Heard Through the Stethoscope What's Another Word for .

Docket: 1-5525 Initial: JN Customer: CMAJ Dec 15/98 15525 Dec. 15/98 CMAJ /Page 1452 nizing death after he entered the Archeologist Nicholas Reeves, have yet to make the big trip, such as 3200-year-old tomb of Pharaoh Tu- author of The Complete Tu- crew member Julia Payette, earn a tankhamen on Nov. 26, 1922. The tankhamen, said there were reports maximum of $107 100. British adventurer, who financed of a black fungus inside the tomb. archeologist Howard Carter’s quest Carnarvon was already in poor Viagra follies to find the tomb of the last king in physical condition when he reached the 18th dynasty in Egypt, may have Egypt and could have suffered a fa- Viagra is cropping up in the most fallen victim to a highly virulent dis- tal infection as a result. unlikely places, including nightclubs ease that was lying dormant in the “There are fungi that can survive and restaurants. The anti-impotence underground burial chamber for in a peculiar environment like a medication that quickly became the millennia. tomb and could well have affected best-selling prescription drug in US Dr. Sylvain Gandon, a researcher someone like him,” Reeves says. He history, is being sold illicitly in at the Laboratoire d’Écologie in dismisses the idea of a curse, point- British nightclubs under the street Paris, has shown that microscopic ing out that if one existed, it spared name of “poke.” Apparently both spores can become extremely potent the overwhelming majority of those men and women are using the erec- and are capable of surviving for long most closely involved with the tion-enhancing medication. periods outside a living host body. tomb exploration — including “The death of Lord Carnarvon Carter, who died in 1939, and the could potentially be explained by in- man who performed an autopsy on fection with a highly virulent and the mummy. very long-lived pathogen,” says Gandon’s research explains the Gandon. His findings, which re- theoretical link between the viru- cently appeared in Proceedings of the lence of a pathogen — a harmful Royal Society, support Sir Arthur Co- bacterium, virus or fungus — and nan Doyle’s conviction that Carnar- the length of time it is able to sur- von died after breathing germs in vive as a spore. But how did the Tutankhamen’s burial chamber. spores get into the tomb in the first Doyle, the creator of the Sherlock place? “If the Egyptians were smart Holmes mysteries, suggested that and really wanted to make a curse,” spores were deliberately placed there notes Gandon, “they could have by priests to punish grave robbers. taken a pathogen well known to The fabulous riches in the tomb them and put it in the tomb.” — © of Tutankhamen, who lived from Gil Kezwer What’s another word 1370-52 BC, stunned the world for . ? when they were discovered 76 years ago. When Carnarvon died in a Heard through the Did you know that the English lan- Cairo hospital on Apr. 23, 1923, af- stethoscope guage offers 1400 synonyms for pe- ter being the first man to enter the nis and more than 300 for breast? boy king’s burial chamber, stories of Out-of-this-world salary Dr. Allan Peterkin swears there are, the Pharaoh’s Curse abounded. and he should know. The Toronto Carnarvon’s death certificate said How much money does a Canadian psychiatrist, journalist and poet has he died of complications from an physician who flies into outer space researched and written the world’s infected mosquito bite, but journal- earn? Probably not as much as you first English-language “erotic the- ists speculated that besides its trea- think. The federal government re- saurus.” The Bald-Headed Hermit sure, Tutankhamen’s tomb con- cently set astronaut salaries at a max- and The Artichoke: An Erotic The- tained a deadly poison. A number imum of $126 000 annually. Because saurus, will be released as a 200- of other people who came into con- of his experience, Marc Garneau page reference book this spring by tact with King Tut’s remains also stands to earn the maximum Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press. met mysterious ends. American amount, as will Drs. Steve MacLean, The search for synonyms began archeologists Arthur Mace and Robert Thirsk, Bjarni Tryggvason as a joke after some of Peterkin’s George Jay Gould both died within and David Williams. Astronauts who friends showed him some lists of 24 hours of entering the tomb. have completed NASA training but sexual slang — he decided to search 1452 JAMC • 15 DÉC. 1998; 159 (12).

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