Dracula
Here I talk AT LENGTH about a production of Dracula I just saw in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.
http://iatsoe.org/2010/09/12/tribe-of-fools-dracula/
I am lucid enough to admit that I could just be jealous that someone got to this before I did.
September 23, 2010 at 9:37 pm
I am way behind the times here, but I thought I would mention, in case you have cause to discuss this production again, that “brain fever” is in the text of Dracula. I believe the phrase was used in much fiction (and some medicine) of the time as a catch-all term for nervous breakdown/feverish delirium/any physical collapse combined with mental anguish. It’s in the Sherlock Holmes stories quite often.
September 23, 2010 at 10:10 pm
There is absolutely nothing about this that is pertinent. If it doesn’t have symbolic meaning, then there’s no real reason to preserve some dumb thing that Victorians thought about medicine.
(Though, in fact, in Victorian medical texts, “brain fever” refers to the feverish delirium brought on be encephalitis–one of the primary causes of which was syphilis.)