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Steve Taylore-Knowles

June 01, 2015 10:00

Word Stories: botox

Steve Taylore-Knowles looks at the stories behind the English language.

In the Middle Ages, much midnight oil was burnt by alchemists in their search for the Philosopher’s Stone. This mythical substance would supposedly do two things: turn base metals into gold (thereby making the alchemist rich) and rejuvenate human beings (thereby making the alchemist young and rich). Although they laid the foundations for modern science, alchemists unfortunately failed to find this secret of eternal youth. However, modern science has succeeded where they failed and given us botox, the fashionable wrinkle-removing treatment, and it wasn’t found in the bottom of a crucible but in a sausage.

During the Napoleonic Wars, in the early nineteenth century, there was an outbreak of food poisoning in Stuttgart and it was suspected that smoked sausages were the culprits. Justinus Kerner, a medical officer, investigated this ‘sausage poison’, which caused paralysis from the head down, eventually resulting in death by suffocation. He thought it had a biological origin and the condition became known as ‘Kerner’s disease’ and later botulism, from the Latin botulus, meaning ‘sausage’. The organism responsible was eventually identified towards the end of the century by a Belgian, Emile Pierre van Ermengem, who named it Bacillus botulinus, later changed to Clostridium botulinus.

Over the course of the twentieth century, the toxin responsible for the disease, botulinum toxin type A, was isolated and studied. It acts by interfering in the transmission of signals from nerves to muscle cells and is highly toxic; it’s estimated that a gram would be enough to kill a million people. However, in minute quantities, it has medical applications in treating muscle spasms, excessive sweating and wrinkly faces. According to the Allergan website, the offical manufacturers of Botox® (botulinum toxin) Cosmetic, it works ‘by reducing the contractions of the muscles that cause those persistent frown lines that have developed over time.’ They also say that ‘side effects following injection include temporary eyelid droop and nausea...localized pain, infection, inflammation, tenderness, swelling, redness, and/or bleeding/bruising’, so you have been warned.

Call me old-fashioned, but personally I plan to just eat the sausages (well-cooked, of course) and grow old gracefully.

Тема: Grammar & Vocabulary       Теги: Wordstory, Etymology

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