Morbid Fact Du Jour For February 13, 2010
February 14th, 2010
Today’s Mercurial Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
One of the saddest deaths of a scientist was that of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) who suffered with prostrate trouble. At a royal banquet in Prague he dare not leave the table to relieve himself, with the result that his bladder split and he died a few days later. Analysis of a strand of his hair, which had the root intact, showed that the day before he died he was given a mercurial medicine in an effort to safe his life. It is now believed that mercury poisoning may have been the actual cause of death.
Culled from: The Elements Of Murder
Mercury or not, when you gotta go, you gotta get up from the table and go!
Yeah… except that this was a royal banquet. It would have been a huge faux pas to get up & leave the table before the highest-ranking person there had done so. If Tycho Brahe had a swollen prostate, he just wouldn’t have been able to hold it in long enough. It seems stupid to a rational person… but keep in mind that people in charge are seldom rational.
Compared to the typical table manners of that era, slipping away to go “see a man about a dog” ought to have been pretty minor.