An Instance of the Fingerpost (9 page)

I shook my head. ‘Lower, I do not understand you,’ I said frankly. ‘Or any of your countrymen. So I will assume this is part of your nation’s manner, and that it is my fault for having so little understanding. I will drink with you.’

‘Thank heavens for that,’ he said. ‘I thought I had foolishly thrown away a valued friend through my own stupidity. You are goodness indeed to give me a second chance.’

‘But please explain. Why did I make you so angry?’

He waved his hand. ‘You didn’t. It was my misunderstanding, and I was upset over losing Prestcott. Not long ago I had a violent row with someone over astrological prediction. The College of Physicians is wedded to it and this man threatened to keep me out of practice in London because I disdain it in public and advocate the new mineral physick. It is a battle between new knowledge and the dead hand of old. I know you did not mean it like that, but I’m afraid the fight I had is too fresh in my mind. The sound of you, of all people, taking their part was too much to bear, so highly do I value you. Unforgivable, as I say.’

He had a way of turning insult into compliment which I was ill
equipped to handle; we Venetians have a reputation for the elaborate nature of both our courtesies and our insults, but they are so formal there is no chance of misunderstanding even the most opaque remark. Lower, and the English in general, had the unpredictability of the uncivilised; their genius is as uncontrolled as their manners, and can make them great or mad. I doubt that foreigners will ever know them, or truly trust them. But an apology was an apology, and I had rarely received such a handsome one; I shook his hand; we bowed solemnly, and toasted each other to bring the argument to a formal conclusion.

‘Why do you want Prestcott so much and so urgently?’

‘My brains, Cola, my brains,’ he said with a loud groan. ‘I have anatomised and drawn as many as I can lay my hands on, and I will soon be finished. I have devoted years to the task, and it will make my name when it is done. The spinal cord, in particular. Fascinating. But I cannot finish without some more, and unless I can finish I cannot publish my work. And there is a Frenchman who I know is doing much the same work. I will not be beaten by some snivelling papist . . .’

He paused, and realised he had mis-spoken again. ‘Apologies, sir. But so much depends on this, and it is heartbreaking to be denied by such stupidities.’

He opened the second bottle, took a long draught from the open neck and handed it to me. ‘So there you are. The reasons for my incivility. They combine, I must admit, with an overly wayward temperament. I am choleric by nature.’

‘So much for the man who rejects traditional medicine.’

He grinned. ‘True enough. I speak metaphorically.’

‘Did you mean it about the stars? You think it is nonsense?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I really don’t. Are our bodies a microcosm of all creation? Can we discern movements of the one from studying the other? Probably. It makes perfect sense, I suppose, but no one has ever given me a good and unassailable method to do it by. All this star-gazing the astronomers do seems very thoughtless stuff, and they will wrap it up so in nostrums and gabblings. And they will keep on finding more of them with these telescopes of theirs. All very interesting, but they become so
enthusiastic they’ve all but forgotten the reason why they’re looking. But do not start me on that. I will lose my temper for the second time in the day. So, can we start again?’

‘In what way?’

‘Tell me about your patient, that most strange widow Anne Blundy. I will give the matter my full attention, and any suggestions I make will be without the slightest taint of criticism.’

I was still chary of taking such a risk and so hesitated until Lower sighed and made an elaborate preparation to go back down on his knees.

‘All right,’ I said, holding up my hands and trying to stop myself laughing once more. ‘I surrender.’

‘Thank heavens,’ he said. ‘For I’m sure I will be rheumatic when I’m old. Now, if I’m right, I believe you said the wound was not knitting?’

‘No. And it will turn putrid very rapidly.’

‘You’ve tried exposing it to the air, rather than keeping it bandaged?’

‘Yes. It is making no difference.’

‘Fever?’

‘Surprisingly not. Not yet, but it must come.’

‘Eating?’

‘Nothing, unless her daughter has managed to feed her some gruel.’

‘Piss?’

‘Thin, with a lemony aroma and astringent taste.’

‘Hmm. Not good. You’re quite right. Not good.’

‘She will die. I want to save her. Or at least I did. I find the daughter intolerable.’

Lower ignored the last remark. ‘Any sign of gangrene?’

I told him no, but that there was again every likelihood it might appear.

‘D’ye think she would be interested in advancing . . .?’

‘No,’ I said firmly.

‘What about the daughter? If I offered her a pound for the remains?’

‘You have met the girl, I believe.’

Lower nodded, and sighed heavily. ‘I tell you, Cola, if I should die tomorrow, you have my full permission to anatomise me. Why it causes such upset I do not know. After all, they’re buried eventually, aren’t they? What does it matter how many pieces they’re in, as long as they die with the blessings of religion? Do they think the Good Lord is incapable of reassembling them in time for the Second Coming?’

I replied that it was the same in Venice; for whatever reason, people did not like the idea of being cut up, whether they were dead or alive.

‘What do you intend to do with the woman?’ he asked. ‘Wait till she dies?’

It was then that I had an idea and instantly decided to share it. Such was my trusting nature that it never occurred to me not to do so.

‘Hand me that bottle again,’ I said, ‘and I’ll tell you what I’d like to do, if I were only able.’

He did so at once, and I briefly considered the momentous step I was about to take. I was hardly in an equable frame of mind; my distress at the bruising I had received, and the relief at his apology, were so great that my judgement was unbalanced. I do believe I would never have drawn him into my confidence had his loyalty and friendship been unquestioned; now it had been placed in doubt, the wish to please him and demonstrate my seriousness swept all before it.

‘Please forgive the clumsy way I express this,’ I said, when he was leaning back on my truckle bed as comfortably as was possible. ‘The idea came to me only when we were watching that dove in the vacuum pump. It is about the blood, you see. What if, by accident, there is not enough blood to carry the nutrient? Could a loss of blood mean that there is insufficient to vent the excess heat from the heart? Might that not be a cause of fever? Also, I have wondered for some years whether the blood gets old with the rest of the body. Like a canal with stagnant water in it, where everything starts to die, because the passageway becomes clogged.’

‘Certainly, if you lose blood, you die.’

‘But why? Not from starvation, nor from excess heat, either. No, sir. It is the draining or occlusion of the life spirit present in the blood that causes death. The blood itself, I am convinced, is merely the carrier for
this spirit. And it is the decay of that spirit which causes old age. That, at least, is my theory, and it is one where the traditional knowledge you disdain, and the experimental knowledge you applaud, are in perfect agreement.’

‘At which point, we connect your theoretical preliminary with the practicalities of your case, is that not so? Tell me how you would proceed.’

‘If you think about it simply, it is very straightforward. If we are hungry, we eat. If we are cold, we approach heat. If our humours are unbalanced, we add or create some more to recreate equilibrium.’

‘If you believe that nonsense.’

‘If you do,’ I said. ‘If you do not, and you believe in the elemental theories, then you rebalance the body by strengthening the weakest of the three elements. That is the essence of all medicine, old and new: to restore equilibrium. Now, in this case, taking away more blood by leeching or scarifying the patient would only make matters worse. If her life spirit is diminished, reducing it still further cannot help her. This is Sylvius’s theory, and I believe he is correct. Logically, instead of taking blood away, the only answer should be . . .’

‘To add some more,’ Lower said quickly, leaning forward in his seat with sudden eagerness as he finally grasped what I was talking about.

I nodded enthusiastically. ‘That’s it,’ I said, ‘that’s it exactly. And not just more, but young blood, fresh, new and unclogged, with the vitality of youth in its essence. Maybe that would allow an old person to repair a wound. Who knows, Lower,’ I said excitedly, ‘it might be the elixir of life itself. It is thought, after all, that merely getting a child to share a bed can benefit the health of an elderly person. Just think what their blood might do.’

Lower leant back in his chair and took a deep draught of ale as he thought about what I had said. His lips moved as he held a silent conversation with himself, going over in his mind all the possibilities. ‘You have fallen under the influence of Monsieur Descartes, have you not?’ he asked eventually.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘You have constructed a theory, and that leads you to recommend a practice. You have no evidence that it would work. And, if I may say
so, your theory is confused. You argue by analogy – using a humoral metaphor you do not actually believe in – to conclude that supplying an absence is a solution. That is, adding vital spirit, the existence of which is conjectural.’

‘Though not disputed even by yourself.’

‘No. That is true.’

‘Do you dispute my theory, though?’

‘No.’

‘And is there any way of finding out whether I am correct except by testing it against result? That is surely the basis of experimental philosophy?’

‘That is Monsieur Descartes’s basis,’ he said, ‘if I understand him correctly. To frame a hypothesis, then amass evidence to see if it is correct. The alternative, proposed by my Lord Bacon, is to amass evidence, and then to frame an explanation which takes into account all that is known.’

In retrospect, looking back over the conversation which I noted diligently in the book which was with me on my travels and which I now re-read for the first time in many years, I see many things which were obscured from my understanding then. The English detestation of foreigners leads very swiftly to a wish to ignore any advance which stems from what they consider faulty methods, and allows this proudest of people to claim all discoveries as their own. A discovery based on faulty premises is no discovery: all foreigners influenced by Descartes employ faulty premises, and therefore . . .
Hypotheses non fingo
. No hypotheses here: is that not the trumpet blast of Mr Newton as he assails Leibniz as a thief for having the same ideas as himself? But at that time I merely thought my friend was using argument as a means of furthering our knowledge.

‘I believe your summary of Monsieur Descartes does him scant justice,’ I said, ‘but no matter. Tell me how you would you proceed.’

‘I would begin by transfusing blood between animals – young and old of the same type, then between different types. I would transfuse water into an animal’s veins, to see whether the same response was elicited. Then, I would compare all the results to see what exactly the effects of transfusing blood are. Finally, when I could proceed with certainty, I would make the attempt on Mrs Blundy.’

‘Who by then would have been dead for a year or more.’

Lower grinned. ‘Your unerring eye has spotted the weakness of the method.’

‘Are you suggesting I should not do this?’

‘No. It would be fascinating. I merely doubt whether it is well founded. And I am certain that it would cause scandal. Which makes it a dangerous business to discuss publicly.’

‘Let me put it another way. Will you help me?’

‘Naturally I should be delighted. I was merely discussing the issues that are raised. How would you proceed?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I thought that maybe a bull might serve. As strong as an ox, you know. But good reasons rule that out. The blood has a tendency to congeal. So it would be imperative to transport it immediately from one creature into the other without delay. And we could hardly bring an ox in. Besides, the blood transports the animal spirit, and I would be loath to infuse the bestiality of an ox into a person. That would be an offence against God, Who has set us higher than the animals.’

‘Your own, then?’

‘No, because I would need to attend to the experiment.’

‘There is no problem. We can easily find someone. The best person’, he continued, ‘would be the daughter. She would be willing, for her mother’s sake. And I’m sure we could impress on her the need for silence.’

I had forgotten about the daughter. Lower saw my face fall, and asked me what was the matter. ‘She was so insufferably offensive last time I visited the house I vowed never to set foot there again.’

‘Pride, sir, pride.’

‘Perhaps. But you must understand that I cannot give way. She would have to come to me on her knees before I would reconsider.’

‘Leave that for a moment. Assuming you could do this experiment – just assuming – how much blood would you need?’

I shook my head. ‘Fifteen ounces, maybe? Perhaps twenty. A person can lose that much without too many ill effects. Maybe more at a later stage. But I do not know how to effect the transportation. It struck me that the blood would have to leave the one body and enter the other in the same place – vein to vein, artery to artery. I would recommend
slitting the jugular, except that it’s fearfully difficult to stop it up again. I don’t want to save the mother and have the daughter bleed to death. So maybe one of the major vessels in the arm. A band to make it swell up. That’s the easy part. It is the transference which concerns me.’

Lower got up and wandered around the room, rummaging around in his pockets.

‘Have you heard of injections?’ he asked eventually.

I shook my head.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘A splendid idea, which we have been working on.’