1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz – Snippet 16
Chapter 3
The Quinta Essentia
December 8, 1615, Padua
Phillip stepped up to the dissection table in the public anatomical theater in the Palazzo Bo off the south west courtyard at the University of Padua. He looked up at the six tiers of galleries, all of them packed, except for a little space either side of a man on the second tier. The observers and students around him were, quite naturally, not pushing up against Professor Giulio Casseri, holder of the chair of surgery at Padua.
The theater was expectant as Phillip bowed his head in honor of his mentor and then pulled back the draping to reveal the cadaver. There were cheers around the theater as students recognized the late and unlamented Professor Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente, Giulio’s former mentor, and for the last thirty years his most bitter rival, on the dissection table. Not that the rivalry had been Giulio’s fault. He could hardly be blamed for being a much better teacher, but Fabrictus, as Fabricius was known to Giulio’s most devoted admirers for his rigid opposition to innovation, had resented Giulio’s success and popularity and used all the power at his disposal to stifle Giulio’s career. It was therefore fitting that Giulio’s greatest apprentice would be the man to dissect his body.
Phillip held out a hand for the scalpel he would use to make the first incision . . .
“Phillip. Wake up!”
Philip blinked a few times and looked around. He was no longer in the public anatomical theater, unfortunately. It had only been a dream, which was equally unfortunate. He was in his room in Giacomo Sedazzari’s house in Padua. He turned his attention to the person who’d woken him. “I was having the most beautiful dream, I was . . .”
“There’s no time for that,” Francesca Sedazzari said. “We need you to amuse the children.”
Phillip cocked an ear. There were only the faintest sounds of children playing. “They don’t sound so noisy.”
“That’s because I told them that if they were good you would read to them.” Francesca stood with her hands on her hips and stared expectantly at Phillip.
He knew what she was doing. She was trying to intimidate him, and as was usual, succeeding. “Okay, okay.” He hauled himself off his bed and staggered over to the bookshelf. “How long do you want me to entertain them for?’ he asked.
“The feast will be served at noon.”
Phillip looked outside to see if he could estimate the time. Unfortunately, and he was using that word a lot right now, it looked like it was barely after eight. That meant he had to read for four hours. Still, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, as celebrated by the extended Rovarini family, would be more than adequate compensation. He selected a number of books that he hoped would take at least four hours to read and headed for the door.
“I’ll see that refreshments are sent over soon,” Francesca called.
****
Phillip was mobbed by the children the moment he stepped into the front room. Eager hands relieved him of the books while equally eager, but smaller, hands took hold of his and led him away. It was almost a tradition now when the Rovarini families gathered that Phillip would read to the children to keep them out from underfoot while the womenfolk got on with preparing the meals and the men got everything else ready. Not that Phillip minded. It was a completely new experience for him to be so much a part of a family.
A space in Giacomo’s barn had been prepared. There was a lamp so Phillip had enough light to read, and the straw and hay around Phillip’s seat were festooned with children wrapped up in blankets to keep warm. Phillip sat down on an oversized blanket and wrapped it around himself before he picked up the first book. He snuggled down on his chair of straw and made himself comfortable. The sense of anticipation in the barn was almost palpable.
Phillip had been forced by children constantly complaining that they couldn’t hear to develop a speaking voice that could fill the barn. Once he’d mastered that he’d gone on to develop the ability to give identity and personality to the characters so the children could keep track of who was who. It wasn’t a quiet reading, because Phillip didn’t encourage silence. He changed his voice to suit the characters and changed his tempo to reflect events in the story. He interacted with the children, making them part of the experience, and they responded by hanging onto his every word. He loved the feeling it gave him. He imagined that this must be something like what Professor Casseri felt when he gave a lecture.
The end came as a bit of a shock to Phillip. He finished one book and automatically reached out for another, only to feel nothing but an empty space where the books should have been. He looked apologetically to the children, and realized they’d been joined by most of the adults. “Is it time for supper?” he asked.
Standing close to the main door Francesca nodded.
Phillip glanced down at the plate of refreshments that he had been provided, and discovered it to be empty. He must have eaten everything without noticing, which was a shame, because Paola Rovarini’s panettone was something to be savored. He fought his way out of his blankets and got to his feet. “Well, children, it seems dinner is about to be served, so reading time is over.”
There was a satisfying heartfelt sea of moans as the children got to their feet and packed up their blankets before walking off. Phillip was amongst the last to leave, with Francesca and her husband waiting for him at the door.
“Thank you for keeping then amused,” Francesca said as Phillip joined them.
“No, thank you for treating me as one of the family,” Phillip said. “I enjoy reading to them, and they certainly enjoy being read to.” He glanced back to check his lamp and blanket had been taken collected before stepping out into the cold with his landlady and her husband.
A few days later
The lecture on theoretical medicine was exploring how to treat a fever and Phillip had to hold onto his seat to prevent himself shooting to his feet and protesting loudly when Dr. Francesco Piazzono started to talk about the virtues of bloodletting.
“The objective is to remove only enough blood to induce syncope, at which point the . . .”
“. . . patient is almost dead,” Phillip muttered his own ending to the sentence. Unfortunately, his utterance fell into an untimely silence and was heard by most of the room. There was a collective, and noisy, intake of breath as the audience waited to see how Dr. Piazzono would react.
He reacted by singling out Phillip. “What was that you said, Signor Gribbleflotz?”
“Nothing, Dr. Piazzono,” he said, hoping that the pontificating Paduan hadn’t heard him
“I’m sure I heard you say something while I was describing the proper way to bleed a patient, Signor Gribbleflotz.”
Phillip made eye contact with Dr. Piazzono. “All I said was that bloodletting to syncope can kill the patient.”
Dr. Piazzono folded his arms and glared at Phillip. “It is not the bloodletting that kills the patient, Signor Gribbleflotz. It is the gross imbalance of the humors that causes the blood to overheat that kills. One bleeds a feverish patient to purge their body of the feverous blood. Health will be restored as the liver produces new blood.”
Phillip shook his head. “I board with an animal doctor, and he never bleeds an animal, no matter how feverish it might be. And they always recover.” In truth some of them died, but Phillip knew that bleeding them wouldn’t have helped, so they didn’t really count.
“I am not impressed by whatever a common farrier may or may not do, Gribbleflotz. Man is more complex than a beast”
Phillip wanted to protest that Giacomo Sedazzari was more than a common farrier, but to the left of Dr. Piazzono he caught his mentor’s eye. Professor Giulio Casseri’s almost undetectable shake of his head told Phillip to stop arguing. But he couldn’t resist one final salvo. “Paracelsus held that bloodletting drains the life-essence from the patient, and that you should be treating the disease with drugs.”
I have never understood how anyone could have come to the conclusion that it was a good idea to bleed someone almost to death in order to deal with illness. Even considering that they didn’t have a way to actually figure out what blood really was, it would not have been difficult to at least keep records on those who were bled to see how many of them ended up dying (which, no doubt, was a huge percentage). And it’s not like the basics of the scientific method didn’t exist at this point in time.
I mean, surely it couldn’t have been too difficult to come up with the idea of taking a group of people all sick with the same illness, then splitting them into two groups, one which was bled and one which was not but who were otherwise treated identically, and seeing which group had more survivors.
Then again, considering how prone we are to things like confirmation bias, the authority fallacy, and special pleading, I guess it’s not that surprising that the doctors of the time wouldn’t have wanted to rock the boat, even if they had private doubts.
But this is one of the things that makes me very glad that I live in the 20th century, when horrific practices like bleeding are in the dustbin of history.
Before you are too indignant with the notion of bloodletting, dont forget about leech treatment~
I’d just as soon not. But honestly, if I had to pick which was worse, I’d choose bleeding. Leeches are gross, but bleeding comes way too close to something I have an actual phobia of.
The leaches, while gross, are still probably safer than blood letting. And they do have some legitimate medical uses, especially for people with poor circulation.
Not that I personally want anything to do with the horrid things.
Jeff writes: “But this is one of the things that makes me very glad that I live in the 20th century . . . .”
Really? Still living in the 20th century? How do you manage that?
I blame being tired last night for that minor slip-up.
I thought for a moment you might be a time traveler. ! : }) Thanks for the interesting comments.
Some say the Egyptians came up with bloodletting, and by Phillip’s time it was a millennial tradition. That alone would make it difficult for physicians to stop doing it.
Also don’t forget that it must have seemed a very unethical experiment for people of the time to withhold the “state-of-the-art” treatment. Statistics weren’t in use.
Not much Later, William Harvey disproved the practice in 1628, but even then it continued on the basis of tradition. Evidence based medicine had a long struggle and still continues to struggle even in the western world, for example with respect to vaccinations or homeopathy.
Yeah, that’s true. It’s hardly the only field of human endeavor where inertia takes hold and then keeps going even when it’s shown to be wrong or silly.
I don’t really follow the conversion of Phillip Gribbleflotz from the devout, meticulous and somewhat shy apprentice to his new state where he has no issue accusing a teacher of malpractice. It’s as if he suddenly had no fear of authority and no idea of manners at all.
Sure, the obvious intent here is to bring him into opposition with the “medical establishment”, but why would he cross the alps just to piss off a professor? You would think he would have had at least the sense to stop arguing with a monumentally senior figure at the first hint. Then he could have spoken with his mentor about the issue so that the reader learns a little bit of the controversy involved in blood letting.
For that matter, earlier in the story he was said to be squeamish. Now he says the idea of cutting into the corpse of a dead teacher is a pleasant dream. I don’t know, even for me that would be a nightmare and I’m not squeamish or afraid of flesh and blood.
Maybe a better way of introducing this change of character would have been one of the family’s children to fall ill with a fever and a doctor insisting on blood letting, against Giacomo’s wishes (or in his absence), and thus killing the patient. Then this outburst would have been understandable.
In his career as an apprentice, he was more aware of “what he didn’t know” so he was very willing to listen to his superiors
As for his squeamishness, there was mention earlier of him learning more about practical medicine as in learning to “sew” wounds closed so what squeamishness he had, he had gotten over it.
As for arguing with this professor, Philip is more sure of himself and he is very much a student of his great-grandfather who had spoken out against blood-letting.
Of course, Philip appears to have more practical knowledge, gained by listening to people who have practical experience, than this professor.
In short, Philip is a smart young man who is hearing nonsense from this “renowned” professor and being young isn’t afraid to call it nonsense.
Mind you, (mild spoiler) this new habit of “speaking out against nonsense when he sees it”, is going to cause problems for him.
Philip seems to be unusually ahead of his time and – enlightened? – or at least in line with 20th/21st century medicine for the wacko we see in the rest of the 1632verse (pyramid power; Kirlian auras; and falling hook, line, and sinker for the line Tom Stone spins about “Hindu chakras”). Am I just a victim of hindsight bias?
Well, IMO his “time” had a mixture of “modern ideas” and “older ideas”.
Of course, he is a follower of his great-grandfather who held many ideas that modern medicine agrees with.
As for his “falling for” those wacky ideas, I think he that he wants to equal or surpass his famous great-grandfather but the wonders that the up-timers have brought surpass, in many ways, what he could reasonable do.
So seeing all these wonders, beyond what he could imagine, why wouldn’t he imagine that there might be something in ideas that up-timers brought with them that he could build on.
Sure some up-timers think of pyramid power & Kirlian auras as nonsense but that just means, to him, that there might be something there to be discovered by him.
Of course, I may be wanting to see him as somebody more that just a “wacko”. [Wink]
Oh mild spoiler, near the end of this book it appears that Tom Stone’s trick may back-fire on him in the next Gribbleflotz book. [Evil Grin]