Rue Poirier de Narcay

When I was 16 in 1988 I spent a couple of days in Paris with a language school. I brought the address for a game store, one that advertised in White Dwarf magazine. It was on Rue Poirier de Narcay, which turned out not to be a central location, and so I never went there. But I've wondered off and on through the years about this funny street name, "The street of the pear tree of Narcay".

And now, of course, the net can cure any idle wonderings in an instant. Turns out, the street is named for a medical doctor, Robert Poirier de Narcay, whose dissertation De l'ascite congénitale was published in 1884. It's about congenital ascites, "abdominal dropsy". In 1900 the doctor published the novel La Bossue, "The Hunchbacked Woman", which was re-issued in 1980.

So, no pear tree outside the game store.