The legend of the mushrooms

Legend 9. Lenin died of syphilis

One of the last lifetime photographs of Vladimir Lenin. Gorki, 1923

Talk that syphilis was the cause of Lenin's illness and death began in the 1920s and continues to this day.

Verdict: This is most likely not true.
Vladimir Ulyanov died at 18 hours 50 minutes on January 21, 1924 "with symptoms of paralysis of the respiratory center." The next day, the body was examined by pathologists who discovered "abrupt changes in the blood vessels of the brain and fresh hemorrhage from the vessels of the pia mater in the quadruple region, which was the closest cause of death." 1924 .. People's Commissar of Health of the RSFSR Nikolai Semashko in the article "What did the autopsy of Vladimir Ilyich's body gave" called the cause of death to vascular sclerosis, which the Ulyanovs had hereditary. Lenin often suffered from insomnia and nervous headaches. According to Semashko, "inhuman mental work, life in constant excitement and continuous anxiety led our leader to the premature death" N. A. Semashko. What did the autopsy of Vladimir Ilyich's body give // The leader of the iron cohort. In memory of Ilyich-Lenin. Memories, articles, poems. Rostov-on-Don, M., 1924.

In the mid-1990s, surgeon, academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Yuri Lopukhin wrote that the doctors who treated Lenin for a long time could not determine the diagnosis and at different times prescribed treatment for neurasthenia, syphilis and lead poisoning caused by the 1918 wounds. Symptoms, according to medical records, were complex and inconsistent, but laboratory tests for syphilis were not confirmed. Lopukhin agreed with the autopsy's conclusions about atherosclerosis as the cause of death (it was not possible to make this diagnosis during the patient's life).

In the political life of revolutionary Russia, rumors about syphilis could discredit political opponents and explain their seemingly illogical behavior. So, the commissar of the Provisional Government in Kronstadt Thomas (Tomasz) Parchevsky wrote that the leader of the local anarchists Joseph Bleikhman suffered from brain syphilis. For Parchevsky, this was probably the easiest way to explain to himself and his readers why the anarchists were challenging the government. Rumors of syphilis could seriously discredit a person. The poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1918 told the writer Maxim Gorky that "he did not beat him just because he was old and sick." Gorky was allegedly involved in spreading false rumors about Mayakovsky-syphilitic B. Yangfeldt. The stake is life. Vladimir Mayakovsky and his circle. M., 2009 .. The stories that Lenin had syphilis, regardless of their veracity, undermined his moral and political authority.

Lacquered polypore

As legends tell, if you find one specific type of linghi mushroom and properly cook it with certain herbs, you get a drug that can completely stop human aging. At the same time, the recipe for making this potion has not reached our days and what herbs should be added there, as well as what type of mushroom is needed.

According to legends, only magicians and alchemists knew the place where the real lingzhi mushroom grew. This place is located on Mount Penglai, which is one of the three sacred island-mountains in Chinese mythology, which served as the abode of the inhabitants of the "sky". Only a limited circle of people knew how to find the right mushroom and how to make the potion of life from it. Even the Chinese emperor was not privy to this secret.

Mysterious sylph

The most mysterious and mystical ancient herb, about which we now know nothing and to which absolutely phenomenal properties were attributed, was called silphium. Sylphius was deeply revered in the Roman Empire and was more expensive than gold, as it was very rare and valuable.

In appearance, the sylph looked rather inconspicuous, had a thick stem and sluggish leaves (its images and descriptions have come down to us), but it was considered a real miracle in medicine. According to ancient doctors, sylphium cured almost any disease, and also protected from snake bites and was so toxic that if you drip its juice into the uterus, you could get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. This was called "cleanse the womb."

Hippocrates gives the following recipe: "If the rectum falls out and does not stay in its place, take a sylphion, as fresh and dense as possible, scrape it finely and apply it as a poultice."

Sylphium was also considered a very powerful aphrodisiac, and it was also used for coughs, sore throat, fever, digestive disorders and even warts. It was given as feed for livestock to make the meat of the animals more tender. Songs were composed about sylph and he was mentioned in prose.

Julius Caesar at the beginning of the civil war took from the public treasury, along with gold and silver, about half a ton of sylphium

Sylphium was the most important export for Cyrenaica (North Africa) and its capital, Cyrene. He was depicted on Cyrene coins and was the only tribute paid by the inhabitants of the country to the Romans.

The most amazing thing is that, judging by the descriptions, it was impossible to grow sylphium by ourselves, it could only be found in the wild in a certain place. “... both Ionia and the Peloponnese are not so badly positioned in relation to the sun and the time of year, so that there was a lack of sun for the growth of plants, however, despite numerous attempts, it was impossible to grow in Ionia and the Peloponnese a sylphion, which itself grows in Libya ", - wrote about the plant Hippocrates.

Gradually, less and less sylphium was mined until it was not found at all. It is believed to have completely disappeared. Modern science considers Sylphium to be a plant from the umbrella family.

Canine mutinus

The mutinos has a very unusual shape. Most often it is oval and oblong, elongated from 8 to 18 cm in length. It is found in North America as well as Europe. It was named that way back in the 1700s for its resemblance to a canine penis. The main body of the fungus is pink, the tip is brownish, covered with viscous mucus with an unpleasant odor. There is a hole at the tip that appears as it ripens. Mucus carries spores. Insects or birds land on the mushroom, damaging it, taking spores with them.

Surprisingly, as soon as the insect gnaws at the top of the mushroom, it changes color to orange. And the mushroom itself begins to decompose, and after a couple of days not a trace remains of it.

A plant that softens stones

Another unusual plant grows somewhere in the rainforests of South America and it was probably used to soften stone.

Famous megalithic stone structures in Peru and Bolivia, for example, such as in Sacsayhuaman, in which the stones in the walls have edges as if melted by something, have long been asking scientists how they were created. It seems that these walls were not erected from solid stone, but from blocks that were once soft and pliable.

The stones in Sacsayhuaman or Cuzco are so tightly fitted to each other that there are no gaps between them. The weight of some stones is over 150 tons.

The incredible walls of Cusco (photo below) once attracted the attention of researchers Jan Peter de Jong, Christopher Jordan and Jesus Camarra, who expressed the idea that the stone blocks for these walls were heavily softened, and then placed in a special mold installed tight to the previous stone. After hardening, all the stones would be very evenly adjacent to each other.

It is not known only how the ancients managed to soften the stones so much.But this apparently managed to be learned and recorded in his diary by the famous traveler and adventurer Percy Fawcett (who later disappeared forever somewhere in the jungle in search of the lost city Z).

Fawcett once saw several holes in the sheer cliffs and the locals told him that a certain bird was making its nests there. The holes were so neatly round that Fawcett quickly noticed that such holes were not found anywhere else on the rocks, only where this bird made its nest. He also wondered why the birds would live there, and not somewhere in a more convenient place.

“They make these holes in the stones themselves,” a local resident told him. Later, Fawcett recorded in his diary how he personally saw a bird, similar to a kingfisher, arrives from somewhere with the leaves of an unidentified plant and begins to quickly rub on the stone in a circular motion with these leaves.

The bird arrives with new and new leaves and after three or four times the stone in that place begins to crumble and a hole appears there. Then the bird brings leaves again and deepens this hole.

Fawcett also recorded the story of a man who wore boots with spurs, and one day this man came to his camp, and the spurs were on his legs looked like melted chocolate. After questioning, the man said that he was passing by an unusual low plant with dark red leaves.

And there is another story from the same Fawcett and also about a substance that softens the stone. A friend of his son Brian Fawcett once found a bottle of some kind of liquid in a mining camp. He was sure it was alcohol. But when the bottle was brought to Fawcett's camp, it accidentally broke, and the substance fell on a small rock.

After about ten minutes, people saw that there was no stone, and in its place was some soft substance, similar in consistency to cement. The rock under the softened stone was also partially damaged. It was as if the stone was composed of wax and melted due to the heat.

What kind of mysterious plant it was, whose juice in such a short time turned the stone into a kind of wax candle, remained a mystery. Fawcett did not manage to find out, and if he did, all this was forever hidden in the jungle, in which he finally disappeared in 1925.

Tea, will not be lost

The mushroom can be grown from scratch.

Fill a three-liter jar with a liter of regular tea.
Add 100 g of sugar, tie with cheesecloth on top and place in a warm place. Do not hide the jar in the dark, but do not expose it to the sun.
Gradually, a slowly growing film will appear on the surface of the tea infusion. Apple cider vinegar will speed up the process - a tenth of the volume.
When the film thickness is about 1 mm and the smell of vinegar appears, you have a mushroom.
After 1.5 - 2 months, the body will be overgrown with layers. The more there are, the stronger and healthier it is.
Top up the jar with sweet tea. A delicious drink is ready in a week.

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And my head doesn't hurt

Kombucha infusion has a slight intoxicating effect. The alcohol content is about 1 percent. If you stand, it will go up to 2 - 2.5 percent. But the old drink is sour and tasteless.

Extraordinary softness

The infusion mixed with mineral water is an excellent cleansing facial toner. And when combined with olive oil it helps to soften the skin.

With nettles and lindens

It is good to add a mixture of nettle with blackberry leaves, coltsfoot, plantain, birch, strawberry, linden blossom, St. John's wort, raspberry and cherry to tea. Do not use plants with essential oils (oregano, sage, calendula, chamomile, black currant).

The doctor in the bank

Kombucha contains the necessary normal life of the body inorganic and organic substances.

Mild laxative

Normalizes metabolism
Useful for gastroenteritis, dysentery, constipation
Effective for influenza and acute respiratory infections
Reduces blood cholesterol levels
Normalizes blood pressure
Relieves headache
Relieves symptoms of chronic sore throat

by the way

Kombucha has nothing to do with the kingdom of mushrooms. This zooglea is a community of interacting microorganisms.
The yeast body can grow indefinitely, forming strong threads. Designer Suzanne Lee (USA) grows huge mushroom jellyfish in bathtubs, divides them into layers, dries, tints, cuts and sews clothes. (Photo)
Kombucha is sold in American and European health food retailers. Among his ardent fans are Gwyneth Paltrow, Kim Kardashian, Orlando Bloom.

COUNT!

In 2015, Russian Viktor Bout, who is serving a sentence in an American prison for smuggling weapons, was extended 40 days after it was discovered that he was growing kombucha. We decided it was alcohol.
Instead of black tea, you can use green tea - in such a solution, the mushroom lives longer and has more healing properties.
Drink kombucha in a glass in the morning on an empty stomach 15 minutes before breakfast, before or after lunch and in the evening before bedtime.

Legend 2. Lenin staged a revolution because he avenged his brother

Alexander Ulyanov. 1887 year

In May 1887, 21-year-old Alexander Ulyanov, Vladimir's elder brother, was hanged in the Shlisselburg fortress for participating in the terrorist faction of the Narodnaya Volya party and preparing an attempt on the life of Emperor Alexander III. Later, the image of the executed student will often be used to explain the revolution and the murder of the royal family. One of the most caricatured incarnations of this mythologeme is a painting by the artist Nikolai Kopeikin, created in 2017: on it, Lenin shoots at Nicholas II, next to it we see the inscription “For brother - death”.

Verdict: This is only partly true.

On the one hand, already in the first years of Soviet power, the image of Alexander Ulyanov was used to explain the motives of Lenin's actions and demonstrate the cruelty of the autocracy. In January 1919, at the unveiling of a monument to the revolutionaries who died in Shlisselburg, the head of the Petrograd Soviet, Grigory Zinoviev, said that Lenin "carries the banner that was torn from the hands of his brother." Grigory Zinoviev's speech at the unveiling of the monument to the Schlisselburgers on January 22, 1919. "Petrogradskaya Pravda". January 24, 1919. On the other hand, the political decisions that Vladimir Ulyanov made during the revolution and the Civil War cannot be explained solely by personal circumstances.

In the second half of the 19th century, revolutionary sentiments were very common among students. After studying for just over three months at Kazan University, Vladimir Ulyanov was expelled: on December 4, 1887, he participated in a student gathering in protest against the government's restrictions on university education. The expulsion from the university (as well as the kinship with the executed terrorist) made the future Lenin marginalized and put him in opposition to the authorities. Ulyanov's sisters, Anna, who was arrested and exiled on suspicion of involvement in the assassination attempt on the emperor, and Maria, also adhered to revolutionary views. Later, both became prominent members of the Bolshevik Party.

Thus, the intellectual influence of the elder brother and the ideas for which he went to execution, largely shaped Lenin's political views, but was not the cause of the revolution.

All about Lenin - in six lectures by Alexander Shubin in "Radio Arzamas"

How Lenin came to power, how he could keep it and how he saw the future of the country

Our earliest Red Book

There may be several applicants for this role, depending on the region - at least the spring fly agaric, or the March hygrophor - but our choice is obvious. Sarcosoma globular (Sarcosoma globosum), rejuvenating apple, earth oil. Rare, according to other sources - the rarest mushroom appears in coniferous forests immediately after the snow melts. Wrinkled brown barrels with a viscous transparent liquid inside are not at all what comes to mind when the word "mushrooms" comes to mind. But this is even more interesting.

Our elusive sarcosoma. We have seen enough of this rarity ... (photo by I. Lebedinsky)

Where sarcos are in bulk, they make a sarcos dish of it - simply stew with potatoes in their own juice. In other areas, it must be strictly guarded. This spring in all regions of the Central District there was so much of it that it is strange to remember about the Red Book. I, too, could not resist, collected a dozen sarcos from the thousand met, cooked a sarcos. Delicious in its own way, like potatoes with jellyfish.

The darkest our Red Book

In the south, in our northern Caucasus, they will not understand such an attitude. But here, where this mushroom is not found every day, every such meeting makes an indelible impression.

Imagine a tree (linden or oak) with a tongue or a piece of liver sticking out of the trunk. Touched - well, the meat to the touch, cold, really. Cut off (if the hand went up) - on the cut, too, as meat or liver, with marble veins. And the ichor oozes.

Why such torment? (photo by Sergei Prokofiev)

Mushroom liverwort (Fistulina hepatica), common in the south, is rare in our country and fairly refers to the protected; somewhere in the regional Red Book it is included, somewhere not. However, in order to cut it and eat, you have to be a heartless person. The liver growing on a tree reminds of the fate of an alcoholic cursed by the fierce ancient gods. This must be protected.

... In general, we have already understood that the Red Book in terms of mushrooms is natural voluntarism. However, this does not negate the need to protect nature and not touch truly rare mushrooms. For example, ram mushroom, aka branched griffin (Grifola frondosa) - our most delicious Red Book, which, however, cannot be eaten - it’s too little of it. In order to carry home these spreading "bushes" that grow every few years on the roots of dying oak trees, you have to be either very hungry or completely heartless person. And if nature forgives hunger, then deliberate neglect - never; and let the millstones of the gods grind slowly, each of us will ultimately get what he deserves. Each.

But these mushrooms do not need protection, and thank God (photo by I. Lebedinsky)

Legend 5. Lenin was an agent of the German General Staff

A delegation from the RSFSR, arriving to sign a peace treaty, at the Brest-Litovsk railway station. 1918 year

In early July 1917, the prosecutor of the Petrograd Court of Justice charged Vladimir Lenin, Grigory Zinoviev, Aleksandra Kollontai and some other Bolsheviks with conspiracy with agents of the states belligerent against Russia to weaken the army and disorganize the rear. Later, in September 1918, the administration of US President Woodrow Wilson circulated a series of documents according to which Vladimir Lenin (at that time he signed as N. Lenin), Leon Trotsky and other Bolsheviks carried out the instructions of the General Staff of Germany.

Verdict: This is not true.

Historians consider the existing evidence of the connection between the Bolshevik leadership and the agents of Germany to be unconvincing or fabricated. Among them - the testimony of warrant officer of the 16th Siberian Rifle Regiment Dmitry Ermolenko. After returning from German captivity, he said that during negotiations at the Berlin General Staff in April 1917, the officers and generals who recruited him "mentioned Lenin's surname as a person working for Germany and for Germany." S. Ermolenko. July 10-11, 1917 // Investigative case of the Bolsheviks. Collection of documents in two books. Book 1. M., 2012 .. Back in 1917, the Bolsheviks pointed out that the disclosure of such secret information when recruiting a small agent, immediately after crossing the front line, went to the Russian counterintelligence service, looks absolutely incredible.

Another set of documents is a series of telegrams intercepted by Russian counterintelligence, mainly related to a businessman based in Stockholm, a member of the Bolshevik Party, Yakov Furstenberg (aka Yakub Ganetsky; party pseudonym - Cuba). After analyzing these texts, the historian Semyon Lyandres came to the conclusion that they do not contain evidence of the financing of the Bolsheviks by the Germans.In telegrams about the sale of pencils (which were imported from Germany, and after the outbreak of the war became a scarce commodity in Russia), it really was about pencils, in telegrams about the size of a note for Pravda - really about the number of lines, and so on S. Lyandres. The Bolsheviks' "German Gold" Revisited. An Inquiry into the 1917 Accusations. Pittsburgh, 1995 .. The so-called "case of the Bolsheviks" did not reach the court in connection with the October Revolution, but the materials of the investigation - about 2500 printed pages - were published, and they do not contain convincing evidence of the connection between the Bolsheviks and the Germans.

They also tried to prove the collusion between Germany and the Bolsheviks with the help of fabricated documents. So, in February - March 1918, the American journalist Edgar Sisson bought in Petrograd more than a hundred papers about the German-Bolshevik conspiracy, which were published a few months later in the United States. In fact, the "Sisson Papers" were made by the writer and adventure novelist Ferdinand Ossendowski using five typewriters and a printing house that printed counterfeit forms. In the mid-1950s, when the original documents were found in the White House safe, the American diplomat George F. Kennan analyzed the fruits of Ossendowski's work and proved the forgery. And in the early 1990s, the Russian historian Vitaly Startsev found additional "Sisson documents", rechecked Kennan and came to similar conclusions.

There is one documented case of the transfer of German money to the Bolsheviks before they came to power. In August 1917, the foreign bureau of the Central Committee of the party received about 230,000 German marks from the Swiss socialist Karl Moor, who worked for the governments of Germany and Austria-Hungary. However, the money did not reach Petrograd - the Central Committee bureau financed the September international conference of socialists in Stockholm, which was attended by opponents of the war from the central powers, for example, the chairman of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, Hugo Haase. The unification of the opponents of the war on different sides of the front was hardly part of the plans of the German General Staff. Although a small part of the millions that Germany spent on weakening the Entente countries reached the Bolsheviks, this did not make them German puppets and in no way explains the support of their slogans by millions of Russian citizens.

Our most massive Red Book

There is one row in our pine forests in the east of the Moscow Region, very changeable in appearance, in one of its many incarnations surprisingly resembles a pale grebe (only at a young, fortunately, age), in the other - a delicacy shod row row. There is a lot of it during the season. In a good season - a lot. It is edible but tasteless. Usually it is not taken, but from hopelessness it is sometimes collected, boiled twice, pickled and treated to guests. Her name is the row is crimson or tied (Tricholoma focale)... And she is also in the Red Book. With all its innumerable livestock.

Pale-fluted variation of the rowing (photo by I. Lebedinsky)

Maybe this is some kind of mistake? Maybe they wanted to "put on guard" some other row, for example, a rowing with shoes, the legendary matsutake, but an error crept in? Or do we have some amazing oasis in the east? No, the forest is like a forest, rather trampled and littered by vacationers, a hundred bottles in their liver ...

In general, a large, beautiful, wonderfully changeable row grows, almost everyone knows it, almost no one collects it, it grows for itself and grows ... We can only imagine her surprise when she finds out that she belongs to rare species and requires careful protection of her places a habitat.

Although about the protection of places - it would be very good. And then they turned the local forests into the devil knows what. It's time to protect, preferably with the use of powerful special equipment.