RagnarökIII – Loki’s Revenge II
Jack Heart & Orage
—In memory of Tara Wallace—
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| Loki |
A man would die on the Belgian Expedition and another go mad and die shortly after returning home. The medical officer of the Southern Cross Expedition would die of an unknown illness and a crewman would die from what was diagnosed as an intestinal disorder. The Southern Crosses first mate would also die on the return voyage home. A couple of more men from later Heroic Age expeditions would also die of mysterious and debilitating heart disease and yet two more would shoot themselves through the head not a year after returning home.
The Gauss Expedition lost three men, with another one badly maimed, from what was then being called ‘polar anemia’ and is now known as Beriberi. The Germans would wait twenty-four years before publishing a ‘medical report’ for the Gauss Expedition, long after Beriberi was wrongly being attributed to a Thiamine deficiency.
Beriberi is now believed to be caused by a “poison of molds,” most likely citreoviridin, a mycotoxin produced by Aspergillus terreus a mold found in soils all over the world. The Germans have always known Beriberi is caused by a contaminant. Christiaan Eijkman, a Dutchman who won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering Beriberi ‘was caused by a vitamin deficiency,’would not even attend “the ceremony” because he already rightly suspected a neurotoxin to be the real cause of the disease.121
Citreoviridin can be purchased from German chemical colossus Merck KGaA through a subsidiary called “Sigma-Aldrich.” 122 George W. Merck, the man who established America’s biological weapons program, was the son and heir of Friedrike Merck who “emigrated from Germany in 1891 to establish E. Merck and Company on 62 Wall Street. Before WWI, E. Merck and Company was a subsidiary” of KGaA. George W. Merck worked very closely with Ira Baldwin, who was Frank Olsen’s supervisor at the University of Wisconsin and the man who recruited Olsen “to work in the Army Biological Warfare Laboratories at Camp Detrick.” 123 Sigma-Aldrich, eldritch...
A mold is a multicellular fungus as opposed to unicellular fungi which are called yeasts. Many fungi are dangerous pathogens, but at the same time they are like Greta Garbo. When they dine, they want to be alone. Towards that end, they secrete powerful antibacterial agents, particularly Aspergillus and its close cousin Penicillium, from which antibiotics are made. Others like the ergot fungus and certain mushrooms are legendary for their hallucinogenic properties.
Fungus is distinguished from plants and bacteria by the chitin in its cell walls. Chitin is the primary ingredient in the shells of crustaceans and the exoskeletons of insects, which is why Lovecraft describes the Mi-Go in other stories as bat-winged humanoid crabs. Lovecraft was a learned man, far more learned than today’s academically accredited parrots...
