Chapter 2
A
good corpse is like a fine fillet of beef, the master would say—tender to the touch and easy to slice. He neglected to make any comparisons with the odor, however. Once it began to stink any cook worth her salt would throw the offending meat to the dogs. Not so with a cadaver. Unlike the side of an ox whose texture and general flavor benefited from a few days’ hanging, the human body needed to be butchered, in the technical sense, ideally within the first few hours of its slaughter, or in this case, demise.
Despite the fact that this particular corpse was relatively fresh, however, it was still proving difficult. Rigor mortis was setting in and Dr. Thomas Silkstone knew he would have to work quickly if he wanted to dissect the intestinal lymphatics before they atrophied. The translucent flexible tubes that resembled a large tangle of string were already beginning to lose their elasticity, even though their unfortunate owner, a Mr. Joshua Smollett, had died only that morning. A former patient, he was one of the few visionaries to comprehend that if any strides were to be made in the field of medicine and the curation of diseases they could only be taken via the knowledge gleaned from the practice of anatomy. “Dissection,” as the master, properly known as Dr. Silkstone’s mentor, Dr. William Carruthers, would frequently say in his lectures, “is the key to understanding all illness.”
Thomas often found himself inadvertently reciting Dr. Carruthers’s mantras. He hated himself for doing it, after all he was now a qualified surgeon in his own right, but the influence of the old man’s teaching had seeped into every fiber of his being and dictated every turn of his professional thoughts, every incision of his razor-sharp knife. “You are an artist,” Thomas recalled him saying more than once. “You are a da Vinci, a Michelangelo. The scalpel is your brush and the corpse your canvas.” It was hard to think of himself as an artist, however, when he had to breathe in short, sharp movements to stop himself retching.
It was autumn now, and the air was cool and relatively fresh, but when the temperature rose so, too, would the reek of decaying flesh. That was the time when only those with the strongest of constitutions could stomach the vile and noxious miasma, which rose throughout every dissecting room in London, fed by sunlight and heat.
It was rare for Thomas to handle a corpse such as Mr. Smollett’s. Indeed, these days he was finding it increasingly rare to handle a corpse at all. When he had first come to London, a fresh-faced foreigner all the way from Philadelphia, the Corporation of Surgeons had invited him to participate in the dissection of a cadaver fresh from the gallows. He shuddered as he remembered them in their black robes and gray wigs, as they peered and prodded like so many vultures until they went in for the first incision. Even now Thomas found the whole affair utterly distasteful, despite the fact that the man they were mutilating was always a convicted felon and had, in all probability, mutilated several people himself while they were still alive.
It was only natural therefore that a man in his position and with such weighty responsibilities should seek out just a few of the many distractions that London offered. In his native Philadelphia he had enjoyed masques and balls, whereas here he found the company a little dull and markedly less refined. The ladies, too, he had noted, possessed by and large thicker ankles than their sisters in Pennsylvania. Nevertheless in London he had found salvation in the theater and, in particular, Mr. Garrick’s in Drury Lane. He had read all the great philosophers but nowhere was the human condition so well expounded as in the great actor’s production of
King Lear.
As he worked on the flaccid body that had once housed Mr. Smollett, Thomas was in a reflective mood. Unlike most of his patients, who would make their loved ones swear as they sat by their deathbeds that their corpses would never be handed over for dissection, Mr. Smollett had no fear of forgoing the pleasures of paradise if he allowed his body to be opened. “St. Peter will welcome me whether I be in a shroud or in pieces,” he had quipped on Thomas’s penultimate visit, before his laughter had caused him to cough up blood.
Phthisis, also known as tuberculosis, also known as the white death, was the obvious agent of his demise. Thomas had found his lungs to be badly scarred as he had expected, but it was the lymphatic system that currently occupied him and so he had taken the opportunity of slicing into the lower abdomen. Mr. Smollett had been a portly gentleman to say the least, and by the time Thomas had peeled away through layers of cream-colored subcutaneous fat, the tissues and organs were becoming increasingly resistant to his scalpel. Not only that, but the light was now fading and he would soon have to resort to candles.
Mistress Finesilver, the wily housekeeper, had already warned him that too much household money was being expended on candles but a good, bright light was essential for his work. He would rather spend money on tallow than on port wine and had told her so, much to her annoyance. He put down his scalpel, wiped his hands on his large, stained apron, and fetched a candelabrum from the windowsill. Placing it on the table just by Mr. Smollett’s left buttock, he struck a flint and lit a long taper. He could not afford himself the luxury of a fire that would turn the corpse even more quickly. Cradling the flame in his bloody hands, he lit the five candles so that Mr. Smollett’s abdomen was gradually illuminated in a halo of soft light.
Now that Dr. Carruthers’s failing sight had forced him to relinquish his work, Thomas had taken on his mantle. Gone were the days when Carruthers would pack a lecture theater to the rafters with students eager to see the precision with which he could remove a man’s spleen or amputate a limb. Unlike his teacher, Thomas was no great showman. He preferred to work quietly and efficiently alone, making detailed notes of his observations as Dr. Carruthers had taught. He now labored in his erstwhile master’s laboratory, graduating from the cramped, airless room at the rear of the Dover Street premises that once served him as a study. He had inherited Dr. Carruthers’s spacious rooms in Hollen Street and all that came with them and that included the grotesque and disturbing creatures that now stared out at him reproachfully from their glass prisons in the half light, like forlorn captives frozen in time.
There was, however, one other living creature in the laboratory—a creature that served as both companion and confessor. He had named him after his father’s friend, the noted scientist, politician, and now war activist Benjamin Franklin, and he was a white rat. Thomas would swiftly point out to anyone who objected to his presence that he was an albino rat as opposed to a black rat. Franklin was, he insisted, not a carrier of disease, but a “pet”—a concept that many surgeons found hard to grasp, it seemed. Dr. Carruthers was about to dissect the poor creature, but Thomas had taken pity on him and persuaded him that he would be much better off kept in the laboratory for experiments. Dr. Carruthers was persuaded of the logic of this and shortly afterward lost his sight. So Franklin—although Dr. Carruthers was unaware that the laboratory rat had been given a name, of course—came out of his cage and accompanied Thomas to his room at night, where he slept in a wooden crate on the floor.
There was something very comforting about having Franklin with him while he worked, Thomas thought, as he wiped the blood from his lancet. He liked to hear him nibbling away at the scraps he left out for him and scurrying around in his cage, which was kept unlocked so that he could, if he chose, roam freely around the laboratory. Thomas frequently talked to him, trying out new theories on him. If he understood a tenth of what he was talking about he would be the most learned rat in Christendom, Thomas thought, smiling to himself.
The smile, however, soon left his lips when he realized that Mr. Smollett’s guts were still exposed like untidy skeins of wool and that, according to the large timepiece on the wall, it was nearly six o’clock. It would soon be dark and time was not on his side. Painstakingly he traced a length that ran alongside a vein and which drained into a channel connected to a vein in the upper chest. Through this branch, Dr. Carruthers had discovered that the nutritious properties of food products enter the veins, conveying them to the heart, the blood acting as a sluice. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Thomas’s mentor had long held that the lymphatic flow was afferent, draining tissue fluid and chyle from the organs and gut back to the heart.
Three years before, the old man had completely lost his sight, but with the help of Thomas, he had proved conclusively that his theory was right. Prior to this most of his colleagues had believed the converse to be true and that the arterial flow was in fact the opposite, toward the heart. This, Dr. Carruthers and Thomas had been able to demonstrate, was like laboring under the delusion that water ran up a spout rather than down it. Thomas now believed it was his duty to continue expanding on this hypothesis. He reported any new observations regularly to Dr. Carruthers, who listened eagerly to the protégé who had now become his eyes. Now and again he would interject with a challenge or an adjunct, always enlivening any report Thomas made with a peppering of colorful expletives and jocular asides. “The monkey’s arse, it did!” was one of his favorites. Fate had been cruel to the old man, depriving him of the very tools that were so vital to his craft, and Thomas felt privileged to be able to continue work so vital to the understanding of the human anatomy.
The young man squinted and pushed away the lock of dark blond hair that had flopped forward with the back of his bloodstained hand. For a moment he stood upright to straighten his aching back. He was fine-featured, tall and slender, and cut a dashing figure about London. The ladies especially noted his pale, flawless complexion and his smile, which revealed a mouth of perfect white teeth.
The light was poor and he knew he would soon have to admit defeat. He had no wish to put a strain on his eyes and suffer the same fate as his master. Out of respect for Mr. Smollett, he stitched up the large flap of skin over his belly, so that he now looked quite respectable, and replaced his sutures in alcohol.
Thomas rinsed his bloody hands in water and as he dried them on a towel, he heard the hoarse cry of a newspaper boy shouting out headlines through the high window facing out onto the street. Continuing to tidy away his instruments he suddenly found himself looking forward to Mistress Finesilver’s venison pie, a tankard of stout, and some good conversation with Dr. Carruthers. Afterward they would sit by the fire in the master’s study and Thomas would read that day’s edition of
The Daily Advertiser
out loud. They would discuss the major news of the day, and then Thomas would turn to the obituaries so that Dr. Carruthers could keep abreast of old associates or adversaries who had been recently deceased.
Rarely a week went by without someone with whom he had worked, or worked on, passing away. If the person had been a patient, Dr. Carruthers would relate his symptoms at the time of his treatment, be they gout or goiter, but if they were his colleagues, he might pause for a while as if picturing them at work, and mutter some melancholy tribute into the brandy that he cradled in his lap.
Thomas had all but finished clearing away when he heard footsteps outside his door. It was Mistress Finesilver. Despite having worked for Dr. Carruthers for more than thirty years, she still had little respect for the practice of anatomy and believed in a strict mealtime regimen. It mattered not that Thomas was on the verge of some great discovery that could benefit all mankind. Dinner was at half past six sharp and woe betide any man who challenged that. Mistress Finesilver also disapproved of Franklin, but had promised not to tell Dr. Carruthers about him in return for a regular supply of laudanum, which was her evening pleasure.
“Dinner is served, sir,” she shouted through the door. She knew better than to enter the laboratory for fear of seeing something she would rather not.
The venison pie was palatable, even if the meat was a little on the tough side. Another half hour in the pot would not have gone amiss, Thomas thought to himself as he champed his way through the chewy haunch.
Mistress Finesilver had cut the old doctor’s food up for him. He insisted on feeding himself, but did not always succeed. After the meal, he almost invariably had spits and spots of gravy liberally splashed over his waistcoat and Mistress Finesilver would dab it off with a damp cloth afterward, fussing like a mother hen.
That evening they sat as usual by the fire and, as usual, Thomas read out loud, starting with the top left-hand column, then working his way through the whole newspaper. On that particular day in October 1780 it was reported that a great hurricane had killed thousands in the Caribbean and that the ships on Captain Cook’s third voyage had returned to port in London, only without their master, who had been slaughtered in Kealakekua Bay. But it was the news that his fellow countryman Henry Laurens had been seized by the British and thrown into the Tower of London that caught Thomas’s eye and he inadvertently tutted his disapproval aloud.
“What upsets you so, young fellow?” questioned Dr. Carruthers. He often called Thomas “young fellow.”
Thomas framed his words carefully, not wishing to offend his mentor. “We New Englanders are not faring so well in our bid for independence,” he informed him.
“Independence! Balderdash and piffle!” came the swift response. “If you colonists have your independence, then every Tom, Dick, and Harry here in England will be wanting a vote soon. Mark my words. Then what would become of us all?” exclaimed Dr. Carruthers, taking a large gulp of brandy. There was a short pause, then the old gentleman said, as he always did, “So tell me who’s died this week, young fellow.”