Episode 129 Advil Can Be Deadly
This episode deals with what can be described as two detective stories - the first a true story that happened last month that could best be described as a medical detective story - that the “culprit” could not be found at first.The second is the generally viewed as the first literary detective story - Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
Episode 129 Advil Can Be Deadly
This episode deals with what can be described as two detective stories - the first a true story that happened last month that could best be described as a medical detective story - that the “culprit” could not be found at first.The second is the generally viewed as the first literary detective story - Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
00:00 Intro
Welcome back to Celebrate Poe. My name is George Bartley, and this is Episode 129 - Advil Can Be Deadly. The intro music music for this episode, Come Rest in This Bosom, is said to be Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite song. Today, Mr. Poe and I will continue to take a deep dive into the times, life, and works of “America’s Shakespeare.”
Now next week, I plan to finally have my episode about the actual interpreting of a Ricky 3 by the Indianapolis Shakespeare Company - Ricky 3 is sort of a combination of Shakespeare and rap music in an incredible production. This month also marks Deaf Awareness month -so don’t miss the next episode of Celebrate Poe.
01:25 A True Medical Detective Story
As you may know, most authorities give credit to Edgar Allan Poe for writing the first detective story in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. I will delve into that story later today, and in far more detail later in several future episodes, but first I want to deal with my own medical detective story - a detective story where I was the victim.
It all started with a dental procedure - I was having extremely painful headaches, and ended up in the emergency room. Some x rays showed that I had a abscess, and I went to a dental surgeon to have it taken care of. He put me under laughing gas, but still the pain was excruciating beyond anything I could have imagined.
When the needle slowly went in and the dentist was pulling the tooth, I was gripping the arms of the chair, and felt like a huge linebacker had kicked me in the mouth - over and over. Are you getting the idea that it hurt?
Well, the dental surgeon gave me some pain medicine to take every eight hours. (I have the empty bottle right here.) It was for ibuprofen - take 300 mg every eight hours for pain)
By the way, ibuprofen - also sold under the name of Advil - usually comes in dosages of 200 mg. And everywhere that I have read said that you should not take more than 6 a day - in other words 1,200 mg.
The dosage that I was prescribed was 1800 mg a day - but I did not know the dangers then.
And being the sometimes compulsive person that I am, I kept a spreadsheet with ibuprofen listed every 8 hours - it is all too easy to be groggy, start feeling pain, stagger to the painkiller, and take a pill. Then get up 2 hours later for another pill, and then two hours later, and before you know it you have become addicted or suffered an overdose. And some of you may know that some of my family members have had problems with substances that have ruined their lives - and I don’t want to go down that road. Several times I would get up wanting a painkiller - look at the spreadsheet where I had faithfully marked down each time I took a pill, and saw that it was or wasn’t an appropriate time for medicine.
I think I stayed in bed for a week - and went to a clinic for a non-related routine procedure that had been set weeks in advance. But when I got there I remarked to the nurse that my blood pressure was a bit high, and I had been getting winded easily. Had not walked around much, but this former marathoner had trouble walking twenty five feet. Why was this happening?
I was even in a hospital gown and on a gurney ready for the procedure, when a doctor came in and canceled the procedure before he even started. He said that it was far more important to deal with my hemoglobin level. Without getting too technical, for some reason, my heart was having to work extra hard to deal with basic functions. Normal hemoglobin levels for an adult mail are 15 - mine was 7.5
He told me to immediately go to the local hospital to find out what the problem was.
I waited for hours in the emergency room, only to beI admitted to the hospital.
Now I had fasted the night before the procedure - but the procedure was canceled - and I had to wait until the next morning to have another procedure - also not eating - except for a clear liquid meal before midnight. Then I could not eat anything until the next morning. I think around 3:00 at night, I would have traded my computer for a sandwich. And for several nights afterwards, I dreamt about food - especially big jumbo juicy hot dogs. I talked with a dietician later, and she said such cravings are totally normal - not psychological - that when the body is deprived of food it physically craves nourishment all the time - at least at first.
Anyway, for some reason, I had developed anemia - constantly weak - and the doctors were not sure about the reason.
Fortunately, they did not have to depend on hunches - the next morning I had a endoscopy - this was the reason I could not eat anything - I was put under laughing gas - but it was not painful and I did not even know it was happening - a camera was inserted into my stomach to take picture of the situation - it must have been a teeny tinny camera.
They discovered - and I hope I have this right - heart palpitations and stomach bleeding due to anemia. (I know a medical student would state it differently) but I was one weak puppy - or tired old man - depending on your perspective.
So the pictures from the endoscopy showed that I had a bleeding stomach - mystery partially solved - and the cause was none other than taking ibuprofen.
Now before I was discharged, my doctor came to my room and pointed out the cause of the problem and more or less solved the mystery. He explained that while Ibuprofen can be an excellent pain killer for the majority of people some individuals have an extremely negative reaction to the drug.
My primary care physician had earlier noted that I had heart palpitations, and I had an appointment to get a 24 hour a day heart monitor but told me to cancel the appointment until I was more stabilized on the corrective medication that I started taking - until then the results would not really be valid.
It has taken me weeks to get better, and i appreciate your patience - but I was really in no position to even think about doing a podcast.
I know when you are doing a podcast, often the subject stays on your mind. And that was definitely true when I was trying to figure out what was happening to me before the doctors found out the solution to the mystery of what was going on. In a sense, it was like a detective story, but against a medical background.
TRANSITION
09:58 The First Detective Story
Now the first formal detective story in literature is generally agreed to be was The Murders in the Rue Morgue" - a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. C. Auguste Dupin is a man in Paris who solves the mystery of the brutal murder of two women. and even though numerous witnesses heard a suspect - no one could agree on what language was spoken. And at the murder scene, Dupin finds a hair that does not appear to be human.
And maybe I should interject a spoiler alert here before I go any further. And Celebrate Poe will delve into The Murders in the Rue Morgue in far more detail in the future.
But as the first fictional detective, Poe's Dupin displays many traits which became literary conventions in subsequent fictional detectives, including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Many later characters, for example, follow Poe's model of the brilliant detective, his personal friend who serves as narrator, and the final revelation being presented before the reasoning that leads up to it.
Now for the first time in this podcast series, I better point out that some of the rest of this podcast episode might gross you out and is not for delicate sensitivities.
The story begins with a lengthy commentary on the nature of reasoning, and Dupin reading the newspaper accounts of a baffling double murder. Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter have been found dead at their home in the Rue Morgue, a fictional street in Paris. The mother was found with multiple broken bones and her throat so deeply cut that her head fell off when the body was moved. The daughter was found strangled to death and stuffed upside down into a chimney. The murders occurred in a fourth-floor room that was locked from the inside, On the floor were found a bloody straight razor, and several bloody tufts of gray hair. Pretty gruesome stuff!
Several witnesses reported hearing two voices at the time of the murder, one French, but disagreed on the language spoken by the other. The speech was unclear, and all witnesses claimed not to know the language they believed the second voice to be speaking.
Because none of the witnesses could agree on the language spoken by the second voice, Dupin concludes they were not hearing a human voice at all. He also points out that the murderer would have had to have superhuman strength to force the daughter's body up the chimney. He formulates a method by which the murderer could have entered the room and killed both women, involving an agile climb up a lightning rod and a leap to a set of open window shutters. Showing an unusual tuft of hair he recovered from the scene, and demonstrating the impossibility of the daughter being strangled by a human hand, Dupin concludes that an "Ourang-Outang" (orangutan) killed the women. He placed an advertisement in the local newspaper asking if anyone had lost such an animal.
Circumstances in the story lead to Dupin meeting a soldier who had brought two orangutans to Paris. The sailor explains that he captured the orangutan while in Borneo and brought it back to Paris, but had trouble keeping it under control. When he saw the orangutan attempting to shave its face with his straight razor, imitating his morning grooming, it fled into the streets and reached the Rue Morgue, where it climbed up and into the house. The orangutan seized the mother by the hair and was waving the razor, imitating a barber; when she screamed in fear, it flew into a rage, ripped her hair out, slashed her throat, and strangled the daughter. The sailor climbed up the lightning rod in an attempt to catch the animal. Fearing punishment by its master, the orangutan threw the mother's body out the window and stuffed the daughter into the chimney before fleeing.
14:55 Enter Mr. Poe
Ah, it is Mr. Poe - I began this episode by talking about - what you might call - a true medical detective story. Then I talked about what is generally agreed to be the first literary detective story - your “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” Would you care to end this episode by reading from that story for a slightly different perspective? And why don’t you start here with this section about the sailor? Warning - this excerpt is not for the squeamish.
Certainly, Mr. Bartley.
I do not propose to follow the man in the circumstantial narrative which he now detailed. What he stated was in substance this. He had lately made a voyage to the Indian Archipelago. A party of which he formed one landed at Borneo and passed into the interior upon an excursion of pleasure. Himself and a companion had captured the Ourang[[-]]Outang. This companion dying, the animal fell into his own exclusive possession. After great trouble, occasioned by the intractable ferocity of his captive during the home voyage, the sailor at length succeeded in lodging the Ourang[[-]]Outang safely at his own residence in Paris, where, not to attract towards himself the unpleasant curiosity of his neighbors, he kept it carefully secluded, until such time as it should recover from a wound in the foot received from a splinter on board ship. His ultimate design was to sell it.
Returning home from some sailors’ frolic on the night, or rather in the morning of the murder, he found his prisoner occupying his own bed-room, into which he had broken from a closet adjoining, where he had been, as it was thought, securely confined. The beast, razor in hand, and fully lathered, was sitting before a looking-glass, attempting the operation of shaving, in which he had no doubt previously watched his master through the keyhole of the closet. Terrified at the sight of so dangerous a weapon in possession of an animal so ferocious, and so well able to use it, the man, for some moments, was at a loss what to do. He had been accustomed, however, to quiet the creature, even in its fiercest moods by the use of a strong wagoner's whip, and to this he now resorted. Upon sight of it the Ourang-Outang sprang at once through the door of the chamber, down the stairs, and thence, through a window unfortunately open, into the street.
The Frenchman followed, in despair — the ape, razor still in hand, occasionally stopping to look back and gesticulate at his pursuer, until the latter had nearly come up with him. He then again made off. In this manner the chase continued for a long time. The streets were profoundly quiet, as it was nearly three o’clock in the morning. In passing down an alley in the rear of the Rue Trianon the fugitive's attention was arrested by a light (the only one apparent except those of the town-lamps) gleaming from the open window of Madame L'Espanaye's chamber, in the fourth story of her house. Rushing to the building he perceived the lightning-rod, clambered up with inconceivable agility, grasped the shutter, which was thrown fully back against the wall, and, by its means, swung himself directly upon the head-board of the bed. The whole feat did not occupy a minute. The shutter was kicked open again by the [[Ourang-Outang]] as he entered the room.
The sailor, in the meantime, was both rejoiced and perplexed. He had strong hopes of now recapturing the ape as it could scarcely escape from the trap into which it had ventured, except by the rod, where it might be intercepted as it came down. On the other hand there was much cause for anxiety as to what the brute might do in the house. This latter reflection urged the man still to follow the fugitive. A lightning-rod is ascended without difficulty, especially by a sailor; but, when he had arrived as high as the window which lay far to his left, his career was stopped; — the most that he could accomplish was to reach over so as to obtain a glimpse of the interior of the room. At this glimpse he nearly fell from his hold through excess of horror. Now it was that those hideous shrieks from Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter, habited in their night-clothes, had apparently been occupied in arranging some papers in the iron-chest already mentioned, which had been wheeled into the middle of the room. It was open, and its contents lay beside it on the floor. Their backs must have been towards the window; and, by the time elapsing between the screams and the ingress of the ape, it seems probable that he was not immediately perceived. The flapping-to of the shutter would naturally have been attributed to the wind.
As the sailor looked in, the gigantic beast had seized Madame L'Espanaye by the hair (which was loose, as she had been combing it) and was flourishing the razor about her face, in imitation of the motions of a barber. The daughter lay prostrate and motionless; she had swooned. The screams and struggles of the old lady (during which the hair was torn from her head) had the effect of changing the probably pacific purposes of the Ourang-Outang into those of ungovernable wrath. With one determined sweep of his muscular arm he nearly severed her head from her body. The sight of blood enflamed his anger into phrenzy. Gnashing his teeth, and flashing fire from his eyes, he flew upon the body of the girl, and imbedded his fearful talons in her throat, retaining his grasp until she expired. His wandering and wild glances fell at this moment upon the head of the bed, over which those of his master, glazed in horror, were just discernible. The fury of the beast, who no doubt bore still in mind the dreaded whip, was instantly converted into dread. Conscious of having deserved punishment, he seemed desirous of concealing his bloody deeds, and skipped agitation, throwing down and breaking the furniture as he moved, and dragging the bed from the bedstead. In conclusion, he seized first the corpse of the daughter, and thrust it up the chimney as it was found; then that of the old lady, with which he rushed to throw it out the window.
As the ape approached him with his mutilated burden, the sailor shrank aghast to the rod, and, rather gliding than clambering down it, hurried at once home — dreading the consequences of the butchery, and gladly abandoning in his terror, all solicitude about the fate of the Ourang-Outang. The words heard by the party upon the staircase were the Frenchman's exclamations of horror and affright, commingled with the fiendish jabberings of the brute.
I have scarcely anything to add. The Ourang[[-]]Outang must have escaped from the chamber by the rod, just before the breaking of the door. He must have closed the window as he passed through it. He was subsequently caught by the owner himself.
Thank you Mr. Poe.
In conclusion, Poe’s imaginative detective story and my all-too real medical detective story share a search for the unknown by individuals with special skills - In Poe’s fictional case, the analytical Dupin who seems to rely on a combination of hunches and reasoning. In my all too real medical detective story, the doctors involved seem to rely on not only hunches and reasoning, but science and education in their areas of expertise.
24:15 Future Episodes
Don’t forget, I plan to finally have my episode about the actual interpreting of a Ricky 3 by the Indianapolis Shakespeare Company - sort of a combination of Shakespeare and rap music in an incredible production. I I actually starting writing this episode a few days after I interpreted for the deaf for the play, and this episode reflects some new information that has taken place since then. This month also marks Deaf Awareness month - and you certainly don’t want to miss this special episode.
25:50 Sources
The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography by Arthur Hobson Quinn, The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Dwight R. Thomas and David K. Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe: The Man by Mary E. Phillips, and Advil Side Effects: Common, Severe, Long Term from the web site drugs.com
Thank you for listening to Celebrate Poe - a deep dive into the life, times, and works of America’s Shakespeare - Edgar Allan Poe.
26:25 Outro
Thank you for listening to Celebrate Poe.