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Julia Catanya’s family roots were in Andorra.  Through the mother’s family they had inherited an inn in Monaco, at the corner of Rue Grimaldi and Rue Suffren Reymond.  There’s a straight shot from the inn to the Grand Prix race circuit.  Years before the present, F1 teams were having some late night revelry the week before the race.  A team not generally in the front of the pack was running three McLarens purchased with only a few thousand miles on the frames, generally driven by little old ladies from Pasadena at an average speed of a hundred thirty seven miles per hour.  That team had rented out the inn for the duration of the racing preparations, time trials, the race, the “load out”, and some downtime afterwards.  Drivers and owners from other teams were adding to the joy that evening.

At the time, Formula 1 championship races held on actual streets, besides Monaco, were in Australia, Singapore, and varied courses in Spain’s Catalonia. The United States Watkins Glen street circuit was replaced in 1956 by a specially built course. Two and a half decades later F1 quit The Glen.

As one thing lead to another, two owners, one being the client of the inn, the other a friend and actual contender, bet on a short race from the front of the inn to the Place Ste. Devote by way of Boulevard Albert I^er.  Nearly sober drivers from the two teams would drive the owners’ private cars.  The client’s car was a Mercedes SLR McLaren, and the other owner’s car was an Audi RS6.  By eleven thirty PM the impromptu rules were established, and most of the restaurant’s patrons had arrayed themselves along the half mile course.  The race began at eleven fifty nine and was over before the nearby church chimed midnight.  Best anyone could tell, it was a tie, at 21.48 seconds.

The celebratory crowd trotted, stumbled, and walked back to the inn.  One enthusiast, in a high state of amiable incandescence, tried riding back on the fender of the Mercedes, but was promptly left on his derriere on the pavement.  Back at the inn the joviality continued to pay for Julia’s education as a medical doctor, hoping to specialize in auto-immune conditions.  Since it was a tie, the inn bought the next round, recouping their generosity in less than a half hour—a win-win for all.

Julia’s interest in auto-immune diseases was close to home.  Also via the mother’s side there was a recessive tendency to experience cauderexy.  If you were subject to the disease, a normal rhinovirus could become life-threatening via general inflammation and swelling throughout the head and into the brain.  Clinically it appeared similar to angioedema but was caused by a genetic susceptibility to rhinovirus rather than a reaction caused by histamine or bradykininn.  The condition was short in duration, and most recovered within four to six days, the cold gone as well.

The disease has a curious association with the Andorran region.  Pharmacies in the country sold a locally prepared anti-inflammatory, used most frequently as an ingested remedy for bug bites.  People suffering cauderexy had also come to rely on that formulation.  It was sketchy whether it helped with the bug bites, and mostly was relied on for cauderexy because there just wasn’t anything else that seemed to help alleviate the swelling, and whether it actually did any good for that was mostly a matter of desperation.  So Julia was interested.