research the hobbit — an unexpected deficiency joseph … · over bad. while the consensus has...

Joseph A HopkinsonStudent

Nicholas S HopkinsonMA, PhD, FRCP,

Senior Lecturer andHonorary Consultant

Chest Physician

National Institute forHealth Research

Biomedical Research Unit,Royal Brompton and

Harefield NHS FoundationTrust and Imperial

College London,London, UK.

n.hopkinson@ic.ac.uk

MJA 2013; 199: 805–806doi: 10.5694/mja13.10218

Research

The hobbit — an unexpected deficiency

The Medical Journal of Australia ISSN: 0025-729X 16 December 2013 199 11 805-806©The Medical Journal of Australia 2013www.mja.com.auResearch

We performed a pilot study usintual analysis to extract data relatdiurnal habits, dwelling, light sure and diet from The hobbit byTolkien. Results are reported approximately consecutive nar

Objective: Vitamin D has been proposed to have beneficial effects in a wide range of contexts. We investigate the hypothesis that vitamin D deficiency, caused by both aversion to sunlight and unwholesome diet, could also be a significant contributor to the triumph of good over evil in fantasy literature.

Design: Data on the dietary habits, moral attributes and martial prowess of various inhabitants of Middle Earth were systematically extracted from J R R Tolkien’s novel The hobbit.Main outcome measures: Goodness and victoriousness of characters were scored with binary scales, and dietary intake and habitual sun exposure were used to calculate a vitamin D score (range, 0–4).

Results: The vitamin D score was significantly higher among the good and victorious characters (mean, 3.4; SD, 0.5 ) than the evil and defeated ones (mean, 0.2; SD, 0.4; P < 0.001).

Conclusion: Further work is needed to see if these pilot results can be extrapolated to other fantastic situations and whether randomised intervention trials need to be imagined.

Abstract

over bad. A

ture has been the consist-t victory of good charactersWhile the consensus has

been to attribute this to narrative con-ventions about morality and the nec-essary happiness of endings, wehypothesised that a major contribu-tion to the defeat of evildoers in thiscontext is their aversion to sunlightand their poor diet, which may lead tovitamin D deficiency and hencereduced martial prowess.

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble, secoster-oid hormone, which in humans islargely synthesised in the skin whenexposed to ultraviolet light, and issometimes called “the sunshine vita-min”.1 Vitamin D is also found insome foods, particularly oily fish and,in small amounts, in egg yolks,cheese, beef, liver and some mush-rooms. It has a well described role incalcium metabolism, with deficiencyresulting in rickets and osteomalacia.Vitamin D also has immune-modu-lating roles with potential effects onsusceptibility to conditions rangingfrom multiple sclerosis to tuberculosisand accelerated lung functiondecline.2,3 Skeletal muscle weaknessis known to be a feature of vitamin Ddeficiency although it has not beenfound to contribute to muscle dys-function in chronic obstructive pul-monary disease (COPD),4 despitepatients with COPD being noted forpoor diet and reduced time spentoutdoors.5

A PubMed search performed on 29July 2012 for studies that fulfilled bothof the search terms “imaginary popu-lations” and “vitamin D” returned nopublications, suggesting that ourhypothesis was untested, and leadingto the work presented here.

Methods

g tex-ing toexpo- J R R

in anrative

fashion. In addition, protagonists wereidentified as good or evil and victori-ous or defeated on binary scales byconsensus. Sun exposure was scoredfrom 3 (lots) to 0 (none at all) and dietwas scored as 1 or 0 depending onwhether any vitamin D-containingitem was mentioned. These weresummed to give a vitamin D score(range, 0–4), and this score was relatedto victoriousness by unpaired t tests.

Results

Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, lives in a holein the ground but with windows, andwhen he is first encountered he is

smoking his pipe in the sun overlook-ing his garden (it is worth noting[parenthetically] that smoking is itselfassociated with skeletal muscledysfunction6). Dwarves and wizardssmoke too, and the production ofsmoke rings is unfortunately glam-ourised. The hobbit diet is clearly var-ied as he is able to offer cake, tea, seedcake, ale, porter, red wine, raspberryjam, mince pies, cheese, pork pie,salad, cold chicken, pickles and appletart to the dwarves who visit toengage him in the business of burg-lary. The dwarves also show evidenceof a mixed diet and, importantly,although they “like the dark, the darkfor dark business”, they do spendmuch time above ground and haveplenty of sun exposure during theinitial pony ride in June that beginstheir trip to the Lonely Mountain.

Sun avoidance is a recurring themeamong the evil characters. The trollsthe party encounter shun the sunlightto avoid the petrification to whichthey eventually succumb and havebeen living on an exclusively muttondiet. They are certainly strong butundeniably stupid, and consumingjugs of “good drink” has furtherbefuddled their wits.

Gollum, himself “as dark as dark-ness” lives in the dark, deep in theMisty Mountains. He does, however,eat fish, although the text describes

805MJA 199 (11) · 16 December 2013

MJA 199 (806

these only as “blind” and it is notclear whether they are of an oily kindand thus a potential source of vitaminD. He sometimes eats goblins, butthey rarely come down to his lake,suggesting that fish play little part inthe goblin diet. Interestingly, theseoccasional trips to catch fish areundertaken at the behest of the GreatGoblin, leading one to speculate thathis enhanced diet may have helpedhim to achieve his pre-eminent posi-tion within goblin society. In duecourse, the Great Goblin is replacedby the Son of the Great Goblin. Whilesimple nepotism is a likely explana-tion, we are unable to exclude anepigenetic process whereby the son’sfitness to rule has been influenced byparental vitamin D exposure.

Goblins’ aversion to sunlightincludes bringing a huge cloud of batsto accompany their army on themarch. Like the Spartans at the Battleof Thermopylae, they expect to gainsome advantage from fighting in theshade.7 However, despite their num-bers, the goblins are defeated by theirenemies. At the Battle of Five Armies,the strongest goblins are defeated byBeorn, a vegetarian who can assumethe shape of a bear. His diet is largelycream and honey, but he spendsmuch time outdoors.

Wood elves linger “in the twilightof our sun and moon”, feasting mer-rily in clearings in the woods. Theyseem to be less potent than the highelves, perhaps because of their crep-uscular habits, but their cave isdescribed as “lighter and morewholesome” than goblin dwellings.Few details are given about their diet,

but roast meat is involved, and butterand apples are brought to them by theriver, as is wine.

Spiders dwell in the dark and seemto eat caught prey exclusively. Thedragon Smaug comes out at night toeat people and particularly favoursmaidens, though he will also eatponies and Lake-men.

The dietary and sun-exposure hab-its of the protagonists are shown inthe Box. The mean vitamin D scorewas significantly higher among thevictorious (mean, 3.4; SD, 0.5) thanthe non-victorious (mean, 0.2; SD,0.4; P < 0.001). However, the absoluteconcordance between goodness andvictoriousness precludes an assess-ment of this as an independent effect.

Discussion

Systematic textual analysis of The hob-bit supports our initial hypothesis thatthe triumph of good over evil may beassisted to some extent by the poordiet and lack of sunlight experiencedby the evil characters.

For the purpose of this study, wehave not discriminated between crea-tures that can be considered, broadlyspeaking, to be mammalian and thosethat are not and whose physiology ismore obscure. These include dragons,whose generation of fire has beendiscussed previously,8 as well as giantspiders and birds of unusual size.

Unfortunately, the principal pur-pose of the author of The hobbit wasnot to provide a systematic dietaryhistory, so reporting bias is a possibil-ity. In particular, there is an emphasisin the text on meat items similar toHomer’s Odyssey, where feasting is arecurrent motif but where few refer-ences to salad are made.

More research would be needed toestablish whether the results of the

current pilot investigation are repre-sentative of the wider Tolkien corpusand indeed of fantastic literature ingeneral, although this will need to bebalanced against the problems of pro-portionality of effort. A further limita-tion is that the concordance of dark-dwelling and evil make it more diffi-cult to infer causation from the cur-rent data. Further reviews of theliterature will need to focus on moremorally ambiguous tales to elucidatethis further, and the outcome of wellconstructed randomised controlledintervention studies may need to beimagined.Acknowledgements: No specific funding was available for this work. Nicholas Hopkinson is supported by the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Unit at Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust and Imperial College London but would like to make it clear that he did this in his own time.

Competing interests: We declare that we have no conflicts of interest relating to this work, though Nicholas Hopkinson quite liked Game of thrones on the telly and Joseph Hopkinson has read all of the books.

Received 20 Feb 2013, accepted 7 Aug 2013.

1 Jackson AS, Hopkinson NS. Vitamin D in COPD - a pleiotropic micronutrient in a multisystem disease. Curr Respir Med Rev 2011; 7: 414-420.

2 Martineau AR, Wilkinson RJ, Wilkinson KA, et al. A single dose of vitamin D enhances immunity to mycobacteria. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2007; 176: 208-213.

3 Barnard K, Colon-Emeric C. Extraskeletal effects of vitamin D in older adults: cardiovascular disease, mortality, mood, and cognition. Am J Geriatr Pharmacother 2010; 8: 4-33.

4 Jackson AS, Shrikrishna D, Kelly JL, et al. Vitamin D and skeletal muscle strength and endurance in COPD. Eur Respir J 2013; 41: 309-316.

5 Donaldson GC, Wilkinson TM, Hurst JR, et al. Exacerbations and time spent outdoors in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 2005; 171: 446-452.

6 Montes de Oca M, Loeb E, Torres SH, et al. Peripheral muscle alterations in non-COPD smokers. Chest 2008; 133: 13-18.

7 Herodotus. The histories. c 430 BCE; Book Seven, Section 226.

8 Georgy ST, Widdicombe JG. The pyrophysiology and sexuality of dragons. Respir Physiol Neurobiol 2002; 133: 3-10. ❏

Characteristics of inhabitants of Middle Earth

Inhabitants Good VictoriousVitamin D score

Hobbits Yes Yes 4

Dwarves Yes Yes 3

Beorn Yes Yes 3

Men Yes Yes 4

High elves Yes Yes 4

Wood elves Yes Yes 2

Eagles Yes Yes 3

Smaug the dragon

No No 0

Trolls No No 0

Goblins No No 0

Gollum No No 1

11) · 16 December 2013