Every fule kno that plucky professor Derek Abbott somehow (let’s not dwell on the details) got hold of a hair embedded in a plaster cast made of the Somerton Man, and then got his students to laser-zap it, revealing a spectroscopic timeline for the last fortnight or so of his life. The most headline-grabbing graph was for lead (which looked as though he had suffered a lead poisoning event some two weeks before his death. But the arsenic graph may also have an interesting tale to tell…
Arsenic and Old Lace
The Somerton Man’s arsenic graph appears on p.20 of Professor Abbott’s students’ “Final Report“:
Even though arsenic has long been known as a poison (it was used to kill people in Roman times, and also by the Borgias, charmers that they were), it was also revived by Thomas Fowler in 1786 as part of his treatment (“cure” would be too strong a word) for syphilis, in the form of Fowler’s Solution (1% potassium arsenite [KAsO2] in water). This solution then fell out of favour, before being revived in 1931 by Forkner and Scott at Boston City Hospital for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia [CML] (see Jolliffe (1993), p.288). Until bulsuphan was introduced in 1953, Jolliffe says, Fowler’s Solution was (in combination with radiotherapy) the standard treatment for CML.
But look back at the above graph (which is time-reversed): the level of arsenic is linearly rising. Either the Somerton Man was being poisoned (remember that his death wasn’t found to be arsenic-related) or he was being treated with an arsenic-based medicine, which was slowly accumulating in his blood stream.
Splenomegaly
At his death, the Somerton Man was found to have an enlarged spleen (AKA “he was suffering from splenomegaly”). Circa 1948, the first sign of chronic myeloid leukemia was an enlarged spleen.
So I strongly suspect that, not long before his death, the Somerton Man had seen a doctor, who had had noted his enlarged spleen, (mis-)diagnosed CML, and started him on a course of Fowler’s Solution. Now, I’m not saying that was the actual cause of his enlarged spleen, just that a doctor thought it was the cause. Given his lead graph, I think it’s actually far more likely that this was enlarged due to lead poisoning, but the doctor got it wrong. Given the systematic medical abuse of workers by mining and smelting companies detailed in Richard Gillespie’s (1990) article (which I discussed previously), I can’t help but suspect that this was not a provincial doctor making a mistake, but a sophisticated “conservative” company doctor passing the corporate buck by diagnosing anything – anything at all – but lead poisoning.
Moving the lead incident back two more weeks
Also: given the linear (time-reversed) rise in the arsenic graph, I believe we can also extrapolate that whole time series backwards. This would predict that the Somerton Man saw a doctor about 1-2 weeks before the hair data starts, i.e. some three or four (possibly even five) weeks before his actual death. So I also suspect that the spectroscopic time series captured in his (single) hair would, had the hair been longer, have yielded a much higher lead peak some four weeks before his death.
However, I’d flag that it’s also possible that there might have not actually been an accident: the drop in lead levels might simply be because he had been forced to give up his shitty job at the smelters because of his enlarged (and misdiagnosed) spleen. His raised lead blood levels might simply have been because he had been working in the baghouse at the smelters for some time.
Raised Strontium levels
The Somerton Man’s strontium levels also raised in the last four or five days of his life, which I suspect may well point to a change in his environment.
Received wisdom circa 1948 was that if you worked with lead, you should drink plenty of milk. I believe that this is actually true, but only if you drink milk before you are exposed to lead, not after (which wasn’t really appreciated back in 1948). So I’m wondering if perhaps the Somerton Man carried on drinking milk, but this rise in strontium might be from a change in milk supplier? (As I understand it, strontium is a congener of calcium, but please feel free to slap my schoolboy chemistry down.) There must surely be GIS maps showing strontium concentration / bioavailability etc, but that’s a task for another day.
Regardless, I wonder whether the upward lurch in strontium was triggered by a change in dairy: so for example, if he had been in Pirie Hospital, but then moved somewhere else in the last few days of his life.