By Dr. Kathleen T. Ruddy
Women Who Read Are Dangerous is a book prominently displayed in my home library. It’s a charming volume written by Stefan Bollmann in 2005, and is, as described on the dust jacket, “a compelling collection of beautiful paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs of women reading.” The women are ‘dangerous’ because, historically, men were threatened and women were envious of female renegades seeking knowledge by independent means, and on their own terms. The book is filled with images of women (and girls) whose countenances bear witness to adventurous souls embarked on silent, solitary journeys through infinite galaxies swirling in the ever expanding universe of books.
There are provocative paintings of women reading in the nude, suggesting that the artists were confused, or ambivalent, about what their models were up to. There’s one painting of a woman whose face is a flaccid mask except for her eyes, which are so intensely focused on the page there is no question but that her mind and the words are as tightly bound as a double helix. And there’s a photograph of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s tomb (c. 1204): she’s holding a book as if reading in bed!
My favorite image, entitled “Dreams”, appears on page 104. It was painted by Vittorio Matteao Corcos in 1896 and hangs in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome. The picture is of a mature and handsome woman sitting slightly forward on a park bench with a small pile of books by her side. One outstretched arm rests on the back of the bench while the other, with its fisted hand, supports her head between her chin and her knee. She looks with a poised glare straight out at the observer as if to say, “I’ve been reading. Now, would you care to know what I think?”
Well, I’ve been doing some reading of my own. Would you care to know what Ithink?” Yes, well here goes.
I feel like the woman portrayed in Corcos’s painting – informed and disturbed. You see, there is a breast cancer virus that was discovered in 1936, but I didn’t learn about it until 2007, not because I don’t read enough (hardly!) but because its research was quite well hidden beneath mainstream medicine’s radar – a testament to the powers of sequestration exerted by academic skeptics jealously guarding their Trees of Knowledge.
It’s quite likely – in fact, we are 85% certain – that this virus is responsible for 40-75% of all human breast cancer. Furthermore, there’s a preventive breast cancer vaccine, the first in the world, which was developed at the Cleveland Clinic in 2010 and is 100% effective in preventing breast cancer in three different animal models. (Preclinical trials don’t get better than that!)
So this is what I have to say: Exactly what are we waiting for, stone tablets to appear from behind a burning bush giving us permission to pursuit our most likely murder suspect – a virus – and defend against it and other forms of breast cancer by immediately funding clinical trials of Cleveland Clinic’s vaccine?
I encourage you, dear reader, to go ahead and live dangerously.
Read about the virus and the vaccine. (See the links given below.)
Learn more.
Reflect.
Dream.
Exercise your judgment.
Take charge.
Move forward.
Change the world.
Change it word by word, book by book, link by link, dream by dream, and woman by dangerous woman.
References
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