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Wednesday, 18 November 2015

Wise Words from Oscar Wilde

"Religion comforts you in your illness. But antibiotics make your better"
- Oscar Wilde

8 comments:

  1. Only until the farmers cottoned onto prophylactic doses for livestock and rendered us all immune to the wonder drugs.

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  2. I never realised Oscar's knees came straight out of his pelvis. I'm sure that explains a lot

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  3. Na, Wilde never said that. It was Socrates, just before he died, you know, during that unfortunate medicine bottle mix up.

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  4. Poor Oscar, he could have done with some antibiotics, too, he died of syphilis after all.

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    Replies
    1. Well it's generally believed it was actually meningitis caused by a complication from an ear infection. But either way, I feel really bad now.

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  5. IIRC, there are several references in Oscar's correspondence to him having a dose and then getting better - in those days they didn't realise that it was the same dose going into a different stage and then recurring (James Boswell earlier made the same mistake). So the intractable ear infection/abscess, which at the time was put down to a blow on the head during his imprisonment, I think, may well have been a symptom of the French Disease.

    Please don't feel bad. He'd have been dead by now, anyway.

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