Elephant Man - Christine Sparks [9]
It was a hard business to make a name for yourself when London was thronged with young doctors all trying to do the same. It was not enough to be a good doctor; you also had to be something of a showman, and your show had to be stranger and more startling than anyone else’s.
The staff at the London Hospital was constantly alert for the new intake of patients that might prove to contain “the one”—the one who might have that rare disease that they alone could diagnose and cure, that unknown condition by which they could cast new light on a hitherto obscure area. Members of the governing committee—Ebenezer Broadneck for one—had been known to remark that it was a scandal the way wretched patients were descended on by throngs of ambitious surgeons and physicians, to be pulled and pummeled and examined hopefully, and then discarded when their conditions revealed nothing that was not already common knowledge.
Other doctors, equally scandalous in Broadneck’s oft-voiced opinion, did not wait for Mohammed to come to the mountain. They went out searching for him like the man in the Bible who scoured the highways and byways to provide guests for the feast. Treves was one of the latter kind.
He knew the arguments against what he was doing, and he could counter every one of them with an argument in favor.
“How does Broadneck expect medical science to progress if we’re only able to investigate what has been investigated before?” he had demanded one evening of Fox, whom he had taken to his own home for dinner. Fox had made no answer, rightly divining that his role in this instance was to listen while Treves got it off his chest. But he had glanced at Anne and received an understanding smile. Anne too knew her role as a sounding board.
“Anatomy has always progressed in the teeth of orthodox opinion,” Treves went on. “And if it hadn’t continually flouted that opinion, we’d still be living in the days of Hippocrates. Leonardo da Vinci used to descend into crypts at dead of night to dissect cadavers.”
“Good Lord, Freddie,” said Fox, revolted. “I believe you’d have bought bodies from Burke and Hare.”
Treves’ eyes flashed humorously. “The name of the doctor who did that was Fox, wasn’t it?” he enquired, all innocence.
Fox scowled. “It was Knox and you know it, Freddie.”
Fortunately Anne had intervened at that moment and restored the atmosphere by serving Fox a large glass of brandy.
Sitting in the ale house now, Treves remembered his discussion with Fox and silently repeated to himself that no doctor made progress if he were too delicate to soil his hands. It meant going to stinking holes like the one he had visited today. It meant dealing with crawling insects like Bytes.
He tried to put Bytes out of his mind, but the “owner” would not be so easily dismissed. He stood there, dirty, ginny, leering at the man who had come to do business with him. In memory Treves could still see his face, and it made him shudder. Behind the incongruously cultured voice and the slimy bonhomie, Bytes was a mean and pitiless man. Half an hour’s acquaintance had been enough to tell Treves that.
He felt a sense of revulsion at the thought of doing business with such a creature, at giving Bytes the right to address him as though the two of them were on an equal level. But for good or ill, it was done now. He had saddled himself with Bytes for as long as he needed the Elephant Man. There was nothing to do but put up with the situation, keep Bytes at arm’s length, and do his best to persuade the man to treat Merrick with more humanity.
A small voice at the back of his mind whispered that it wasn’t going to be that easy. But impatiently he forced the voice to be silent. There was no point in looking for trouble—especially now, when his ambitions were so nearly within his grasp. He would deal with the problems when they arose.
As he went out into the cool evening