Word: snakes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...angry first novel about the casual maltreatment of the insane in a Midwestern state asylum called Canterbury. The book's anger might be a great deal more effective if Author Telfer, who herself spent six years as a clerk in a state institution, did not keep abandoning the snake pit for the passion...
...cases by Dr. Dotter in Portland and in 30 by Dr. Gensini in Syracuse, the procedure begins with insertion of a thick, hollow needle (under local anesthetic) into the femoral artery. Through the needle the diagnostician passes a flexible steel spring, like a plumber's snake (or like the bass strings of pianos and guitars). The needle is soon withdrawn. Inside the steel spring is a single-strand steel wire for stiffening. As in the Syracuse housewife's case, polyethylene tubing is slipped over the steel spring. But in her case, the doctors did not go beyond...
...waiting for the victorious American soldiers with signs, such as "Gum Chum," and Big Four ministers playing the board game "Diplomacy." What mars the film, apart from acting flaws, is chiefly an over-reliance on corn and gag lines, like Miss Seberg's "I always thought you were a snake, you snake." If the script is supposed to be satire on the usual Hollywood cliches, it does not come off as such, but sounds merely trite itself...
...island of Queimada Grande, off the coast of southeastern Brazil, is the kingdom of a snake called Bothrops insularis. Pit vipers related to rattlesnakes but much more poisonous, they swarm in the undergrowth, festoon the trees. They are found nowhere else in all the world, and their control of the mile-long island has not been contested since 1921, when the Brazilian government withdrew its lighthouse keepers after snakes had killed three of them and the wife of a fourth. They seem to live an ideal life, with plenty of sea birds to prey upon and no enemies...
...island. An assistant dissecting one of them showed him what he thought was a tumor. "That's no tumor," said Hoge. "That's an atrophied embryo." The assistant replied: "It can't be; it came from a male." Both Hoge and the assistant were right; the snake had well-developed male reproductive organs but also female ovaries. Hoge checked his specimens and found that more than half were hermaphrodites. Only 15 were true females, and all of them were sterile. The hermaphrodites are bigger than either true males or females. Most are more female than male...