The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [170]
And yet… there was not one practicing physician, I thought, who had never faced this. I had had it happen a few times before— even in a modern hospital, equipped with every life-saving device known to man— then.
Some future physician here would face the same dilemma; to undertake a possibly dangerous treatment, or to allow a patient to die who _might_ have been saved. And that was my own dilemma—to balance the unlikely possibility of prosecution for manslaughter against the unknown value of my records to someone who might seek knowledge in them.
Who might that be? I wiped the pen, thinking. There were as yet few medical schools, and those few, mostly in Europe. Most physicians gained their knowledge from apprenticeship and experience. I slipped a finger into the casebook, feeling blind between the early pages, kept by the book’s original owner, Daniel Rawlings.
Rawlings had not gone to medical school. Though if he had, many of his techniques would still have been shocking by my standards. My mouth twisted at the thought of some of the treatments I had seen described in those closely written pages—infusions of liquid mercury to cure syphilis, cupping and blistering for epileptic fits, lancing and bleeding for every disorder from indigestion to impotence.
And still, Daniel Rawlings had been a doctor. Reading his case notes, as I sometimes did, I could feel his care for his patients, his curiosity regarding the mysteries of the body.
Moved by impulse, I turned back to the pages containing Rawlings’s notes. Perhaps I was only delaying to let my subconscious reach a decision—or perhaps I felt the need of communication, no matter how remote, with another physician, someone like me.
Someone like me. I stared at the page, with its neat, small writing, its careful illustration, seeing none of the details. Who was there, like me? No one. I had thought of it before, but only vaguely, in the way of a problem acknowledged, but so distant as not to require any urgency. In the colony of North Carolina, so far as I knew, there was only one formally designated “doctor”—Fentiman. I snorted, and took another sip of tea. Better Murdock MacLeod and his nostrums—most of those were harmless, at least.
I sipped my tea, regarding Rosamund. The simple truth was that I wouldn’t last forever, either. With luck, a good long time yet—but still, not forever. I needed to find someone to whom I could pass on at least the rudiments of what I knew.
A stifled giggle from the table, the girls whispering over the pots of headcheese, the bowls of sauerkraut and boiled potatoes. No, I thought, with some regret. Not Brianna.
She would be the logical choice; she knew what modern medicine was, at least. There would be no overcoming of ignorance and superstition, no need to convince of the virtues of asepsis, the dangers of germs. But she had no natural inclination, no instinct for healing. She was not squeamish or afraid of blood—she had helped me with any number of childbirths and minor surgical procedures—and yet she lacked that peculiar mixture of empathy and ruthlessness a doctor needs.
She was perhaps Jamie’s child more than mine, I reflected, watching the firelight ripple in the falls of her hair as she moved. She had his courage, his great tenderness—but it was the courage of a warrior, the tenderness of a strength that could crush if it chose. I had not managed to give her my gift; the knowledge of blood and bone, the secret ways of the chambers of the heart. Brianna’s head lifted sharply, turning toward the door. Marsali, slower, turned too, listening.
It was barely audible through the thrumming of the rain, but knowing it was there, I could pick it out—a male voice, raised