Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [98]
I used to have the highest opinion of him, but I don’t any more. How does he explain the pains in your chest? How does he explain your loss of voice? You know I believe the weakness of your nerves has a great deal to do with your general debility: to neglect this entirely, as Doctor Zuliani does, and to speak only of diarrhoea, does not predispose me to have much consideration for his ability.32
Lucia’s reference to the “new medicine” practised in Vienna was a way of introducing her sister to Herr Speck, the medical guru of Viennese society under whose spell she had recently fallen. Doctor Speck was a self-taught medicine man who had picked up much of what he knew while working as a lay nurse in the hospital of Maria Caelis in Rome as a young man. He treated his patients with what Lucia called “tonic remedies,” a vague term that covered everything from herbal infusions to natural laxatives. But Doctor Speck’s fame rested largely on the “miraculous powders” he prepared for his patients. The formulas varied according to the particular ailment and the patient’s constitution and medical history. He never revealed the composition of his remedies, but his devoted followers had a blind faith in his healing powers. The modest apartment out of which he worked was always crowded with society ladies waiting to pick up their little packets—small envelopes, each holding a single dose of the preparation. After one of her regular trips to Doctor Speck’s, Lucia wrote:
We stand by the heating stove in the tiny entrance hall, fill up the living room and often have to spill into the kitchen. He has brought about so many remarkable recoveries here in Vienna that he is looked upon as Aesculapius himself. And I believe in him so much that I take his powders without thinking twice about what he has put in them.33
In fact the number of Viennese ladies addicted to Doctor Speck’s powders was such that one saw them pulling out their envelopes and swallowing the contents at all hours of the day, in the streets, in the Prater, even at the theatre. Lucia saw Countess Korolyi, thin as a reed since her husband’s death, cross paths with another lady during their afternoon stroll as they both were about to take their powders. “They greeted each other, and with an air of complicity, raised their little envelopes ‘à l’honneur de notre Docteur Speck.’”34
In her effort to enlist Paolina, Lucia added the cautionary tale of poor Prince Liechtenstein: “He was gravely ill, Herr Speck got him back in health, he stopped taking his powder, became gravely ill again, and died.”35
Lucia convinced a reluctant Doctor Speck to prepare a powder for her sister—the doctor did not usually mix a preparation without visiting the patient first. It was reddish, very fine, and each dose looked like a generous pinch of paprika. She sent it off to Paolina, begging her to take it. Paolina had reservations, but she did not want to disappoint her solicitous older sister. “I am not hurt in the least by your hesitation,” Lucia reassured her. “By all means, show the powder to a chemist and he’ll easily tell you what’s in it. Adieu, every day I love you more, and I think you did the right thing not to take Speck’s powder without having it examined first.”36
This medical exchange between the two sisters, stretched over several months, echoed their discussion a decade earlier on the merits of giving birth in the chair, with Doctor Speck