PopCo by Scarlett Thomas

Author:Scarlett Thomas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780547543932
Publisher: Canongate
Published: 2004-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Saturday morning. We are leaving on our strange nature ramble in about half an hour. I have a sore throat, so I am chucking Aconitum down my throat like there’s no tomorrow (in homeopathic terms, this means I have actually taken two doses). I hate colds. I will do almost anything to avert a cold, including taking high doses of vitamin C, Echinacea and spoonfuls of honey virtually every hour if I think I have one coming on. I do have my reasons for this. When I was a kid, my dad and I lived in a damp council flat and since then I have always had a weak chest. Plus, it was colds (or, actually, varying degrees of the ’flu) that finally killed both my grandparents. Whenever I get a cold, it cuts through to my chest with the sharpness of a sickle and I go around wheezing like an old woman for weeks. I have told myself that the next bad chest will be the sign that I have to stop smoking. I am not looking forward to that day, not at all.

Aconitum is the Latin prefix for the Monkshood family of flowers and is poisonous, of course, in crude doses. In fact, Aconites are some of the most used poisons in history. Aconitum angelicum is the wild version, but Aconitum napellus, the domestic variety that you can still see in gardens today (and the variety used in homeopathic prescribing), was originally introduced in order that everyone could have his or her own supply of poison. Sixteenth-century herbals commonly warned that its charming, shy, blue flowers are not to be trusted. If you eat Monkshood, it kills you. The poisoning comes on suddenly, and always makes the victim panicky and terrified of their approaching death. If you find that you have an illness which has come on suddenly, and you think you might die (and even feel that you could predict the time of your own death), then you might need homeopathic Aconitum as a remedy. This is the thing about homeopathy: similia similibus curentur. Like cures like. Suddenness is therefore a particular keynote of Aconite, and many homeopaths suggest taking it at the first sign of a cold; when you go, in an instant, from feeling sunny and relaxed and normal to having razor blades in your throat and an inflated balloon in your head. I have quite a high-strength bottle of Aconite with me – 1M – so I think I have a good chance of staving off this thing.

What do I need for a day on the moor? My mind briefly fills with thoughts of jam jars with wire handles, magnifying glasses and sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper. But no, I am an adult. I will take my survival kit, a bottle of mineral water and perhaps a packed lunch from the chefs, depending on whether anyone else is doing the same thing. We have been told to take a compass and a notebook. I have a compass in my survival kit, and I take my notebook with me everywhere.

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