An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [53]
"Why is it so cold?"
"To keep the specimens preserved." He went about lighting lamps.
The place came to life. The back wall was lined with heavy draperies. "Window," Robert said. "When your uncle works in here he opens the draperies to let sunlight in. Nobody lives back there, so he has privacy."
The walls were painted white. And lined with wooden shelves. Some of the shelves had large jars filled with floating things. I saw the head of a pig in one jar. A frog in another. Even a snake. From a far corner a human skeleton glared at me. I gasped.
In still another jar a human finger floated in some solution.
Robert smiled. "It was saved by your uncle when it was found on the floor of one of the army hospitals. I see you brought pad and pencil. Aren't you going to take notes?"
"Yes."
Robert showed me around. He showed me syringes, stones taken from a gallbladder, a human skull. I saw no bodies. But I was fascinated just the same.
He showed me some carbolic acid, used as a disinfectant. He held up a jar with some dark liquid. "This is iodine," he said. "It was first used in a field hospital in Jonesboro, Georgia, during the war, where it was sprayed into the air as an antiseptic. But we here in America are way behind Europe in our medical progress. Here, for instance, is a clinical thermometer. It is hundreds of years old. Yet during the war there were not more than twenty in the whole Union Army."
I wrote.
"This is a hypodermic syringe. It is still only used by some surgeons. Most still prefer to dust morphine into wounds or give opium pills. This is an ophthalmoscope. A doctor can examine the inside of the eye with it. It was invented in 1851. But then years after its invention few doctors in our army could yet use it."
"Why?"
"Because the army had too many incompetent medical men. And because before the war most medical schools did not have the advanced knowledge of the day. The war opened up those opportunities for us. It gave us the chance to do things, out of sheer necessity, that were not even allowed or taught in medical schools."
"So there was some good to the war," I said.
"Yes. War always brings us technological advances."
"My daddy died of a stomach wound."
"So many did. The son of Dr. Bowditch of Boston, for instance. Young Bowditch was wounded on the battlefield. No ambulance was sent out to him. He was brought off on a horse and died. Bowditch fought the War Department for a trained ambulance corps."
"Did he get one?"
"Yes. Where did your father die?"
"Chancellorsville."
"May of '63. By then we had an ambulance corps. But it was a Confederate win. The ambulance corps brought about eight thousand of our men into the division hospitals, but twelve hundred were left on the field when our army retreated. They were treated well enough when captured, but in the ten days before the prisoner exchange there was a real shortage of supplies."
I nodded. My mouth was dry. "I know what that is." I pointed. "A stethoscope."
"Yes. Invented in 1838. And Harvard Medical School still doesn't have one. Its catalogs still don't mention many of these instruments."
"Why?"
He shrugged. "Too many medical schools are just diploma mills. What we've learned from the war still hasn't gotten to them. It's why the work your uncle is doing is so important. He is directly teaching what he learned in the war. And he is one of the most qualified teachers of anatomy around today."
"You mean he works on dead bodies."
"All medical schools use them, yes. Anatomy courses are the reason for the establishment of medical schools. Before that students learned as apprentices, following doctors around."
"Where do you get the bodies?"
"They are bequeathed to us. Or they are those of executed criminals." His gaze was warm and direct. Was he lying? No, I decided. His answers were too easy. I wrote some more.
"And finally, this is an achromatic microscope," Robert said. "The headquarters of the Army Medical Department didn't have one until 1863. Well, does that satisfy your curiosity?"
"Yes. Thank