Tropical Medicine?

London has had a few days of freezing weather and wind... with a couple of inches of snow now.  On Friday when the snow started we thought... what is "tropical" about this?

As most of you know, there are a lot more diseases in the tropics because the bugs, worms, parasites, viruses, and animal vectors are happier where it is warm.  We feel relatively safe from the diseases we are studying at this point.

It was too cold and windy to do a long walk today so we took a break from studying in the afternoon to go to the British Museum (which is only 2 blocks from us!  There were a lot of notable things to mention - AND MUCH MORE for us to see on our next visit.  We saw the world's oldest chess set carved out of walrus ivory tusks and found on the Isle of Lewis. They were found in the 1800's but thought to be from around Iceland or Norway in the 1200's.

Don't worry, the walrus's were dead before they used their tusks - we checked.  I especially like the rook as they are depicted as biting on their shield, as they were so ready for battle - they were called the "Berserkers" in Norse legends.  That is one piece on the board you wouldn't want to mess with.

Clay and I found the ancient clocks especially fascinating.  We stood there for a long, long, time trying to figure out how the energy transfer happened in the older clocks that used a weight.  We got the part about the weight being hoisted up by a human, but the next part about how it transferred its energy to one of the wheels is still a mystery to us.  Somehow the wheel holds back the force of the weight and only transfers its energy a "bit" at a time to turn the wheel and keep time.  Here is a pic of a very old clock from the 1600's that uses weights.  Let us know if you can figure it out.

The other cool clock I wanted to show was one that used a rolling ball on a platform - taking 30 seconds to get back and forth on the platform before triggering a switch that lifted that edge up again and the ball started back to the other side... how cool would it be to have that clock?  What great engineering that lasted several hundred years, and it is still working.

Another neat thing we saw was a pile of ancient Roman gold coins that a British man found LAST YEAR.    Get this... 

A novice treasure hunter who bought a basic metal detector returned to the shop in shock weeks later, clutching part of the country's finest ever hoard of Late Roman gold coins.

The man stunned staff by showing them 40 gold Solidi, before asking them: 'What do I do with this?'

They contacted local experts and together got the permits they needed, headed back to the scene and pulled up another 119 gleaming pieces.

The hoard could be worth more £100,000.

Now I know I want a metal detector for my birthday.  

So that is a little peek at one small corner of the British Museum...  Clay says we should start tunneling from our apartment so we can take home some really unique souvenirs.  He says they probably don't count all of the coins in those piles.