Projekt:Pátrání/Tuberkulózní opička

Tuberkulózní opička

Problém

Podle tohoto příspěvku na Google+ měla opička, kterou měla Franklinova expedice s sebou, tuberkulózu.

Jaký je zdroj tohoto tvrzení? A pokud ano, proč ji brali s sebou?

--Radouch (diskuse) 29. 4. 2018, 10:43 (CEST)

Návrhy postupu

1. Kontaktovat autora příspěvku.

Zjištění

1. William Battesby v knize James Fitzjames uvádí (s. 142, viz Google Books):

   Fairholme wrote that ‘the Doctor’, presumably Stephen Stanley, joked that ‘Jacko [the Erebus’ pet monkey] is in a rapid consumption’. He said that ‘he certainly has a very bad cough, but the only other symptom I see of it, ishe rapid consumption of everything eatable he can lay his paws on’.

   Opička tedy měla kašel, ale jinak hlavně sežrala (zkonzumovala) vše, na co přišla...

2. Dotaz autorovi příspěvku na G+ položen 24. 6. 2018, viz [1]

Kevyne Kicklighter obsáhle a rychle odpověděl:

Just mentioning the monkey was consumptive is enough.

Tuberculosis, the "White plague", in the day was like AIDS in the 1980s. Doctors knew the signs and symptoms, and it was often fatal.

They knew it because is was too common, especially of the socioeconomic class sailors came from.

The crews were often full of it. Not only were all three of the Beechey Island buried were infected with TB, Torrington had a lung lesion showing an earlier recovery of TB; and Braine had Pott's Disease, the TB of the spine.

The "cough" was noted in the monkey as being terrible, and we know 4 on the expedition by the time they got to Disko Bay, Greenland were "perfectly useless" due to TB. Of the 5 transferred home from Disko Bay, only one was not due to the disease (broken bones due to a storm sailing to Greenland, and being smashed by the barrels of provisions).

That means Torrington was probably ill but not so severely warranting a journey back home. His hands show no callouses expected of a stoker, so he was too ill to shovel coal for months before death, yet well enough to continue working in some capacity after the expedition sailed into oblivion.

The letters home from the officers reflect the positive mood of the crew, and how much Franklin was an optimist (he was destined to be an Anglican clergy until he got the sea bug. So he evangelized the crews. They loved him). They were expecting to get to Russia before the summer was over by their letters (upon the news of whalers earlier in the season of early cleared ice). Problem is they sailed too late waiting on those tins of food, only to be killed by them in the end (Goldner skipped out of England, like a thief he was in the night, too).

So the monkey had lung TB (the terrible cough of TB), and could've been the very reason why so many of the officers were dead before the ships were abandoned in 1848 -- 9 officers were dead before April, 1848, that was almost half of them. Commander Gore (who would've became the captain of one of the ships when Franklin died), fourth in command, was even dead before the ships abandonment, too.

To abandon ships in the coldest part of spring, something horrible had to happen, so terrible they could not wait even 2 month for summer.

Přesto si troufám tvrdit, že právě proto, že doktoři i námořníci znali příznaky tuberkulózy, zjevně opičku za tuberkulózní nepovažovali.