Learned By Heart by Emma Donoghue

Author:Emma Donoghue
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Macmillan

That Friday, the Manor girls line up for the lancet. They try not to look at Dr. Mather’s little blade, with its tortoiseshell handle. Instead they trade cases. “My aunt is stone blind, since she had it as a child,” Nan volunteers.

Betty’s brother’s wife’s brother is quite disfigured—one great pucker of scars.

The doctor scrapes Fanny’s full-grown arm above the elbow, making her squeal.

“Does it hurt terribly?” Nan asks in sympathy.

He cuts in before Fanny can answer: “It does not. A mere scratch.”

Fanny blinks back a tear. “It’s just the fright of it.”

With the tip of his finger Dr. Mather takes up a little matter from the jar and rubs it into Fanny’s arm.

Nan moans. “A stranger’s pustules, ground up!”

“As I explained to the whole school, Miss Moorsom, I use the modern process. This is only lymph from milkmaids with cowpox, a much milder infection than smallpox.”

“Hence vaccination, from vacca, a cow,” Lister says at the back of the line.

“Will that braggart never cease showing off?” That’s Jane, among the Seniors.

Eliza’s face scalds on Lister’s behalf.

“How’s your cough, at night?” Dr. Mather’s asking Fanny.

“Much the same.”

“I’ll stop in next week and try leeches on your chest.”

“Thank you, sir,” Fanny says fearfully.

“Mercy won’t come down from the library,” Margaret’s telling Betty, “because her parents say it’s unchristian to take part of an animal into yourself.”

Lister snorts. “What does she think she’s doing when she tucks into a plate of beef?”

Nan is examining her own tiny reddened spot. “So I’m going to catch cowpox now?”

Dr. Mather shakes his head. “Some get a little scab, some a slight malaise, that’s all. And some fret themselves into a high fever,” he adds with a smile, “especially silly schoolgirls who suffer from suggestibility and morbid imagination.”

That makes them all laugh.

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