The Fox and Dr. Shimamura by Christine Wunnicke

Author:Christine Wunnicke
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811226257
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2019-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Jean-Martin Charcot, who ruled over the women’s asylum La Salpêtrière, was the most famous neurologist in the world and probably also the most famous Parisian — there really was no limit to his renown. He looked like a Roman emperor, spoke ten languages, including German, and with a charming smile was delighted to accept all of Shimamura’s woodcuts from Nagasaki as soon as he laid eyes on them. He explained they would enrich the planned second volume of his book Les Démoniaques dans l’art, which proved also to lay readers that female insanity and so-called possession were a universal phenomenon, historically as well as geographically. Then he quickly changed the subject.

Dr. Shimamura couldn’t say why he found himself sitting at the table of Professor Charcot like an old family friend, just days after he finally discovered the asylum. He vaguely remembered a whole swarm of female patients buzzing around him the minute he stepped into the Salpêtrière, and that this swarm had immediately transported him to Charcot like bees carrying a queen.

Meanwhile Charcot’s assistants had been swarming around the master. And he had been very busy, because every patient he visited on his evening rounds displayed some neurological disorder as soon as he approached the bed. The patients who were escorting Shimamura likewise displayed a variety of symptoms the moment they spotted Charcot. The result was a great hullabaloo. And in the middle of all this noise, among all the fluttering hair and flapping shirts, Charcot caught sight of Shimamura. And something happened. A spark leapt between them.

(Later, in the many versions of his memoirs which he wrote in German so Sachiko couldn’t read them, he had to replace this very apt expression with “sympathy arose” even though it didn’t accurately capture the moment. But Shimamura had so often made a mistake while writing the sentence and discovered that he’d put down “fox” instead of “spark” that he gave up on the latter).

Whatever it was that happened when Charcot caught sight of Shimamura and Shimamura caught sight of Charcot — it was there to stay. The shrine of neurology opened its doors, and the young man on the imperial stipend was soon sitting in Charcot’s mansion on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, poking at truffled grouse and discussing the simple dignity of Noh theater, especially with the head of the household, who had been impressed by what he had seen at the Exposition Universelle.

Long before he fully understood the Salpêtrière, one thing was clear to Shimamura: Professor Charcot was quite fond of animals. He had a sign posted at the entrance to the clinic letting it be known that dogs were not experimented on there. The decapitation laboratory at the Sorbonne was a thorn in his side. Even guinea pigs elicited his sympathy. He owned a pet monkey who answered to the name Rosalie and was allowed free rein. He would stop beside a draft horse and speak to it consolingly. Shimamura’s woodcuts set off a long tirade against the horrors of

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