An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [100]
When I started writing this book, I didn't know if I would find even one flower that bloomed at night. Thanks to Peter Loewer, I found a book full of them.
After all is said and done, I am writing fiction here. Writing, just like medicine in Lincoln's time, is half magic, half art, and half hard work. And my story is based on the hard, dry facts that I have taken pain to substantiate.
So then, what happened to my fictional heroine, Emily Pigbush? I like to think she stayed with Uncle Valentine. Perhaps she became one of Mrs. McQuade's star pupils. Perhaps she sat in the courtroom at Johnny Surratt's trial. Did he see her there? Did their eyes meet? Did they speak?
I like to think she finished her schooling and went on to become a woman doctor.
Body snatching declined by the 1890s. The medical profession succeeded in getting decent anatomy laws enacted and scientific methods made it possible for cadavers to be preserved for a very long time. By the twentieth century body snatching had all but ceased.
* * *
Bibliography
Adams, George Worthington. Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War. New York: H. Schuman, 1952.
Bettmann, Otto L. A Pictorial History of Medicine: A Brief, Nontechnical Survey of the Healing Arts from Aesculapius to Ehrlich. Springfield, 111.: Charles C. Thomas, 1956.
Bishop, Jim. The Day Lincoln Was Shot. New York: Harper & Row, 1955.
Campbell, Helen Jones. Confederate Courier. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965.
Green, Constance McLaughlin. Washington: A History of the Capital 1800–1950. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962–1963.
Keckley, Elizabeth. Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. New York: Arno Press, 1968.
Lewis, Lloyd. The Assassination of Lincoln: History and Myth. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Originally published as Myths After Lincoln, New York: Harcourt, 1929.
Loewer, Peter. The Evening Garden. New York: Macmillan, 1993.
Long, E. B., and Barbara Long. The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac 1861–1865. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1971.
Russell, Pamela Redford. The Woman Who Loved John Wilkes Booth. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1978.
Shultz, Suzanne M. Body Snatching: The Robbing of Graves for the Education of Physicians in Early Nineteenth Century America. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1992.
Weichmann, Louis J. A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the Conspiracy of 1865. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975.
* * *
Reader Chat Page
1. What kinds of life lessons did Emily learn from the Grimm's fairy tales and nursery rhymes told to her by her father? Does his nickname for her, Miss Muffet, have any significance?
2. After the Civil War, what sorts of problems arose between freed slaves and more established African American people like Elizabeth Keckley, who had good jobs and more education?
3. Emily tells Maude that "People make lots of their own problems. Then they blame them on the war." What sorts of problems were blamed on the war in this story?
4. Compare Johnny Surratt to Robert. What qualities did they share? How were they different from each other? Why did Emily feel torn between her loyalties to the two men?
5. How did the people of Washington, D.C., react when President Lincoln was assassinated? What actions and emotions followed this tragedy?
6. President Johnson refuses to consider pleas for Mary Surratt's life, sending the message that "Mrs. Surratt kept the nest that hatched the eggs" in the plot to kill President Lincoln. Do you believe that Mrs. Surratt was fully aware of the plans being made in her home? Do you believe that she deserved to die for her crime?
7. Why did Dr. Bransby and his associates need to rob graves? Since studying bodies made Dr. Bransby a better doctor, do you think the grave robbing was worth the risk? Or is committing a crime such as grave robbing inexcusable?
8. Explain the symbolism