped to dispel myths and misconceptions about the eleven hundred nonvampire bat species as well as blood feeders in general. We can now spend more time dealing intelligently with our attraction to nature’s vampires as well as the unique substance that ultimately led to adaptations like razor-sharp teeth and salivary anticoagulants. That substance is, of course, blood—to many, the source of life. But considering our seemingly innate feelings of attraction and revulsion toward blood, until recently, our relative lack of knowledge about the red stuff made us look positively erudite about vampire bat biology.
I firmly believe that if the whole material medica as now used could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind—and all the worse for the fishes.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Nearly all men die of their remedies and not of their illnesses.
—Molière
Several hours before his death, after repeated efforts to be understood, [he] succeeded in expressing a desire that he might be permitted to die without further interruption.
—Drs. James Craik and Elisha Dick (December 31, 1799)
4.
EIGHTY OUNCES
On the morning of Friday, December 13, 1799, the first president of the United States woke up with a sore throat. He had been riding at his farm the day before and the weather had been cold and windy—snow giving way to hail and finally rain. To make things worse, although his clothes had gotten soaked, he refused to change out of them before dinner. That evening, George Washington stayed up late, reading newspapers and asking his private secretary, Tobias Lear, to read him an account of the Virginia Assembly’s debates on the selection of a senator and governor. Washington, whose voice had become hoarse, took no treatment for what he perceived to be the start of a simple cold.
Later, Martha, who could tell that her husband was starting to come down with something, chided him for coming to bed so late. “It has been my unvaried rule never to put off till the morrow the duties which should be performed today,” reportedly came Washington’s famous reply to his wife.
At around 3 a.m., on December 14, the Founding Father woke with a fever. He also found it hard to speak and was having difficulty breathing. A mixture of molasses, vinegar, and butter was prepared, but Washington began choking violently when he tried to swallow it.
The former president’s longtime physician, Dr. James Craik, was called in, but before the doctor arrived Washington sent for his estate overseer, Albin Rawlins, who appeared just after sunrise. Rawlins’s medical experience consisted of treating sick livestock, but that didn’t stop Washington from ordering the man to bleed him. Although this would seem to be a bizarre request, in Washington’s time bloodletting or “breathing a vein,” as it was called, was an extremely common treatment, comparable nowadays to popping a couple of aspirin. Still, after preparing the former president’s arm, Rawlins hesitated.
“Don’t be afraid,” Washington