Arsenic & Old lAce - Center Stage

Glossary
Continued
of the ammonia irritates the mucous membranes of the nose,
and triggers an inhalation reflex. They are used to arouse
people from unconsciousness, and to revive one from a fit of
the vapors.
Strindberg: Johan August Strindberg (1849–1912) remains,
along with Henrik Ibsen, one of the most important
Scandinavian writers ever, and one of the fathers of modern
theater. His best-known plays include Miss Julie, The Father,
A Dream Play, The Dance of Death, and Ghost Sonata. His
earlier work is naturalistic, but in a later period he pioneered
expressionism in drama. Strindberg confronts class, gender
roles, dysfunctional family dynamics, and repressive social
mores.
Strychnine: Strychnine is commonly used as a rat poison.
When ingested by a human, the characteristic symptoms
of strychnine convulsion usually appear after 20 minutes.
The victim experiences intense pain and fear throughout
the convulsions, which last for two minutes and reoccur
periodically until the seizures are controlled or the victim dies.
Teddy Roosevelt: Theodore
Roosevelt, Jr. (1858–1919),
was the 26 th President of the
United States, serving for
two terms from 1901–1909.
Before coming to office
after President William
McKinley was assassinated,
he was a rancher in the
Dakota Territory, a hero of
the Spanish-American war,
and the governor of New
York. He was a historian, a lawyer, and a prolific writer; his 35
books ranged in subject from the American frontier to naval
history. He was born into a wealthy New York family, but
pushed for progressive reforms throughout his political life.
As President, Roosevelt spearheaded the construction of the
Panama Canal and became known as a “trust buster.” An
ardent conservationist, he set aside 194 million acres of land
for national parks and wildlife refuges, and urged Congress to
establish the United States Forest Service in 1905. Roosevelt
won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for brokering the peace
treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War. Although his
opponents decried him as a cowboy imperialist, his boundless
energy, childlike curiosity, and wide-ranging intellectual
interests won him many admirers, and he remains one of the
most popular presidents in history.
The Oregon: The USS Oregon never made it to Australia. She
was launched in 1893, and served in the Spanish-American
War, setting a record with a historic voyage in 1898. In 66 days,
she sailed over 14,000 miles, from San Francisco to Florida,
circumnavigating South America. This voyage swept away all
opposition to the construction of the Panama Canal, as the
Oregon’s journey would have been a mere three weeks if the
Canal had already existed. The Oregon continued to serve nobly
in the Pacific until she was scheduled to be dismantled for
scrap in WWII. However, it turned out that there was plenty of
scrap metal to be had without destroying an old war hero, so
she was reinstated and used as a munitions barge in the Battle
of Guam. Finally, in 1948, she fell apart and drifted off to sea.
[see also: Panama Canal, Teddy Roosevelt]
Thoreau: Mortimer’s ambitions reach beyond the footlights:
he’s writing a book on Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), the
prolific American transcendentalist author and philosopher
best known for Walden and the pamphlet Civil Disobedience.
Thoreau wrote over 20 volumes of poetry, essays, books, and
journals, dealing with such topics as abolition, ecology and
the environment, conscientious objection, and nonviolent
resistance. He was part of the literary and philosophical circle
that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
True Detective: The original
American true crime magazine,
founded in 1924, True Detective
published both fictional and
factual accounts of crime and
detective work. The magazine
was the home for early Dashiell
Hammett (whose detective,
Sam Spade, Humphrey Bogart
made famous in The Maltese
Falcon), and spawned hundreds
of imitations. Although
beloved by law enforcement
(and J. Edgar Hoover, a charter subscriber), the magazine never
spurned controversy: the 1931 serial “I Am a Fugitive from a
Chain Gang,” about Georgia’s brutal penal system, led to prison
reform across the nation.
Yellow fever: Yellow fever—an acute viral disease that causes
high fever, muscle pain, vomiting, shivers, loss of appetite,
and, in its toxic phase, jaundice, bleeding from all orifices, and
kidney failure—is spread by mosquitoes; this was discovered
by a medical team, led by Dr. Walter Reed, during the Spanish-
American War. Panama was prone to yellow fever epidemics,
which had devastated all attempts to build a canal until Reed’s
discoveries were implemented. Still, yellow fever, malaria, and
landslides took their toll: as many as 27,500 workers may have
died during construction of the Panama Canal. The last major
outbreak of the disease in the United States was the 1905 New
Orleans epidemic; a vaccine was developed in 1937. [see also:
Panama Canal, Teddy Roosevelt] X
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