An Instance of the Fingerpost

by Iain Pears

  ‘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.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Myself, Dr Willis and my friend Wren. Similar in some ways to your idea. What we do, you see, is take a sharp instrument and push it into a vein, then squeeze liquids straight into the blood, avoiding the stomach entirely.’

  I frowned. ‘Extraordinary. What happens?’

  He paused. ‘We have had mixed results,’ he confessed. ‘The first time it worked marvellously. We injected an eighth-cup of red wine straight into a dog. Not enough to make it even tipsy, usually, but by this method it turned rolling drunk.’ He grinned at the thought. ‘We had a terrible time controlling it. It jumped off the table and ran around, then fell over after bumping into a cupboard of plates. We could barely control ourselves. Even Boyle cracked a smile. The important thing is that it seems a little liquor injected has much more of an effect than when taken through the stomach. So we took a mangy old beast next time and injected sal ammoniack.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It died, and in some considerable pain. When we opened it up, the corrosion to its heart was considerable. We tried injecting milk the next time to see if we could bypass the need to eat. But it curdled in the veins, unfortunately.’

  ‘Died again?’

  He nodded. ‘We must have overdone the amount. We’ll cut it back next time.’

  ‘I would be fascinated if you would allow me to attend.’

  ‘A pleasure. My point is that we could use the same idea for transferring your blood. You don’t want the blood exposed to the air, because it might congeal. So you take a pigeon quill, which can be made very thin and sharp. Put a hole in the end and insert it into Sarah’s vein. Join it to a long silver tube, which has a narrow diameter, with another quill in the mother’s vein. Wait for the blood to flow, then stop the flow in the mother’s vein above the slit. Join the two together, and count. I’m afraid we’d have to guess about how much comes out. If we let the blood flow into a bowl for a few seconds, we’ll have some idea of how fast it is going.’

  I nodded enthusiastically. ‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘I had thought of cupping. This is much neater.’

  He grinned, and held out his hand. ‘By God, Mr Cola, I’m glad you’re here. You’re a man after my own heart, truly you are. In the meantime, which of us is going to see Grove for poor Prestcott?’

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  I HAVE ALWAYS acknowledged my debt to Lower on the mechanics of transfusion. Without his ingenuity, I doubt that the operation could have been made to work. The fact remains, however, that the first suggestion of the idea and the reasoning for it came from myself, and I later carried out the experiment. Until then, Lower’s thoughts had revolved solely around the problem of injecting physick into the blood, and he had never for a moment considered the possibility, or potential, of transferring blood itself.

  This is a matter for a later part of my narrative, however, and I must stick to my story as it happened. At that moment, my main concern was to offer my services to visit Dr Grove on behalf of Prestcott, because I still believed that the more members of that society I knew, the better it would be for me. Dr Grove, certainly, was unlikely to be of much use, and Lower told me he was heartily glad of my offer to go as it spared him a meeting with a man he considered very tiresome. He was an avowed and vociferous opponent of the new learning, and only a fortnight before had delivered a stinging sermon in St Mary’s attacking experimental knowledge as contradictory to God’s word, undermining of authority and flawed in both intention and execution.

  ‘Are there many of his opinion in the town?’ I asked.

  ‘Dear heavens, yes. There are physicians who fear for their prerogatives; priests frightened of being usurped, and whole hordes of the ignorant who simply dislike anything new. We are on dangerous ground. This is why we must tread carefully with Widow Blundy.’

  I nodded; it was the same in Italy, I told him.

  ‘In that case you will be prepared for Grove,’ he replied with a grin. ‘Talk to him. He will keep you on your toes. He is no fool – even though he is wrong and, frankly, somewhat tedious.’

  St Mary College of Winchester in Oxford, vulgarly called New College, is a large, shabby building that stands in the east of the town hard up against the walls and the tennis courts. It is very wealthy but has a reputation for being one of the most backward of places. When I arrived, it seemed almost deserted, and there was no indication of where the object of my journey might be. So I asked the one person I saw, and he informed me that Dr Grove had been ill for some days and was not encouraging visitors. I explained that, while I would normally be willing to leave him in peace, I could not in all conscience do so. Accordingly this man, a short, dark little fellow who introduced himself with a stiff little bow as one Thomas Ken, showed me to the staircase.

  The thick oak door of Dr Grove’s room – the English are prodigal with fine wood in this way – was firmly closed,
and I knocked, expecting no reply. I did, however, hear a slight scuffling and so knocked again. I thought that I heard a voice; I could not make out what it was saying, but it seemed reasonable to assume that it was inviting me in.

  ‘Go away,’ the voice said with irritation as I entered the room. ‘Are you deaf?’

  ‘I do beg your pardon, sir,’ I replied, then paused in surprise. The man I had come to visit was the same person I had seen a few days previously rejecting Sarah Blundy’s request for help. I stared uncertainly at him, and he looked back at me, clearly also remembering that he had seen me before.

  ‘As I say,’ I continued when I recovered my poise, ‘I apologise. But I couldn’t hear very well.’

  ‘Let me repeat myself, then, for the third time. I was telling you to go away. I am feeling much too poorly.’

  He was an oldish man, in his early fifties and possibly more. Broad shouldered, he none the less had that air of decline that sooner or later is sent by the Almighty to touch the shoulder of even the most robust of His creatures, reminding them of their subjection to His laws.

  But, a re decedo. ‘I am very sorry to hear you are ill,’ I said, standing my ground in the doorway. ‘Would I be right in thinking your eye is causing you distress?’

  Anyone could have made this statement, for the doctor’s left eye was red and rheumy, inflamed by much irritated rubbing. Quite apart from my reason for being there, the sight aroused my interest.

  ‘Of course it is my eye,’ he replied curtly, ‘I am suffering the torments of hell from it.’

  I advanced a step or two into the room, so that I could see more clearly and establish myself more firmly in his presence. ‘A severe irritation, sir, producing gumminess and inflammation. I hope you are receiving proper attention. Although I don’t think it looks so serious.’

  ‘Serious?’ He cried incredulously. ‘Not serious? I’m in agony. And I have a great deal of work to do. Are you a doctor? I don’t need one. I have the very best treatment available.’

  I introduced myself. ‘Naturally, I hesitate to contradict a physician, sir, but it doesn’t look that way to me. I can see from here that there is a coalescence of a brown putridity around the eyelid, which requires medicine.’

  ‘That is the medicine, idiot,’ he said. ‘I mixed the ingredients myself.’

  ‘What ingredients were they?’

  ‘Dried dog excrement,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I had it from my doctor, Bate. The king’s physician, you know, and a man of good family. It is an infallible cure, tested through the ages. A pedigree dog, as well. It belongs to the warden.’

  ‘Dog excrement?’

  ‘Yes. You dry it in the sun, then powder it and blow it into the eyes. It is a sure remedy for all forms of eye complaint.’

  To my mind this explained why his eyes were giving him so much trouble. There are, of course, innumerable old remedies in use and some are, no doubt, as efficacious as anything a physician could prescribe – not that this is necessarily saying much. I have no doubt that the mineral physick that so enthused Lower will eventually supplant them all. I had some idea of the sort of prattle that accompanied the recommendation. The natural attraction of like and like; the powdered excrement setting up an affinity with the noxiousness and sucking it out. Or not, as the case may be.

  ‘Far be it from me to question, sir, but are you quite sure it is working?’ I asked.

  ‘Surely that means you are questioning it?’

  ‘No,’ I said cautiously. ‘In certain cases, it may be effective: I do not know. How long has your eye been troubling you?’

  ‘About ten days.’

  ‘And how long have you been treating it in this way?’

  ‘About a week.’

  ‘And in that time, has your eye become better or worse?’

  ‘It has not improved,’ he conceded. ‘But it may be that without the treatment it would have got worse.’

  ‘And it may also be that with another treatment it would have become better,’ I said. ‘Now, if I gave you another treatment, and your eye improved, that would demonstrate . . .’

  ‘That would demonstrate that my original treatment has at last begun to be effective and that your treatment was of no significance.’

  ‘You want your eye to recover as fast as possible. If you apply a treatment and within a reasonable time there has been no improvement, then one may conclude that, within that time, the treatment does not work. Whether it works next week, the week after or in three years’ time does not matter.’

  Dr Grove opened his mouth to dispute this line of argument, then suffered another twinge of pain in his eye, which he began once more to rub furiously.

  I saw an opportunity both of ingratiating myself and perhaps even of gaining a fee to bolster my resources. So I asked for some warm water and straight away began to bathe the foul mess out of the eye entirely, thinking that this alone would probably effect an almost miraculous cure. By the time I had finished, his tortured eye was open once more and, although he was still in some discomfort, he expressed his joy at how much better he felt already. Even more satisfyingly, he attributed it solely to the potion I had applied.

  ‘Now for the next stage,’ Grove said stoutly as he rolled up his sleeve. ‘I think five ounces would do, don’t you think?’

  I disagreed, although I refrained from telling him that I was far from convinced that bleeding ever did anyone much good, as I was afraid of losing his confidence. So instead I suggested the harmony of his body would be better restored by a light vomit after eating – especially as he looked like a man who could easily miss a meal or two with no ill effects.

  The treatment concluded, he asked me to share a glass of wine with him, which invitation I declined, having already drunk far too much recently. Instead, I explained my visit to him, thinking that if he did not bring up the incident in the coffee house, I would not do so either. Initially, I had been critical of his behaviour; now I knew the girl better, I was more understanding.

  ‘It is about a young man whom I encountered yesterday,’ I said. ‘A Mr Prestcott.’

  Dr Grove frowned at the very mention of Mr Prestcott and asked how I had met him, considering that he was locked in the castle.

  ‘It was through my dear friend Dr Lower,’ I said, ‘who had a . . . message to deliver to him.’

  ‘Wants his corpse, does he?’ Grove said. ‘I swear when I become sick I feel inclined to go back to my family in Northampton, in case Lower turns up at my bedside with an acquisitive glint in his eye. What did Prestcott say?’

  I told him that Prestcott had refused outright to countenance the idea, and Grove nodded. ‘Good for him. Sound boy, although it was easy to see that he’d come to a bad end. Very wayward.’

  ‘At the moment’, I replied gravely, ‘he seems very contrite and in need of spiritual comfort. He wants you to visit him, to offer him the solace of religion.’

  Grove looked as pleased as he was surprised. ‘The ability of the noose to make even the worst of sinners embrace God’s mercy should never be underestimated,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘I will go this evening.’

  I liked him for that. He was brusque and certainly of very definite opinions, yet he was also kindly, I sensed, and loved nothing better than for people to disagree with him. Lower told me later that, whatever his failings, Grove never took offence at opinions honestly held, even though he was determined to combat them as much as possible. It meant that, while he was difficult to like, some came to love him.

  ‘He was most anxious to speak to you as soon as possible,’ I said. ‘But I would recommend you wait for a day or so. The wind is from the north, and it is known that is bad for an ailment of the eyes.’

  ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘But I must go soon. I was loath to do so unless he called for me himself, and I am gratified he now has. My thanks, sir.’

  ‘Do you know’, I asked as I peered into his eye once more, ‘what the story of his cri
me was? From the few details I have heard it seems quite peculiar.’

  Grove nodded. ‘Very peculiar,’ he agreed. ‘But I am afraid he was fated to act thus, because of his family. His father was wayward as well. Made an unfortunate match.’

  ‘He disliked his wife?’ I asked.

  Grove frowned. ‘Worse than that. He married for love. A charming woman, so I am told, but against the wishes of both families, who never forgave him. It was typical of the man, I’m afraid.’

  I shook my head here. Coming from a merchant family myself, I was well aware of the importance of not allowing sentiment to cloud one’s judgement in marital affairs. As my father had once remarked, if God had meant us to marry for love, why had He created mistresses? Not that he indulged overmuch in this direction himself, for he and my mother were devoted to each other.

  ‘He enlisted on the side of the king when the war broke out, fought with valour and lost everything. But he still continued faithful and plotted against the Commonwealth. Alas, he loved plotting more than he loved his monarch, for he betrayed his king to Cromwell, and almost with disastrous effects. A more evil deed has not been seen since Judas Iscariot sold Our Lord.’

  He nodded sagely at his tale. For my part, I found it all very interesting, but still did not understand how Prestcott came to be in prison.

  ‘That is very simple,’ Grove said. ‘He is of a violent and unstable disposition; perhaps it is a case of the sins of the fathers being handed down. He became an unruly, ungovernable child and took to bad ways with a vengeance once he was free of family control. He assaulted and nearly murdered the guardian who has looked after him with kindness since his father’s disgrace, and there is also a complaint from an uncle that he ransacked that man’s money chest on a recent visit. It happens: we hanged an undergraduate for highway robbery last year, Prestcott this year and, I’m afraid, these will not be the last. “The land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence.”’ He paused for me to recognise the quotation, but I shrugged helplessly.