Sublime

If you met Lewis in the street, you might guess that he was a lawyer or a kindly geography teacher. In fact, he was one of the most efficiently deadly men in the British services.

John Macdonald (1741–96), a Scottish Highlander, was a famous footman who wrote memoirs of his experiences in service. An orphan who had been sacked from a previous job rocking a baby’s cradle, Macdonald found work in a gentleman’s house turning the spit. He was aged just five.

Dr. Jonathan Southard, Dr. Ying Long, Dr. Andrew Kolbert, Dr. Shri Thanedar, and I coauthored a paper titled “Presence of L-canavanine in Hedysarum alpinum seeds and its potential role in the death of Chris McCandless,” which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine in October 2014.