Page 60 of A Devilish Element
“A body is but worm food, Miss Wakefield. It is of no practical use to its previous owner, and I should think as a self-proclaimed scientist, you should appreciate that in order to mend a thing, one must first understand how it is that God intended it to function. Only then can one determine how disease, poverty, and malnutrition can alter that vessel.”
She did understand that, but bodysnatching had become a worrisome hazard of death.
“I suppose you’re a pickler, Doctor Bell. Are you a pickler?”
“Only if there’s a purpose to the pickling. Preservation for the purposes of study, or comparison is wise, as is it beneficial to catalogue the mutations and deviations from the norm. Pickling things purely for non-scientific or monetary purposes, I cannot condone. But the trade of organs, teeth and the like is hardly a new fad. The church has always encouraged such things in the form of relics.”
“That is hardly the same.”
“It is exactly the same.”
“My friends,” Jem stepped between them. “Must we be so hostile to one another? Might we not put aside our differences of opinion and focus on the experiment happening before us? Eliza, perhaps you’d be so good as to take some notes for me? Bell—”
“It rather seems that my assistance is unnecessary. You have yourself a scribe, what more could you need? I have matters of my own I can attend to.” He stalked off in a long-legged stride, a deep frown etching his face that made his skeletal slenderness all the more pronounced.
“He’s awfully pompous,” Eliza remarked of his disappearing silhouette.
Jem looked up from his task of adjusting various portions of his apparatus. “I think you scare him.”
“What could he possibly find terrifying about me?”
“Fears for his livelihood, I should imagine. Eliza, one only has to know you for a short while to realise how terrifyingly bright and adept you are. If a marquis chose you over a physician, and Bell is by no means the only one trained in progressive methods, then surely that’s a sign that their days as an exclusive club are numbered.”
“Not while women remain barred from the universities and lecture halls.”
He nodded. “I concede that is an issue, but it is not the case everywhere. They may be few in number, but there are women now with university degrees in both philosophy and medicine.”
“Barely a handful compared to the many, many men, and none here in Britain, only in Sweden, and Bologna, and other such far places. They may as well be on the moon, for they are just as inaccessible to me as an orb in the sky.”
“You could learn Italian,” he said. She was tempted to kick him, but he was fiddling with the equipment, and she didn’t wish to disrupt his experiment. The acquisition of another language would not swallow up the distance between a foreign university and her beloved Yorkshire.
“My French is barely passable. It would likely be a waste of my efforts to attempt another language as well. No, I shall keep up with my studies as I’ve always done and learn from books and the other resources around me.”
He nodded. “I didn’t mean to insinuate otherwise or tell you what to do. You may borrow that book, if you like, once I am done here. Though I warn you, you may be horrified by the number of lives sacrificed to the cause.”
“Lives?”
“Small mammals, primarily. Though there are sections of study dedicated to the effects of various gases on fish and reptiles too.”
“I see,” she said. “Poor beasts. It’s such a shame that progress must come at such a gristly cost.” Normally she’d have her nose thrust inside such a tome immediately, but the live experiment being conducted before her currently held her attention. “Is your gas ready?”
He nodded. “I think it may be.” From under a sheaf of papers, he produced a waxed silk bag. This he attached to the glass apparatus by means of a tube attached to a small tap in the vessel where the gas was collected. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you to partake in this experiment along with me? One of Davy’s observations is that it opens the mind to endless possibilities. He found his thoughts awash with unique ideas and all manner of possibilities.”
She was tempted, for knowledge of all kinds was indispensable, but nervous too of filling her head with vapours and having her thoughts slide away from her. Cedarton was a dangerous place to not be in full possession of one’s faculties. She’d taken tincture of poppies once, to ascertain its effectiveness in numbing pain, and experienced its benefits, but saw also how it melted the mind, as did so many other remedies recommended and described by both Culpepper and Elizabeth Blackwell.
“Don’t feel I am pressuring you. You may make your decision after I’ve taken a good dose of it, and you’ve witnessed the effects.”
He bled off some of the collected gas, until the small bag inflated. Then, once the tap was shut off, Jem nipped closed the neck of the sack. “If you could turn to a new page for me, then I’d appreciate you transcribing any observations and findings. Davy reports taking up to twenty quarts, and regularly imbibing six, but I think what we have here will be more than sufficient for this trial and to satisfy Linfield’s requirements. At least, hopefully.”
He brought the bag to his lips and covered both his mouth and nose. Eliza watched his cheeks grow flushed, and a smile crept over his face. His eyes shone bright making the hazel tones stand out against the deeper, forest green.
“How does it feel? Is it acting in the way you expected?”
Jem seemed to struggle with the formation of words for a moment. He moved his tongue around his mouth and over his teeth, before finally bringing his fingers to his lips. “Presently, it’s all in my head, making it feel strangely thick. I would not describe it as a particularly pleasurable—Oh! Oh, wait. It’s spreading.” He stretched out his arms and proceeded to weave patterns in the air with his digits. “That is curious, and—” He brought the bag back to his mouth and took another few deep inhalations. “It is most curiously pleasant, especially in the extremities. I don’t quite know how to best describe it.”
“All of your extremities or just some of them?” Eliza enquired, while doing her best to both keep an eye on him and transcribe his thoughts precisely and concisely. The nib of his pencil was worn and made her writing smudgy, but there was no pen or ink to hand.
“Most all.” Jem continued to weave his patterns for several moments. “It subsides disappointingly quickly. I suppose this is why Davy reports inhaling for up to twenty minutes. It is curiously freeing though.” He seemed to be fighting to spit out his words now. “My mind is quite open. There are so many thoughts. Such clarity.” He took yet another draft.
