This very first experiment revived her faith in her husband. Perhaps Aaron was right and the subjects would never feel pain. What point was there in being afraid? After all, it was up to her, wasn’t it?
Aaron worked only on minor vivisections in the first years. On each occasion, the subject was bundled up in a blanket then released and returned to the countryside or in a farm. Calista had not known what to expect but over time she felt saddened, realising that she would not see them again. Each subject began to represent an impending loss. It was her silent wound. For to bond with it so deeply and to impress on it her magnetic force, she made herself vulnerable to letting it go.
Over the years, for each operation, Aaron made corresponding notes in his journals describing his methods and whether or not the results were significant in demonstrating the effect of animal magnetism. The first indication of success was an observed stability in the subject’s pulse over the entire operation, with no significant variation. The second measure of success was whether the animal stabilised after the operation – whether it ate normally, ignoring its sutures, or showed signs of stress and pain.
Aaron had been pleased with the results of the minor operations. He had written that so far, animal magnetism had proved effective in producing pain free operations.
He had devised a naming convention for the subjects. D1 was for the first dog subject. D2, applied to the second dog, and so on and so forth... He employed F, for fox and then later, C, for cat. Calista conceded it was easier to refer to the subject by an initial, rather than a name. Though it lacked warmth.
Things worsened in the following years.
The first kidney vivisection did not go as planned. Calista stared in dismay as blood spilled from the wound, staining her red dress. The cat shrieked and she lost its attention. Pressing her own ear on that damned wooden tube, she had noted the cat’s galloping heartbeat. Her nerves were shot. She shook throughout the entire operation. As for the cat, it shrieked until it lost consciousness.
But over time, the couple made progress. Certainly, animals succumbed to their wounds following the procedures, and most of them eventually died, but it appeared to Aaron they felt no pain.
“We need to work harder, Calista,” he would say. “Stronger results, would require the creature to stay alive. The subject needs to be oblivious to what it has undergone. For days afterwards, it must go on living, feeling no pain.”
But despite all her efforts, the animals kept dying soon after. Dispirited, Calista would lay them inside an old wooden trunk and Aaron would bolt it shut then ask Alfred, who ignored everything, to burn the trunk.
On the day following an operation that went awfully astray, Calista was staring expressionless at the remains of a fox on the operating table. She was hunched forward and stunned by what she had witnessed. Aaron wiped the blood off his hands and threw away the cloth in anger.
“Something is not working as it should,” he grunted. “The creature knows too much. It knows in itself that something is wrong and it behaves accordingly.”
Calista ran a trembling hand over her forehead. She wrapped the dismembered fox in a hemp cloth and laid it into a trunk which the gardener would later burn.
Aaron sat by his desk, brooding over the flaws in his experiment. “They are too intelligent. They know what they have endured, even if they are soothed. We will need to make use of a stupid creature. Or else, I will have to stun the subject…”
Aaron soon settled on the idea of drugging his subjects, employing various pills and medicinal concoctions he had studied during a past trip to Nanking and Peking. He experimented with various combinations and in the first instance, where he had once been curious to see if the animal would live, he now grew fascinated by another idea.
“What if it were made to be more aggressive?”
Calista’s vision blurred. They had strained themselves all week and she had so far witnessed the death of two dogs.
“You wish them to be more aggressive?” she asked in disbelief.
“Think of it, Calista. If in the first instance, the subject were to be rendered anxious or aggressive, if it were agitated, then we could measure the degree to which the animal magnetism succeeds in returning it to a calmer state. Think of it. In what extreme state must a subject find itself before you fail to soothe it?”
“But it will attack us…”
“Calista, will you cease fretting? We will strap it down, like we always do.”
Aaron set about to order and catalogue various medicinal capsules and tablets.
I am astounded to discover that, for minor operations at least, a rise in aggressive behaviour does not lead to any significant tempering of the effect of animal magnetism. The subject heals steadily and does not feel pain.
When Calista had read Aaron’s stunning conclusion, she felt herself grow numb. Could he not see that with subjects in an aggressive state, she was more and more afraid to enter the cellar? Could he not see she was exhausted with each attempt to becalm the animals? They would often scratch and bite and to maintain them in a calm state, robbed her of her own inner peace. Over time, these
