18.Patrick Horne + 21.04.08

Yesterday I was told that Pat had died from a massive heart attack. He was on vacation in Cuba. The following day, his ashes had been returned to Toronto.
In his last email, just before he left for Cuba, he had complained of being tired, and I thought that he was depressed. But his passing was shattering news to me. I have lost a very close friend - albeit a pen friend. We have corresponded at least twice a week, often more, for several years now. We met only once - when he visited Britain to research his work on Armand Ruffer.

It all started when Pat contacted me to praise the paper published in the JRSM [by Loebl and Nunn], on walking aids in Egypt and Palestine. It rapidly transpired that he had published an item in the BMJ's Minerva section, on Aspergillosis during life found in the lung of a mummy: the fungus histology is different in vivo. I told him that I remembered the item, and the amusing correspondence that followed. The BMJ always added a note requiring the subject's signed consent if pictures were to be shown. One of the correspondents wondered, how the mummy could give permission; and another suggested, that perhaps it could be obtained from the mummy's mummy.
For my talks on ancient medicine, he promptly sent me better slides of that case.

Pat was affiliated to his university, and so he had far better free access to literature on the web. Coupled with his uncanny knack of finding relevant items, his diligence and generosity, and his acquaintance with other experts, his supply of data was enormously helpful to me on numerous occasions. I shall continue to give him credit in my talks for two exciting small snippets: why the Biblical Ricinus plant [kikayon] that shaded Jonah, is usually illustrated wrongly as a gourd; and the post-Biblical exact Midrashic source for the medieval illustration of Noah, planting a vine accompanied by four animals, and getting drunk.

We were planning to submit for publication - possibly for 'Minerva' - another short item of a portrait showing unreported Xanthomata - I had spotted it in an art gallery and Pat had given me much help to define the diagnosis.

With great enthusiasm, he kept 'feeding' me with numerous other papers, which on first reading sometimes appeared irrelevant, but turned out to be valuable - or even farcical, such as the rubbish article from Beer Sheba about king David's diagnosis of osteoporosis. He told me that he enjoyed reading my papers and the texts of my talks. He was a rapid reader, and usually replied with some obscure picture that I had missed.

And then there were the jokes, including excellent Jewish and Catholic specimens. Pat had a very good sense of humour, and good sources. He probably died before he received my last string of rather good jokes. Ah well, there is no email in the Hereafter... and no Hereafter, either.

I shall miss him very much.