THE PALE HORSEMAN - THALLIUM / THANATOS

Long story short, why did I get such an interest in human physiology? Long story short: it was wonder at the marvel that is our everyday life, and that of our ancestors in the past... and awareness of the fragility of health and life itself, how a disruption from within or from without can put an end to it all, and can even make the person who died live forever, as long as others remember that person who died violently, painfully, and/or strangely...

Understanding the way we get to live, to fall ill, and to die is as important as understanding the past or understanding the creative arts. Everything is tied together. Our psychic lives, our feelings, thoughts, inspirations... are but sodium ions passing constantly from synapse to synapse. Every artist's, composer's, writer's, designer's, even strategist's masterpieces... every great engagement in love, warfare, or creativity, is but the progress of these sodium ions, which can be used for good and for no good. We are free to decide whether right or wrong. Is freedom, then, also within these ions? We live on this petty teal planet in this ordinary star system... is there at least another sapient species out there?

At the University of Valencia I got very interested in the concept of consiliency - science and the human arts taking leaps together just like in the Renaissance, but using contemporary tools that were unavailable to out Vasa-era or Tudor-era ancestors like the Periodic Table. Speaking of which, I am following a consiliency podcast called the Episodic Table which I completely rec if you, dear readers, are interested in the issue - each and every episode is dedicated to a chemical element in the humanities, arts, and science! https://episodictable.com/start-here/ 

When it comes to blacklisted substances on this table, element 33 (arsenic) gets the worst rep. But what if I told you there is an element that out-arsenics arsenic? Stealthy as a ninja, an elusive master of disguise, lethal as they come, as flavourless and odourless as arsenic itself, it kills slowly and softly...

And the rider on the pale horse was Thanatos, and Hades was with him....

Not a very positive syncretic picture from the Revelation of the last of the four Horsemen, and yet still one that inspired Agatha Christie, along with the three fateful witches in Shakespeare's unmentionable Scottish Play, to wreak havoc with thallium in the systems of people across an idyllic shire in the British countryside.

Thallium atoms ninja their way into the system disguised as sodium atoms (a strategy familiar to anyone who has seen Star Wars Ep IV or The Wizard of Oz; countless more examples can be found here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DressingAsTheEnemy); the very same sodium ions that make up our thoughts, our emotions, our intuitions, and so forth. So, if you find yourself light-headed and sanity-slipping as well as trembling like a leaf and think "I am too young to have Parkinson," well don't fret, someone may be trying to say "good riddance" to you with a li'l thallium!

The Pale Horseman is even more elusive than arsenic by virtue of being even deeper downstairs on the periodic table. Still, there are those few and far between who know their thallium well. A well-read Christie geek pediatrician was able to save babies' lives from a serial thallium child poisoner in the nick of time, or so I have been told. Reading in this case was able to save fragile infant lives, nipped in the bud, from the scythe of the Pale Horseman... miraculously. So do like her and don't stop the reading. Don't stop the consiliency!