Draconology

            It is said that the blood of a dragon has the capability of curing all ills. Dr. Tesimond and Dr. Kircher in Daniel Kehlmann’s novel, Tyll, have been in search of dragons. To gather the blood of the dragon would be a welcome gift to the human world: no disease and ultimately no death! Eternal good health! But alas, dragons are very shy and therefore very difficult to find. “Yes,” says Dr. Tesimond, “dragons are inconceivably shy and capable of astounding feats of camouflage. You could search for a hundred years and yet never get close to a dragon. Just as you can spend a hundred years in immediate proximity to a dragon and never notice. it” But this problem does not overly concern Tesimond and Kircher because the appearance of a dragon is not what is important; rather, it is the dragon’s knowledge that one seeks! Pliny the Elder writes that, “dragons know an herb by means of which they can bring dead members of their species back to life. To find this herb would be the Holy Grail of our science.” What that seems to mean is that they need not kill the dragon for its blood which of course would be quite limited in supply regardless of how large might be the dragon, but rather they would seek to learn from the dragon and acquire its knowledge of herbs. I believe that such a discovery would, indeed, be significant to our species and certainly to the hypochondriac tendencies and displeasure with mortality that I suffer. The herb would serve a function equivalent to the dragon’s blood! Maybe you see the problem: finding a dragon seems an impossible task, but the dragon knows the herb that would effect the same result as its blood. It would it would be a significant discovery to learn the identity of the herb would be consequential to the human race. But how could one learn from a dragon that won’t be seen. 

Tyll wonders that if dragons can’t ever be seen—because they are too shy—then how do we even know that dragons exist at all! Good question. And somewhat relatedly Tyll’s father Claus asks, how can the blood be gathered if we never see a dragon from which to draw? And the draconologist Dr. Kircher answers that the blood of the dragon is so powerful that having it in actual possession is not at all necessary: one needs only to find a substitute. The efficacy of the dragons blood can be approximated by finding the correct substitute for it. How do we know dragons exist? The Doctor answers, “Because of the efficacy of the substitutes.” That is, we do not need the real thing but only its surrogates! And these substitutes will suffice. As an example, the doctor says, that earthworms and grubs look like a dragon and therefore, when ground up they are medicinally beneficial. Ah! What makes grubs so important in their capacity to cure is their similar appearance to a dragon: grubs are efficacious substitutes. Cinnabar is valuable in medicine because its color is so similar to that of a dragon’s blood! Medicine, it would appear, depends on the discovery of substitutes for actual dragon blood! The secret to a healthy life depends on the possession of the correct substitutes. But, I do wonder, which are the appropriate ones? Ah, there’s the rub!

            Substitutes. We never see the real thing: well, at least not Truth anyway. Truth is too shy, too evasive I suppose. Not to be seen. But our wish for a life of health and even of immortality depends on discovering the right substitutes but until they might be found . . . we suffer issues with health and we suffer death. And I might consider that our lives are devoted to the search for the substitutes. We find sometimes one or two effective ones, but our difficulties remain and so we continue to search for substitutes. What we search for may not be the secret to eternal life, but our Desire impels us into the world seeking. Thoreau writes “I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail.”  We seek the ideal and we settle for the substitutes, and they must suffice.

Ah, there must be a dragon somewhere out there!