From F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
I read with great interest your report on the two young scientists, Antoine and Louis Cyr, who have diagnosed pituitary damage in the cartoon character Tintin (18 December 2004, p 18). They are, however, using incomplete data when they report that Tintin’s symptoms include an absence of libido.
The researchers may not have read Tintin’s last adventure, Tintin and Alph-Art, which was left unfinished at the time of creator Georges Rémi’s death in 1983. In this story, Tintin shows a strong reaction to an attractive young woman in a skimpy skirt. Tintin’s libido may have taken 60 years to develop, but it arrived eventually.
Also, I have never understood why Tintin is so often described as a reporter. Several of his adventures end with Tintin’s latest triumph being widely publicised in news stories written by other journalists, but if Tintin himself ever filed a news dispatch in his many years of adventures, I must have missed it.
Badlesmere, Kent, UK
