Only four years after Dracula was published (1897), Landsteiner made his discovery of blood groups. The appalling and unholy four blood transfusions that poor Lucy received before dying would have not being so easy or, perhaps, offered more possibilities to the fiction. On a different side, it is a discovery to me the use of telegrams that the characters of the novel make: telegrams can be sent and received in the course of a train trip and some of them are directed to the housekeepers or assistants. Kind of a common piece of technology, isn't it? The cargo ship in which Count Dracula arrived to Whitby, England, is however a puppet in the hands of nature, navigating astray and at the mercy of the winds of the storm. No communication existed with the coastguards whatsoever. In an invigorating walk along the White Cliffs of Dover today, I just learned that the first go-and-return ship-to-shore radio message using Morse code was transmitted on the Christmas Eve of 1898... Alas!
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Diaries seem to mean a whole lot for the characters of the period. All effects of writing that we experience today were already manifested more than 100 years ago. Dr. Seward, Jonathan and Mina sooth their pain, anxiety, worries, doubts and stress in keeping diaries. Sometimes, one of them says "that's it! FINIS", only to come back to it a few days down the line. Sometimes they find themselves too worn out to write; sometimes, they record two or three entrances in the same day... . Messages, letters, telegrams and notes complete the urge for communication.
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It is not a big thing, nor any original at all, but I would like to record here another example of the tremendous stupidity of excessive and zealous care for security in teaching labs nowadays. I keep asking: Why? Stupidity to the point to replace mercury thermometers by "spirits", alcohol ones, or to worry at the rotten-eggs smell. What, if not, is Chemistry for a student but a rotten-eggs and a bitter-almond smell?
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(LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
**
Diaries seem to mean a whole lot for the characters of the period. All effects of writing that we experience today were already manifested more than 100 years ago. Dr. Seward, Jonathan and Mina sooth their pain, anxiety, worries, doubts and stress in keeping diaries. Sometimes, one of them says "that's it! FINIS", only to come back to it a few days down the line. Sometimes they find themselves too worn out to write; sometimes, they record two or three entrances in the same day... . Messages, letters, telegrams and notes complete the urge for communication.
**
It is not a big thing, nor any original at all, but I would like to record here another example of the tremendous stupidity of excessive and zealous care for security in teaching labs nowadays. I keep asking: Why? Stupidity to the point to replace mercury thermometers by "spirits", alcohol ones, or to worry at the rotten-eggs smell. What, if not, is Chemistry for a student but a rotten-eggs and a bitter-almond smell?
\
(LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
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