Now I Know More (10 page)

In 1964, Roald Dahl published his third book,
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
. Seven years later, in 1971, it was made into a hit movie,
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
, starring Gene Wilder. The story is that of a poor child, Charlie Bucket, who lucks into a golden ticket, one that entitles him (and his Grandpa Joe) entry into Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory. Four other children also find golden tickets and join Charlie on the tour.

One by one, each child (other than Charlie) suffers an odd fate. The obese Augustus Gloop, unable to control his love of chocolate, falls into a river of chocolate and is sucked into a pipe—to be made into fudge. Another, compulsive gum chewer Violet Beauregarde, turns into an ever-expanding human blueberry, filling with blueberry juice. A third, the bratty Veruca Salt, is judged a “bad nut” (in the movie, the nuts are changed to eggs) and sent off to the furnace. The fourth, television addict (and aptly named) Mike Teavee, shrinks himself in a television transportation device. Only Charlie avoids a horrific accident. And all the children but Charlie are, on their way out of the factory, serenaded. Wonka's servants, the green-haired, orange-faced Oompa-Loompas, gleefully marked the occasion of each child's fall from grace with a song and dance.

Miranda Piker—the straight-laced daughter of a school headmaster—was child number six. Her story did not make the final version of the book. In Dahl's original draft, Wonka develops a candy that makes the child break out in spots—a fake illness designed to get the child out of a day of school. Piker objects and she and her schoolmaster father storm the room in which the candy is being made. Something explodes, and Piker and her father, by Wonka's scheme, are turned into a necessary part of the recipe: “We've got to use one or two schoolmasters occasionally or it wouldn't work,” he says.

Piker's story was cut, since the book publishers believed it to be too gruesome for young audiences. But a few years ago, the
Times
(UK) obtained and printed the excerpt, complete with the Oompa-Loompas' song, which can be found on the
Times
website as of May 2014.

By the time
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
, the fourth book in the Harry Potter saga, was published in 2000, the series had already become a smashing success. The first book,
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
(“Sorcerer's Stone” in the United States) debuted in the UK in the summer of 1997 and was being turned into a movie; the
Goblet of Fire
book set a new record for
Amazon.com
pre-orders. Its popularity rampant, Potter's trials and tribulations won fans of all kinds. Among them was Natalie McDonald of Toronto, a nine-year-old girl who could not wait to hear how the story would end—but sadly, not because she was impatient. McDonald had a terminal case of leukemia and was all but certain to die before
Goblet
hit the bookstores.

A family friend, Annie Kidder, went to the publisher of the Potter series, asking them to pass a letter (and fax) on to J.K. Rowling, author of the books. Kidder's request was a simple one: give this dying child a preview of the outcome of
Goblet
—nearly a year before the rest of the world would be able to read it—as the
Potter
stories “had been [Natalie's] respite from the hell of leukemia” and Natalie was not going to survive long enough to otherwise enjoy the story. Rowling was on vacation when the request arrived and replied via e-mail to Natalie's mother on August 4, 1999. The e-mail detailed the fate of the main characters in
Goblet of Fire
and did so eleven months prior to the book's publication date. Unfortunately, Natalie passed away the day prior to receiving the news.

Nevertheless, Natalie's mother Valerie and Rowling began a friendship from that day forward. Rowling, for her part, honored Natalie's memory in print—on page 159 (or 180, depending on the version) of
Goblet of Fire
, a young witch by the name of Natalie McDonald, new to Hogwarts, dons the Sorting Hat and becomes a member of House Gryffindor.

Photorhabdus luminescens
sounds like a spell from the Harry Potter universe, maybe one that lights up a camera or ignites whatever mythical creature a “habdus” might be. In fact, the wizards and witches of Hogwarts aside,
Photorhabdus luminescens
was once the cause of what many likely considered magic. Just ask Confederate soldiers during the U.S. Civil War—especially the ones who inexplicably began to glow in the dark.

In April 1862, Union and Confederate forces met at Shiloh, Tennessee. The Battle of Shiloh was a clear Northern victory despite a heavy casualty count on both sides—each had roughly 1,700 soldiers dead and another 8,000 wounded. The Confederate medical crews were ill-prepared for those types of casualties, and many wounded Southerners were, therefore, left untreated for a few days. When night came, the wounds of some of the injured soldiers, still left unattended, began emanating a faint blue light. They created a soft glow in the otherwise-dark battlefield. When the wounded soldiers finally received treatment, many claimed that those who had the glowing injuries healed more thoroughly than those without the apparently supernatural halo.

It wasn't a gift from the heavens, of course. It came from
Photorhabdus luminescens
, a type of bacteria.
P. luminescens
, as the cool kids call it, is a bioluminescent microbe that has a symbiotic relationship with roundworms, a parasitic nematode that infects insects. The roundworm invades an insect and, effectively, throws up a gut full of
P. luminescens
. The bacteria releases a toxin that kills the insect within forty-eight hours and an enzyme that breaks down the insect's body. The nematode then eats the liquefied insect, returning much of the bacteria to its home inside the roundworm's body.

The roundworms—and therefore the bacteria—were most likely present in the mud and dirt of the Shiloh battlefield. It's further likely that the microbes made their way into the wounds of many of the injured Confederate soldiers and, because of other conditions, were able to thrive there. Even that required a bit of luck, which explains why only some of the soldiers began to glow.

While
P. luminescens
typically can't survive in a human host because our body temperature is too warm for them, according to MentalFloss.com, prolonged exposure to the rainy and wet conditions of the battlefield caused many soldiers to suffer from hypothermia. This dropped the body temperature of those fighters, allowing
P. luminescens
to invade their wounds—and, being a bioluminescent creature with a blueish hue, to create the glow.

The good news for those soldiers is that
P. luminescens
isn't all that infectious, and our bodies' immune systems can typically handle the microbe. But before that happens, the
P. luminescens
do their human hosts a favor typically reserved for the roundworms. The toxins they produce that kill insects also happen to kill other bacteria in the area, keeping the
P. luminescens
and its host safe from infection. That's almost certainly what happened in this case, which is why the glowing soldiers recovered more quickly than their standard-hued comrades-at-arms.

The human body contains roughly 10 trillion cells—and roughly 100 trillion bacteria. These bacteria—life forms in their own right—constitute as much as 2 percent of our body mass. Most of the bacteria operate, effectively, independent of us, having little to no effect on our health or well-being. Some are actually symbiotic, aiding in the digestion of food and perhaps even making us smarter (although that study is controversial). Others are harmful—one type may make depression symptoms worse—while others cause illnesses such as strep throat.

And others turn our stomachs into breweries.

Well, once at least.

Sometime in the late summer or early fall of 2013, a sixty-one-year-old Texas man walked into an emergency room drunk out of his mind. Nurses administered a Breathalyzer exam and determined that the patient's blood-alcohol level was 0.37 (which can lead to serious impairment). Normally he'd be given some time to sober up. But there was one weird variable in this case: the man hadn't been drinking. To make sure that he wasn't sneaking a shot or two, doctors searched him for booze and, finding none, stuck him in a hospital room, alone, for twenty-four hours. He was given food like any other patient as medical professionals kept monitoring his blood-alcohol level. While people who had stopped drinking and eaten some food would sober up, the man actually got drunker. His blood-alcohol level went up 12 percent.