Bugs in the belfry

[R.A. Hettinga]

<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/11/28/bugs_in_the_belfry?mode=PF>

The Boston Globe

THE EXAMINED LIFE

Bugs in the belfry

By Joshua Glenn, Globe Staff  |  November 28, 2004

FOR OVER a century, philosophers and literary scholars have debated whether
or not the apocalyptic, sometimes megalomaniacal qualities of the final
books written by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche can be chalked
up to the gradually unfolding delusions and personality disturbances of the
author's paresis (tertiary syphilis). In the current issue of Daedalus, the
journal of the Cambridge-based American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
distinguished UMass-Amherst geobiologist Lynn Margulis announces that the
answer to this longstanding riddle has been discovered floating in a Cape
Cod pond.

To recap: In 1888, a sickly Nietzsche wrote the tracts "Twilight of the
Idols," "The Antichrist," "Ecce Homo," and "The Case of Wagner" in a burst
of productivity. But the following January in Turin, he flung his arms
around the neck of a horse being flogged, collapsed in the piazza, and
swiftly descended into a raving dementia brought on -- as records of a
young Nietzsche's treatment for syphilis 30 years earlier would appear to
indicate -- by paresis. So was Nietzsche suffering, as many have argued,
from incipient paresis when he wrote "Twilight of the Idols," et al? If so,
then (the argument goes) these late books, brilliant as they may appear to
be, can't be taken as seriously as his earlier, saner writing. Or did the
philosopher go mad from some other cause all of a sudden, in the space of a
single day, as others prefer to believe?

That's where Margulis, an expert in microorganisms who has no reputation as
a Nietzsche scholar, comes in -- to say "neither."

After explaining that syphilis is a syndrome caused by the ravages of the
spirochete Treponema pallidum (the lively, corkscrew-shaped bacterium
pictured at right), Margulis elaborates on her own recent research into
spirochetes by weighing in on the long-running debate over Nietzsche's
brain. Yes, Nietzsche's madness was undoubtedly caused by paresis, she
writes -- but he most likely went crazy quite suddenly, as opposed to over
the course of weeks and months. "Nietzsche's brain on January 3, 1889
experienced a transformation," she states -- which means that his books of
1888 weren't written by a delusional kook.

But is it possible for paresis to appear overnight, instead of slowly?
Margulis believes it is, and as evidence points to studies of microbial mat
samples taken from Eel Pond in Woods Hole and kept in a jar in a
UMass-Amherst lab. Although no typical spirochetes were found in these
samples, Margulis recounts, when food and water known to support spirochete
activity were added to some samples, spirochetes that could only have been
been lying dormant suddenly awoke from their slumber. Extrapolating from
these experiments, Margulis argues that inactive Treponema pallidum
spirochetes had been hiding out in Nietzsche's tissues ever since his
syphilis treatment some 30 years earlier."

But on January 3, 1889 in Turin," Margulis concludes, channeling Vincent
Price, "armies of revived spirochetes munched on his brain tissue. The
consequence was the descent of Nietzsche the genius into Nietzsche the
madman in less than one day." ? ) Copyright  2004 The New York Times Company
 

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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'