“1984”: What Orwell could not predict. Proteomic analysis of his scripts

Abstract

George Orwell, fighter for the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War, was shot through the throat by a sniper on 20th May 1937 and nearly killed. After receiving only a summary external treatment, on the 29th, he was cured in a Barcelona hospital where he was infected by the Koch bacillus. After fleeing from Spain on 23rd June 1937, he repaired to his cottage in Wallington, Hertfordshire, wherefrom he wrote a letter to Sergey Dynamov, Editor of Soviet journal “Foreign Literature.” This typewritten letter was analyzed by application of five EVA strips (ethylene vinyl acetate studded with strong cation and anion and with C8 and C18 resins; four on the corners and one over his signature), searching for biological traces. Upon elution of the captured biologicals, trypsin digestion and Orbitrap Fusion trihybrid mass spectrometer analyses, three of the five strips yielded clear traces of six unique proteins (via proteotypic peptides) of the tuberculosis bacterium. Additionally, MALDI TOF analysis of saliva of a tuberculosis patient and the EVA strip eluates gave a spectrum of 14 peptide bands (Mr 2700 to 6700 Da range) coincident between the two samples, thus, fully confirming Orwell's pathology. These results are attributed to saliva traces on Orwell's fingertips and to the fact that the letter was written on 2nd July 1937, when Orwell's pathology was at its peak.

Artefact Profiling: Panomics Approaches for Understanding the Materiality of Written Artefacts

“…This includes, for example, a study conducted on a typewritten letter by George Orwell. A bottom-up analysis was used to identify peptide markers that confirmed that Orwell was a carrier of Mycobacterium tuberculosis [ 30 ]. On the basis of an original manuscript by the Russian satirist Mikhail Bulgakov, it could also be proven that the author died of nephrotic syndrome.…”

“…In particular, the meta-information obtained with these techniques can provide indications of bacterial or fungal infestation of manuscripts, which can be helpful to stop biodeterioration processes and also to protect the people who handle the analysis material [ 23 , 24 , 25 ]. In addition, they are also suitable for obtaining information about the authors or the readers [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ]. The analysis of certain stable isotopes using isotopolomics approaches can provide further information.…”

Fiat Lux ... how Alessandro Volta illuminated his scripts

“…In the case of Bulgakov though, analysis of metabolites and proteins present in the margins of his manuscript Master i Margarita allowed us to detect his use of drugs (morphine) [27] as well as to identify biomarkers of his renal pathology [28]. In the case of Orwell [29] we could detect, via proteomic analysis, traces of the Koch bacillus, since he had been infected by the M. tuberculosis bacterium when he was hospitalized in Barcelona during the Spanish civil war. Yet in the present case, the proteins detected would not have had any particular meaning, therefore these data have not been reported in this research report, whose main aim was the ink composition.…”

NUOVE ESCHE PER PESCARE NEL <em>MARE MAGNUM DELL’EREDITÀ CULTURALE</em>

“…Dopo l'eluizione del materiale catturato e le analisi di spettrometria di massa, tre delle cinque strisce hanno prodotto chiare tracce di sei proteine del batterio M. tuberculosis (vedi Fig. 3) [37]. Potrebbe sembrare un miracolo, considerando che il documento è stato scritto a macchina.…”