The tetanus vaccine, as common in the summer as Stephen King's novels

Stephen King published It (DeBolsillo) in 1986. Since then, it hasn't lost any of its power, and is considered the great American horror novel, on par with Moby Dick according to some critics, and one of the most electrifying books in all of contemporary fiction.

This is a disturbing story about a supernatural entity—disguised as a clown—terrifying the population of Derry. Faced with this threat, a group of teenagers decide—at their own risk—to take action and put an end to this monster. So far, so good; we won't spoil the plot, but we will take an interest in the scientific side of things. Because Stephen King knows how to achieve realism in each of his stories, to which he masterfully and skillfully adds just the right dose of terror.

In one passage of this novel, the gang of teenagers sets out to find planks and wood for a very particular use. Some of what they find are splintered, and others have rusty nails that have to be pulled out with the end of hammers. "If you cut yourself on a rusty nail, it can give you tetanus," one of the boys tells another. After making a light joke about the word, he explains that it has nothing to do with "tits," but with microbes that grow in rust. While we're at it, who hasn't had a tetanus shot? Summers are very prone to that, and even more so at those ages when the world around you seems like a safe game.

Because tetanus is a disease that originates through open wounds that come into contact with rusty surfaces, soil, manure, or a bird's beak if it draws blood. Once in the body, tetanus releases two toxic substances: tetanolysin and tetanospasmin, which is neurotoxic and responsible for the neurological symptoms of the disease. When it reaches the nervous system, it causes spasms and rigidity. Hippocrates was the first to describe its symptoms in a sailor, describing them as "hypercontraction of skeletal muscles," that is, the spasticity known as opisthotonos, a posture of muscular contraction characterized by arching and dorsal rigidity that causes the body to curve backward in spasms.

It wasn't until 1884 that the tetanus toxin was isolated; five years later, in 1889, Shibasaburo Kitasato, a Japanese bacteriologist, discovered the antitoxin. A year later, in 1890, together with the German bacteriologist Emil von Behring, he applied the serum from one infected animal to another. And in this way—with serotherapy—immunity was achieved.

It was during World War I that small doses of serum were administered to soldiers. Later, in the 1920s, French biologist Gaston Ramon—using the chemical compound formaldehyde—would develop a means of inactivating toxins that would lay the foundation for the current vaccine, called Tdap, which combines tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough . In any case, the toxicity of tetanus and its real danger are nothing compared to the danger faced by the teenagers in Stephen King's novel.

Not to mention that one of them, when he was a baby in a stroller, was attacked by a crow that pecked at him "like the evil beasts in fairy tales" and had to be given a tetanus shot. In short, Stephen King's novel is highly toxic, one of those that grips you and doesn't let go even after you finish the book.

The Stone Axe is a section where Montero Glez , with a desire for prose, exercises his particular siege on scientific reality to demonstrate that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.