under observation, and he did not seem a very reliable pauper; perhaps he would have run away or got transported or hanged, and I should have lost the chance of observing his symptoms as they arise. And without a doubt, every time I asked him to appear before me he would have wanted money. Well, here I am, and within two or three weeks I will have the pox myself, and what could be more convenient? I can make my observations and recordings from the comfort of my own armchair. And I won’t send myself a bill either.
seven
The experiment had taken place on a Friday. Saturday, nothing. Sunday, a teasing itch. The itch gone by Tuesday. But then the hard chancre: a cause of rejoicing. His theories soon to be proved, on his own flesh.
He holds his pen as if it were a surgical tool. He begins to record, knowing what he can now expect: the attack upon the glans and urethra, the discharge of many colours, the bleeding, the irritation and swelling of the testicles, the muscle spasm which causes the urine to be voided by jerks; suppuration, fistula in perineo, pains in thighs, vomiting, abdominal pain, and colic. His handwriting is small—to save paper costs—but always legible. After the valerian, musk, camphor, cold bath, hot bath, electricity, and opium it will be the mercury cure. But not for three years yet. A man must have time to make his observations. Physician, heal thyself; this saying also applies to surgeons.
Meanwhile, experimentation continues. He becomes interested in the venereal blotches that break out on the skin. He inoculates a pocky pauper with matter from another person’s chancre, and is interested to find that chancres form. To be sure it is not a fluke, he does the experiment again and again. He inoculates another pauper with matter from an ulcerous tonsil—with no result—and with a gonorrhoeal discharge: this latter produces a chancre. Theories whizz around and around in his head. He takes out his organ and stares at it. The mysteries of the universe are here.
A woman of twenty-five comes into St. Georges’ Hospital with florid skin symptoms, and he detains her till he has found a person with buboes who has not been treated by mercury, and in whom he can be pretty sure that the buboes are venereal and not scrofulous. He injects matter from the buboes into the skin of the woman of twenty- five, and for good measure injects her with fluid from her own ulcers. He writes up his case notes.
He has become used now to the thick, snuffling voices of those who are affected in the throat. Unfortunately for them, their lesions don’t scab over, as the act of swallowing keeps the parts always moist. Deafness is frequent, with suppuration of the ear. Effects on the whole constitution are to be anticipated; a couple of years on, the deep ache inside begins, the pain that seems to bloom out of the bones. Nights, it’s worse. He lies awake thinking of experiments he might make. The question of the drowned persons haunts him. They used to roll them over a barrel, or hang them up by their heels, thinking the water would drain out. He turns over and over in his bed—his solitary bed. The spaniels yap, the mastiff growls, the leopards roar beneath the moon.
He is satisfied the venereal plague cannot be spread by saliva. He has tried his best and failed. It is not, then, like the bite of a mad dog. Some say it stays in the blood, year upon year. He cannot see this. How it can be. There are those who have too much imagination, its findings unbuttressed by results.
That summer the Giant grew rich. He washed in Castile soap, and made the purchase of some decanters. His followers ate green peas and strawberries. Joe Vance played with the writing set, and Pybus, Claffey, and Jankin haunted the skittle alleys, the cockfighting, the prize-fighting, the dog- fighting, and the bull-baiting. “If we go on so,” said Claffey, grinning, “we will have tamboured waistcoats like the quality, and silver buckles to our shoes.”
“What do you mean, if we go on so? I am not likely to shrink.”
“You’re of a testy temper these days,” Joe observed, glancing up from his calligraphy.
The Giant, by evening, was often tired from exhibiting, and they woke him with their drunken stumbles on the stair. Gin and water was their only tipple now, and they brought it back for Bitch Mary.
When the patron’s half-crown was given over—the price of viewing the Giant—Joe Vance would give back a tin token; this was the system favoured by all the best shows and spectacles. Select groups of ten or a dozen a time were admitted, and they came in a steady stream all through June and July: through those months when the streets steamed and the poisoned water trickled from the pumps and London shit baked in the ditches, when milk turned and fish stank and the blinded birds in their prisons of gilt were stunned and silent in the heat. Sometimes, a smaller party would be admitted: ladies, rustling, faces glowing, frou-frou of petticoats and scent of musk and powder and cut flowers dying. Often they asked to converse with the Giant—this he did very easy, very civil—and they not only paid their half-crown but left a handsome tip on top of it. He dreamed of their tiny feet on London staircases, skittering like the feet of mice.
“I don’t think he should have his percentage on the tip,” Claffey said, nodding towards Joe Vance. “After all, it’s not earnings, it’s a token of esteem, more a sort of prize or reward to Charlie for being tall.”
“So Charlie should have it in his own pocket,” said Pybus.
Joe’s eyebrows shot up. “You want your nose punched out of the back of your head?” he offered. “You want me to press on your cheeks so your eyes zing out of your skull and go bouncing about the room?”
August: sunlight slipped like rancid butter down the walls. Joe returned to the book he was reading, frowning and gnawing his lip. It was a book about a prince, and Jankin was waiting for him to finish and tell stories out of it. “He that writ the book is called McEvilly,” Jankin said. “Joe Vance’s grandad knew his grandad.”
The Giant looked up, smiling. “That’s right, Jankin. Weren’t they both turf boys together to the O’Donaghues of Glen Flesk?”
The horizon was bright, these evenings, with the pearl-like shiver of noctilucent clouds. But dark at last fell; blood-red Antares blazed over the city.
“For all the prodigies of nature, there’s an awful lot of blawflum,” said Hunter to Howison, his trusted operative. “Do you remember Mary Toft?”
“She that gave birth to fifteen rabbits?”
“She that did not.”
“And yet the court itself, sir—did not the prince of Wales send his surgeon down to Godalming?”
“What? There was a procession of them, man, rode down to Surrey to view the tomfoolery. And did the fools not fetch her up to town, and lodge her handsome? The woman had a vast distended belly, to be sure, and plenty of activity inside it, but that hardly diagnoses rabbits.” Hunter snorted: for sometimes people do snort. “It’s fairy tales, that’s what it is—fairy tales, and rabbit skins and scraps smuggled under the skirts and groaning and moaning from the lass while the coins are chinking into a basin. Sir Richard Manningham had the right of it, he threatened her with an operation to relieve her condition—aye, he showed her the knife.” John Hunter chuckled: for people do chuckle. “I tell you, her belly soon deflated. No, Howison, I wouldn’t give you threepence for
