36
WORLDS UNSEEN
THE HOUSEHOLD WAS QUIET; it was the perfect opportunity for my experiments. Mr. Bug had gone to Woolam’s Mill, taking the Beardsley twins; Lizzie and Mr. Wemyss had gone to help Marsali with the new mash; and Mrs. Bug, having left a pot of porridge and a platter of toast in the kitchen, was out, too, combing the woods for the half-wild hens, catching them one by one and dragging them in by the feet to be installed in the handsome new chicken coop her husband had built. Bree and Roger sometimes came up to the big house for their breakfast, but more often chose to eat by their own hearth, as was the case this morning.
Enjoying the peace of the empty house, I made up a tray with cup, teapot, cream, and sugar, and took it with me to my surgery, along with my samples. The early morning light was perfect, pouring through the window in a brilliant bar of gold. Leaving the tea to steep, I took a couple of small glass bottles from the cupboard and went outside.
The day was chilly but beautiful, with a clear pale sky that promised a little warmth later in the morning. At the moment, though, it was cold enough that I was glad of my warm shawl, and the water in the horses’ trough was frigid, rimmed with sheets of fragile ice. Not cold enough to kill the microbes, I supposed; I could see long strands of algae coating the boards of the trough, swaying gently as I buckled the thin crust of ice and disturbed the water, scraping one of my bottles along the slimy edge of the trough.
I scooped up further samples of liquid from the springhouse and from a puddle of muddy standing water near the privy, then hurried back to the house to make my trials while the light was still good.
The microscope stood by the window where I had set it up the day before, all gleaming brass and bright mirrors. A few seconds’ work to place droplets on the glass slides I’d laid ready, and I bent to peer through the eyepiece with rapt anticipation.
The ovoid of light bulged, diminished, went out altogether. I squinted, turning the screw as slowly as I could, and . . . there it was. The mirror steadied and the light resolved itself into a perfect pale circle, window to another world.
I watched, enchanted, as the madly beating cilia of a paramecium bore it in hot pursuit of invisible prey. Then a quiet drifting, the field of view itself in constant movement as the drop of water on my slide shifted in its microscopic tides. I waited a moment more, in hopes of spotting one of the swift and elegant Euglena, or even a hydra, but no such luck; only bits of mysterious black-green, daubs of cellular debris and burst algal cells.
I shifted the slide to and fro, but found nothing else of interest. That was all right; I had plenty of other things to look at. I rinsed the glass rectangle in a cup of alcohol, let it dry for a moment, then dipped a glass rod into one of the small beakers I had lined up before my microscope, dabbing a drop of liquid onto the clean slide.
It had taken some experimentation to put the microscope together properly; it wasn’t much like a modern version, particularly when reduced to its component parts for storage in Dr. Rawlings’s handsome box. Still, the lenses were recognizable, and with that as a starting point, I had managed to fit the optical bits into the stand without much trouble. Obtaining sufficient light, though, had been more difficult, and I was thrilled finally to have got it working.
“What are ye doing, Sassenach?” Jamie, with a piece of toast in one hand, paused in the doorway.
“Seeing things,” I said, adjusting the focus.
“Oh, aye? What sorts of things?” He came into the room, smiling. “Not ghosties, I trust. I will have had enough o’ those.”
“Come look,” I said, stepping back from the microscope. Mildly puzzled, he bent and peered through the eyepiece, screwing up his other eye in concentration.
He squinted for a moment, then gave an exclamation of pleased surprise.
“I see them! Wee things with tails, swimming all about!” He straightened up, smiling at me with a look of delight, then bent at once to look again.
I felt a warm glow of pride in my new toy.
“Isn’t it marvelous?”
“Aye, marvelous,” he said, absorbed. “Look at them. Such busy wee strivers as they are, all pushing and writhing against one another—and such a mass of them!”
He watched for a few moments more, exclaiming under his breath, then straightened up, shaking his head in amazement.
“I’ve never seen such a thing, Sassenach. Ye’d told me about the germs, aye, but I never in life imagined them so! I thought they might have wee teeth, and they don’t—but I never kent they would have such handsome, lashing wee tails, or swim about in such numbers.”
“Well, some microorganisms do,” I said, moving to peer into the eyepiece again myself. “These particular little beasts aren’t germs, though—they’re sperms.”
“They’re what?”
He looked quite blank.
“Sperms,” I said patiently. “Male reproductive cells. You know, what makes babies?”
I thought he might just possibly choke. His mouth opened, and a very pretty shade of rose suffused his countenance.
“Ye mean seed?” he croaked. “Spunk?”
“Well . . . yes.” Watching him narrowly, I poured steaming tea into a clean beaker and handed it to him as a restorative. He ignored it, though, his eyes fixed on the microscope as though something might spring out of the eyepiece at any moment and go writhing across the floor at our feet.
“Sperms,” he muttered to himself. “Sperms.” He shook his head vigorously, then turned to me, a frightful thought having just occurred to him.
“Whose are they?” he asked, his tone one of darkest suspicion.
“Er . . . well, yours, of course.” I cleared my throat, mildly embarrassed. “Who else’s would they be?”
His hand darted reflexively between his legs, and he clutched himself protectively.
“How the hell did ye get them?”
“How do you think?” I said, rather coldly. “I woke up in custody of them this morning.”
His hand relaxed, but a deep blush of mortification stained his cheeks dark crimson. He picked up the beaker of tea and drained it at a gulp, temperature notwithstanding.
“I see,” he said, and coughed.
There was a moment of deep silence.
“I . . . um . . . didna ken they could stay alive,” he said at last. “Errrrm . . . outside, I mean.”
“Well, if you leave them in a splotch on the sheet to dry out, they don’t,” I said, matter-of-factly. “Keep them from drying out, though”—I gestured at the small, covered beaker, with its small puddle of whitish fluid—“and they’ll do for a few hours. In their proper habitat, though, they can live for up to a week after . . . er . . . release.”
“Proper habitat,” he repeated, looking pensive. He darted a quick glance at me. “Ye do mean—”
“I do,” I said, with some asperity.
“Mmphm.” At this point, he recalled the piece of toast he still held, and took a bite, chewing meditatively.
“Do folk know about this? Now, I mean?”
“Know what? What sperm look like? Almost certainly. Microscopes have been around for well over a hundred years, and the first thing anyone with a working microscope does is to look at everything within reach. Given that the inventor of the microscope was a man, I should certainly think that . . . Don’t you?”
He gave me a look, and took another bite of toast, chewing in a marked manner.
“I shouldna quite like to refer to it as ‘within reach,’ Sassenach,” he said, through a mouthful of crumbs, and swallowed. “But I do take your meaning.”
As though compelled by some irresistible force, he drifted toward the microscope, bending to peer into it once more.
“They seem verra fierce,” he ventured, after a few moments’ inspection.
“Well, they do need to be,” I said, suppressing a smile at his faintly abashed air of pride in his gametes’ prowess. “It’s a long slog, after all, and a terrific fight at the end of it. Only one gets the honor, you know.”
He looked up, blank-faced. It dawned on me that he didn’t know. He’d studied languages, mathematics, and Greek and Latin philosophy in Paris, not medicine. And even if natural scientists of the time were aware of sperm as separate entities, rather than a homogenous substance, it occurred to me that they probably didn’t have any idea what sperm actually did.
“Wherever did you think babies came from?” I demanded, after a certain amount of enlightenment regarding eggs, sperms, zygotes, and the like, which left Jamie distinctly squiggle-eyed. He gave me a rather cold look.
“And me a farmer all my life? I ken precisely where they come from,” he informed me. “I just didna ken that . . . er . . . that all of this daffery was going on. I thought . . . well, I thought a man plants his seed into a woman’s belly, and it . . . well . . . grows.” He waved vaguely in the direction of my stomach. “You know—like . . . seed. Neeps, corn, melons, and the like. I didna ken they swim about like tadpoles.”
“I see.” I rubbed a finger beneath my nose, trying not to laugh. “Hence the agricultural designation of women as being either fertile or barren!”
“Mmphm.” Dismissing this with a wave of his hand, he frowned thoughtfully at the teeming slide. “A week, ye said. So it’s possible that the wee lad really is the Thrush’s get?”
Early in the day as it was, it took half a second or so for me to make the leap from theory to practical application.
“Oh—Jemmy, you mean? Yes, it’s quite possible that he’s Roger’s child.” Roger and Bonnet had lain with Brianna within two days of each other. “I told you—and Bree—so.”
He nodded, looking abstracted, then remembered the toast and pushed the rest of it into his mouth. Chewing, he bent for another look through the eyepiece.
“Are they different, then? One man’s from another, I mean?”
“Er . . . not to look at, no.” I picked up my cup of tea and had a sip, enjoying the delicate flavor. “They are different, of course—they carry the characteristics a man passes to his offspring. . . .” That was about as far as I thought it prudent to go; he was sufficiently staggered by my description of fertilization; an explanation of genes and chromosomes might be rather excessive at the moment. “But you can’t see the differences, even with a microscope.”
He grunted at that, swallowed the mouthful of toast, and straightened up.
“Why are ye looking, then?”
“Just curiosity.” I gestured at the collection of bottles and beakers on the countertop. “I wanted to see how fine the resolution of the microscope was, what sorts of things I might be able to see.”
“Oh, aye? And what then? What’s the purpose of it, I mean?”
“Well, to help me diagnose things. If I can take a sample of a person’s stool, for instance, and see that he has internal parasites, then I’d know better what medicine to give him.”
Jamie looked as though he would have preferred not to hear about such things right after breakfast, but nodded. He drained his beaker and set it down on the counter.
“Aye, that’s sensible. I’ll leave ye to get on with it, then.”
He bent and kissed me briefly, then headed for the door. Just short of it, though, he turned back.
“The, um, sperms . . .” he said, a little awkwardly.
“Yes?”
“Can ye not take them out and give them decent burial or something?”
I hid a smile in my teacup.
“I’ll take good care of them,” I promised. “I always do, don’t I?”
THERE THEY WERE. Dark stalks, topped with clublike spores, dense against the pale bright ground of the microscope’s field of view. Confirmation.
“Got them.” I straightened up, slowly rubbing the small of my back as I looked over my preparations.
A series of slides lay in a neat fan beside the microscope, each bearing a dark smear in the middle, a code written on the end of each slide with a bit of wax from a candle stub. Samples of mold, taken from damp corn bread, from spoiled biscuit, and a bit of discarded pastry crust from the Hogmanay venison pie. The crust had yielded the best growth by far; no doubt it was the goose grease.
Of the various test substrates I had tried, those were the three resultant batches of mold that had contained the highest proportion of Penicillium—or what I could be fairly sure was Penicillium. There were a dismaying number of molds that would grow on damp bread, in addition to several dozen different strains of Penicillium, but the samples I had chosen contained the best matches for the textbook pictures of Penicillium sporophytes that I had committed to memory, years ago, in another life.
I could only hope that my memory wasn’t faulty—and that the strains of mold I had here were among those species that produced a large quantity of penicillin, that I had not inadvertently introduced any virulent bacteria into the meat-broth mixture, and that—well, I could hope for a lot of things, but there came a point when one abandoned hope for faith, and trusted fate for charity.
A line of broth-filled bowls sat at the back of the countertop, each covered with a square of muslin to prevent things—insects, airborne particles, and mouse droppings, to say nothing of mice—from falling in. I had strained the broth and boiled it, then rinsed each bowl with boiling water before filling it with the steaming brown liquid. That was as close as I could come to a sterile medium.
I had then taken scrapings from each of my best mold samples, and swished the knife blade gently through the cooled broth, dissipating the clumps of soft blue as best I could before covering the bowl with its cloth and leaving it to incubate for several days.
Some of the cultures had thrived; others had died. A couple of bowls showed hairy dark green clumps that floated beneath the surface like submerged sea beasts, dark and sinister. Some intruder—mold, bacterium, or perhaps a colonial alga—but not the precious Penicillium.
Some anonymous child had spilled one bowl; Adso had knocked another onto the floor, maddened by the scent of goose broth, and had lapped up the contents, mold and all, with every evidence of enjoyment. There obviously hadn’t been anything toxic in that one; I glanced down at the little cat, curled up in a pool of sunshine on the floor, the picture of somnolent well-being.
In three of the remaining bowls, though, spongy velvet mats of mottled blue covered the surface, and my examination of a sample taken from one of them had just confirmed that I did indeed have what I sought. It wasn’t the mold itself that was antibiotic—it was a clear substance secreted by the mold, as a means of protecting itself from attack by bacteria. That substance was penicillin, and that was what I wanted.
I had explained as much to Jamie, who sat on a stool watching me as I poured the broth from each live culture through another bit of gauze to strain it.
“So what ye’ve got there is broth that the mold has pissed in, is that right?”
“Well, if you insist on putting it that way, yes.” I gave him an austere glance, then took up the strained solution and began distributing it into several small stoneware jars.
He nodded, pleased to have got it right.
“And the mold piss is what cures sickness, aye? That’s sensible.”
“It is?”
“Well, ye use other sorts of piss for medicine, so why not that?”
He lifted the big black casebook in illustration. I had left it open on the counter after recording the latest batch of experiments, and he had been amusing himself by reading some of the earlier pages, those recorded by the book’s previous owner, Dr. Daniel Rawlings.
“Possibly Daniel Rawlings did—I don’t.” Hands busy, I lifted my chin at the entry on the open page. “What was he using it for?”
“Electuary for the Treatment of Scurvy,” he read, finger following the neat small lines of Rawlings’s script. “Two Heads of Garlic, crushed with six Radishes, to which are added Peru Balsam and ten drops of Myrrh, this Compound mixed with the Water of a Man-child so as to be conveniently drunk.”
“Bar the last, it sounds like a rather exotic condiment,” I said, amused. “What would it go with best, do you think? Jugged hare? Ragout of veal?”
“Nay, veal’s too mild-flavored for radish. Hodgepodge of mutton, maybe,” he replied. “Mutton will stand anything.” His tongue flicked absentmindedly across his upper lip in contemplation.
“Why a man-child, d’ye think, Sassenach? I’ve seen the mention of it in such receipts before—Aristotle has it so, and so have some of the other ancient philosophers.”
I gave him a look, as I began tidying up my slides.
“Well, it’s certainly easier to collect urine from a male child than from a little girl; just try it, sometime. Oddly enough, though, urine from baby boys is very clean, if not entirely sterile; it may be that the ancient philosophers noticed they had better results with it in their formulae, because it was cleaner than the usual drinking water, if they were getting that from public aqueducts and wells and the like.”
“Sterile meaning that it hasna got the germs in it, not that it doesna breed?” He gave my microscope a rather wary glance.
“Yes. Or rather—it doesn’t breed germs, because there aren’t any there.”
With the countertop cleared, save for the microscope and the jars of penicillin-containing broth—or at least I hoped that’s what they were—I began the preparations for surgery, taking down my small case of surgical instruments, and fetching a large bottle of grain alcohol out of the cupboard.
I handed this to Jamie, along with the small alcohol burner I had contrived—an empty ink bottle, with a twisted wick of waxed flax drawn up through a cork stuck into the neck.
“Fill that up for me, will you? Where are the boys?”
“In the kitchen, getting drunk.” He frowned in concentration, carefully pouring the alcohol. “Is the urine of wee lassies not clean, then? Or is it only harder to get?”
“No, actually, it isn’t as clean as that of boys.” I unfolded a clean cloth on the countertop and laid out two scalpels, a pair of long-nosed forceps, and a bunch of small cautery irons. I dug about in the cupboard, unearthing a handful of cotton pledgets. Cotton cloth was hideously expensive, but I had had the good fortune to cajole a sack of raw cotton bolls from Farquard Campbell’s wife, in return for a jar of honey.
“The . . . um . . . route to the outside isn’t quite so direct, you might say. So the urine tends to pick up bacteria and bits of debris from the skin folds.” I looked over my shoulder at him and smiled. “Not that you ought to go feeling superior on that account.”
“I shouldna dream of it,” he assured me. “Are ye ready, then, Sassenach?”
“Yes, fetch them in. Oh, and bring the basin!”
He went out, and I turned to face the east window. It had snowed heavily the day before, but today was a fine, bright day, clear and cold, with the sun reflecting off the snow-covered trees with the light of a million diamonds. I couldn’t have asked for better; I should need all the light I could get.
I set the cautery irons in the small brazier to heat. Then I fetched my amulet from the cabinet, put it round my neck so it hung beneath the bodice of my gown, and took down the heavy canvas apron from its hook behind the door. I put that on, too, then went to the window and looked out at the cold icing-sugar landscape, emptying my mind, steadying my spirit for what I was about to do. It was not a difficult operation, and I had done it many times before. I had not, however, done it on someone who was sitting upright and conscious, and that always made a difference.
I hadn’t done it in several years, either, and I closed my eyes in recollection, visualizing the steps to take, feeling the muscles of my hand twitch slightly in echo of my thoughts, anticipating the movements I would make.
“God help me,” I whispered, and crossed myself.
Stumbling footsteps, nervous giggles, and the rumble of Jamie’s voice came from the hallway, and I turned round smiling to greet my patients.
A month of good food, clean clothes, and warm beds had improved the Beardsleys immensely, in terms of both health and appearance. They were both still small, skinny, and slightly bowlegged, but the hollows of their faces had filled out a bit, their dark hair lay soft against their skulls, and the look of hunted wariness had faded a little from their eyes.
In fact, both pairs of dark eyes were presently a little glazed, and Lizzie was obliged to grab Keziah by the arm in order to prevent his stumbling over a stool. Jamie had Josiah gripped firmly by the shoulder; he steered the boy over to me, then set down the pudding basin he carried under his other arm.
“All right, are you?” I smiled at Josiah, looking deep into his eyes, and squeezed his arm in reassurance. He swallowed hard, and gave me a rather ghastly grin; he wasn’t drunk enough not to be scared.
I sat him down, chatting soothingly, wrapped a towel round his neck, and set the basin on his knees. I hoped he wouldn’t drop it; it was china, and the only large pudding basin we had. To my surprise, Lizzie came to stand behind him, putting her small hands on his shoulders.
“Are you sure you want to stay, Lizzie?” I asked dubiously. “We can manage all right, I think.” Jamie was thoroughly accustomed to blood and general carnage; I didn’t think Lizzie could ever have seen anything beyond the common sorts of illness and perhaps a childbirth or two.
“Oh, no, ma’am; I’ll stay.” She swallowed, too, but set her small jaw bravely. “I promised Jo and Kezzie as I’d stay with them, all through.”
I glanced at Jamie, who lifted one shoulder in the hint of a shrug.
“All right, then.” I took one of the stoneware jars of penicillin broth, poured it into two cups, and gave one to each of the twins to drink.
Stomach acid would likely inactivate most of the penicillin, but it would—I hoped—kill the bacteria in their throats. Following surgery, another dose washed over the raw surfaces might prevent infection.
There was no way of knowing exactly how much penicillin there might be in the broth; I might be giving them massive doses—or too little to matter. At least I was reasonably sure that whatever penicillin was in the broth was presently active. I had no means of stabilizing the antibiotic, and no notion how long it might be potent—but fresh as it was, the solution was bound to be medicinally active, and there was a good chance that the rest of the broth would remain usable for at least the next few days.
I would make new cultures, as soon as the surgery was complete; with luck, I could dose the twins regularly for three or four days, and—with greater luck—thus prevent any infections.
“Oh, so ye can drink the stuff, can ye?” Jamie was eyeing me cynically over Josiah’s head. I had injected him with penicillin following a gunshot injury a few years before, and he obviously now considered that I done so with purely sadistic intent.
I eyed him back.
“You can. Injectable penicillin is much more effective, particularly in the case of an active infection. However, I haven’t any means of injecting it just at present, and this is meant to prevent them getting an infection, not to cure one. Now, if we’re quite ready . . .”
I had thought that Jamie would restrain the patient, but both Lizzie and Josiah insisted that this was not necessary; Josiah would sit quite still, no matter what. Lizzie still gripped his shoulders, her face paler than his, and her small knuckles sharp and white.
I had examined both boys at length the day before, but had another quick look before starting, using a tongue depressor made of a slip of ash wood. I showed Jamie how to use this to keep the tongue pressed out of my way, then took up forceps and scalpel and drew a long breath.
I looked deep into Josiah’s dark eyes, and smiled; I could see two tiny reflections of my face there, both looking pleasantly competent.
“All right, then?” I asked.
He couldn’t speak, with the tongue depressor in his mouth, but made a good-natured sort of grunt that I took for assent.
I needed to be quick, and I was. The preparations had taken hours; the operation, no more than a few seconds. I seized one spongy red tonsil with the forceps, stretched it toward me, and made several small, quick cuts, deftly separating the layers of tissue. A trickle of blood was running out of the boy’s mouth and down his chin, but nothing serious.
I pulled the gobbet of flesh free, dropped it into the basin, and shifted my grip to the other tonsil, where I repeated the process, only a trifle more slowly in consequence of working backhanded.
The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds per side. I drew the instruments out of Josiah’s mouth, and he goggled at me, astonished. Then he coughed, gagged, leaned forward, and another small chunk of flesh bounced into the basin with a small splat, together with a quantity of bright red blood.
I seized him by the nose and thrust his head back, stuffed pledgets into his mouth to absorb sufficient blood that I could see what I was doing, then snatched a small cautery iron and took care of the largest vessels; the smaller ones could clot and seal on their own.
His eyes were watering ferociously, and his hands were clamped in a death grip on the basin, but he had neither moved nor made a sound. I hadn’t expected that he would, after what I had seen when Jamie removed the brand from his thumb. Lizzie was still gripping his shoulders, her eyes tight shut. Jamie reached up and tapped her on the elbow, and her eyes sprang open.
“Here, a muirninn, he’s done. Take him and put him to his bed, aye?”
Josiah declined to go, though. Mute as his brother, he shook his head violently, and sat down upon a stool, where he sat swaying and white-faced. He gave his brother a ghastly grin, his teeth outlined in blood.
Lizzie hovered between the two boys, looking back and forth between them. Jo caught her eye, and pointed firmly at Keziah, who had assumed the patient’s stool with an outward show of fortitude, chin upraised. She patted Jo gently on the head, and went at once to take hold of Keziah’s shoulders. He turned his head and gave her a smile of remarkable sweetness, then bent his head and kissed her hand. Then he turned to me, shutting his eyes and opening his mouth; he looked just like a nestling begging for worms.
This operation was somewhat more complicated; his tonsils and adenoids were terribly enlarged, and badly scarred from chronic infection. It was a bloody business; both the towel and my apron were heavily splattered before I had done. I finished the cautery and looked closely at my patient, who was white as the snow outside, and completely glassy-eyed.
“Are you all right?” I asked. He couldn’t hear me, but my concerned expression was clear enough. His mouth twitched in what I thought was a gallant effort to smile. He began to nod; then his eyes rolled up and he slid off the stool, ending with a crash at my feet. Jamie caught the basin, rather neatly.
I thought Lizzie might faint as well; there was blood everywhere. She did totter a little, but went obediently to sit down beside Josiah when I told her to. Josiah sat looking on, squeezing Lizzie’s hand fiercely while Jamie and I picked up the pieces.
Jamie gathered Keziah up in his arms; the boy lay limp and bloodstained, looking like a murdered child. Josiah rose to his feet, his eyes resting anxiously on his brother’s unconscious body.
“It will be all right,” Jamie said to him, in tones of complete confidence. “I told ye, my wife is a great healer.” They all turned then, and looked at me, smiling: Jamie, Lizzie, and Josiah. I felt as though I ought to take a bow, but contented myself with smiling, too.
“It will be all right,” I said, echoing Jamie. “Go and rest now.”
The small procession left the room, more quietly than they had come in, leaving me to put away my instruments and tidy up.
I felt very happy, glowing with the calm sort of satisfaction that attends successful work. I had not done this sort of thing for a long time; the exigencies and limitations of the eighteenth century precluded most surgeries save those done in emergency. Without anesthesia and antibiotic, elective surgery was simply too difficult and too dangerous.
But now I had penicillin, at least. And it would be all right, I thought, humming to myself as I extinguished the flame of my alcohol lamp. I had felt it in their flesh, touching the boys as I worked. No germ would threaten them, no infection mar the cleanliness of my work. There was always luck in the practice of medicine—but the odds had shifted today, in my favor.
“All shall be well,” I quoted to Adso, who had silently materialized on the counter, where he was industriously licking one of the empty bowls, “and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
The big black casebook lay open on the counter where Jamie had left it. I turned to the back pages, where I had been recording the progress of my experiments, and took up my quill. Later, after supper, I would write down the details of the surgery. For the moment . . . I paused, then wrote Eureka! at the bottom of the page.