The Empire Trilogy - J. G. Farrell [356]
“Certainly,” said Dr Dunstaple. His face was flushed, his eyes glinting with excitement; he seemed to be having difficulty breathing, too, and he spoke so rapidly that he slurred his words. “But first ladies and gentlemen, you should know that Dr McNab holds the discredited belief that you catch cholera by drinking...more precisely, that in cholera the morbific matter is taken into the alimentary canal causing diarrhoea, that the poison is at the same time reproduced in the intestines and passes out with the discharges, and that by these so-called rice-water’ discharges becoming mingled with the drinking-water of others the disease is communicated from one person to another continually multiplying itself as it goes. I think that Dr McNab would not disagree with that.”
“I’m grateful to you for such an accurate statement of my beliefs.” Could it be that McNab was actually smiling? Probably not, but there had certainly been a tremor at each corner of his mouth.
“Let me now read to you the conclusion of Dr Baly in his Report on Epidemic Cholera, drawn up at the desire of the Royal College of Physicians and published in 1854. Dr Baly finds the only theory satisfactorily supported by evidence is that ‘which regards the cause of cholera as a matter increasing by some process, whether chemical or organic, in impure or damp air’...I repeat, ‘in impure or damp air’.” Dr Dunstaple paused triumphantly for a moment to allow the significance of this to seep in.
Many supporters of Dr McNab exchanged glances of dismay at the words they had just heard. They had not realized that Dr Dunstaple had the support of the Royal College of Physicians...and felt distinctly aggrieved that they had not been told that such an august body disagreed with their own man. Two or three of Dr McNab’s supporters wasted no time in surreptitiously slipping their cards of emergency instructions from their pockets, crossing out the name McNab, and substituting that of his rival, before settling back to watch their new champion in the lists. The Magistrate noted this with satisfaction. How much more easily they were swayed by prestige than by arguments!
Meanwhile Dr Dunstaple was continuing to disprove Dr McNab’s drinking-water theories.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the fact that cholera is conveyed in the atmosphere is amply supported by the epidemic in Newcastle in 1853 when it became clear that during the months of September and October an invisible cholera cloud was suspended over the town. Few persons living in Newcastle during this period escaped without suffering some of the symptoms that are inescapably associated with cholera, if not the disease itself. They suffered from pains in the head or indescribable sensations of uneasiness in the bowels. Furthermore, the fact of strangers coming into Newcastle from a distance in perfect health...and not having had any contact with cholera cases...being then suddenly seized with premonitory symptoms, and speedily passing into collapse, proves that it was the result of atmospheric infection.”
“What a fool! It proves nothing of the sort,” thought the Magistrate, stroking his cinnamon whiskers with excitement that bordered on ecstasy.
However, Dr Dunstaple had now adopted a less ranting and more scientific tone which the audience could not help but find impressive. Some of his oldest friends, who for years had been accustomed to seeing him, fat and genial, as the leading light of a pig-sticking expedition, were astonished to hear him now holding forth like a veritable Newton or Faraday and discussing the latest discoveries in medicine as fluently as if they were entries in the Bengal Club Cup or the Planters’ Handicap. One or two of his supporters turned to direct malicious glances at Dr McNab, who was still leaning calmly against the ledge and listening attentively to what his prosecutor had to say. Louise, too, had dried her