daf bit: Gittin 69

The mishna teaches that if a man is seized with delerium his instruction to write a get is disregarded. The gemara asks what delerium is. From this begins a discussion (several pages in length) of various medical conditions and their cures. Some examples from today's daf:

• For cataracts, take a scorpion with seven colors of stripe, dry, mix with stibium, and drop in the eyes. (Careful not to use too much!)
• For night-blindness there is a complex ritual involving tying one's leg to a dog, processing through the streets with children calling out, and feeding the dog from different houses.
• For toothache, crush garlic, put it on the thumbnail (on the side corresponding to the tooth), and wrap it in dough, but do not let it touch his flesh lest it cause leprosy.
• For stomach pain, drink 100 grains of long pepper in wine daily for three days.

(67b mishna, 69a-b gemara)

(I suggest that this last one will at least alter your stomach-ache. :-) As for the scorpion... err, what?)

a story

A conversation with a coworker today prompted a memory that I realized I never actually wrote about.

A few years ago, my cat Erik had to have surgery, which had complicated after-care -- feedings were on a 6-hour cycle while some drugs were on an 8-hour one, both inflexible. I work full-time. Clearly this wasn't going to work.

We had just moved into new office space and parts of it were not complete. Specifically, we have a shower that was still missing some of its plumbing, so not usable as a shower. My manager arranged for me to be able to use that room for a week, stashing Erik in there and just going in when I needed to do stuff to him. This was neither a secret nor widely-known; people who saw me walk into the building would have seen the carrier, but it's not like there was an announcement. (Though a couple people who knew about it made visits to the room too.) I put a sign on the door saying "please don't open; find me if this is a problem" and signed it.

My company was, at the time, in its first year of having been acquired. Large companies are not always as casual as the small companies they buy. We had, fairly recently, had a manager from the mothership transfer to us, perhaps to help steer us in the right direction in the larger world.

I only heard about this incident some weeks after it happened: this manager and one of our software developers were walking down the hall past this room when Erik meowed. The manager stopped, looked at the door, and said "you have a cat in there". The developer looked at the sign, said "must be Monica's", and continued walking, having given this fact all the attention he felt it deserved. Apparently the look on the manager's face was special.

At the time the manager had no reason to know who I was. Now that he does, I infer that he's forgotten all about the cat in the office. Or, if he hasn't, he has declined to bring it up. :-)