Whatever it was, it didn’t matter; because Auden Strothers realized he’d just found exactly what he needed.
Until tonight I thought I was inured to providing the college with medical specimens. . . . I’d even overcome the resentment I felt about being a “scholarship boy.” The sons of Dunham, Wister, Parkerton—those giants of commerce and industry—aren’t expected to grub in dirt or hacksaw through metal and marble to produce cadavers the future doctors desperately need to perfect skills they’ll use when they treat their patients. Strictly speaking it’s not illegal; the law looks the other way in hopes that one of us, or our counterparts here or across the pond, or in Europe will save his life down the line. Books are nothing to bodies.
Each time we go out, we meet by pre-arrangement in front of the lecture hall and shuffle our feet in nervous anticipation and blow on our hands to ward off the chill while Dr. Perry stands on the steps of the lecture hall and gives a little pep talk—part lecture, part plea, part innuendo. “Men,” he says, “our duty—unpleasant as it may be—is of the utmost importance. Never forget that for an instant.”
Twice the professor slipped up during his standard speech; once last autumn he accidentally inserted the phrase “of gravest importance,” and a second time, around the Christmas holidays when brandy-toddies and rum-shrub were abundant, he made reference to “the task that lies ahead.” Only a second year student we call “Cruncher” laughed out loud—he was overly familiar with digging down over the head and yanking out a corpse cranium-first.
But tonight’s task was supposed to be simpler. After all, the ground is still frozen hard in New England, so we were going to nearby Blue Haven to raid a “receiving vault,” where they stack up the dead until the spring thaw permits gravediggers to shovel deeply into the thin stony soil.
There were just four of us and—quelle luxe—Dr. Perry brought along his own Miller landau for us to ride in and collect the bodies we’d carry back, instead of sending us off to the dark, wide-scattered cemeteries in groups of two and three.
I was glad for once that more of my fellow resurrection men had not shown up. It’s only now that I’m writing these pages that I wonder if they knew what was afoot or if their intuition—or some yet unknown, unmapped sense, or even angel guardians—warned them.
We were seated inside the coach; Perry was upfront alongside his driver. Cruncher sat facing me. “Here, Sykes. You look like you could use a bolt.” He extended a flask, and more for the sake of politeness than anything else, I took a swig.
“Have another and pass it around.” He nodded toward Freddie O’Rourke and Tom Winterbourne who were both first year students and had only been on one or two other midnight raids. “There’s wild work ahead, laddies.”
Winterbourne looked uncomfortable and shifted in his seat.
“I’ve got armlets, you bet,” O’Rourke said, “and they’re vulcanized, to boot.”
Cruncher tilted his head back against the upholstery and laughed. “You’re going to need more than a couple of rubber sleeves to grope amongst this lot,” he said. “And more than those flimsy cotton butcher aprons Perry’s toted along.”
The carriage lights were swaying as the horses jigged along and Cruncher studied my face. “Sykes doesn’t know.”
“Sykes doesn’t know what,” I said.
“Liked it better when to work off your scholarship, you only had to wait tables or sweep out the lab or set out the gear for the rich boys, Sykes?”
“You’re drunk, Cruncher.” I turned away. It had been bad when I had to don black tie and serve meals, or clean up blood and vomit in the lab, or lay out everything from yachting togs to surgical notes for the sons of senators and kingmakers. I had actually begged the professor for some job, any job where—away from the tonier crowd—I thought it would be easier for me to maintain my dignity, my sense of self.
“Fourth year students—even those with straight A’s who have to unbury the dead—think they know everything.”
“I know you’re an ass, and for the moment, that’s enough for me,” I said under my breath.
He passed the flask to O’Rourke who drank and handed it to Winterbourne.
“Maybe you imagine you’ll be in practice some day,” Cruncher said. “ ‘Mrs. Smythe, it seems poor little Teddy has contracted influenza,’ ” he said in a stricken voice; then paused. “Only you won’t be treating the swells on Park Avenue like the rest of your class, you’ll be seeing a bunch of immigrants and rotters and drunks and ignorant women who haven’t gotten their monthlies and are shocked to learn they’re expecting another ‘blessed event’ for the seventh time.”
I didn’t say a word; there wasn’t any point to arguing with Cruncher. He wasn’t on scholarship, but it was clear he drank too much and there were rumors he was well-acquainted with opium dens in the city. He wasn’t like the swells, but his family had money. He must have wanted to get his medical degree or please a demanding father: why else would he be out after midnight scrabbling in cemeteries?
“No answer, eh, Sykes? Well, here’s one for you. Show ’im, Tommy.”
Winterbourne reached inside his coat and pulled out a folded sheet of paper and handed it to me.
There wasn’t enough light to read it carefully, but it didn’t matter because I knew the page from the communicable diseases text book very welclass="underline"
Small pox (variola, qv.) Causative organism, not definitely known. More common during the colder seasons. No age exempt. May occur in utero. No preference as to sex. Acquired chiefly by direct contact with patient.
Symptoms: Onset abrupt with chills. Headache (usually frontal), intense lumbar pains, elevation of temperature which may rise to 104 or higher, nausea, or more frequently, vomiting. Fever remains high until evening of 3rd or morning of 4th day, when it falls sharply, often to normal.
With the drop in temperature, the eruption makes its appearance, coming out as a rule about the face, and soon afterward on extremities and to a lesser extent, the trunk. These lesions pass through a series of well-documented phases: macules, papules (which are raised and filled with fluid), vesicles, pustules (which feel to the touch as if bird shot pellets have been embedded under the skin) and finally, crusts.
About the 2nd day of eruption, the macules become papular (raised and filled with fluid) which increase in size and become vesicles. The vesicles increase in size and from the 7th to 8th day well-developed pustules are present, having the appearance of drop-seated or inverted areolae. In some cases, the blisters overlap and merge almost entirely producing a confluent rash, which detaches the outer layer of skin from the flesh beneath it and renders the sufferer more likely to succumb to death. From the 8th to the 11th day, desiccation occurs and by the end of the 21st day, scabs have formed over the lesions and flaked off, leaving permanent, pitted etiolated scars if the patient survives.
There is no disease so repulsive, so dirty, so foul smelling, so hard to manage, so infectious as smallpox may be and is . . .
I felt my face blanch and I suddenly felt light-headed.
“Ho, Winterbourne, hand over the flask. Feeling a trifle peaked, Sykes?”