Re: Mosquitoes at Pennsic

[francis@tigana.microserve.com (John [Francis] Stracke)]

At 4:10 PM 13.07.95, John Strauss wrote:

>Vitamin B1 prevents mosquito bites.

My brother heard this from a Mexican doctor when he was planning to go into
the Guatemalan jungle; the doctor told him that, if he took B1, he didn't
need the malaria vaccine.  He took B1, he got malaria.  (He survived.)

Now, it may be that B1 *discourages* mosquitoes, and reduces the number of
bites, and my brother was just in a particularly mosquito-rich environment.
Or it may be that B1 is an urban legend--admittedly, it'd be hard to see
where it came from.  My bet would be the former.  Just don't expect it to
keep all the bites away all the time.

(Personally, I don't get many mosquito bites anyay.  Come to think of it,
neither does my father.  Maybe we've got some kind of B1 gene.  And maybe I
should shut up before somebody decides I need to be put in a small room
with a large cloud of mosquitoes to test my claim.  :-)

/===========================================================================\
|John (Francis) Stracke        | http://www.io.com/~francis                 |
|francis@tigana.microserve.com |============================================|
|Power Mac w/PPP               | The problem with any unwritten law is that |
|My Mac, my opinions.          |  you don't know where to go to erase it.   |
\===========================================================================/
  Francois Thibault          AFP of PA!       Shire of the Blak Rose (East)
  Argent, a cock gules, and, on a chief sable, three standing stones argent