The anatomists, p.1
The Anatomists, page 1
Hal McDonald
The Anatomists
For Nancy, who believed…
Contents
Chapter 1
As Queen Victoria prepares to enter her fifth decade upon…
Chapter 2
“Rather than scratch our heads over what we do not…
Chapter 3
The next morning found us strolling through Southwark in the…
Chapter 4
Our journey to Darcy, or more accurately to an inn…
Chapter 5
“Well, Jean-Claude,” I said, as we made our way toward…
Chapter 6
We arrived back at St. Alban’s just after midnight, and…
Chapter 7
That night found us returning to a certain dark and…
Chapter 8
The next morning found Jean-Claude and me in the operating…
Chapter 9
The route we followed to the Gazette offices took us…
Chapter10
When we carefully and discreetly passed St. Alban’s on the…
Chapter11
Having slept no more hours over the past few days…
Chapter12
Upon stepping out the door into the street next morning,…
Chapter13
“The doctor was a bit more forthcoming than we expected,…
Chapter14
Following our nearly disastrous misadventure with the angry mob, Dr….
Chapter15
As bleak as Dinmont Street was, at that or any…
Chapter16
The coach ride out to Darcy refreshed me very nearly…
Chapter17
As we crunched our way up the gravel walk to…
Chapter18
“Why can’t you simply admit it, Jean-Claude? You were wrong.
Chapter19
The following day dawned far more beautifully than I had…
Chapter20
While I was gallivanting around London with Maddy Worthington, Jean-Claude…
Chapter21
“But how could you, Jean-Claude?” I fumed. After bidding farewell…
Chapter22
The following morning being the last day of our forced…
Chapter23
The day passed remarkably quickly. As Jean-Claude only half-jestingly predicted,…
Chapter24
“Of course, you know much of the story after this…
Epilogue
“Care for a game of chess, Jean-Claude?” I asked, next…
Acknowledgments
About the author
Copyright
About the publisher
CHAPTER 1
As Queen Victoria prepares to enter her fifth decade upon the throne, I stand poised upon the threshold of my own momentous milestone—namely, retirement.
Looking back upon my long and, I must humbly add, distinguished career in medicine, I cannot help but reflect on how very much my chosen profession has changed since I first entered into it nearly half a century ago. Techniques for the diagnosis and treatment of physical maladies have, of course, advanced considerably over the past several decades, but an even more substantial, if perhaps subtler, alteration has occurred in the public perception of medicine itself, and of those of us who practice it. What is today considered a respectable—nay, very nearly sacred—vocation to which to dedicate one’s life was once viewed by the common masses with suspicion, and in some cases with outright antagonism, due to a variety of social dynamics far too numerous and complex to go into here. Suffice it to say that the early days of my career were fraught with difficulties, and even dangers, from which a physician starting out today is completely immune. Had I been in possession of a full foreknowledge of these difficulties as I initially contemplated the pursuit of medicine, however, I should not have veered one step from the path I actually followed, so very fascinating were the characters with which it brought me into contact and the adventures it afforded me. One such adventure befell me shortly after I first entered into the formal study of medicine.
Having completed my university studies at Oxford in 1824, I ventured to London and enrolled in St. Alban’s Medical School, to pursue the course of study that would ultimately permit me to practice as a physician. Upon inquiring from the Registrar where I might find lodgings close by the school, the gentleman directed me to a dingy narrow house that commonly let rooms to medical students. Earlier in the day, he had directed another student to an apartment at that same address, and, the accommodation being intended for two inhabitants, thought we might wish to share the rooms, as well as the expenses.
I followed the man’s directions through crowded, dirty streets until arriving at the designated address, where I climbed a torturous set of stairs up to the first floor and rapped upon the apartment door. In response to a vague, indistinguishable voice from the other side, I let myself into the apartment, where I encountered one of the most singular specimens of human mortality ever to walk the face of the earth. It was Jean-Claude Legard, formerly of Paris, but now a confirmed “Englishman” ever since arriving in Cambridge three years earlier for his own university studies. I shall never forget that first glimpse of him, for it was part and parcel of the man’s entire character, as I would come to know it over the course of the next many years. He was sitting at a small table beside the cold empty hearth busily occupied in a game of chess—with himself! Sliding the chessboard ’round and ’round, he played first one player’s move, then the other, all the while studying an anatomy book that lay open at his left elbow. He never so much as acknowledged my presence until he got himself into checkmate and turned over his king, punctuating this final move with a strange clicking sound from his tongue. Then he stood up, introduced himself formally with a slight bow, and immediately asked me if I cared to play a game of chess. It was to be the first of countless such games.
Our first year of medical study passed quickly, involving mostly theoretical bookwork along with great quantities of rote memorization. Jean-Claude, of course, excelled in all of this foundational study—his confidence in the synthetic powers of reason being second only to his monumental faith in his own capacity for wielding these powers. While not nearly as capacious as he in absorbing raw intellectual matter, I nonetheless handled myself adroitly enough to complete the first year without serious incident and advance to the second year, when we should finally be permitted to lay aside the books from time to time and venture into the operating theater for some practical firsthand experience with human anatomy.
To embark upon next this phase of our studies, it was incumbent upon us to procure our own anatomical specimen, or, in slightly less euphemistic words, a human body. There being in those days virtually no legal means of procuring such specimens, students of medicine reluctantly but almost universally resorted to trade with that seedy species of night-laborer known as “resurrectionists.” Not to put too fine a point upon the matter, the resurrectionists were grave robbers for hire. If a medical student required a specimen, he sent word out “on the street,” and sometime during the next few days would be approached by a beggar, urchin, or some other species of societal refuse announcing the imminent delivery of said specimen. And then, at the appointed hour and location, the resurrectionist would arrive with the grim fruit of his night’s labor, take his money, and disappear back into the darkness from which he had emerged.
Like most students of medicine, Jean-Claude and I felt a natural and instinctive revulsion toward this evil practice, but realizing, alas, that it was a necessary evil, when our time came to produce a cadaver for our continued study of the human anatomy, we swallowed our repugnance and ventured onto the street. The agent of our brief intercourse with the trade turned out to be a surprisingly clear-eyed and energetic lad of fourteen named “Jimmy,” whom we arranged to meet at a certain dark hour on a certain dark street corner two blocks away from St. Alban’s. We arrived, as instructed, with a rustic wooden handcart, which we had “borrowed” from the school’s maintenance shed. Bumping this cart through the virtually deserted street, fearing that every jarring cobble broadcast our nefarious mission to the whole of London, Jean-Claude and I felt alternately sinister and ridiculous. Just imagine for a moment, two respectable young medical students hauling an empty wooden handcart through the streets like some common day laborers. Sensing my emotional ambivalence regarding our current task, Jean-Claude dispelled my nervous gloom by concentrating on the ridiculous rather than the sinister element of our plight. For all his surface respectability and seriousness, Jean-Claude had a wickedly droll irreverent streak that was highly welcome on occasions such as this. “To market to market, to buy a fat pig,” he quietly chanted, in that peculiar Anglo-French dialect of his. “I say, Jean-Claude,” I replied in mock moral outrage, but with unmistakable relief in my voice. “Do have some respect for the dead.” Had we not been strolling through pitch-blackness, I am sure I would have seen that familiar little curl that always appeared in the corner of his mouth when he was particularly pleased with something he had said. Our moment of levity was short-lived, however, for the faint light of a lantern up ahead soon revealed to us the gangly figure of Jimmy, leaning casually upon his own handcart.
“Good evenin’, gentl’men,” he greeted us in a matter-of-fact tone, as if it were a load of turnips he had in that cart instead of what had once been a living, breathing, rational human being. “Let’s make this quick, now. Don’t want to attract no attention, do we?” As much as I wholeheartedly agreed wi
“The agreed-upon fee was four guineas, was it not,” Jean-Claude interjected, clearly as eager as I to bring this transaction to a rapid close. He produced from his coat pocket a small purse of coins, which Jimmy tossed up and down a few times, as if checking the weight, then stuffed unceremoniously into his own coat pocket. And then, after threading his fingers together and giving his knuckles a good crack, as if he were getting ready to dig a ditch instead of…well, what he was about to do, he squatted down behind his cart, heaved a large canvas bag up onto his shoulder, and then deposited the bag into our own cart with an unforgettably sickening thud. “Come ’round again if you got any more business to do,” he said casually, and turned and walked away. Following the dim light of his lantern with our eyes, we watched in curious disbelief as he strolled merrily down the street, parked his handcart before a row of run-down-looking houses, and disappeared into a door hanging none too securely on its hinges beneath a sign that read THE JOLLY FOX TAVERN.
“He appears to like his work, that lad,” Jean-Claude observed, with that slight clicking of his tongue, though whether of disapproval or amusement, I could not tell. And then, patting the side of our cart with the flat of his hand, by way of invitation, queried, “Shall we?” Swallowing my repugnance and trying to adopt a portion of Jean-Claude’s flippant bravado, I grasped one handle of the cart, he grasped the other, and we wheeled our dread burden back to St. Alban’s.
Public anatomical dissections, for the benefit of student observation, were typically performed by veteran surgeons in the bright, spacious operating theatre of Sloane’s Hospital, the institutional sponsor of St. Alban’s. When the time came for the students to practice the surgical procedures we had observed in the demonstrations, however, we were herded into a close, dank common dissection hall at St. Alban’s, where we worked elbow to elbow upon anywhere from four to eight cadavers at a time. In order to prolong the useful “life” of these dead bodies, dissections took place during the winter months only, but the perpetual chill in which we conducted our researches did little to quell the noxious atmosphere that is so natural and inevitable a feature of postmortem existence. It was a dissection table in this charnel house for which our burlap-clad subject was bound, but first we had to perform a cursory private examination of the cadaver to assure ourselves that it was not already dismembered, or in an advanced state of decomposition—in short, to make sure we’d gotten our four guineas’ worth.
Toward this end, we carried our evening’s “purchase” into a defunct root cellar, upon whose dark earthen walls hung smoky torches whose feeble light had poorly illuminated countless precautionary examinations such as the one we were about to perform, and deposited the sack unceremoniously upon an ancient, smooth-worn, and rather disturbingly stained carving table there.
As horrifying as our dark endeavor had seemed to me while our “subject” was crudely and shapelessly wrapped in burlap, once we had him laid out upon the table, my professional curiosity to a large degree overcame my revulsion. We had, after all, been preceded in our labors by a whole train of anatomists, many of whom were held in quite high regard by polite society. Hadn’t Leonardo da Vinci done many times what we were preparing to do tonight?
Thus morally and emotionally mollified, I took my place at Jean-Claude’s side and gave my undivided attention to the poor fellow spread out on the table before us—a mustachioed man in his mid to late twenties who, aside from being dead, appeared the very picture of health.
“Hmm,” I heard Jean-Claude mutter, significantly. Having grown up in the home of a Parisian gendarme, my friend had a more-than-passing acquaintance with violence and death, and as he stood there meditatively stroking his chin, I knew he must have noticed something amiss with our subject.
Having, not disagreeably, no prior experience with dead bodies myself, I nonetheless immediately suspected the meaning behind his speculative utterance. “The clothes,” I ventured.
“Yes,” he responded. For in truth, there was something quite odd about the departed man’s mode of attire. “When the deceased is prepared for interment,” he continued, “is it not the practice to attire him ‘to the nines,’ as they say? But this man here…”
“Yes,” I said. “He looks as if he’d been playing cards all night long.”
“Précisément,” responded Jean-Claude, looking pleased with the analogy. “Playing cards, yes. And in genteel company.”
This latter observation referred to the quality of the man’s clothing, which was, indeed, that of a gentleman—expensive fabric tailored to a perfect fit, just the sort of clothing one might expect a deceased gentleman to be buried in. The strangeness of the ensemble lay, not in the suit itself, but rather in the general state of dishevelment in which we found the suit on first inspection. The coat, for example, was missing entirely. The vest, terribly wrinkled, gaped halfway open, and the unbuttoned collar and loosened black tie hung shapelessly about his neck. “Not exactly prepared to meet his Maker, eh Jean-Claude,” I observed.
“We can know nothing of what happens when he meets his Maker,” he replied, “but perhaps we can find out something about what sent him on his journey. And regardless of how strange his clothes may appear to us, we can discover little while he still has them on. To work!”
And with that sudden exhortation—of the kind, by the way, Jean-Claude was extremely fond of uttering—we set about undressing our gentleman. Being of a slightly more robust physical nature, I grasped him underneath his arms and lifted him to a seated position, while Jean-Claude worked at removing his vest and shirt. After a few minutes of this labor, I began to gain a new understanding of the word “deadweight,” for my shoulders and back began to ache under the prolonged strain. “I say, Jean-Claude,” I groaned, “do get on with it.”
“I am working as rapidly as I can, my friend. You see, I already have the vest and tie, and here comes the shirt…But what is this?” he exclaimed as he removed the collar. “Mon dieu!”
Seeing that Jean-Claude had succeeded in removing the man’s shirt, and having reached the end of my physical endurance, I allowed our subject to return to his original prone position and stretched my cramping shoulders and back.
Paying absolutely no heed to my physical distress, Jean-Claude held the shirt collar in front of my face, and said, “What do you make of this, my friend?”
For a moment, I could make out nothing but the shadow of my own head, so very uneven was the lighting, but after shifting my position and blinking away the sweat that had trickled into my eyes during my recent exertion, I saw it. There in the dead center of the back of the collar was a single rust-colored spot about the size and shape of a single halfpenny. “It looks like blood,” I said, somewhat stupidly, having not fully recovered my composure.
“Of course it is blood,” he responded, a bit too excitedly for my tastes, given the circumstances. “Do you know what this means?”
I had been acquainted with Jean-Claude for over a year at this point and had long since become accustomed to these impromptu dialectical sessions. Nonetheless, I always seemed to be one step behind him in his chain of reasoning. “I have my own theory,” I said, trying to appear guardedly knowledgeable, “but why don’t you tell me yours first?”
“Zut!” he exclaimed, rolling his eyes, and raising his hands as if in supplication to the ceiling. “How many dead men have you ever known to bleed? This man, however—a gentleman, by all appearances—bled after he was placed in these clothes, presumably his burial clothes. Regarde, and from the dishabille of his clothes, he appears to have been quite mobile in them for some time before he died. The bleeding, and the wrinkled clothes—they can mean only one thing!” Here he paused, as if to permit me to provide the conclusion to the premises he had patiently laid out before me. Fortunately, before I had to venture a guess as to where he was headed with all of this, another thought occurred to him. “Quick, turn him over! We must see.”
