City of Dreams (52 page)

“The
Weekly Journal.”

“Yes, that’s the one. Any number of physicians advertising that they can cure this, that, and the other thing. You must lift yourself above the throng, Caleb.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Papa. But how do you propose I do so?”

“Simple. I have arranged for you to share a practice with Cadwallader Colden.”

“What an extraordinary name!”

“I can’t help what he’s called. You’ve been away too long, or you’d have heard of him. A rising star in politics, is Cadwallader Colden. He’s surveyor general of New York. That’s a lot of power, lad, saying who can build what where.”

“But I’m a doctor. I know nothing of—”

“Exactly. And so’s he.”

“Who?”

Will sighed. “Cadwallader Colden. He’s an Edinburgh-trained physician, same as you. But he’s got a wife and children to support, and he’s clever, and the governor’s given him an important post. So if he’s to keep his hand in medicine as well, he needs a young assistant. I’ve suggested that he take you on, and he’s agreed.”

Caleb had no money of his own, no wife, and no prospects. There was never any question but that he must comply with his father’s wishes. Neither father nor son imagined that a few months after taking up his association with Cadwallader Colden, Caleb would find himself in the middle of one of the worst and most invincible epidemics the city had known.

On a single May morning Caleb watched four children die.

Each small form went through the same torturous struggle to breathe. Each one turned blue moments before the end came. Each small body arched on the bed and tore at the bedclothes with grasping fingers as suffocation progressed. In two cases the intolerable pressure popped out the victim’s eyeballs before death came. Finally, painfully, slowly, in unimaginable agony, each young life ended.

Cadwallader Colden’s idea of being the senior partner of a medical practice was to allow the junior partner—Caleb—to do everything medical while Colden pursued his other affairs. Visits to the homes of the sick were turned over to Caleb. He was supposed to call on two other patients before the dinner hour of the day his four small patients expired. Instead he stumbled, sweating and nauseous, back to the small office his father had made available to the two men.

The office was a tiny room on the ground floor of the Devrey house on Wall Street, next door to the rooms that served Devrey Shipping. It contained little besides a pair of desks. There was a flask of rum put by for emergencies in one of them.

Caleb slammed the door behind him, grateful to have avoided meeting his father or his brother in the corridor, and stood with his eyes shut, leaning against the wall, trembling, waiting until he’d gathered enough strength to get to the rum.

“Good God, man, what’s wrong? Are you ill?”

Caleb opened his eyes and forced himself to straighten up. “Dr. Colden. I did not expect to find you here, sir. No, I’m not ill. At least I don’t think so.” He put a hand to his throat and drew a deep testing breath. No, he was fine.

“It doesn’t often attack adults,” Colden said quietly. “At least, there are few such instances in the literature.”

The man was always going on about “the literature.” Fancied himself more of a scientific investigator than a physician. By his lights that meant he could avoid having to stand helplessly beside little children and watch them choke to death. “I’m not afraid of catching it.” Caleb crossed to his desk and set his bag on it. “But looking on and being able to do nothing while this vicious disease slaughters whom it will, that’s wearying.”

“Yes, I suppose it must be.”

“Then you suppose correctly.”

Colden had been sitting, now he stood. It didn’t make a lot of difference. He was a short man, round, with little bandy legs that looked too fragile to support his body, and too much nose for his face. His short, heavily powdered wig had seen better days. It was constantly flaking and leaving a trail of white across the shoulders of the black coat he wore unbuttoned over a black vest and a white linen cravat. “How many this morning, then?”

“Four. Two in the same house. The remaining sons of a woman who has already lost her eldest boy to the bladders.”

“Dear God. I take it you blistered?”

“Of course.” Caleb opened his bag and pulled out the cupping tool and dropped it on the desk. “I clamped this damned thing on enough times to raise a throat blister from ear to ear. Frankly, Dr. Colden, I do not see that it did me or my patient a damned bit of good.”

“It must do. The literature is quite—”

“Yes, I know. The literature is quite specific. For a malign throat, a large blister covering the larynx. I assure you, I did not neglect to cup.”

What did they teach you in Edinburgh more important than the evidence of your own eyes?
Jennet’s words.

“And did you bleed?” the older man asked.

“Yes, Dr. Colden. I bled each of my patients. Morning and evening of every other day.
Ad deliquium
from the jugular, as the literature advises. And I administered the recommended eight grains a day of calomel. And twice daily I purged each child with a mixture of tartar emetic and cerated glass of antimony. And they shat and vomited until there could be nothing left in any part of the insides of any of them. And as far as curing
angina suffocativa
is concerned, none of it had the least effect.”

“It is nonetheless the treatment advised by all the best scientific minds.” Colden began gathering the papers lying on his desk. “And it certainly can do no harm. You need trouble yourself no further.”

The documents Colden was so concerned about appeared to be written in Will Devrey’s hand. No doubt details of property transactions he was interested in moving forward. “Dr. Colden … Have you lost a child to this throat distemper?”

Colden paused and looked up. “A child of my own?” Caleb nodded. The older man went back to arranging his papers. “No, sir. God has spared me that trial. And since my family lives some distance from the city, I do not fear for them in this latest plague.”

“You are indeed fortunate. My sister, too, lives far from here in the north of the Province. But my brother Bede and his wife have already lost their youngest daughter and fear for the remaining girl and their twin sons.”

Colden stopped fussing with the lists. “Yes, your father told me. It is a great sadness. You have my sympathies on the death of your niece, Dr. Devrey.”

“Thank you. May I ask you something else?”

“Of course.”

“Do you imagine, sir, that there might be … possibly. I mean, with great skill, enormous skill, and extra care …”

“Yes? What are you proposing, Dr. Devrey? Don’t be shy. Science is moved forward by observation and trial. If you have noted some medicine that—”

“No, nothing like that. What I was thinking … Might it be possible to intervene surgically, Dr. Colden?”

“Surgically? I take it you mean with a knife?”

“With a scalpel, yes.”

“Dear God, what a remarkable notion. No, of course that’s not possible. I give you my word, Dr. Devrey, if you cut the throats of your young patients they will die sooner rather than later.”

Caleb held up his large hands and studied them. “I didn’t mean that I should do it. I’m barely able to use a lancet for bleeding. My hands shake.”

“Never mind. You can call in a barber if you need to. Or use leeches.”

“Yes. I can and I do.” He was still staring at his hands. “But what about other people? Surgeons? Those who have skills with the knife.”

“Butchers have skills with the knife.” Colden had managed to arrange the papers in a manner that satisfied him and was putting them in a leather dispatch box. “I do not think any mother would thank you for bringing a butcher to her deathly ill child.” The box was closed and the key turned.

“No, I’m sure you’re right. But there’s something else troubling me.”

Cadwallader Colden had been headed for the door. He paused. “Yes? What more disturbs your peace, Dr. Devrey? It is, I may point out, almost the dinner hour. So I trust it is no important topic you are now proposing we consider.”

“Not very important, Dr. Colden. Simply this. Do you believe a woman could ever be a physician? Or perhaps a surgeon?”

“A woman be a … You are joking, are you not, sir?”

“Frankly, Dr. Colden, I’m not sure. I suppose I must be.”

In the first two years of her marriage to Solomon, Jennet saw Martha Kincaid only once, in passing on the street. Both women paused just long enough for Jennet to see that the growth hadn’t returned to Martha’s face, and notice the way the other woman was eyeing her fine gown and her cloak and her muff.

All the same, there was not a day since she’d visited the bawdyhouse in the woods that she wasn’t haunted by the memory of what she’d seen there. The man with the horn growing out of his scalp, the woman with hands attached to her elbows, the two-headed twins … The memory made her more than ever determined to do what she could for those whose troubles she could treat. Her charity and her surgical skills had improved the lives of the poorest women and children of the town, but this choking illness of the throat defeated her. On a Wednesday some three weeks into the siege she came home from the tanneries with her eyes red from weeping. “Solomon, this cannot be allowed to go on.”

He had been reading the
Gazette.
The paper reported a town on the long island where there were now only two children left alive. All the rest had been carried off by the bladders of the throat. “My dear girl, if it were in my power or that of anyone else in this province to stop it, the throat distemper would be gone by now. I take it you’ve had a particularly bad visit with your supplicants.”

“Horrid. Ada Carruthers … I’ve mentioned her before, haven’t I?”

“I believe so. The one with no husband and seven children.”

“Five. But she only has two left. Three choked to death this week. And none of the tanneries women have husbands. You of all people should understand how it is with them, Solomon, so don’t look at me in that fashion.”

They were in his second-floor study and Tilda, the black maid—Solomon never permitted anyone who worked for him to be referred to as a slave; even if they had been bought, he paid them all a wage—had delivered the tea tray. While she spoke Jennet was pouring the fragrant brew into large Spode cups. She used silver tongs to put two big chunks of brownish sugar in the one meant for her husband, and added a splash of milk. Solomon took the cup from her. “Thank you. And I shall look at you in whatever fashion I choose. I’m your husband. That’s my right.”

“My liege lord,” she said, managing a smile for the first time since she’d arrived home.

“Lord and master. Don’t forget the master part.”

“I shan’t. The master part is delicious.”

He took a swallow of the tea and smiled at her over the rim of the cup. “Jennet. Listen, my love. Don’t confuse those hags you fuss over with the women who work for me. My ladies are professional prostitutes. The crones who live in those shacks by the swamp beg in the streets and fornicate in any convenient doorway. They’re whores and drunks and frequently thieves. They spread disease and breed like rabbits. In any sane society they’d be locked away where they would be no threat to decent people.”

“What horrid things to say! If you think that, why do you help them so much?”

“I don’t. You do.”

“Only through your good offices.”

“Yes, but I am good for your sake. Because, as you well know, I adore you. You are good for theirs. And for the life of me, I have never figured out why.”

“I’ve never been entirely sure myself,” she admitted. “But ever since I was a child, since I knew that some people have a much harder life than I and my family did in the worst of times … Particularly after—” She broke off. She’d never told Solomon about Martha Kincaid’s bawdyhouse, or what it contained, much less that she’d gone to visit.

“Yes?”

“Nothing.” Jennet sipped her tea, didn’t look at him. Solomon was looking at her with an expression that said he knew a great deal more than she’d ever told him. “Misery calls to me,” she whispered. “It makes me shiver inside. And when that happens I think if I don’t do something I shall die. And so I do it.”