Archdeacon Renatus. Getorius knew him from having treated his recurring fevers. The churchman had given a strange history when he had first come in. A Gaul, his full name was Surrus Martinus Renatios, born at Primulacium. The town was the site of a shrine to Blessed Martin, to which his mother had been on pilgrimage when she gave birth.
Having been raised on stories about the miracles of Martin, it was logical that Surrus adopt a middle name after the saint, and enter studies for the presbyterate. The bishop Latinized his surname to Renatus, which neatly corresponded with the verb “to be born again.” His mother hoped—and Renatus had laughed when he mentioned it to Getorius—that he would be born again as a bishop in the growing Gallican Church. Instead, he had left his studies after attaining the rank of deacon.
When Renatus came to the new capital at Ravenna he had impressed the bishop, who made him archdeacon, an important church post that supervised the money and provisions given out to the poor of the city.
Getorius stood and wiped his fingers on a napkin, thinking that the sooner he finished with his patients, the quicker he could take the manuscripts to Theokritos. He passed along the garden portico to his clinic with the scroll case, half-wondering if Galla Placidia actually was interested in appointing him palace physician to replace the aging Antioches.
No one was in the examination room. Getorius went to his office, an area with a high ceiling and three clerestory windows in the north wall. Shelves underneath displayed the bones of animals that had been brought to him. Alongside the bleached skulls of a horse, a cow, two pigs, and several dogs and cats, were those of wilder species—boar, deer and bear. His prize skeleton was that of a Rhesus monkey that had died in the palace zoo.
Getorius’ patients usually avoided looking at these reminders of their own mortality, and even more so at a collection of containers that held preserved organs. The glass jars were filled with liquids in which floated animal hearts, livers, and lungs, as well as several intestinal worms that had been purged from clients. Getorius had experimented with various substances that might preserve these tissues: a solution of wine and salt would keep hearts intact for up to a year, while a mixture of wine, honey and vinegar preserved stomachs and livers long enough to be dissected, although he had discovered that liver tissue tended to break down the quickest.
Before calling for Arcadia to bring in the first patient, Getorius put the manuscript case on his desk and went to look at the hog heart he had been dissecting. A fatty yellow mass surrounded the organ, a mass that was absent from the lean heart of a chicken next to it. Both animals were about the same age. What could cause the different conditions?
As he idly picked at the fat with a needle, Arcadia opened the door from the waiting rooms.
“Getorius? I thought I heard you come in. Ready?”
“What? Oh…yes. Who is the first patient?”
“Domina Felicitas Firma.”
“Did you check her urine?”
Arcadia held up a glass flask. “It’s cloudy. She’s overly heavy, complains of being thirsty and tired all the time. There are ulcers on her legs.”
“Good, you’ve completed half the diagnosis. Send the lady in. Did you ask her age?”
“Felicitas admits to forty-four. Her son is with her.” Arcadia put the flask on the desk and eyed an iron stove in the corner. “It’s cold in here. I’ll have Primus light a fire.”
After Getorius sat down, his wife brought in the woman and her son. Felicitas shuffled to a chair. The man stood behind her, holding a round basket. Felicitas looked ten years older than the age she had given, a tired-looking gray-haired matron in a soiled tunic, and shoes that were becoming unstitched. Even across the desk the smell of urine was strong. Her son was a gaunt Germanic type, Getorius noted, with unkempt blondish hair and a bushy moustache that needed trimming.
Getorius knew that beginning a conversation with a new patient was awkward. Most people would not come except out of desperation, so he tried to relax them before asking about health problems.
“Well, Domina, what seems to be the trouble?” he inquired cheerfully. “You’re not too happy about our cold weather?”
“Mother doesn’t want t’get up in the morning,” the son complained. “Up all night pissin’…”
“Let her answer, please,” Getorius interrupted. “You are?”
“Her son Fabius.” He laid the basket on the desk. “This here’s an eel for payment. Can y’help mother?”
“I’ll try.” Getorius glanced at Arcadia. “The eel will be fine. Now then, Domina, how long has this been going on?”
“Since…since a few months,” Felicitas answered in a frightened voice. “I couldn’t get up for Mass. Wet the bed….” Her voice trailed off in shame.
Getorius tried to reassure her. “Don’t be embarrassed, that could be normal for your condition. What do you like to eat?”
“Take away her bread and honey and she’d die,” her son interjected again.
“Fabius, please.” If I don’t, she will be dead. “So you like sweet things, Domina?”
Felicitas nodded and pulled up her ragged tunic hem to scratch a scab on her leg.
Getorius knew the symptoms—the excess release of urine and resulting abnormal thirst, sores on limbs, blurred vision. Death often came soon afterward.
Galen had written about the inability of the liver to synthesize and distribute certain foods, yet without knowing why this was so. Logic dictated that a body’s excess should be treated with its opposite. This patient displayed an overbalance of sweet. It was not one of the four major body humors, Blood, Phlegm, Yellow or Black Bile, yet serious nonetheless. Her lethargy might
