I've got something weird going on with one of my eyes. It looks like it should be okay, so don't worry about me if you're a reader who knows me. The point is, one of the treatments is atropine eye drops. And the eye drops did what they needed to do, but as a side effect the vision in that eye is super blurry. Like, I have to use the biggest font possible and wear an eyepatch as I type this (yarr, avast me hearties, etc) because it's impossible for me to read otherwise. Fortunately it's just one eye, so I have enough vision to be more or less functional if I cover the malfunctioning orb.
I was curious because I knew I'd heard the word "atropine" before and had associated it with some poison that would have been used in, like, an Agatha Christie story. So I looked it up, and sure enough, it's extracted from deadly nightshade - also known as belladonna.
And it's called belladonna - Italian for "beautiful lady" - because during the Renaissance women used to use it in eyedrops to dilate their pupils - the idea was that guys would find their eyes more beautiful because their pupils were so wide. It would send the guy a subconscious signal something like "Dude, this girl is totally into me, her eyes are wide with wonder at every word I say".
So now that I've experienced for myself how, with this one eye affected by atropine, I can't read, can't drive, have to close the affected eye in order to do pretty much anything that requires seeing clearly...
I'm starting to imagine how some of the classic "chivalrous" stuff that men were supposed to do for women got started.
I'm starting to think that some contessa pulled her grandson aside before his first date and told him, "Listen, bambino, your girlfriend can't breathe because of all the corsets she's wearing to have the figure that you think she ought to have, and she can't see because she put LITERAL POISON, IN HER EYES, to give you the impression that your conversation is WAY more scintillating than it actually is. So the least you can do is make sure she doesn't break her neck. Help her in and out of the carriage, her depth perception is off and her mobility is limited. Pull her chair out for her and push it in so she doesn't fall on her culo. Take her arm and guide her, she can't see for shit and she'll break her nose on the doorpost if you leave her to fend for herself. Order dinner for her, she can't read the menu. You're paying, because she can't tell which coins are which. And if you don't do those things and she gets hurt, your nonna will make you wish you'd never been born, capiche?"
