by Nina Siegal
I stopped in for a quick goblet at the very tavern where I’d received my beating. For I had been a thief and a mendicant so long I knew not how to seek an honest wage. The tavern keeper’s eye weighed heavy on my face as I complained of this sad truth to my fellow knave at the bar. He said the same was true for him. How can a man work if he was never trained? I told him I’d squandered the training my father had given me in the sheath-maker’s trade and showed him the set of tools Flora had given me in the leather case. He told me that if I wanted now to put those to good use, he at least knew how we could employ them.
In a low voice, he said he’d come to know a childless merchant who kept a stately house and a stable of horses he sold to the Americas. He kept the rest of his treasures in a cellar that didn’t rightly shut. I told him I didn’t believe it to be true and bade he take me to the place.
He found the place and we used my father’s carving knife to pry the cellar door, but found no treasure. Instead, we burst in upon a man who was taking his bath in a barrel below the stairs. He came at us, in all his naked glory, and we ran to free ourselves from his soggy embrace. This so-called merchant, it seems, was no merchant at all, but instead a constable of the Leiden court.
For this offense, I was flagellated in public in the square in Leiden, as poor Flora watched and wept, along with all the other townsfolk she had tried to convince of my goodness. Then I was branded with the blunt end of an iron—you can see the scar from that day here on my shoulder—and banned again from Holland and West Friesland for twenty-five years. I was forced from my birthplace by pitchfork, in a torch parade, and stripped of my new clothes and fancy cap. I would not have felt quite so much shame if it weren’t for the sound of Flora’s wailing, which played in my ears for many weeks as I walked and walked and walked. I was banished from Leiden, and yet still, I ended up back there.
So golden-hearted is that wench that I suspected she would await my return no matter how much I’d sinned. Poor is the wench who tries to convert a thief into a gentleman with kindness. I could not help myself from continuing along my well-worn, and pernicious, path.
My last offense was to trespass on a house near the Stevenshof in Leiden. I lifted some windowpanes to attempt to filch a purse that was sitting near the glass, but was caught in the act, because the windows fell down upon my hands and I howled noisily.
I hope I will never in my life see that hellish city of my birth again, for the worst violence was done to me there. The justice of the court took no pity for this minor offense, and seeing the long list of misdeeds on my record, he screwed up his face. I was speechless when he announced that my right hand was to be sawed off at the wrist. And I was still not awake when this horrifying punishment began. But when that rusty blade took the first bite of my flesh, I awakened. Ten men had to hold me down, and one put a plank of balsam between my teeth so I would not bite through my own tongue. But pain is a curious demon and in that moment I had so much of it I soon became almost calmed. A strange thought passed through my mind in this moment of stupor. This was, indeed, the very lifelike incarnation of the nightmare that had kept me from sleep all those years. My arm was being sliced open to the cold air. Though I did scream and kick and repent with all my heart to get them to stop this torture, some part of me believed that now that the deed was truly done, I’d no longer suffer from that dream.
Then I lifted my head and saw what they had done to me and I died my first death. I won’t speak more on this because the torment of that day is enough for one man to bear. As you can see, Your Honor, the skin has now closed around the cut, and the arm is but a fleshy club where once I had a hand. No more thumb have I to hold a pen nor index finger to pick my nose. I miss each of the other fingers just as much, for now I know how much good they could’ve done for me had I used them well.
These brands and whipping scars from my ankles to my neck, this stump that hangs useless from an able limb are all testament to my depravity. I was a pretty boy. I might’ve grown up to be a handsome man, but my form now represents my wretched soul. No man alive, not even a blind man, can fail to observe my wickedness.
January 31, 1632
Dear Mersenne,
I write to you again tonight in a rare state of agitation, having just returned from the anatomical lesson. I have at this moment arrived at my lodging at the Oud Prins, and I feel a desire to relate all that I have seen, for it has given me a great deal of new insight into the questions of the body and soul that have so preoccupied me of late.
I have torn off my gloves, though I still wear my cloak and my hat. Let me remove my coat and hat and I will continue with more solemnity.
There it is. I am defrocked, as it were.
I write to tell you of a fascinating performance at the anatomy hall this evening, when that Tulpius, of whom I jotted earlier, dissected a human hand. The lecture was otherwise uninteresting—Tulp is more moralist than philosopher, and used a great portion of the evening to search the poor criminal’s corpse, in vain, for evidence of despoilment. The liver was not black, the heart was not shrunken or distended, and neither the small nor large intestine contained polyps, no matter how long he spent examining their every turn and curve. I thought at one point he’d wrap the dead man’s digestive tract around his neck and use it as a scarf.
In any case, he took particular care with the portion of the lecture in which he focused on the hand, as I believe this is the only area where he differs with Galen, who mostly dissected Barbary apes and never managed to dissect a human hand. Instead Tulp sided with Vesalius, saying that the hand is the only distinctively human feature of a man.
First, Tulpius covered all but the limb, and asked his assistant to hold it steady at the shoulder. Using his scalpel, he sliced through the center of the forearm and the skin folded back and rolled away.
He presented to us the muscles and tendons that wrap around the radius and ulna—these bones I have previously observed only in skeletons. By holding the elbow steady and turning the arm laterally, Tulp demonstrated how these various muscles operate together to allow for the very complex mobility of the forearm. Some groups work for extension and others for supination, and then the tendons work for pronation and flexion.
The radius and ulna are only two bones but they are miraculous, really. Because there are two bones in the forearm, unlike in the upper part of the arm or in the legs, the forearm is not fixed; it can twist and corkscrew. In that way, we can move our hand in various directions. You could go so far as to say that these two bones, the radius and ulna, make almost all human endeavors possible, because they allow for the torquing motion that makes all hand movements possible. Turning a doorknob. Stabbing with a knife. Operating a crank.
Then Dr. Tulp sliced horizontally across the wrist and pulled down the skin of the palm over the tips of the fingers, as if the skin were a glove. He snipped off the skin at the fingertips just below the nails, like a butcher would trim sausage from a long band. It was all very neatly done, I must say. As I mentioned, Tulp certainly knows his way around a blade.
A funny thing occurred to me when the interior of the hand was at last revealed: it very much resembled the inner workings of a harpsichord. The hand has a whole system of pulleys and sliding structures that make it possible to bend each finger. You know how, as you press a key in a harpsichord, the corresponding string within the instrument will sound when the plectrum plucks the string? It was like this with the fingers, which could move on their own as he drew back each flexor tendon.
Then Tulp gave us a very clever demonstration of the operation of these flexor tendons. He used his forceps to grasp the tendons in the wrist, creating tension in the arm so that the fingers of the corpse began to curl.
It was macabre and scintillating at the same time. Every one of the onlookers gasped. A few admitted afterward that they’d thought for a moment that the dead man’s soul had returned to his body.
Tulp was only playing puppeteer. All he had done was put pressure on th
e mechanism using his own hand. Yet it was quite extraordinary to see it. How can I put it accurately? It was proof that the body is a machine and that the muscles and bones all act in accordance with mechanical principles. I shall not forget it.
After he had done it, Tulp let a few of us also try grasping the flexor tendons ourselves, so we could feel the motion within the arm. I was very pleased to have this opportunity, as I might not have completely believed what I had seen without testing it. But it was very simple, Mersenne. The human body is constructed, it seems to me, with a very clear mechanical purpose in mind. All these parts work in harmony, and all is apparent once you are able to gaze upon these elements individually.
The hand is part of that machine, but the machine operates at the dictates of the soul. If a corpse’s hand can be reanimated in death, then it must be by some other living soul and not itself. I could directly observe through Tulp’s anatomy that most of the vital functions, such as digestion of food in the stomach and so on, do not involve the soul at all—that is, the part that thinks, understands, wills, imagines, remembers, and has sensory perceptions.
Permit me to suggest that the soul is very much like the corona of a candle flame. It is apparent to the observer, but it is illusory. It changes depending upon the way it is viewed. It is there, and yet we cannot touch or feel it. The candle allows for the corona to exist; the candle flame is extinguished when the body dies. I believe this candle flame must be found in the brain, for that is the seat of the will which drives the hand and all the other bodily mechanisms to perform acts. But the corona of the flame is what happens inside the brain. In other words, thinking.
The rest of Tulp’s lecture was not so spirited. He speaks much about the importance of ocular testimony, yet his theological lenses obscure his sight. The lecture included such a perverse assortment of claims, mingling science of the ancients with his Calvinist theology, that I found my thoughts twisted about in all directions and ultimately nowhere at all. Never have I heard a single modern surgeon so often quote Hippocrates, Pythagoras, and Celsus. It’s as if it were yet 1522. Poor Galen should only be lifted directly from his grave and brought to stand before the entire assembled mass of Amsterdam surgeons for a more vivid display of sycophancy. Tulp deforms his own logic to make empirical enquiry reflect his personal theology, no doubt the result of his education under Petrus Pauw, that strict predestinationist who found human beings so irredeemable.
After the performance with the arm, the guild members went off to their banquet. Since his strict religiosity forbids him to partake, Tulpius welcomed us into his private chambers. There, I suggested to Tulp that the brain, and specifically the pineal gland, might be the location of the soul; he responded that Galen had already disproved all theories about regulation of psychic pneuma. Well, I just left it at that. As you know, no one else on the continent has even spoken of psychic pneuma since Niccolò Massa.
My friend, that is my story for this evening. I shall put down my pen for now, for the fire has gone out and my chamber has grown cold. I will write more reflectively tomorrow in response to your observations on the corona of a candle flame. For now at least, I must blow out my own candle and sleep.
Your true and loving friend,
René Descartes
I was summoned to join the banquet with the magistrates, noblemen, barbers, and surgeons and I could hardly decline as I’d already come so late. I did not see you there, Monsieur Descartes; perhaps you are one of the few men in town who does not have the stomach to feast after a dissection.
They held it in the grand hall of the medical guild at a long wood table made, I was told, from a single giant oak that had been shipped all the way from the New World. That was only the first of many extravagances prepared for this particular feast. Silver trays of Gouda and Edam cheeses, lamb, goat, pig, fish, beef, and lobster were delivered to the table, and it seemed as if the autopsy was quickly forgotten.
I didn’t have much of an appetite upon leaving the dissection chamber, and my head was swimming with memories of my brother and the boy from Leiden. I was thinking, too, of that woman who rushed into the anatomy theater during the dissection, and how she had the force of the crowd behind her. How they had pressed their way into that room so that she could see him one last time. But like that … to see him like that …
No one else seemed the least bit interested in this or anything having to do with the anatomy lesson. Once they delivered the casks of Rhenish wine, the conversation quickly turned bawdy. Some gruesome jokes about innards were made at the dead man’s expense, and the men stabbed their knives into their meats with far more dexterity than Tulp had used his blade. It was about the time when the banqueters began singing and crashing their tankards against the table that I was tapped on the shoulder to see Dr. Tulp in his private chambers upstairs. This was a great relief to me by that point.
Tulp received me warmly when I entered his office.
“They’re toasting you at the banquet,” I said, sitting down across from him. He was behind a large wood desk on a chair that seemed more like a throne. “Don’t you want to join the festivities?”
“I dislike liquor and abhor tobacco,” he said with a gentle smile. “I am an antisumptuary but I don’t seem to be able to prevent the guild members from partaking. I pay for the banquet out of the guild’s purse. I simply choose to remain apart.”
“I am honored to be invited to your private chambers. Let me express my heartfelt apologies that I was so tardy tonight. If it could have been prevented, it would have.”
He offered me some more of his herbal brew and I accepted it.
“I wondered what had become of you,” he conceded without scolding. “But I was pleased that you arrived when you did. You did not miss the most important part. That part you’ll need for the portrait.”
“Your dissection of the hand was masterfully done,” I said. “All the guild members are saying so. I should think Professor Pauw would be very proud of his star pupil.”
Tulp bowed his head, I think, to blush. “That is a generous compliment, indeed.” He looked up at me again. “I think he should be disappointed with me; I was not able to locate the source of the criminal’s corruption in his soul.”
“Where did you suspect it would reside?”
“I should have thought to find it in his heart or at least his liver.”
“And not in his hand?”
The doctor shook his head. “Moral philosophy and criminal justice diverge dramatically when it comes to offending organs. Judges and magistrates punish the hand because it is the most effective way to prevent the repetition of the criminal act. But there is no medical evidence that the hand itself contains the source of the thief’s soul corruption any more than the tongue is to blame for the liar’s prevarications. Our moral philosophy teaches that all soul corruption resides in one of the vital organs of the thorax.”
“And could there be no other medical explanation?”
“All men of scientia must come up with new theories, or else we should never have any lively debates in our profession and no new published works. Some men believe that new knowledge is always the best knowledge. I prefer to stick with the ancients. The mortal soul is clearly to be found in the thorax. Now there is a debate, of course, between Plato and Aristotle about whether there is further division and that the immortal soul can be found in the neck and head. Yet, for a thief I think one must focus on the mortal soul to discover the source of corruption. It would be in the thorax. I must have overlooked something during this dissection. I am just not sure yet what.”
He was momentarily distracted, jotting down a note for himself. I began to move slowly around the room, taking in all that he had on display. It was a formal study and everything had its place. The shelves were lined with mustard- and rust-colored leather-bound tomes. In the cabinets were a handful of anatomical preservations in glass jars: small samplings of animal and human tissue in pale liquid, labeled with their precise contents. Th
e colors of the specimens were fleshy reds and pinks. There was a small slice of what appeared to be a human lung latticed with holes like a fisherman’s net. Another jar held a lobe of a brain, its contours gray and brown with age. The cabinet also contained smaller jars of what seemed to be medicines and ointments, items from his developing pharmacopeia, I guessed.
On another wall was an anatomical drawing of an ape. The lines of the drawing were weak and thin, the shapes that made the body too round and inexact to be a credible likeness. The ape looked more human than he should, yet not at all natural. To one side of his cabinet there was a wall marked in the shapes of his medical tools—forceps, scalpels, retractors—some of which lay on the shelf below.
He finished writing and returned his focus to me.
“It is an important question,” he said. “Where the soul resides. You must have an opinion of your own on the matter.”
“I have been told often that my portraits do not accurately depict my patrons. And many of my subjects do not see in themselves what I put on the canvas. When I view a man, I do not study so much the color of his eyes or the precise folds of the particular wrinkles about his mouth. Their noses are too wide, or their eyebrows too large; they say my skills in creating likenesses is sometimes wanting.” I paused to collect my thoughts. “As a portrait painter, it is my job to try and capture not only a man’s likeness but also a man’s soul. Men of learning, like you, search for the soul that lies within. The artist is trained to view what is without and to reflect it as faithfully as possible. But how many of us are able to use what we see on the outside as a way to glimpse what is within?”
Tulp smiled wryly. “And yet your self-portraits do depict you faithfully.”