Tuesday's Tales has come round again, and I am begiing to wonder when time became jet-propelled. I mean, where did January go to? *grin* Yeah! yeah, so I'm showing my age...
This week's word prompt is Silver so in keeping with my new wip I went to my source for this project and have ended up with a 500word+ short story.
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Sheila looked from the coin in her hand to her friend, Martha, sitting across the table from her. Their plates, smeared with the last evidence of the meal they’d shared, sat pushed to one side, waiting for collection.
“Did you know silver is used in medication?”
Wide-eyed, Martha shook her head. “No!” Her shudder was real enough, her eyes wide with a mix of revulsion and fascination as she too, stared at the coin in Sheila’s hand. “You’re joking. Tell me you are joking,” she pleaded.
“I kid you not.” Laugh lines crinkled at the edge of Sheila’s eyes now and her lips curved upward. With one finger she traced the edge of the coin. “I read somewhere that it was first used by the Anglo-Saxons who believed rubbing it on diseased skin was efficacious. Apparently the first record of using silver for medicinal purposes goes back to the eighth century when silver filings were used to purify the blood and ease what they call heart palpitations…”
“But it’s not used now? Is it?” In a subliminal act of comfort Martha reached for her tea cup, frowned when she found it empty, and held up her hand to stop Sheila’s commentary until she’d refilled it. “I mean, it’s barbaric. Silver is poisonous.”
“So are a lot of chemicals that are used medicinally,” Sheila verified. “And yes,” she continued, “it is still used in modern medicine.” She turned the coin over and looked up again. “There’s an anti-bacterial ion in silver which is currently used in wound dressings that is more successful than many antibiotics formerly used against MRSA.”
Martha sat back, both hands wrapped round her tea-cup and stared. Her eyes darkened, her mouth worked, but no words came out. She lifted her cup to her mouth, drank then replaced it on its saucer.
“Where do you get all this information?”
“Do you remember when Granny Blake was rushed to hospital a couple of years ago?”
Recalling the suddenness with which the woman had fallen ill, and been rushed to hospital Martha nodded. “Yes, but she’s at fit as a fiddle and active as ever. What does that have to do with the use of silver as a medication?”
“She was diagnosed as having MRSA.”
Sheila’s words coincided with a sudden silence in the café and Martha felt the eyes of all the other diners turned towards their table in shocked silence. Her embarrassment at being thrown into the centre of attention changed to triumph when she thought of Granny Blake today.
“But she’s as fit as she used to be! She still has more energy than the two of us put together. Are you saying they used silver in her medication?”
“All my research at the time indicates that the staff would use medication that included silver during Granny’s stay in hospital.”
“Wow!”
Martha’s laugh brought grins to the faces of those at the surrounding tables.
“And here I thought silver, apart for paying for goods and pretty things, was all about whether it crossed the right or the left hand. Prosperity for one and poverty for the other. I’ll never look at silver in the same way again,” she said, while fingering the filigree chain round her neck.
There's lots more TT stories at Tuesday's Tales
16 comments:
What a lovely story!
:-) Thanks Vicki, After reading everyone elses offering I convinced myelf I'd got it sooooooooooooo wrong this week. So, thank you for your kind words.
This caught my attention. Drew me right in
:-) Thanks Lindsay
Oh, I really like that! I especially like the line about chemicals being used in medicines are also poisonous. It's so painfully true. I really enjoyed this - it made me smile. :)
Great story, Sherry. I found it fascinating and the use of it as medicine had me wondering how much of that is or was real? Great post.
That was a really cool story. I learned things I never knew and I loved the story to boot!
I had no idea that silver was in medicines. Just goes to show you. Very good story Cant wait for next weeks'
:-) Sarah, It was news to me too. Kinda shocked me, so I had to go withthe idea when it surfaced. Thanks for your comment.
Glad you liked it Jean here's a couple of links about the medicinal use of silver -->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_uses_of_silver
and more generally -->
http://www.silverinstitute.org/site/silver-in-technology/silver-in-medicine/
I was going to give you the gogle link but it was as long as my TT submission and tinyurl refused to work with it! LOL
Trcia, I learned a lot while writing this short, too :-) Thanks for coming by.
:-) Thanks Tai, I'm glad you enjoyed this.
Amazing how some things can be so fatal, yet, in small quantities perform miracles. :)
I was astonished when I learned about the use of silver in medicine, Davee.
Hmmmm .... tempted to write “Where do you get all this information?” ... great litte story, loved the info!
:-) Iris, my sister gave me a book for Christmas, and as soon as I saw the title, I had the ideas for this project. So this story is part of my current wip and as silver was the prompt I shot striaght off to this book to see if there was anything I could use, after that I hit google! Glad you enjoyed it.
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