The Things I Learned Today, or Weird Trivia

We learn new stuff every day even if we don't try. Even if we don't want to learn, we do. The Native American philosophy of education is when the time is right we learn what we need to know. (In other words, institutional classroom education is unnatural.) I think we learn a whole lot of stuff we don't need to know, too. Some of that stuff might come in handy in the future. Or not. I read a lot. Some times I read about things that amaze me, make me wonder, make me laugh or disturb me greatly. This is my new blog post series so I may share these new learnings with my readers.

Today I learned yellow fever epidemics used to decimate whole communities in the 1800s. No one knew mosquitoes spread it so everyone got sick, died, and whoever survived threw all the dead bodies into mass graves. Can you imagine watching everyone around you dying and not knowing why? How incredibly frightening. The very first inoculation in the USA was for yellow fever. They would drain the pus from someone who was recovering, make a tiny incision on the affected person's skin, and stick the pus in. Yuck. But it worked.

Second learning: paraphilia  This is a crazy-ass mental illness whereby a person gets sexually aroused when viewing a dead person. Hmmmm.... I read about Jane Toppan, serial killer nurse who would kill friends and patients with overdoses of morphine. (Friends might be too strong a word.) As they died she'd snuggle into bed with them and watch. It gave her "voluptuous delight." (Her words, not mine.) Hmmm.... They are also called "lust killers".

Someday I'll need to know those things. Not today. Today these learnings are categorized as weird trivia. I might need to change my new series heading to "Weird Trivia".

I'll spare my readers illustrations for these two new learnings or it could get even weirder.