Beloved Poison Read Online Free PDF Page A

infatuation?’
    ‘Partly,’ I said. But Dr Graves had also been referring to something other than Dr Bain’s dalliance with Mrs Catchpole.
    It had occurred at a meeting of the St Saviour’s Medical and Chirurgical Society. The society met once a month, in Dr Magorian’s anatomy museum, lecture theatre and meeting room – a suite of chambers on the top storey of Dr Magorian’s town house. One evening, some two years ago, I had been helping Dr Bain prepare a specimen – a two-headed puppy which the dog catcher (knowing Dr Bain’s interest in the macabre) had brought to the doctor’s house.
    ‘Well,’ Dr Bain had said, once we had prepared a satisfactory cross section of the beast. ‘Shall we take the product of our labours to the Society tonight?’
    The place was lively. All St Saviour’s physicians and surgeons were present that evening, as well as a number of students, and the two-headed dog we had brought was admired by everyone. But the main debate of the evening had concerned venereal diseases. Dr Catchpole had prepared a specimen of a severed finger blighted by a large syphilitic chancre. He had also brought with him a monkey with a globular sore upon its testicles, and a costermonger exhibiting the first signs of syphilis. The question being addressed was whether it was possible to inoculate against the pox.
    ‘Dr Hunter’s ideas concerning syphilis have long been discredited,’ Dr Bain remarked. ‘There’s no link between pox and clap. The one is unrelated, as a disease, to the other. Ricord’s ideas on the matter were little better. Inoculation is impossible – it cannot be done.’
    ‘Perhaps you should try it for yourself?’ Dr Catchpole’s voice had a mocking edge to it, but Dr Bain remained unperturbed.
    ‘We stand on the shoulders of giants,’ he replied. ‘But I don’t claim to be a giant myself. I’m not heir to the likes of John Hunter.’
    ‘And you, Dr Catchpole?’ cried a student. ‘Do you follow Hunter’s methods of experimentation? You knew him, did you not?’
    ‘I’m not
that
old,’ cried Dr Catchpole.
    ‘But your ideas are,’ said Dr Bain.
    The students had sniggered. The doctors had smiled. The monkey had screamed and bounded up and down in its cage, rattling the bars and showing its teeth, as though it too were laughing. All eyes had turned to Dr Catchpole. His face was furious. ‘You, sir, would do well to listen to those with experience. I have seen inoculation against syphilis with my own eyes.’
    ‘Then your observations are flawed,’ said Dr Bain. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘You may well have mistaken a chancrous lesion for true syphilis. Your reasoning is logical, but it is unsound.’
    ‘Unsound?’ Dr Catchpole’s countenance turned thunderous. Before us, the syphilitic patient was still sitting with his genitals exposed. All at once Dr Catchpole snatched up a surgical blade from the table top and sprang towards him. Before the man could react, Dr Catchpole had seized the fellow’s penis between his finger and thumb and scraped the side of the blade against the moist and seeping chancre that blighted the soft skin of the glans. Holding the scalpel, glistening with the offending matter, between his teeth, Dr Catchpole unbuttoned his own trousers.
    ‘There is but one way to prove the truth,’ he cried, now waving the blade in the air. ‘As you rightly say, Dr Bain, the way forward is through experiment and observation.’
    ‘But, sir—’ Dr Bain raised his hands. ‘As cowpox may be used to inoculate against the small pox, it may be that a similar, chancrous disease from an animal might cause an inoculation against syphilis. But
directly
from the human chancre? It’s not possible. It’s the
monkey
, Dr Catchpole. We might use matter from the sores of the
monkey
—’
    He leaped forward to seize hold of Dr Catchpole’s wrist, but Dr Catchpole danced free.
    ‘I apologise, sir, if my humour was misplaced,’ said Dr Bain.