Story on BBC tonight about jellyfish the size of two match heads that can kill bathers
off eastern Australia:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2713211.stm

I haven't read the article yet, wwh. I will. But the size of two match heads? How in Sam's Hill would you see the bloody thing? Big Virginia jellyfish are pretty hard to see. But two match heads. Somebody needs to send this information to Dave Barry.

OK. Just read it. And there's a cool word problem that I can see going both ways.

First the name of the nefarious little beast:

irukandji jellyfish

Irukandji means "Match Head Two Times Over." Just kidding.

But here's the interesting sentence from the article to parse since this is a word board and even occasionally down here on the safari that only wwh and I read and write in with occasional visits by such dignitaries as the recent flight of the wingful Asp. Oh, I got sidetracked thinking about what a desolate place this safari is. Here's the sentence (wwh, I know you're with me):

"Peter Fenner, a jellyfish expert, said: "Of course, two patients doesn't make a whole solution but it's an extremely helpful tool for hospital treatment."

Two patients doesn't make? Now I understand that what jellyfish expert Fenner means: solution (singular) = whatever quantity is equivalent to the singular solution. But, sheesh, what's wrong with:

"Two patients don't make a whole solution"? I know, I know already! You're thinking, "Well, Jellyfish Fenner said it that way so we wouldn't think the two patients were actively engaged in making the solution themselves, Wordwind, you thick-headed lout!"

But I think that the "two patients doesn't make" is such an awkward construction that we (people like me) lose the whole story while trying to figure out why the plural subject is taking a singular verb, and, once we've figured it out, we've forgotten what the story was about in the first place.

Any thoughts on this, wwh?

Dear WW: you might not see it, but it apparently is extremely painful. Fifty years ago there
were reports that painful stings from Atlantic jellyfish could be soothed by application of
meat tenderizer, which contains an enzyme said to be capable of detoxifying the venom.
I never got a chance to test it. My wife saw a scientist at Bar Harbor, where she had summer
job in the Laboratories there, scoop a dead jellyfish out of a pail, not stopping to think that
the sting cells were still functional. She said he had great pain in his hand for several hours.

Oh, you can see 'em--but you have to keep your eyes peeled for them. I've never been stung by one. They certainly do look like jelly.

But what's hard to see about the Portuguese Man o' War is the very long almost invisible
tentacles that hang deep into the water. Remember the Sherlock Holmes story
The Lion's Mane?

I was stung by a jellyfish once in Mazatlan. There is a whole nother story attached to this, but to keep it short, it hurt like hell for several hours. The Red Cross clinic my (now ex-)husband took me to gave me an OTC pain killer and rubbed the sting with lemon juice. I had already been in physical and emotional agony for an hour and the next several hours were spent in mental anguish, so I really can't tell you if it helped or not. The irony of the whole thing is that I was stung while standing in two inches of water, trying to coax my one year old daughter into the ocean, telling her there was nothing to be afraid of.

I just did a search for treatment of jellyfish stings. There are so many conflicting statements that
it is clear none of the treatments are much good. There are so many incidents that you'd think
that there shouldn't be so much confusiona dn contradiction, after so many years.

"Of course, two patients doesn't make a whole solution..."

...why the plural subject is taking a singular verb...

The subject, it ain't plural. The "two patients" are a single entity. "The two patients..." would be plural.

Thanks for your response, Doc. And I understand the form used here with 'two patients doesn't'--

But would 'two patients don't make a whole solution' be categorically incorrect? In other words, could this be an either/or case for grammatical correctness?

A medical aphorism: Beware of the man with a series of two cases.