Magic bullet

Being a sufferer from one of the lesser auto-immune diseases, that is to say the skin complaint psoriasis, I was interested to read at reference 1 of a magic bullet for same, a new use for a pre-existing cancer drug called Car-T, otherwise chimeric antigen receptor cell therapy.

I may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, but whatever the case, this magic bullet presently comes in at around half a million US dollars a go, so no doubt the bean-counters at NICE of reference 2 would, quite properly, have something to say about its use on the NHS.

In the meantime, I remembered reading something about an obscure reference in Shakespeare to the disease, something about someone having lime kiln hands, alluding to the similarity of the damage caused to the palms by contact with lime and cement to the scarring of psoriasis. I also remember getting into trouble with cement in this connection when I was young. However, Bing, Google and Gemini all fail to turn up any such reference, with the best that Google can do being reference 3 which wraps psoriasis up with various other complaints under the antique umbrella term 'serpigo'. Perhaps a relation of 'impetigo'. I shall try harder later. 

There is also the point of interest that Gemini can talk about reference 3 when prompted, although it did not in the first instance. Maybe Gemini really does have access to secondary storage and is able to follow user prompts down by-ways not in the first instance thought productive.

PS 1: Bing thought that I mean food mixers when I asked him about magic bullets, magic bullet appearing to be the name of a popular make of same. New to me. But we do get the snap above.

PS 2: much later, I had another go at searching for hands, palms, sores, lime and drama, using both Bing and Google. Which turned up some curious stuff, including various theatres with lime kiln flavoured names, but nothing linking Elizabethan talk of scaly palms to psoriasis. Is this particular memory a complete fabrication?

References

Reference 1: Gene therapy offers ‘single shot’ hope to autoimmune disease patients; Use of Car-T for lupus could drive surge in demand for a treatment that was first approved for blood cancers - Oliver Barnes, Financial Times - 2024.

Reference 2: https://www.nice.org.uk/.

Reference 3: Shakespeare's Cutaneous Curses and Contempt - Ethel H. Davis -1969. The Journal of Investigative Dermatology.