The Road to Wellville

by T. C. Boyle

  It was Nurse Graves who’d informed him of the occasion on which Mr. Lightbody had vented his lust on his enervated and all-but-prostrate wife—nearly two weeks ago now, around the time the Thanksgiving bird had turned up dead. But the Doctor had been away on business to Sioux City, Minneapolis and St. Louis, addressing gatherings of the Western Cracked Wheat Association, the National Cheese Congress and the American Soybean Association (of which he was a founding member), and he hadn’t yet had an opportunity to consult with the couple individually and ascertain the severity of their lapse. Certainly the evidence was against them. Mr. Lightbody had, as best anyone could determine, spent the night in Mrs. Lightbody’s room, and while of course no one could say what went on behind closed doors, it certainly looked suspicious—especially to one who knew human nature as thoroughly as the Doctor did. Perhaps the husband had simply sat up with the wife or slept—merely slept—beside her. Still, all excuses aside, it was an outrage, and no matter the culpability, the Doctor, already wound up by his little confrontation with George and his confederates, was determined to let them writhe a bit one way or the other.

  “I do not mention this transgression lightly, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, setting the empty glass down and leveling his sternest gaze on the audience, “but rather as an example to you all and a strict admonition to avoid the greatest risk to life and health I can imagine.”

  He was warming up now, his brain choked with a logjam of medical terms, horrifying statistics, the names of eminent physicians and arresting conditions, his arms twitching with their inchoate gestures, feet breaking away—and all of a sudden he was out from behind the lectern, standing bold and upright among the good but misguided people who had gathered to hear him. “Even the youngest, healthiest and most vigorous among us are, my friends, subject to the debilitating effects of sexual excess, I’m sorry to say. But I shudder to think of the consequences when the systems of both partners are already depleted—as the systems of this particular couple most certainly were—by the twin shocks of autointoxication and neurasthenic prostration.” And now his voice reached out on the tendrils of their attention, demanding, proclaiming, laying down the law: “There is a hygiene to be observed in marriage, ladies and gentlemen, and that hygiene is no more to be disregarded than forgoing a bath or failing to change one’s linen.”

  There was a stir among the audience. Several of the men—was that Homer Praetz?—looked away from his steely gaze.

  “And let me ask you this—why do you suppose our gynecologists’ offices are so crowded with worn and exhausted women in this our supposedly civilized society? Because husbands abuse the marital bond, that’s why. The popular view seems to be that any indulgence of the passions is made permissible by the marriage ceremony. No view could be more erroneous.”

  The little Doctor strode amongst them like a colossus, now whirling, now pointing a declamatory finger, locking eyes with one abashed husband after another. As he spoke, warming to the subject, denouncing the baser appetites and the priapic urge, the women in the audience seemed to come quietly to life, like so many flowers blooming in a hothouse. Miss Muntz was wrapped in a greenish glow and her eyes seemed to devour her face; Mrs. Tindermarsh wore the tiniest smirk of recognition, though her acquaintance with the matters at hand would almost certainly have been memorial at this juncture; Nurse Graves, standing demurely with a group of nurses in the rear, held herself with virginal rectitude. Even Eleanor Lightbody, who should have been ashamed of herself, seemed preternaturally alive to his words. Regal, unabashed, she offered up every least particle of her attention.

  “We have no room in the University of Health for satyrs and fleshpots, libertines and sybarites, any more than we have room for abusers of the whiskey bottle, the tobacco pouch and the frying pan. Let me quote no less an authority than Jeremy Taylor in this, ladies and gentlemen—and I might add that I most heartily concur with every word. ‘It is a common belief,’ Taylor says, ‘that a man and woman, because they are legally united in marriage, are privileged to the unbridled exercise of amativeness. This is wrong. Nature, in the exercise of her laws, recognizes no human enactments, and is as prompt to punish any infringement of her laws in those who are legally married, as in those out of bonds.’”

  Dr. Kellogg paused to scan the audience; there wasn’t a single man or woman in that room who wasn’t perched at the edge of his or her chair. He cleared his throat. “I’d like to add my own italics here, ladies and gentlemen, seekers after health and right living, because Mr. Taylor hits the nail directly on the head: ‘Excessive indulgence between the married produces as great and lasting evil effects as in the single man and woman, and is nothing more or less than legalized prostitution.’ I repeat, ladies and gentlemen, ‘legalized prostitution.”’

  There was a gasp from one of the younger patients—Froeble, wasn’t it? Annaliese; age fourteen, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Bright’s disease, diabetes, autointoxication, obesity. That gasp gave the Doctor pause: perhaps this sort of truth telling was too unsettling for young ears? But he dismissed the notion as quickly as it came to him—she would learn the harsh truths soon enough at the hands of some libidinous brute of a husband; better she should be girded in physiologic armor when the time came.

  Waving his arms like a dervish, spinning on his diminutive feet, he worked his way back to the little stage and mounted to the podium. “Yessss,” he hissed in a long constricted rush of breath, “and what is the effect of such failure to control the carnal appetites? What is the danger to which I’ve alluded so many times tonight, the sad fate that awaits married couples who seem to think that connection can be repeated as regularly and almost as often as their meals?”

  There was no response. They were as silent as stones, but he had them, had them by their noses—he could see it in the alert looks, the sidelong glances, the bowed heads and nervously tapping fingers and feet.

  “Well, then: what would be the effect of pouring gasoline into an engine that had known only water? Most men—most decent men, at any rate—and all respectable women have lived a continent life till marriage, and then suddenly they are thrust into a tumult of nervous excitation which literally combusts their nervous systems and in the process destroys their digestion and bankrupts the emunctories. For the man, at least, giving up as he does so many emissions of life-giving fluid, it is ruin, absolute ruin.”

  Miss Muntz shifted in her seat, gave the Doctor a brief mortified glance and looked quickly away. Mrs. Tindermarsh was a living statue, but for that hint of a smirk. Several of the men, Will Lightbody and J. Henry Osborne, Jr., the bicycle king, among them, looked uneasy, unwell even.

  “But for the woman”—and here Dr. Kellogg’s voice became saturated with pity—”being of feebler constitution and hence less able to bear these terrible shocks, the result runs the gamut from mild hysteria and nervous exhaustion to cancer, marasmus and death. Little wonder that Midulet characterizes our era as ‘The Age of Womb Diseases.”’ And then, shaking his head piteously, dredging his glistening brow back and forth like a pendulum drifting between heartbreak and surcease, he drew himself up to deliver the ultimate blow. “Finally, my friends, my patients, my fellow travelers in the quest for a life free of disease and impairment, I ask you this: how many women among us tonight can say, ‘I have never been well since the night of my marriage’? Think about it, ladies and gentlemen. Think and act.”

  He brought his hands together, as if in prayer, dipped his head. “I thank you.”

  And then the applause started up, startled, shocked, an applause surprised by itself but growing increasingly firmer, steadier, more thankful and heartfelt, an offering to the one man who would stand amongst them and speak the painful but unvarnished truth. Dr. Kellogg bowed his head in humble acknowledgment. A full minute elapsed before there was any diminution in their enthusiasm, and then, as the applause began finally to die down and the Doctor gathered up his notes, a hand shot up in the front row and a voice called out over the clamor:
“A question, Dr. Kellogg—will you take a question from the audience?”

  The request had a calming effect, and the applause fell away to a spatter and then it ceased altogether. The Doctor focused on a man in his early twenties with something of an effete air about him. He wore a thin black mustache, waxed at the ends, and an artist’s plume of hair at the point of his chin. He lowered his arm languidly and rose to put the question—but who was he, now? John Harvey Kellogg knew, he knew them all. Let’s see: Crampton? Cruthers? Crowley? No, no. Krinck, that was it. John Hampton Krinck, Jr.; Hyde Park, New York; morphia addiction, venereal disease, autointoxication. Oh, yes. A libertine of the first stripe, a reader of the plays of Shaw and that tripe of Dreiser’s. “Yes, Mr. Krinck?” the Doctor said, bracing himself for a challenge.

  Young Krinck stood there a moment, his shoulders slumped forward as if they’d been molded of butter, a sick sly rebellious look sunk into his sensualist’s face. His voice was blown through a reed, nasal and nasty. “I’m very sorry, Doctor, but don’t you seem to be advocating extinction for the race? If sexual connection is to be avoided at all cost, even within the bonds of marriage, then what hope is there for us, outside of virgin birth?”

  This provoked a titter—certainly the impudent young mooncalf meant it as a provocation, a sick joke, the sort of thing George might have conceived or enjoyed—but no one in that crowd dared so much as a smile. The Doctor was angry. This addict, this pampered, snot-nosed sponge of craven desires and self-indulgence, this notorious black sheep who was a disgrace to one of the wealthiest and most respected families in New York, dared to twit him? Ha! He could crush him, demolish him with a single phrase—but no, that wasn’t the physiologic way. This was a learning experience—for all concerned, even Mr. Krinck. Demonstrating a lofty restraint, the Doctor held the young man’s gaze a moment, perfectly straight-faced, before glancing up to play to the audience. “Virgin birth, did you say? Well, as a scientist, I hardly find it feasible”—pause for the appreciative chuckle—”but as a moralist and physician, I couldn’t wish for anything more.”

  As usual, Dab was waiting for him in the corridor, and as usual, the secretary was in a huffing, puffing, sweat-running dither about something or other. Whatever it was, the Doctor didn’t want to hear about it. He was coasting on the glory of the moment, and he felt his heart sink as Dab came thumping up to him, wringing his hands and sputtering inarticulately—Not now, he was thinking, not today—but he allowed his secretary to fall into stride beside him and paused just long enough to growl, “All right, Poult, let’s have it—what’s the problem?”

  But there wasn’t just a single problem—the problems, plural and multifarious, each swelled to crisis proportions and each required his immediate attention. First, there was George. Apparently agitated over the Doctor’s earlier dismissal of him, the boy had made use of the intervening hours to get himself violently and shamefully drunk, and he was now crouched in the middle of the public street just opposite the San’s main entrance, hurling epithets at the crème de la crème of health-reform society as they climbed into their conveyances in the San’s circular drive. “He’s calling them ‘gizzardites’ and ‘chaff chewers,’ Doctor, and the bellman reports that he actually threw a projectile at one of the patients.”

  They were striding up the hallway toward the main lobby, Christmas glitter spangling the walls, the genteel clamor of the lobby opening up around them. The Doctor fixed his eyes straight ahead, struggling to control himself. Every word out of Dab’s mouth was a straight pin jammed into his nerve endings—he had to rest, he had to; no mere mortal could cope with all this. “Projectile?” he said, striding along furiously, nodding curtly at this doctor or that.

  “Uh, actually, Chief,” Dab gasped, doing his best to keep up, “it was a corn-flake box—one of your brother’s—and it was stuffed with, uh, well, corncobs, sir. Used cobs, sir, if you catch my meaning.”

  John Harvey Kellogg stopped dead in his tracks. A patient in a wheelchair simpered at him—Mrs.? Mrs.? Oh, who gives a damn!—and he ignored her. “Used?” he repeated.

  Dab studied his hands. “He must have got, uh, into a, uh, latrine somewhere, and, uh, and then—”

  The Doctor drew in a breath so sharp it might have been his last. “God!” he cried. “Damn that boy, damn him, damn him a thousand times!” Twenty heads turned and as quickly turned away again. The Doctor was in motion now, marching across the lobby like an infantryman with fixed bayonet. As he entered the far corridor, striding angrily for his office, he stopped and whirled suddenly on his secretary. “Lock him up,” he said. “Call Farrington and have him thrown in jail. But keep it quiet, understand?” Then he turned on his heels and spun into the office.

  Dab was right behind him.

  There was more. The furnace had failed in the San’s hothouses and the tomatoes, okra, mango trees and chrysanthemums were freezing; a Mr. Smotkine of Sedro Woolley, Washington, had broken a tooth on a piece of the Doctor’s patented zwieback and was threatening a lawsuit; and Lillian the chimp had locked Murphy in her cage, ripped Dr. Distaso’s pant leg from cuff to crotch and was now loose and running amuck in the experimental kitchens … and then there was the situation with the Christmas goose.

  In all his life, through all the crises he’d faced, even the mysterious fire that had left the San in ashes just five years ago, the Doctor had never felt himself so close to the breaking point. It was too much. Too, too much. He’d attained the sanctuary of his desk, and he stood behind it now, the eyeshade clamped firmly in place. “Situation?” he repeated, and he heard the quaver in his own voice. “What situation?”

  “Sir?”

  “The goose. What’s wrong with the goose?”

  “It looks a bit peaked, Doctor. And it won’t eat. Murphy seems to feel it’s caught cold, and we wouldn’t want a repetition of the problem with the Thanksgiving turkey, at least I felt you wouldn’t, and I thought you ought to know.”

  Just what he needed. The Thanksgiving bird had been a major embarrassment, the dining room already half filled with dutifully Fletcherizing patients when one of the nurses discovered the corpse—and how to explain that one to his physiologic novices? If he couldn’t even keep a turkey alive, what did that say for Grandma and Aunt Emmeline? As a distraction, he’d brought the Christmas goose in ahead of schedule and arrayed it in the same spot, under a banner that read: IS HIS GOOSE COOKED? NOT AT THE BATTLE CREEK SANITARIUM. What a debacle. Next thing he knew, one of the patients would turn up dead. “All right, all right!” he barked suddenly, and he felt his stomach take a decidedly unphysiologic dip. His hands were trembling, actually trembling, as if he were some sort of coffee fiend or something. It was the moment of truth.

  The Doctor was equal to it. Who else? He fought down the negative thoughts that had threatened to drown him all day, reached deep within him and somehow managed to summon the strength to fight back, as he always did, indomitable, indefatigable, positive-thinking and right-living, the one man among the millions of the world to prosecute this crusade and see it through to the end. He was a reformer, a titan, a tower of strength. All at once he was in command again, pacing the room like a panther, firing out orders, his voice powerful, clear, decisive: “Wrap the goose in a blanket and give her a yogurt-whey enema—clearly a case of anserine autointoxication; find a locksmith to release Murphy from the cage and get Barker out of bed and into that power plant, tout de suite—and have them mist all the plants so they’ll freeze hard on the surface, thereby preserving their vital parts; George to jail, as I said; offer Mr. Smotkine—odd name, that: is it Bohemian? Polish?—at any rate, offer Mr. Smotkine a year’s free supply of Health Koko and Sanitas Wheat Flakes if he’ll reconsider pressing his suit; and as for Lillian, well, I’ll take care of her myself. Understood?”

  Dab was scribbling vigorously across the surface of his notepad, murmuring, “Yes, yes, of course,” and nodding his chins in unison—he really should get the man to try radium emanation as a mea
ns of reducing; he was hardly an advertisement for the Sanitarium bill of fare—when the Doctor looked up to see the gaunt, lust-haunted form of Will Lightbody framed in the open doorway. Lightbody was alone. He stood there, looking uncertain, the naked slabs of his hands dangling at his sides, his sickly pale mortified features floating up out of the cheery backdrop of the hallway like the bad spot on an otherwise perfect piece of fruit. “Dr. Kellogg?” he boomed in his sepulchral tones, “do you have a minute?” He glanced at Dab and back again. “I need, I mean I want very much to discuss something with you—in private. About your lecture, I mean … but if this isn’t a convenient time …”

  Now here was something else. Just as he was mobilizing his forces, just as he was calling up his inner resources to combat strange chances and put his nemeses to the sword, the Doctor found himself confronted with yet another disappointment. The man was a walking cadaver, a hound of venery, and he’d directly and flagrantly contravened his physician’s orders—and now he’d come crawling back. Dr. Kellogg felt something harden in him. He shooed Dab out of the office—”I’ll see to Lillian directly,” he called to the secretary’s retreating form, “keep everyone away from the kitchens”—and then he instructed Will to shut the door behind him and take a seat. The Doctor remained standing. “Yes, Mr. Lightbody? And what seems to be the problem?”