Agatha Christie's 1961 murder-mystery novel saves the life of a 19-month-old with bizarre condition
Many say a book holds power. This is often because books contain attributes of imagination, creativity, knowledge and so much more. Reading novels or books can always contribute positively. As powerful as books are, one would never imagine a book saving a person’s life. However, renowned author Agatha Christie had something in her novel, “The Pale Horse,” that saved the life of a toddler from Qatar, per The New York Times. The novel, decades old, revolves around a detective plot and interestingly became a miraculous help to a 19-month-old. The girl fell ill in 1977 and was taken to a hospital in London, but doctors couldn’t understand what plagued her.
The girl’s condition kept getting worse and doctors were unaware of how it could be fixed. With rapidly increasing blood pressure, among other symptoms, her health was rapidly declining. After the girl started losing hair, a nurse, Marsha Maitland, recognized the similarity of the symptoms, per The Line-Up. She suggested that the girl may have been poisoned by thallium. Found in heavy metals and sulfur ores, thallium can be deadly for the human body. Once consumed, it can affect the internal cycle of the body.
While doctors couldn’t make sense of the situation, they followed the nurse’s hunch and ran a few tests. Victor Dubowitz, professor of pediatrics at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, revealed that they were “in a state where almost any suggestions were welcome," per The Washington Post. Thallium had been used earlier for pest control treatment in the girl’s home, which explained the possible accidental intake. Since the hospital didn’t have facilities for testing thallium poisoning, they had to contact other professionals, making the scenario a broader concern.
What followed were several tests and discussions with experts to understand whether this theory could be true. It was revealed that the little girl did have thallium traces in her urine and doctors were able to treat it and bring the girl to safety. The compound was difficult for doctors to detect because its symptoms coincide with those of other conditions such as encephalitis, epilepsy, and neuritis. To their luck, the nurse’s mention helped save the girl’s life. "When we last saw her she had made a good deal of progress and was sitting up and taking notice again,” the doctor recalled.
On figuring out how the nurse came to the hunch, she revealed that she had been reading Christie’s then-16-year-old novel and realized that many of the symptoms the girl was facing connected with that of a portion in the book. Christie mentioned symptoms of lethargy, hair fall, numbness, blackouts, and more in her novel. The nurse simply connected the dots and pointed out that it could be a plausible theory. The case has been noted in the British Journal of Hospital Medicine with a note of thanks to the author. Christie has gone down in history for her work being not just one-of-a-kind but also a life-saver.