“Why do you want Prestcott so much and so urgently?” “My brains, Cola, my brains,” he said with a loud groan. “I have anatomized and drawn as many as I can lay my hands on, and I will soon be finished. I have devoted years to the task, and it will make my name when it is done. The spinal cord, in particular. Fascinating. But I cannot finish without some more, and unless I can finish I cannot publish my work. And there is a Frenchman who I know is doing much the same work. I will not be beaten by some sniveling papist…”

He paused, and realized he had misspoken again. “Apologies, sir. But so much depends on this, and it is heartbreaking to be denied by such stupidities.”

He opened the second bottle, took a long draft from the open neck and handed it to me. “So there you are. The reasons for my incivility. They combine, I must admit, with an overly wayward temperament. I am choleric by nature.” “So much for the man who rejects traditional medicine.” He grinned. “True enough. I speak metaphorically.” “Did you mean it about the stars? You think it is nonsense?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, I don’t know. I really don’t. Are our bodies a microcosm of all creation? Can we discern movements of the one from studying the other? Probably. It makes perfect sense, I suppose, but no one has ever given me a good and unassailable method for how to do it. All this star-gazing the astronomers do seems very thoughtless stuff, and they will wrap it up so in nostrums and gab-blings. And they will keep on finding more of them with these telescopes of theirs. All very interesting, but they become so enthusiastic they’ve all but forgotten the reason why they’re looking. But do not start me on that. I will lose my temper for the second time in the day. So, can we start again?”

“In what way?”

“Tell me about your patient, that most strange widow Anne Blundy. I will give the matter my full attention, and any suggestions I make will be without the slightest taint of criticism.”

I was still chary of taking such a risk and so hesitated until Lower sighed and made an elaborate preparation to go back down on his knees.

“All right,” I said, holding up my hands and trying to stop myself laughing once more. “I surrender.”

“Thank heavens,” he said. “For I’m sure I will be rheumatic when I’m old. Now, if I’m right, I believe you said the wound was not knitting?”

“No. And it will turn putrid very rapidly.”

“You’ve tried exposing it to the air, rather than keeping it bandaged?”

“Yes. It is making no difference.”

“Fever?”

“Surprisingly not, but it must come.”

“Eating?”

“Nothing, unless her daughter has managed to feed her some gruel.”

“Piss?”

“Thin, with a lemony aroma and astringent taste.”

“Hmm. Not good. You’re quite right. Not good.”

“She will die. I want to save her. Or at least I did. I find the daughter intolerable.”

Lower ignored the last remark. “Any sign of gangrene?”

I told him no, but that there was again every likelihood it might appear.

“D’ye think she would be interested in advancing… ?”

“No,” I said firmly.

“What about the daughter? If I offered her a pound for the remains?”

“You have met the girl, I believe.”

Lower nodded, and sighed heavily. “I tell you, Cola, if I should die tomorrow, you have my full permission to anatomize me. Why it causes such upset I do not know. After all, they’re buried eventually, aren’t they? What does it matter how many pieces they’re in, as long as they die with the blessings of religion? Do they think the good Lord is incapable of reassembling them in time for the Second Coming?”

I replied that it was the same in Venice; for whatever reason, people did not like the idea of being cut up, whether they were dead or alive.

“What do you intend to do with the woman?” he asked. “Wait till she dies?”

It was then that I had an idea and instantly decided to share it. Such was my trusting nature that it never occurred to me not to do so.

“Hand me that bottle again,” I said, “and I’ll tell you what I’d like to do, if I were only able.”

He did so at once, and I briefly considered the momentous step I was about to take. I was hardly in an equable frame of mind; my distress at the bruising I had received, and the relief at his apology were so great that my judgment was unbalanced. I do believe I would never have drawn him into my confidence had his loyalty and friendship been unquestioned; now it had been placed in doubt, the wish to please him and demonstrate my seriousness swept all before it.

“Please forgive the clumsy way I express this,” I said when he was leaning back on my truckle bed as comfortably as was possible. “The idea came to me only when we were watching that dove in the vacuum pump. It is about the blood, you see. What if, by accident, there is not enough blood to carry the nutrient? Could a loss of blood mean that there is insufficient to vent the excess heat from the heart?

Might that not be a cause of fever? Also, I have wondered for some years whether the blood gets old with the rest of the body. Like a canal with stagnant water in it, where everything starts to die, because the passageway becomes clogged,”

“Certainly, if you lose blood, you die.”

“But why? Not from starvation, nor from excess heat, either. No, sir. It is the draining or occlusion of the life spirit present in the blood that causes death. The blood itself, I am convinced, is merely the carrier for this spirit. And it is the decay of that spirit which causes old age. That, at least, is my theory, and it is one where the traditional knowledge you disdain, and the experimental knowledge you applaud, are in perfect agreement.”

“At which point, we connect your theoretical preliminary with the practicalities of your case, is that not so? Tell me how you would proceed.”

“If you think about it simply it is very straightforward. If we are hungry, we eat. If we are cold, we approach heat. If our humors are unbalanced, we add or create some more to re-create equilibrium.”

“If you believe that nonsense.”

“If you do,” I said. “If you do not, and you believe in the elemental theories, then you rebalance the body by strengthening the weaker of the three elements. That is the essence of all medicine, old and new—to restore equilibrium. Now, in this case, taking away more blood by leeching or scarifying the patient would only make matters worse. If her life spirit is diminished, reducing it still further cannot help her. This is Sylvius’s theory, and I believe he is correct. Logically, instead of taking blood away, the only answer should be…”

“To add some more,” Lower said quickly, leaning forward in his seat with sudden eagerness as he finally grasped what I was talking about.

I nodded enthusiastically. “That’s it,” I said. “That’s it exactly. And not just more, but young blood, fresh, new and unclogged, with the vitality of youth in its essence. Maybe that would allow an old person to repair a wound. Who knows, Lower,” I said excitedly, “it might be the elixir of life itself. It is thought, after all, that merely getting a child to share a bed can benefit the health of an elderly person. Just think what their blood might do.”

Lower leaned back in his chair and took a deep draft of ale as he thought about what I had said. His lips moved as he held a silent conversation with himself, going over in his mind all the possibilities. “You have fallen under the influence of Monsieur Descartes, have you not?” he asked eventually.

“Why do you say that?”

“You have constructed a theory, and that leads you to recommend a practice. You have no evidence that it would work. And, if I may say so, your theory is confused. You argue by analogy—using a humoral metaphor you do not actually believe in—to conclude that supplying an absence is a solution. That is, adding vital spirit, the existence of which is conjectural.”