Russia in the times of cholera

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It happened to a 14-year-old Russian boy and he marked it for life. One day an epidemic of cholera broke out in the city. There was no effective medication and one of the victims was his mother. It was nineteenth-century Russia, and the treatment was worse than the disease: the patient was immersed in a tub of almost boiling water, and he was given plenty of liquids to drink. Some patients were saved thanks to hydration, but most died cooked or survived with horrendous consequences of burns. That child witnessed the treatment: his mother naked, pleading with screams to be taken out of the boiling water. In the end he died. Psychologists say that that experience caused that after seeing or imagining the naked body of a woman, he had justified terror. Then, in love, he looked for male companies. Growing up the boy was known as Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky.

His love life with women was not, of course, the most successful. In spite of it, it agreed marriage with a Belgian soprano that few days before the marriage it left it to marry with another one. Tchaikovsky recovered from the blow, although he always pointed out that she was the only woman he had ever loved, and decided to remain single without looking for women, although they went crazy for him. One of them was called Nadezhda von Meck, multimillionaire widow with twelve children, in love without conditions of Tchaikovsky and his music. For years he sent her large sums of money. They never met face to face, but over a thousand letters overflowed with daydreams and confidences. But the sexual condition of Tchaikovsky came to the widow's ears. She argued economic straits and suspended all aid. To keep up appearances, or perhaps looking for money, Tchaikovsky fell into the trap that a madwoman tended to him. A woman, the daughter of butlers, told him that she was indeed the daughter of the former owners of the castle and that he would inherit a considerable fortune once the murderers of his parents were discovered. That the criminals were the current butlers who had stolen her as a child. Tchaikovsky believed him and went to the altars. The marriage was never consummated, and the woman who was an uncontrollable nymphomaniac, ended up locked in an asylum where she died shortly after. Alone, desperate, in a hostile world that punished his sexual condition, without the financial help of his former protector, it seems that Tchaikovsky sought his death: he took advantage of a new epidemic of anger in the city, took water that he knew contaminated, and died a few hours then in the midst of dark circumstances.

In chess, lowering the guard, also leads to the end:

1: R8Q RxB 2: B5B And the end is inevitable.

This story was originally written by my friend Ramiro Díez in Diario EL TELÉGRAFO under the following address: https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/columnistas/1/rusia-en-los-tiempos-del-colera If you are going to use it, please quote our source and place a link to the original note. www.eltelegrafo.com.ec