Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson

Author:Kirsten Menger-Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2008-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

NEURASTHENIA: A VICTORIAN LOVE STORY

Naked, Edwin Macready’s legs and lower abdomen quivered. His feet and ankles paled to an unsightly yellow; his chest, cruelly carved by his disease, curved as delicate as a china bowl. He folded his hands over his genitals. A sulphurous smell of sparks, long extinguished, filled the air.

“Bit of good news today,” he said, blue eyes gazing longingly to the left of Doctor Steenwycks’s shoulder, where a woolen vest and underpants lay exposed on the examination table.

Doctor Benjamin Steenwycks, who had just finished implanting a fist-sized copper electrode in a damp sponge, raised the instrument to the gaslight to observe his work. Behind him coils of wire and sharp-toothed gears hung from hooks on the wall. Scattered hammers, glass jars of odd nails and screws, and fragments of welded metal gave the small office the feel of a clock repair shop. “Yes?” he said.

“I’ve been promoted to head clerk.”

“Wonderful news! And you’re feeling —” The doctor nodded toward Edwin’s groin.

“Better,” Edwin said, suddenly remorseful. The truth of the matter, as any clerk knew well, was that “head clerk” meant little more than undesired responsibility and additional unpaid hours. No matter how long or hard he worked at the undergarment department at Macy’s, he would never afford Doctor Steenwycks’s fees. Edwin stood in the scratched copper treatment dish only because the doctor studied neurasthenia in the lower middle class: single men, who paid eight dollars a month to live in dingy boardinghouses, who worked late into the night at factories that rose like flaming candles throughout New York.

Neurasthenia, the doctor claimed, was prevalent among the poor and rich alike, though it was more often diagnosed among the latter. In fact, ailing nerves were the root of all human misery. What but disease could explain the conditions the destitute chose for themselves?

Doctor Steenwycks diagnosed and cured more cases of nerves than any other doctor. He was highly regarded in the medical community. Other doctors as well as patients consulted him on every medical matter: the use of carbolic acid in surgery, the relationship of clean water to public health, the best treatment for cysts, the repair of fistulas. A man of vast means, descendant from a long succession of brilliant doctors, he worked because passion drove him. And one day, after his cousin Letty died and he inherited the family estate, which would have been his had his father not been such a fool, he would move his practice from the lower floor of his Eighteenth Street brownstone to Orchard Street, his ancestral home, which had four chimneys and a rich history of success. When he spoke of it, the doctor looked very wise, his eyes magnified behind spectacles, his hair a neat coif of brown curls.

“Cure the body, the rest will follow,” he said.

Edwin nodded. The clerk received free treatments, generously scheduled for dawn so that he could depart in time to begin his twelve-hour day, but he was often too tired to follow conversation. Beneath his feet the metal dish felt cold.

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