Are there adverse effects from eating a kidney with Bright's disease?

[Mort Belfry]

It's probably been asked before, but was Jack in any danger here?

[Rosella]

^ What a very intriguing question Mort. My answer is, I sure hope so! We need someone medically trained to answer and say whether, IF the kidney DID have Brights Disease, would cooking it do anything to lessen the dangers? You wouldn't think so, but who knows!

[Michael W Richards]

If the killer knew how to extract that organ and did not accomplish his task by virtue of good luck or chance, then he would know there was something wrong with the organ. He would have known not to eat it.

Which for me smells of hoax...the claim is obviously there to frighten, but doesn't seem to pan out when considering the possible skill/knowledge level of the extractor.

[Harry D]

I don't think it was sent by the killer. Lusk was being stalked by people, and had a confrontation with a guy in a pub leading up to the 'From hell' letter. It's probably a safe assumption that the Vigilance Committee were treading on a few toes when they were prowling the streets for the Ripper and disrupting shady goings-on. The person(s) involved wanted to scare Lusk off and force him into disbanding the committee.

[Sam Flynn]

It's probably been asked before, but was Jack in any danger here?

No more danger than if he'd eaten a cirrhotic liver - which, after all, would be a more likely outcome of alcoholism. Neither Bright's Disease nor cirrhosis is contagious or infectious, as there are no agents (bacteria/viruses) that transmit either condition.

[DJA]

Eddowes' kidney was infected with Streptococcus pyogenes.

Wouldn't eat it raw.

Neither would Jack.

Absolutely nothing to do with with alcoholism,at least not in Gareth's terms.

[Errata]

Eddowes' kidney was infected with Streptococcus pyogenes.

Wouldn't eat it raw.

Neither would Jack.

Absolutely nothing to do with with alcoholism,at least not in Gareth's terms.

Well, we don't know it wasn't damage from alcoholism. It probably wasn't but we can't say for 100%.

Kidney infection is a good bet. But it could have been anything from a genetic anomaly to a fungal infection. We also don't know that the taken kidney was affected. Not all kidney anomalies or even infections are bilateral.

No one sane eats human kidney, so if he ate it, we don't have to apply normal reasoning to the act. He might eat it raw. He might eat it raw knowing it was diseased. And as long as he didn't make a habit of eating human flesh, especially brain, he probably wouldn't have had much ill effect. Stomach acid kills a lot. And eating infection is probably better for you than touching it. Saliva kills infection, stomach acid kills infection, intestinal juices kill infection... skin only protects you if it isn't broken, and it's pretty much always broken.

I figure you are crossing the line by about a mile by eating a human organ. It's only another six inches to eat it raw. I don't see many fetish cannibals drawing the line at cooking their human kidney. But it probably doesn't taste very good.

[Sam Flynn]

For the sake of clarity, there is no bacterium that carries Bright's Disease - no "Staphylococcus brightii", if you like - so you can't "catch" it.

[Bridewell]

Wasn't 'Bright's Disease' used, in the LVP, as something of a generic term for kidney disease rather that as a reference to any specific condition? (Forgive me, not sure where I read that, but somewhere on this forum I suspect).

[Mayerling]

Wasn't 'Bright's Disease' used, in the LVP, as something of a generic term for kidney disease rather that as a reference to any specific condition? (Forgive me, not sure where I read that, but somewhere on this forum I suspect).

I know it was used to refer to a specific disease that was inevitably fatal and painful to the sufferer. Indeed it probably was tolerated only by large quantities of alcoholic beverages.

Besides the victim of Jack, other sufferers from the disease included three U.S. politicians: Vice President (and then President) Chester Alan Arthur, Speaker of the House (and then Senator from Maine, Republican Presidential Candidate of 1884, and Secretary of State first for Garfield and then for Benjamin Harrison) James Gillespie Blaine, and Congressman from Utica, New York (and then Vice President under William Howard Taft) James Schoolcraft Sherman. All three were to die from the disease in 1886, 1893, and 1912 (a week before his second appearance on the ballot with Taft). In fact, Arthur knew he had the disease when he was Garfield's Vice President. Because he did, although he would have liked a term in office from the electorate of his own (and had sufficient popular support that with some effort he could have gotten the nomination rather than Blaine in 1884), Arthur did not make a real effort to get that nomination because he knew he would not survive his full term, and he did not want to put the nation through a second dying President situation after Garfield's prolonged martyrdom from July to September 1881. Arthur left office on March 4, 1885, and died in November 1886, which (after James Knox Polk's three months in 1849) was the second shortest post Presidential life span.

It is worth considering that if Jack did eat that diseased kidney without knowing it was bad for him, and was rushed to a hospital by relatives who did not know what caused his serious gastric problems, and while recovering he learned about the Bright's disease, in that month on his back he would have been festering increased hate towards prostitutes for trying to kill him that way, and when he got out in early November 1888 it might explain the eruption of purely evil violence done to Mary Jane Kelly's body.

Jeff