Castel del Monte, Stupor Mundi, and red poison

About halfway down the boot of Italy lies a picturesque little village with its accompanying old castle, something you just don't find around here outside a Hollywood set:

The community and castle or castel as they spell it is called Castel del Monte - "of the mountain" I deduce using my lame Latin root skills. Some poor toddler named Frederick took over the reign of this place at the age of three when his dad Henry, croaked, probably from syphilis. Well I made that last part up, but who knows. This was in 1197. I bet it was dank and not terribly clean, but the sex was the same.

Anyway Frederick managed to hold onto this until 1250. Frederick actually turned out to be a pretty cool guy, he helped get his anarchistic community calmed down, he started the University of Naples, and he studied five languages and high level mathematics. 

He was a real rennaisance guy ahead of the curve. He brought in scholars from all over the world, he had Aristotle translated into Latin, and he studied Greek architecture, and oriental toilets. His focus on the middle east and Muslim architecture led him to want to design a mathematically perfect castle.

Here's what the castle looks like:

He had it built in the middle of nowhere, on a hill, using Muslim and antique mathematical principles for its design, rather then the Christian principles that dictated the look and feel of many other castles that were built in that era. For example this castle had no moat, no kitchen, no chapel, no real ornamentation. The thing is an octagon with repeating trapezoidal rooms, made of limestone that glitters with quartz. The upstairs rooms are fancier than those below, with vaulted ceilings and Greek style triple columns. 

Frederick sought the input of the orient too - installing hydraulic toilet and bathing facilities. I can't really imagine the castle about a kitchen, so that bothers me, but otherwise this seems rather magnificent. 

No one lives there now, and it is eroding, although so slowly that we can't see it. I don't think my house will be around and seven or eight centuries. What will? You can still go visit this place if you can find it. It's still in the middle of nowhere.

Okay so fast forward to the 1950s. The pharmaceutical companies all over the world are in a big race to figure out who can make the most money by solving and curing cancer. One company in particular, Farmitalia Research Laboratories, an Italian company, apparently sent out a bunch of people to try to find soil microbes toward this endeavor. I can't really quite imagine this. Let's try to imagine it. Maybe it was a guy named Paolo, or Cosmo. Driving around in a teeny tiny little blue car with his other grad student type colleagues all over the Italian countryside, with their little test tubes and scoopers and cork stoppers. They would get up in the morning from their crap hotel, sit outside and have a coffee and a cigarette and then another coffee. And then say the hell with it let's go, get dressed, grab your stuff, get in the car and drive around. Periodically they pull over -  (When? Where? Why? What drives the knowledge that a particularly important soil microbe lies nearby?) - dig around in the dirt, sniff with their little inept noses and put samples in test tubes that they then slap masking tape on to and scribble in non-sharpie pen: date, location, notes. 

Well a couple samples were taken right outside of this Castel del Monte. And they turned out to be golden, or I should say: red.

Outside Frederick's octagonal monolith someone found a new strain of Streptomyces peucetius, which turned out to be very valuable to the pharmaceutical company. They'd stumbled upon something important.

How did it get there?  Why? Wonder if this is something to do with Frederick himself? Did he cough onto the soil a magic antibiotic from his own body back in 1237, that then grew like Jack's magic bean into a microbiological soil strain. No… That can't be. 

Streptomyces peucetius. 

When I see these words it reminds me of strep throat. And a strep throat has been a secret ingredient in many things including cancer research from over 100 years ago when a doctor noted that if he let his patients almost die of strep throat they would sometimes get rid of their cancer, and some more modern reports that have to do with strep throat and autism or neurological problems. I myself am a person that is had strep throat over 10 times, as have my children. I wonder if strep is a key? To the body? Immune system? Cancer? Brain? Run off and get your PhD on this some young bright enterprising person, I'm getting back to my story now.

Scene: 1950s cancer race. A breakthrough at Castel del Monte! But MERDE!  A dastardly competing French team of young soil sniffers had also discovered this same compound at about the same time so a fight sprung up! They had to share the prize, and decided to name the new red compound after a word for an old pre-Roman tribe that used to live in the area (Dauni) and the French word for ruby: rubis. The new compound was to known as daunorubicin.

(PS - if nothing else, let this history remind you, that yes, in the future there will be a term that says "pre-United States civilization" and another term that says "post American civilization." The words "Europe" and "New York" and "Christianity" and "China" will be dusty antiques forgotten. We are all going to go the way of Frederick and the Dauni and our ways and religions and castles will be forgotten). 

Back to the pharmaceutical world of Italy/France and their red prize. They were thrilled, trials started immediately, the stuff was found to help a lot with cancer that it been previously untreatable. TRES BIEN! DIAMO UNA FESTA! MERAVIGLIOSO!

Unfortunately people started croaking due to "fatal cardiac toxicity."

Back to the drawing board, they fiddle around with the formula and made it a little bit less deadly. Techy sentence:

"A strain of Streptomyces was mutated using N-nitroso-N-methyl urethane and this new strain produced a different, red-colored antibiotic." Don't ask me. 

It was a bit less toxic, not a lot, but they wanted a new name. Interestingly they named this new poison cure afyer the Adriatic Sea - calling it Adriamycin. My drug.

So I'm taking the poisonous red Adriatic Sea-named thing discovered in the 50s in some dirt outside of a castle that was designed by a guy Frederick that was so far ahead of his time that his nickname was Stupor Mundi, meaning "Wonder of the World."

Just pondering what is happening to me right now. I'm hairless. My throat and tongue are covered with thrushy fur which makes me sick of myself. My house disgusts me. My spirit is tired. Yet little parts of me perk up at little things, like maybe a movie I might watch today would be good. I went on a mile-long walk yesterday with Susan and that did not kill me. The sunshine felt pretty good. I ate a good dinner last night. I have some bookclubs coming up. I have a best friend coming to visit me tomorrow. Family too. Things will be okay I think. I'm almost done with another super excellent book. I like to read. Birds exist.

I'm so hungry and starving my stomach is caving in on itself yet my head and my mouth tell me not to eat.

A friend had a double mastectomy Monday and reconstruction surgery at the same time. I want to go visit her, but I wonder if the thrush in my mouth means that my immune system is not very strong, and if going to a hospital would be a super bad idea. Stupendously stupid. Secretly a part of me wants to go get checked into a hospital and put in the ICU and knocked out and woken up in a month when this is all done. Maybe I'll go there and lick the floor.

Is my history tied up with Frederick's? 

Stupor Mundi? Muslim architecture? Some random French guy taking up a piece of soil? Is my history tied up with you? Is my history even important or should I quit worrying about it and just look forward? Why am I obsessed with poetry?

Sources

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/398

http://www.myelomabeacon.com/resources/2008/10/15/doxorubicin/