Dear Mr Downes
I apologise for not having been in touch for some time. I gather you enjoy receiving my correspondence. Are there any ichthyologists among your band of merry men and women? I wonder if they may be able to help.
When a human contracts scombroid poisoning he usually suffers for a few hours before becoming well again, from what I have read of the disease, but what if a merperson, hypothetically, were to contract it from their own tail? I understand you believe such creatures to be ‘zooform’, but say they were flesh and blood and the fish part was of the scombridae family. Said merperson was too long out of water and the tail began to die off, so to speak. The tail could release toxins into the living human half of the creature, could it not? Whereas a human who ate a dodgy piece of mackerel would get better once the fish was out of his system, the poor afflicted merperson would be perpetually ill, one must assume, since the fish tail remains attached to the body. Could that theoretically be the case? And if so, how would one, theoretically, cure the merperson of his ailment without recourse to amputation?
I imagine you will think I am mad after this but do bear with me. It is something to think about if we ever were to discover such a creature, don’t you think?
Yours truly,
Sostratus Winston
personally I think that unless the toxin was in the digestive system it would be a topical infection and could be treated as any good fishkeeper of old would with a dose of topical Iodine.
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