(The year is 1763, and Sir James Wilbrahim has suddenly fallen ill. The full text of the novel can be read at pgvshil.blogspot.com )
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Wishing to learn more, I next proceeded into Bereton to search out Doctor Stump. I had never consulted him myself, having had so far the great good fortune to suffer neither illness nor injury while living at the Priory, but I knew him by sight: a man of strange appearance that scarcely inspired confidence, for he was short and crouching in posture, his eyes were never still and his face bore a dark pustule above his right eyebrow. He had but two teeth in his mouth, and they were very yellow and very long, giving him a carnivorous appearance when he spoke. He smelt constantly of snuff, which stained his coat.
He worked, I discovered, from a small, dingy shop in a side street, situated, perhaps appropriately, next to a butcher. A sign proudly announced him as Theodore Stump: physician and apothecary. The window displayed bottles of coloured liquids, but their faded labels could barely be read through the dirty glass.
An ancient female conducted me through to a back parlour, where I found Doctor Stump in conversation with another man who was the exact opposite in appearance, being tall and cadaverous, with a motionless face that was as white as chalk. He was dressed entirely in black, like a cleric. Had he been lying prostrate, I could have taken him for a corpse.
Doctor Stump welcomed me to his home and hastened to introduce me to the other man, who it transpired was a most eminent physician from Mulchester, by name Doctor Lawton. Stump was unusually effusive in his manner, as if boastfully proud that a Member of Parliament should be paying him a visit.
I explained that I was concerned about Sir James Wilbrahim’s state of health, and wished to know what could be done to cure him.
“And you were quite right to come, sir,” said the visiting doctor, speaking in a voice so soft that I could barely hear him, “for we were indeed discussing his case as you entered. I shall allow my esteemed colleague here to state his opinion first.”
Doctor Stump, evidently eager to impress both me and his visitor, now embarked on a lengthy discourse on the four humours. He attributed Sir James’s collapse to an excess of Black Bile in his blood, leading to an imbalance which needed to be remedied by bleeding; and should the symptoms persist, the treatment should be repeated until the correct balance had been restored. If he, the doctor, was unable to be present, then a number of leeches might suffice. In that eventuality, he said, a treatment favoured by some authorities was to counter the Black Bile with a Red Cure, which could include replacing the green bed-hangings with scarlet ones and feeding the patient only red food and drink. He also recommended a certain elixir that he could supply, involving snails and millipedes plus other secret ingredients, bruised to a paste and mixed with claret wine, which was certain to produce what he described as “a plentiful evacuation”.
Doctor Lawson shook his skull-like head firmly, with a frown on his face. “Your diagnosis is incorrect,” he pronounced in condemnation, his voice now rising to take on a harsh tone. “Even if your patient’s affliction had indeed resulted from an imbalance of the humours, then in my opinion he suffered from an excess of Red Choler, in which case your Red Cure would only make his affliction worse. And your elixir too contains red wine! Make it Moselle, sir: Moselle! Otherwise you will infallibly kill your unfortunate patient! No, sir: the unhappy gentleman has plainly suffered an attack of the flying gout.”
When I asked him for the meaning of this strange term, he explained, in a most superior and patronising tone, that whereas the proper focus of gout was, of course, the feet, but in the case of Sir James the affliction appeared to have suddenly transferred to his brain; and for this he proposed a treatment of the application of hot mustard-plasters to the feet, in order to attract the gout back to its proper home.
The expression on Doctor Stump’s face suggested that he strongly disagreed, but did not dare contradict his more eminent colleague. I said that for my part I agreed with Doctor Stump’s treatment, for good quantities of claret would at least put Sir James in good heart, whereas I believed that he did not like Moselle wine. I then asked whether, in furtherance of the Red Cure the room should perhaps be lined with red roses and poppies, gathered when Mars, the red planet, was in the ascendant?
I had intended this comment to be light-hearted, but the learned Doctor Lawton took it with the utmost seriousness. He shook his head impatiently, dismissed the use of flowers as a mere superstition of the uneducated, and informed me, in the lofty tone of a schoolmaster addressing a recalcitrant pupil, that I, as a mere layman, was lamentably ignorant of the astrological sciences. His investigations, he said, had revealed that Sir James was under the influence of Saturn, and could not expect a full recovery until that planet appeared in the constellation of Virgo.
“Mars has nothing to do with the matter, sir! Nothing at all!” He pronounced with contempt. His voice was like iron scraped over gravel. I felt I had nothing more to contribute to the discussion, and so we parted. I was still without any ideas as to how I could help the good people of Stanegate, for it appeared unlikely that I would be admitted to the house.
