A Genuine Vintage Mad Scientist Reviews Jekyll and Hyde

MWAHAHAHA! Be welcome, ghouls and goblins! It is I, Lord Erkon H.G. Madstein of the Castle Aratais; master of all fields of unnatural philosophy! I have used the Time Traveler’s time machine to travel to the postmoderne day. 

It has come to my attention that my future counterpart for which you are most familiar, Dr Erkon, has been stricken by a severe ailment of unwanted youth due to testing an antiaging potion on himself. This has rendered him quite indisposed for the time being. I have endeavoured to maintain his duties for the month of October, including this peculiar “worldwide website”.

Did you dare to think that this “blogge” was only for the discussion of the rational sciences? NO! It is about MAD SCIENCE! And what could be more madly scientific than my colleagues, the traditional mad scientists of the monster mash; the genius Baron Frankenstein, the reclusive Dr Moreau, the Invisible Man Griffin, or the esteemed Dr Jekyll?

I shall abridge and review these masterful works of all hallowed fame. Eventually. For now, I shall focus on my most esteemed colleague Dr Jekyll. I realize that the vocabulary of people of this time has somewhat declined, so I shall abridge the story in a way you are more likely to understand.

Table of Contents:

• Abridgement: The Casual Case of Jekyll and Hyde
• A Belayed Foreword on the Abridgement
• The Scientific Analysis of Jekyll and Hyde
• How Mad Was Dr Jekyll?
• The Literary Analysis of Jekyll and Hyde
• The Sexological Analysis

The Casual Case of Jekyll and Hyde

In Victorian-era London, a loyal and kind lawyer (yes, such a thing existed back then) named Mr Utterson walked and talked with his friend. Being reserved Victorian gentlemen, they spent their time brutally gossiping about people who break the facade of reservedness. 

The friend said, “Oi, gov, I hear some chav, Hyde, knocked over a bonnie wifout so much as an apology! Gave ‘er a cheque to get the bobbies off ‘im. Signed by Dr Jekyll, it was. Naff, innit?”

Mr. Utterson replied in a polite yet concerned tone, “Doc Jekyll? Dat’s roight naff! He’s my mate and client. Doc neva does anyfing dat ain’t proper. Betta not wag our jaws on ‘bout it though, ain’t proper like.”

Though they agreed to stop discussing it, Utterson was put in a terribly bad state. As Dr Jekyll’s lawyer, he knew that he had already left everything in his will to the same scoundrel, Mr Hyde, and nothing to his family. Who does that? Certainly not someone as repressed as the good doctor. Utterson had nightmares about him being blackmailed, or worse. 

Utterson consulted a mutual friend of he and Jekyll’s named Dr Lanyon to ask about the situation.

Lanyon said, “Doc Jekyll? I don’t like that sweaty sock no more. Ya know he doesn’t even keep a proper lab notebook? ‘What if ya need ta make more of somethin’?’ I ask ‘im. ‘I’ll just make it from memory!’ he says! Uses ‘imself as a test subject too. King Dick, that one.” 

“Uh, roight… but do ya know anyfing about Hyde?”

“Nah, never heard of ‘im.”

This did little to quell Utterson’s worries. In fact, it made them far worse. He went to Jekyll’s house only to find that he instructed his manservant to also treat Hyde as a master. Wtf?

“Utterson! Wot are you doin’ in me hoose?” Dr Jekyll yelled.

Utterson politely voiced his concern. “Oi, I hear some git, Mr Hyde, been takin’ ya flashy bits. Want me and da boyz to krump ‘im for ya?” 

Dr Jekyll was shocked. “What? Och, no! Ah can be free o’ Hyde anytime Ah want. You dinnae need to worry about me.”

A year later, Mr Utterson heard from the police that one of his clients, Sir. Danvers Carew, got hecking murdered by Hyde. Utterson went to have another talk with Jekyll.

“He wot? Och, that does it! Ah’m finished with that eejit minger! In fact…” 

Dr Jekyll turns around and quickly scribbles on a napkin. “He’s even given me a letter sayin’ he’s finished with me! See?”

“A letta? Roight, dis seems proper an’… wait, is dis your handwroiting?”

Jekyll stares at him. “No? Now, git outta mah hoose!”

It seemed that Dr Jekyll had remained true to his word. He had stopped acting suspicious for the next two months and no one heard from Mr Hyde. But he again began locking himself in his room and avoiding social situations, which I gather today is completely normal behaviour, but at the time was very sus’. Mr Utterson went back to Dr Lanyon to inquire about their friend’s condition, only to find him a shadow of a man.

Lanyon whispered weakly, “Utterson! I’ve had a scare that will soon kill me!”

“Uh, Doc, I ain’t a Doc, but I don’t fink dat’s how dat works.”

“Shut it! Can’t ya see I’m in a Barney?”

“Barney?” Utterson raised an eyebrow.

“Trouble! Barney Rubble-trouble. Anyway, I’ve written this letter for ya.” Dr Lanyon held out a sealed envelope with a shaking hand.

“Oh, sure. So, wot was it dat scared ya so bad? Doc? Oh, he’s dead… Roight.” Mr Utterson looked at the envelope in his hands and the tag reading not to break the wax seal until after the death of Dr Jekyll. Standard lawyer stuff, normally Utterson would lose it in a filing cabinet. But this one he decided to keep.

Weeks later, Dr Jekyll’s manservant runs to Utterson asking him to come to Jekyll’s house in a panic. He said that Dr Jekyll has locked himself in his laboratory for weeks, demanding he slide food and chemical reagents under the door. They go to the lab and hear a voice from inside. But it’s not Jekyll’s politely pleasant voice, but the harsh vulgar drawl of Mr Hyde. 

Mr Hyde said, “Hello, dear guests! I apologize, but I’m quite indisposed and simply can’t entertain you at the moment. Would you mind coming back another time, perchance?”

“Hyde, ya git! ‘Ave you krumped me mate Jekyll? I’m comin’ in ta give you a proper scrap!” Utterson yells before smashing his shoulder against the door. He winces, his scrawny lawyer’s body crumpling against the stalwart mahogany. Utterson resorted to repeated light kicking at the lock.

“Sorry, but I must ask that you refrain from doing that! Please, I beg of you! Don’t make me do this!” Hyde begged.

Utterson finally battered down the door finding only Hyde’s body, freshly dead by suicide, and a letter signed by Jekyll. Taking the blood-stained note in hand, Utterson decided to read Lanyon’s note instead. After all, he assumed Jekyll was dead and he’s supposed to read it if that happened.

Lanyon’s letter explained that Jekyll had Lanyon get some chemicals from his lab and wait until some guy came. Then Hyde walked in, did some science magic with the chemicals, drank it, and transformed into Dr Jekyll! Witnessing this caused him to die, somehow.

Then Utterson read the blood-stained note. In it, Dr Jekyll describes his hypothesis that humans have a good and an evil self. He created a potion which lets him separate the two and transform into his “evil self”. 

Using this veil of anonymity and lack of shame, he could indulge in all the things Victorian society prevented him from doing. Like looking at women’s bare ankles! But then one thing led to another and he might have sort of killed someone. Ankles are one slippery slope.

He swore off the potion but later found that he would start transforming spontaneously even without it. That’s why he tried to get Lanyon’s help so he could figure out how to make more of the antidote. He has been unable to reproduce the original. Some impurity he didn’t account for. He no longer believed that Hyde was his other half. In fact, he was afraid that he would die and Hyde would go on as a separate being, free to indulge without restraint.

A Belayed Foreword

The voice of the characters is quite important in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Every character is an exemplar of cordial behaviour, except for Mr Hyde whose entire reason to exist is to be impolite. So I thought it would be funny to rewrite every character speaking in British accents typically associated with lower classes or rude behaviour (Utterson’s friend talks like a Londonite chav, Lanyon speaks in a Cockney accent with rhyming slang, Jekyll speaks in a thick Scottish dialect, Utterson talks like an ork), except for Mr Hyde who uses overly polite Queen’s English (or is it King’s English now?).

Some parts of my abridgement are confusing, such as when Utterson decides to read Lanyon’s note first. But the truth is that the original novella made even less sense. Mr Utterson originally took the suicide note back home with him and then read Lanyon’s note first. 

Though you almost certainly already knew the twist ending, this story was originally meant to be a mystery. Much of the plot in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was badly contrived so Robert Louis Stevenson could draw out the reveal that Jekyll and Hyde were one and the same as long as possible. If you didn’t know the twist this was not as noticeable as if you do.

The Science of Jekyll and Hyde

So, is the Curious Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde scientifically accurate? Do you really need to ask? Of course not. 

Duality of Man

The sort of Jungian idea that the human psyche exists as a duality of good battling evil has been widely disproven by psychologists and the book. The idea of there being some literal equivalent of an angel and devil on your shoulder is an attractive idea, it’s why the concept still pervades media long after it’s been disproved. It does seem that the human mind is made of many smaller subprocesses working together, but it’s nowhere as simplistic as a duality, or even an id, ego, and superego. It’s likely more like a computer where you have a graphics card, CPU, ram, motherboard, dozens of other programs running on them, etc. I haven’t the faintest idea what any of that is, but am assured it’s something many of you would understand. And, knowing evolution and human biology, it’s almost certainly far more convoluted and needlessly complicated than a computer.

The Potion

The potion that triggers Jekyll’s physical transformation is impossible. Maybe one could relatively quickly (but not in seconds) cause cosmetic alterations using nanobots, Jekyll’s potion was implied to be chemical in nature. I doubt Victorians had any conception of a self-controlled microscopic machine. The most advanced “robots” were clockwork dolls. 

While some chemicals can cause alterations to the body, most notably estrogen and testosterone, these take months of constant exposure to have any physical effect. And these effects are largely irreversible without surgery. A hormone is just a token the body uses to signal a change. I can’t imagine why the body would even need the ability to transform into an unrecognizable evil alter ego, so it’s probably not a hormone.

However, there could be some possibility of a chemical altering behaviour in this way. Any connoisseur of alcohol will be well aware of this. While a chemically induced split personality disorder (which I am told is now called dissociative identity disorder) seems unlikely, the potion really is just inhibiting Jekyll’s inhibitions. Perhaps the potion simply does that without the other effects of alcohol.

How Mad was Dr Jekyll?

Dr Jekyll was barely a mad scientist; hardly even a glad scientist, though as Dr Lanyon put it, he was certainly a bad scientist. Not only did he test an experimental potion on himself, but he also did so without fully knowing what was in it. The explanation given for why he couldn’t make more to turn back was that one of the ingredients had an impurity he didn’t know about. Apparently, this mystery impurity was critical to making the potion. Once he ran out of the impure ingredient he had no way of knowing what that “secret sauce” was.

I assume the story was set in 1886, the year the book was published. While it was before the discovery of atomic orbitals or a precise understanding of chemical reactions, alchemy had been long dead by then. The scientific method was well established. High standards for chemical purity had been set nearly half a century before. Many of the elements had been discovered. Chemists were capable of writing chemical formulas and molecular diagrams. There were methods for analyzing the content and purity of a chemical, such as titrations and melting points. They were more tedious and not as precise as modern methods, but were reliable enough.

I’m not going to say that every chemist should titrate all their reactants and always practice lab safety methods to the letter. It’s fine to be a bit lazy sometimes. But if you plan on drinking your product (which you shouldn’t), purify your chemicals if you suspect they’re impure. If you don’t know, check that they are! I know, titrations and distillations suck, but it’s better than getting stuck as your evil alter ego.

While it’s true that reaction-grade chemicals tend to be purer than food-grade chemicals (the human body is remarkable at filtering stuff out on its own so it’s fine if there’s just a bit of poison.) A lot of chemical suppliers add extra chemicals to improve shelf life or dissuade graduate students from getting drunk or high off them. (My professor said he has a trick to knowing what to add to it to cover the taste, but didn’t tell us what it was.) These additives are chosen to not interfere with most reactions, but might still give you throat cancer or something.

Literary Analysis of Jekyll and Hyde

The masterwork tome of Robert Louis Stevenson, The Curious Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, is certainly one of the most influential books of its day. Its message was quite poignant in the Victorian period. If you could not tell by now; the story was an analysis of the duality of man. 

The Victorian period was a socially repressive time where reputation was paramount. One could not engage in vices without dire social repercussions, but this does not remove the innate drive to those vices. Whether by God or Nature, it is undeniable that certain urges are inextricable from the human condition. Some consider these to be evil, ruinous pleasures and avoid them out of guilt. Others consider them natural but avoid them still from fear of being shamed. In either case; it is a sobering thought to know you will never experience them. To die without having first lived. It is normal to entertain these escapist fantasies; to dream of fulfilling these urges without consequence.

I, Lord Erkon, am also from the time of the reign of Queen Victoria. So I also naturally identified with the characters. But I would imagine that you, dear readers, may not as you come from a dark and unenlightened time where women may bare their ankles freely (I have seen so many here, how scandalous!). So this may not be as impactful to you. Chances are that you are permitted to fulfil most of your urges. But likely not all, right?

Sexology

Though I am aware that it would be entirely inappropriate to bring up the topic of sexual fetishes; a time as extreme as yours requires an equally extreme example. This post isn’t for kids, by the way. Not that kids would understand most of the topics on this science blog anyways. Sexology is a perfectly valid field of scientific study. 

Ever notice how the plot of pornographic moving pictures operates under their own bizarre logic? Why do they need a plot at all? Fantasies are more enjoyable if they can somewhat reasonably seem consequence-free. 

Even if you have a fantasy of looking at a woman’s bare ankles, having sexual intercourse with a nurse, a married woman, a nun, a relative, an anthropomorphic version of a literal animal, literal animals, “vore”, or whatever other horrid things your generation does on the “world-wide-web” these days (what in Magdelene’s name is wrong with you all?) there aren’t many logical scenarios where one could actually do that. More so for the latter examples. If you were to just do any of those you’d probably feel some sense of shame or guilt. But if you first establish in your imagination that the feeling is mutual or that you live in a world where fetishising ankles is an acceptable thing to do, then it’s no problem.

Stevenson never established what exactly Jekyll did as Mr Hyde other than that it was vaguely reprehensible. But lots of things considered perfectly normal today were reprehensible according to Victorian sensibilities. Though Hyde was clearly meant to be impolite and had some anger issues, his nights out on the town may not have been sexual at all. Or maybe they were.