The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [7]
“Simpson,” said the Professor, “you do not seem to agree.”
“No, sir,” she answered, coughing slightly from being caught in the act. “I do not see how digitalis would have alleviated the symptoms or provided a cure.”
“What then, Simpson?”
Simpson considered this for a moment but finally admitted that she could think of no treatment that would have been effective. Such a response might have been treated harshly by many who taught medicine—doctors were supposed to have a response for everything—but the Professor preferred no answer to an incorrect one, and so merely nodded and moved on.
“How about you, Turk?”
“Perhaps showing him Farnshaw’s fee would have shocked him back to health,” Turk replied.
“Ha! Quite right, Turk.” The Professor chortled. “That is one aspect of medical education that Harvard does not ignore.” He turned to the unfortunate Bostonian. Farnshaw’s face had gone a deeper red than his hair. “Digitalis would no more have prolonged this man’s life, Dr. Farnshaw, than would standing on his head. There was nothing we could have done for this man short of manufacturing him a new heart.”
The Professor began to pace about the room, the fingers of his right hand tapping into his left. “All we know here, Farnshaw, is that we don’t know. We have permutated disparate pieces of data, but can come to no definitive conclusion. This patient died with all the symptoms of chronic coronary valve disease, but we find no affection of the valves and only moderate arterial degeneration. The kidneys are not especially fibroid and there was not sufficient pulmonary distress to account for the hypertrophy and dilation of the heart.”
The Professor returned to his place at the center of the table and gestured at the cadaver, hand opened, palm up. “So what do we do, Farnshaw, when faced with a mystery?”
As so often occurs in youth, Farnshaw’s reckless enthusiasm had been supplanted by abashed reticence.
“After we have recorded each bit of data, no matter how seemingly inconsequential or tangential to the case,” expounded the Professor, now addressing all of us, “we form hypotheses and then pursue and test each one without prejudice or preconception until it is disproved. We distrust coincidence.
“In this case,” the Professor continued, “there is evidence that circumstances that tend to produce and maintain a high degree of tension in the arterial system may lead to hypertrophy and dilation. Here, we have a subject whose occupation often involved intense exertion, and who had no history of syphilis, so it may be possible to connect his habits to the life of the disease. Still, as we cannot definitively account for the hypertrophy, we will simply chronicle the evidence so that we may compare it to similar instances in the future and seek correlations that may lead us to solve this riddle.”
“Not a very satisfying conclusion,” remarked Turk.
“On the contrary,” replied the Professor. “We have discovered a case whose particulars do not correspond to accepted data, an illness or condition from which this man died that is not yet recorded in the literature. What I see here, Turk, is an opportunity, and hardly unsatisfying.”
“Of course, Doctor,” said Turk. “As you say.”
“You are a good doctor, Turk, but I’m not sure that research is your métier,” observed the Professor. “Perhaps you and Farnshaw should join in private practice. That way you may partake of those legendary Harvard fees.”
Farnshaw again reddened, but Turk guffawed. “An excellent suggestion,” he replied cheerily.
We all grinned, grateful for the break as the Professor strode over to check Corrigan’s notes. As Simpson and I made to deposit tissue samples in specimen jars and return the removed organs to the body, I noticed her eyes on me, but her gaze flitted quickly away. For a time, Charlie had been responsible for putting things back in what order he could, and then stitching up the cadavers before burial. But Charlie, who had been known to tipple the alcohol in the specimen jars, was not always reliable. On one occasion, some months ago, a male cadaver