The Healing Season (29 page)

Announcement in the
Morning Post

Married: Ian Russell, doctor of surgery, to Maisey Moore, spinster, April 3, 1818, at the Morningstar Chapel, Whitechapel.

Witnesses present: Jacob and Louisa Thornton and their offspring.

• 1) What is Ian Russell’s first impression of Eleanor Neville? Hers of him? How can first impressions be both accurate and inaccurate?
  
• 2) Both Ian and Eleanor have preconceived notions of what the other should be in their respective professions, the doctor and the actress. How does each break the stereotype in the other’s mind? What kind of parallels do they see in each other’s professions?
  
• 3) What is Eleanor’s real opinion of men? Why does Eleanor want to tempt Ian to fall from his pledge of purity? How is this related to her cynical view of men? In her opinion, is any man capable of the ideals Ian holds?
  
• 4) How is the Bible story of Isaac and Rebekah significant to Ian?
  
• 5) How do Ian’s attentions to Eleanor differ from other men’s? How does this confuse Eleanor?
  
• 6) When Ian escorts Eleanor to a show at the Drury Lane, how does this event begin to change Eleanor’s ambitions from being accepted by the high society of London to being merely a respectable member of society?
  
• 7) When Eleanor attempts to do good—working with the children at the mission, attending church—how do things backfire?
  
• 8) What does Ian’s “apprenticeship of faith” consist of? What kinds of things does he have to unlearn from his religious upbringing? How does the faith of his parents and elders begin to be transformed into his own faith?
  
• 9) After all her years of separating herself from her shameful past at the hands of her stepfather, Eleanor’s life comes full circle when she finds herself at the mercy of d’Alvergny. What is the ultimate result of the degradation she is made to feel at his hands?
  
• 10) How does Ian finally realize Eleanor is as pure as the woman he has held up as his ideal?
  

I apologize for causing any squeamishness in my readers when describing some of the medical procedures in 1817 London. I, too, am squeamish and found them difficult to write about! But I have tried to portray an accurate picture of medicine, including its many advances, in the Regency period. I was privileged to visit an operating theater in London, as well as an herb garret, both of which were part of St. Thomas’s Hospital in Ian’s day.

I’ve also found much useful information in many books on medicine and theater at the time, which I list following. Although I have tried to respect dates, I did take a few small liberties. For example, although Rene Laennec did invent the stethoscope in 1816 in Paris, he didn’t publish anything on it until 1819, so
it was probably
not
in use in London at the time of my story. However, I believe it to be a reasonable scenario that someone could have heard about it from a French colleague and even received a sample one, the way Ian does.

It was true, also, that at the time there existed no hospitals to treat children. The first “dispensary” specifically for children opened in 1769, but disappeared in 1789 when its founder, Dr. George Armstrong, died. The idea of a dispensary was like our modern-day out-patient clinic. Few of these treated children. The second one for children, the Universal Dispensary for Children, opened in 1816, and grew to eventually become the Royal Hospital for Children and Women. It didn’t actually admit children as inpatients until 1856.

As for the theater world, the male leads in some of the offshoot productions of
Don Giovanni
did go to women, but not until 1820. One of the most popular was Madame Vestris, whom I mention briefly in the story. But it was not unusual for a woman to land a “breeches” part prior to 1820.

For further reading on the medical and theatrical worlds of the period, I recommend the following works (this is not a complete list):

Bosworth, F.F.
Christ the Healer.
Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing Group, 2004.

Buchan, William.
Complete Domestic Medicine 1849.

Gloucestershire: Archive CD Books.

Clinton-Baddeley, V. C.
The Burlesque Tradition in the English Theatre after 1660.
London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1952.

Hitchcock, Tim and Heather Shore, eds.
The Streets of London from the Great Fire to the Great Stink.
London: Rivers Oram Press, 2003.

Hood, Paxton.
Portraits of the Great 18th Century Revival. Greenville:
Ambassador Books, 1997.

Houtchens, Carolyn W., contrib., Lawrence H. Houtchens, ed.
Leigh Hunt’s Dramatic Criticism, 1808–1831.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1949.

Loudon, Irvine.
Medical Care and the General Practitioner 1750–1850.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.

Mandel, Oscar, ed.
The Theatre of Don Juan: A Collection of Plays & Views, 1630–1963.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963.

Nuland, Sherwin B.
Doctors: the Biography of Medicine.
New York: Vintage Books, 1988.

Porter, Roy.
Quacks, Fakers & Charlatans in Medicine.
Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing, 2001.