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Authors: Fiona Mountain
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recovery,” Mary said.
“The patient is to have feverfew and sage mixed with half a pennyworth of pepper, one little spoonful of chimney soot and the white of an egg, all laid together on the wrist.”
“And if that doesn’t do any good?” I whispered, trying not to despair.
“I have every confidence . . .”
“It didn’t help my mother or my sister.”
“You can also try a spider bruised in a cloth, spread upon linen and applied to the patient’s forehead. Or dead pigeons placed at his feet to draw down the fever.” He glanced round the great hall with distaste as he left us. “It’s living for so long in this place that’s the problem. It is not healthy to live in such proximity to bogs and marshes and unhealthy damp vapors. You only have to meet a few inhabitants to see how it twists the body and subdues the spirit.”
So why was it that ague struck most often in the heat of summer? The physicians said it was bad air that caused ague, and who was I, a mere child—a girl child at that—to question them? And yet question them I did. The fact remained: My sister and mother had both fallen ill and died, not in the dankness of winter, but on beautiful sunny days both. And now my father was dying in the hottest summer for decades.
MY POOR FATHER’S BODY was subjected first to convulsive shivering and then to raging fever, followed by another punishing bout of quaking and shuddering two days after the onset of the first. Propped up on pillows, he no longer looked like a man who’d commended himself at the Battle of Langport, the battle that had heralded the beginning of the end for the Royalists in this county. He had not been defeated then, but even I had to admit that he looked defeated now, or rather as if he had willingly surrendered, as if there was no fight left to be won. The seton on his leg had turned smelly and nasty and his skin had become a waxy yellow, but I recoiled at the prospect of calling Dr. Duckett back for more of his purges.
“Can we not send for the London physician?” I beseeched Mary as she met me, coming out of the chamber with an untouched dish of toast soaked in small beer.
It was Ned Tucker, when he took pike and eels to market, who’d heard that Thomas Sydenham, the West Country gentleman said to be the most eminent physician in all of England, had fled his practice in Pall Mall to escape the plague and had come with his wife and sons to stay with relations near Bristol.
“Some kind of physician he must be,” Mary said, a judgmental tone to her voice that I’d never heard from her before. “If he can abandon the dying to save his own skin, I guarantee he won’t set foot outside his front door for less than five guineas either.”
“I don’t care what it costs,” I said. “We will pay him whatever he wants.”
She cupped my face in her hands and looked down into my eyes that were shadowed with worry and the exhaustion of caring for my father. Mary and Bess had both offered to sit up with him through the night, but I had insisted upon doing the bulk of it, needed to do it.
“Send for the physician, by all means,” she said with a smile. “So long as I don’t have to be civil to him.”
I smiled back ruefully. “Shall you be as uncivil to him as I was to Dr. Duckett?”
She laughed, stroked my hair. “Maybe not quite.”
We sent to Mr. Merrick, begging him to use his connections to find the physician, and later that day he escorted him to us on horseback, and for once looked shabby and insignificant in comparison. Dr. Sydenham was dressed in a dark gray cloth riding suit with a wide collar trimmed with lace. He wore no wig and his own light brown hair, parted at the center, fell gently to his shoulders with threads of silver at his temples. He rode his enormous bay hunter as if he and the beast were one. Gait prancing, muscles rippling, his powerful steed was docile as a lamb under the reins. Dr. Sydenham was the kind of man whom even
“The patient is to have feverfew and sage mixed with half a pennyworth of pepper, one little spoonful of chimney soot and the white of an egg, all laid together on the wrist.”
“And if that doesn’t do any good?” I whispered, trying not to despair.
“I have every confidence . . .”
“It didn’t help my mother or my sister.”
“You can also try a spider bruised in a cloth, spread upon linen and applied to the patient’s forehead. Or dead pigeons placed at his feet to draw down the fever.” He glanced round the great hall with distaste as he left us. “It’s living for so long in this place that’s the problem. It is not healthy to live in such proximity to bogs and marshes and unhealthy damp vapors. You only have to meet a few inhabitants to see how it twists the body and subdues the spirit.”
So why was it that ague struck most often in the heat of summer? The physicians said it was bad air that caused ague, and who was I, a mere child—a girl child at that—to question them? And yet question them I did. The fact remained: My sister and mother had both fallen ill and died, not in the dankness of winter, but on beautiful sunny days both. And now my father was dying in the hottest summer for decades.
MY POOR FATHER’S BODY was subjected first to convulsive shivering and then to raging fever, followed by another punishing bout of quaking and shuddering two days after the onset of the first. Propped up on pillows, he no longer looked like a man who’d commended himself at the Battle of Langport, the battle that had heralded the beginning of the end for the Royalists in this county. He had not been defeated then, but even I had to admit that he looked defeated now, or rather as if he had willingly surrendered, as if there was no fight left to be won. The seton on his leg had turned smelly and nasty and his skin had become a waxy yellow, but I recoiled at the prospect of calling Dr. Duckett back for more of his purges.
“Can we not send for the London physician?” I beseeched Mary as she met me, coming out of the chamber with an untouched dish of toast soaked in small beer.
It was Ned Tucker, when he took pike and eels to market, who’d heard that Thomas Sydenham, the West Country gentleman said to be the most eminent physician in all of England, had fled his practice in Pall Mall to escape the plague and had come with his wife and sons to stay with relations near Bristol.
“Some kind of physician he must be,” Mary said, a judgmental tone to her voice that I’d never heard from her before. “If he can abandon the dying to save his own skin, I guarantee he won’t set foot outside his front door for less than five guineas either.”
“I don’t care what it costs,” I said. “We will pay him whatever he wants.”
She cupped my face in her hands and looked down into my eyes that were shadowed with worry and the exhaustion of caring for my father. Mary and Bess had both offered to sit up with him through the night, but I had insisted upon doing the bulk of it, needed to do it.
“Send for the physician, by all means,” she said with a smile. “So long as I don’t have to be civil to him.”
I smiled back ruefully. “Shall you be as uncivil to him as I was to Dr. Duckett?”
She laughed, stroked my hair. “Maybe not quite.”
We sent to Mr. Merrick, begging him to use his connections to find the physician, and later that day he escorted him to us on horseback, and for once looked shabby and insignificant in comparison. Dr. Sydenham was dressed in a dark gray cloth riding suit with a wide collar trimmed with lace. He wore no wig and his own light brown hair, parted at the center, fell gently to his shoulders with threads of silver at his temples. He rode his enormous bay hunter as if he and the beast were one. Gait prancing, muscles rippling, his powerful steed was docile as a lamb under the reins. Dr. Sydenham was the kind of man whom even
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