The Frankenstein Chronicles
I just re-watched the TV series 'The Frankenstein Chronicles' from 2015. Sean Bean is, as always, superb in the main role. The rest of the cast is also superb. The production values are high, the costumes, the recreation of 1820s London, are excellent.
Of course it's fiction. But many historical characters are portrayed, under their real names (William Blake, Mary Shelley, Sir Robert Peel, to name a few.)
Some of the action takes place in Greenwich, which was my stomping ground as a child. I grew up just down the road, in Deptford.
There is a subplot where the Dean of Westminster wants to sell some valuable land in Westminster to property developers. Unfortunately for him, the land (Pye Street) is occupied by poor people. Before he can sell the land he needs to clear the slums.
The good people of Pye Street start dying of what is rumored to be the plague. In those days they called it 'miasma' - they didn't know what caused disease and thought it was somehow lingering in the air. ('Malaria' means 'bad air'.) Several people die and others start leaving to escape the 'plague'. The slum is clearing.
The whole street draws its water from a nearby well. Sean Bean's character smashes the pump and goes down to examine the source of the water. There is a diseased, rotting corpse. Planted there by cronies of the Dean of Westminster. The people are being poisoned. They think it is a contagious disease, but it is their common source of water that is poisoning them.
And this is my point. Think about this, the next time someone tries to scare you with monkey diseases. There is no 'disease'. There are no viruses. There are only symptoms, caused by over-exposure to toxins, which overwhelm the body's ability to eradicate them. So the toxins accumulate, and it reaches a point where symptoms arise. One means for the body to eradicate toxins is sweating. The skin is the biggest organ in the body. So the excess of toxins which overwhelm our sweat mechanism can manifest as skin outbreaks. Rashes. Lumps. This is the new monkey ailment they're trying to sell us.
