Anatomy: A Love Story

On an overcast day, Hazel Sinnett finds a dead frog during her morning walk and carries it back to Hawthornden Castle. She enters through the kitchens to avoid attention and finds the cook cradling a deep cut in “the meaty palm of the base of her well-callused hand” (10). Hazel stitches and bandages the injury while offering words of comfort to the grateful cook. The young noblewoman leads a lonely life. Her father’s regiment is posted on Saint Helena, her mother is in mourning, and her spoiled seven-year-old brother, Percy, is absorbed in playtime and lessons. Hazel welcomes this solitude, especially when she has an experiment in hand. Her cousin, Bernard, saw a scientist in Switzerland use electricity to reanimate frog legs and a convict’s severed head. By impaling the frog on a poker and waving a key over its limbs, Hazel can make the body move. After her experiment succeeds, she hears her mother weeping about George, Hazel’s brother who died of the Roman fever.

An excerpt from Dr. Beecham’s Treatise on Anatomy on the Roman fever lists its symptoms, which include “blackened gums, lethargy, decreased urination, and aches” (21). The plague’s name comes from the bloody boils on the backs of the infected, which resemble Julius Caesar’s wounds. The fever claimed over 5,000 lives in Edinburgh in 1815 and has no known cure.

Dr. Beecham III, the grandson of the famous surgeon who wrote the treatise, will soon give a medical demonstration. Hazel looks forward to the event far more than the ones that fill her social calendar as a young noblewoman, “dreary luncheons with dowdy widowers and insufferable debutantes or the dull, endless balls” (24). She is expected to marry her cousin Bernard to preserve the family’s wealth and title. Hazel finds this match acceptable because having a powerful man’s support would prove invaluable during her medical training and because she wants to leave behind Hawthornden and the grief that fills the castle.

During a visit to Bernard’s fashionable home in Edinburgh, she sees Dr. Edmund Straine remove a molar from “a beggar in dust-colored rags” and implant it in the jaw of Bernard’s father, Lord Almont (26). The doctor frostily ignores Hazel and takes his leave once the operation is complete. Hazel asks her cousin to join her for a walk.

During their walk, Hazel shows Bernard an advertisement for Dr. Beecham’s demonstration and asks him to escort her there. He rejects her entreaties, saying that surgeons are little more than butchers and that the situation would be different if she “wanted to pretend that [she was] going to become a physician—or a nurse” (35). Bernard tears up the advertisement and suggests a more socially acceptable outing instead. Upset but wishing to conceal her feelings, Hazel insists on finishing her walk without her cousin.

Hazel sees one of the Almonts’ maids slip a piece of paper to a tall, dark-haired boy named Jack and receive a few coins in exchange. The boy notices Hazel and gives her a look “that might have been a smile or a smirk or maybe just a trick of the light” before vanishing in the direction of the smoggy, lower-class Old Town (38). She thinks about the gray-eyed boy during her carriage ride back to Hawthornden.

Seventeen-year-old Jack Currer meets with Jeanette, a girl who supplies information about recent burials to resurrection men. Jeanette recently started work as a maid at Almont House, and she is anxious to keep the job. She warns Jack that one of the bodies may have died of the Roman fever, but he dismisses the rumors. Jack notices a noblewoman spying on their conversation. Looking at the brown-eyed, red-haired young woman, he notes that she is “pretty, in the way that all wealthy girls are” (41). Jack surmises that she is married because she isn’t accompanied by a chaperone. He feels “a prickling heat [creep] up the back of his neck” when his gaze meets Hazel’s (41), and he’s relieved when she enters a carriage.

An encyclopedia entry on the first Dr. William Beecham identifies him as the founder of the Royal Edinburgh Anatomists’ Society and the author of a seminal text for medical students. According to the encyclopedia, Beecham developed an interest in the occult towards the end of his life, sought a means of achieving eternal life, and died due to poisoning from his alchemical experiments.

Hazel concocts a plan to ride to Edinburgh and sneak into Dr. Beecham’s demonstration without her family’s noticing her absence. She reaches the Royal Edinburgh Anatomists’ Society without incident. Despite Bernard’s insistence that the demonstration would be “a den of ruffians and theatrical actors” (49), the men waiting to see Dr. Beecham at work look like respectable gentlemen to Hazel. She tries to sneak into the surgical theater after the demonstration begins, but she finds the door locked and sinks to the ground in defeat. Jack, a stranger to her at this point, helps her up and shows her another way inside. When Hazel asks Jack if he’ll join her for the demonstration, he replies, “I see enough misery in real life to need to see some doctor do it for applause” (53). Jack leads Hazel to a passage under the audience’s seats that offers an excellent view of the stage. He vanishes before she can thank him.

On the walk to his day job, Jack recalls the events of the previous night: He isn’t sure why he helped the wealthy young woman, but thinks it was because she looked “more alone than was possible” (57). Now Jack hastens his steps towards Le Grand Leon, the theater where he works as an all-purpose assistant—washing costumes, cleaning the stage, constructing sets, and doing “whatever else Mr. Anthony asked of him” (58). He plans to ask a dancer named Isabella to join him for a drink after this evening’s performance.

Dr. Beecham’s patient for the demonstration is a man with a severely infected leg. When the patient struggles anxiously, a man with a tall hat and a man with a mustache hold him down. The doctor tells his skeptical audience that he has found a way to render surgery painless. Beecham produces a bottle containing a fluid that is “deep sapphire laced with silver” and smells like flowers, rot, and something Hazel struggles to identify (62). Dr. Beecham calls the substance ethereum or “the Scotsman’s dodge” (63). He uses a handkerchief soaked in the fluid to sedate the patient, who sleeps peacefully through the amputation of his leg.

Hazel notes how closely the triumphant doctor resembles portraits of his illustrious grandfather. Dr. Beecham announces that he will give a series of anatomy lectures for those preparing to take the Royal Physician’s Exam. The idea of attending the lecture series thrills Hazel, who imagines herself becoming an accomplished doctor and finding the cure for the Roman fever. Back outside, Dr. Straine recognizes Hazel and reminds her that women aren’t permitted in the Anatomists’ Society. Night has fallen by the time that she reaches Hawthornden Castle. Lying in bed, Hazel remembers how she felt when she had the plague and realizes that ethereum smells like death.