by Cindy Winget
“Victor, you have a visitor,” she stated.
Victor looked up. When he saw who stood beside Ms. Westenra he leaped to his feet and hurried over to the man, pumping his hand vigorously and slapping him upon the back. “Henry! What on earth are you doing here?” The grin upon Victor’s face slid off. “I hope all is well at home?”
“Yes, yes. Nothing to worry about on that front,” replied Henry.
Victor sighed in relief.
“I have missed the company of my best friend,” explained Henry. “Father and I made quite a bit of money on our last shipment of goods and he agreed that I was due a small reprieve. So here I am. I am still welcome, I hope.” Henry glanced apprehensively at Mrs. Westenra and Jack. “Victor told me in a letter that if ever I felt the need for a holiday, I could join you at Whitby.”
“Of course, old boy! You are always welcome here. We have been anxious to meet you. Victor has told us so much about you,” Jack assured him.
Henry grinned in evident relief and sat down upon the couch.
“So, tell us all about yourself and your trip over here,” Jonathan added.
Henry spoke for the next hour, telling them all about his childhood with Victor and his father’s merchant business. “As an only child, my father had hoped that I would be his partner and then take over his business one day, as he had done for his own father. I didn’t mind this necessarily, but oh how envious I was of Victor when he left for Ingolstadt.”
“You seem to be doing well in the business,” Mina noted.
“Yes. I discovered that I actually do like being a merchant. I have a good head for it. I am a quick study at learning different languages and mathematics, both of which have aided me in becoming a man of business. But even so, I love to read and learn, and Victor was about to embark upon an adventure without me. We had always done everything together until this point. I found myself becoming lonely. Hence the reason I have come here.”
“Well, any friend of Victor’s is a friend of ours,” Jonathan told him.
While residing at Whitby, Jack taught Victor and Henry how to fence and shoot. They went for long rides in the countryside, rowing down at the lake, or played lawn tennis.
The English cuisine was different than what Victor was used to, and he wasn’t sure that his gastrointestinal tract was up to the challenge, but on the whole, he enjoyed the food, particularly the desserts—custards, fruit pies, plum pudding, jam, and ice cream. He stuffed as much of it into his mouth as proper etiquette would allow.
When the allotted two weeks were up, Victor reluctantly packed his trunk, said his goodbyes to his friends, and traveled over to King’s College. Henry traveled with him half of the way until parting ways for the coast.
Although Victor would miss his friends and his heart ached at having to leave Whitby, the closer he came to his new destination, the more excited he became. By the time he arrived, he was ready to start his studies once more. There was nothing like the prospect of new discoveries to stir the blood and catch the imagination. He felt certain that he was made for greatness, and he would be the next scientist to discover something new—something the world had never seen before.
*****
Victor strode into the lecture hall of Professor Van Helsing, determined to give the man a chance at proper instruction, as Mrs. Westenra had directed. Victor found Van Helsing to be a bit older and less round of face than his beloved Professor Waldman. He was a man of medium height, strongly built, and with a square jaw that he did not obscure with facial hair. Bushy eyebrows sat above green eyes, set far apart, and he spoke with a heavy accent. Victor concluded that he was from the Netherlands.
Victor stood in the back of the class, listening as Van Helsing lectured on the different stages of decay. After several minutes, Victor perceived that Van Helsing was obviously a man of skill and experience, therefore, he took it upon himself to enroll in his anatomy class.
Early the following morning, Victor took a seat in the first available spot in the lecture hall and began to take avid notes as Van Helsing began the lesson.
Abraham Van Helsing stood at the front of the room beside a chalkboard with a human skeleton hanging next to him on a hook attached to a metal pole. Victor reflected on the things he had been told about how such medical props were obtained, and he couldn’t contain a small shiver. Van Helsing was using a pointer to indicate the different bones and then would have one of the students name that part of the body.
At the conclusion of the lecture, Victor walked up to the front of the room and introduced himself to the man. In only a few minutes of conversation, Victor had found a true friend and possible colleague. Van Helsing was as kind and knowledgeable as Professor Waldman had been, but was as down to earth and witty as Jonathan. Victor discovered that Professor Van Helsing had also taught Jack Seward back when he was aspiring to be a medical doctor instead of a psychologist.
In the ensuing weeks of classes, Victor came to realize that Van Helsing was an expert on obscure diseases and was somewhat of a metaphysician and very open-minded to all things. He would not have scoffed at Victor’s adolescent preoccupation with alchemy and the raising of spirits.
Then came the day that Victor would work on his first cadaver. Earlier in the week, Van Helsing had asked Victor to help him in the demonstration of an autopsy. Victor was nervous, having never been in the same room as a dead body before, other than his mother’s, and he had a nagging suspicion that it would not be the same.
“Victor! You made it!” Van Helsing exclaimed as Victor entered the operating theatre, which was lit by candles to augment the dim light drawn from the windows, creating shadows in the corners of the large space and up to the vaulted ceiling. The tiered wooden benches of the gallery were already half-full.
There it was. The corpse that Victor would help cut open and dissect, laying prostrate and naked on the surgical table. Victor gulped back some bile and tried not to faint.
Van Helsing looked at him—appraising him. “Nervous? Don’t be. You will do fine. I will be here with you every step of the way.”
But that wasn’t the reason for Victor’s nervousness. He couldn’t help but reflect on the stories Jonathan had told him about the way human cadavers were procured for anatomical study. Although he knew that great strides had been made in the past three years to procure bodies legally and respectfully, since the passing of the Anatomy Act, he couldn’t get the images of body snatchers and murderers out of his mind. He didn’t know where this particular body had been found or how the deceased had died, and he was not at all sure he wanted to know. Van Helsing handed him a long white apron, which he reluctantly donned as Van Helsing began his lecture.
Victor looked once again at the pale features of the middle-aged man upon the slab. Although Victor’s hands remained stiffly at his sides, he could almost feel the cadaver’s icy flesh; the stiffness of inert human tissue once the life force has ceased to quicken the body. He now noticed an array of steel or brass medical instruments splayed out on a smaller table adjacent to the body—scalpels, bone saws, clamps, and glass syringes.
“Now that you are all here, we can get started,” Van Helsing was saying. “When performing an autopsy, first note the outward appearance of the corpse. Take measurements of the deceased’s height and weight. In the case of this unfortunate gentleman, there is no outward appearance of foul-play. Observe that there are no broken bones, open wounds, or bruising of any kind. If there were, you would spend some time determining if such injuries were the cause of an unlawful killing, self-murder, or accidental mishap. But foul-play is not the only reason for performing autopsies. Sometimes when there is no obvious reason for the deceased to be, well deceased,” he chuckled, “then an autopsy is performed to determine the reason, be it a cancerous tumor, or an illness of some kind.
“When performing an autopsy and getting ready to make your preliminary incision, be sure to stretch the skin of the chest over the sternum in like manner, using your thumb and i
ndex finger.” Van Helsing demonstrated the proper procedure upon the cadaver. “You shall make an incision, starting at the upper part of the shoulder, and make your way down to the sternum. Do the same on the other side. Make your last incision, starting at the meeting place of your first two initial incisions, and come all the way down to the navel.
“Now, don’t be ninnies about it; although the flesh is easy to pierce, much like cutting a steak at dinner, you will need to press down firmly in order to cut deep enough to slice through the muscle. Now, peel back the flesh and crack open the ribs.” He reached out his hand and Victor handed him the bone spreaders. As Van Helsing cracked open the rib cage, the sickening sweet smell of decay wafted out. Victor hurriedly turned his head away in revulsion, pressing his hand over his nose. The students sitting in the front row did likewise, while one gentleman began to retch.
“Trust me,” laughed Van Helsing, “you never get used to the smell, no matter how many times you cut into a body. The fresher the body, the less smell there is.”
Surprised that blood did not spurt or flow freely from the body upon the opening of the chest cavity, Victor was quick to ask the professor about it.
“I am glad you asked. I would estimate that this fellow has been dead at least three days. After thirty-six hours, the blood will begin to coagulate and congeal as it is no longer being pumped and circulated around the body by the heart. You will notice as well that it is not the bright red that people normally associate with blood, for this is not fresh blood and therefore retains the much darker brown hues of aged blood.
“Now, when you have gained access to the body’s vital organs, each one must be removed and weighed. The reason for this is because certain types of illness can cause a reduction or increase in the weight of organs such as the heart or lungs. Note that the liver has no scarring, so heavy drinking was not the culprit. Now, if determining the time of death is vitally important, you can examine the contents of the stomach to discern when the person last ate and what that meal consisted of. Perhaps they had been poisoned.”
Van Helsing took a moment to weigh and examine each organ individually and then folded back the skin even further into the abdominal cavity, revealing the slick and wet viscera it contained.
“Now this specific body would appear to be healthy. If we had discovered a problem, the offending organ would be kept in preservative liquid made of an arsenic and mercury-based solution, and labeled, so that future students could learn from it. Tomorrow, I will pull out such preserved organs and test you on what exactly is wrong with the organ and what the cause of death was.
“But do not despair. If you do not find anything in the main cavity of the body, then it is to the brain that we look to for our answer. Although an external examination shows no head trauma, not all signs of trauma are visible on the exterior. Make an incision from one ear to the next at the back of the skull. The scalp is then separated from the bone by folding it back. You will then open up the skull to reveal the brain and make your first examination. Once this has been completed satisfactorily, the brain is removed for a more thorough inspection.”
A tool rested on the table next to a set of scalpels of varying size and jaggedness. Van Helsing laid down his bloody scalpel and grabbed a hold of the bone-saw, using it to open up the skull and examine the brain. “Still no sign of trauma.” Van Helsing placed the bone-saw back on the table and carefully removed the brain.
Victor was once again surprised. He would have thought that the brain was pink, but it was actually gray.
“Aha! I have found our killer!” Van Helsing turned the brain, where it lay in the dissecting pan, to reveal a bloody mass on the left side of the temporal lobe, down near the base. “A brain aneurysm.”
One of the young men began to clap, as though a mass murderer had been caught red-handed. The rest looked about, wondering whether or not to copy the action. Victor heard a small pattering of applause as two or three students joined him. Soon the entire class was clapping vigorously, Victor along with them. Van Helsing smiled indulgently, clearly liking the response.
“When the autopsy is complete and all procedures have been followed, place the organs back into the body and carefully sew it back up,” Van Helsing concluded.
In the coming months, Victor himself became quite adept at performing autopsies and determining the cause of death. The revulsion he experienced at the first, passed away, and he was now able to dissect cadavers with no thought as to where the body had come from or with any reservations about touching dead flesh.
In fact, Victor, having become a metaphysician in his own right—exploring the fundamental questions, including the nature of concepts such as being, existence, and reality—had begun to enter mausoleums and charnel houses in order to watch the natural cycle of decay. His father had always been careful not to let his children be frightened by ghost stories and other tales of the supernatural, and as a result, it never occurred to Victor to be scared upon entering these vaults or to be afraid of the dark. To him a churchyard was merely a receptacle for dead bodies, nothing more.
He figured that in order to understand life, he must first understand death. He longed to know about that vital phenomenon that quickens the human frame, called the soul. He had been reading books about Vitalism, the belief that living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than inanimate objects. This element was a vital “spark” or “energy,” which some equate to the soul.
He talked this over with his new friend, Abraham Van Helsing, who claimed that such ideas were old-fashioned. Vitalism was an old theory of biology that was no longer accepted by science. He claimed instead that it was electricity that gave the illusion of this “spark” that was missing from non-living entities.
“What do you mean? My father once used a spinning machine to show me how electricity works, but I don’t understand how that has any bearing on the human condition.”
“Have you ever heard of a man by the name of Luigi Galvani?”
Victor shook his head.
“Oh, Victor, have I got an experiment in mind for you. Come to my next lecture, and I will show you what I am talking about.”
Chapter Six
Victor did as Van Helsing directed, and a week later, he was front and center for his instruction. This time the students gathered together in a large room rather than the operating theatre. He spotted Van Helsing standing behind a table that held a metal tray with a frog splayed out on its back. The skin of one leg was peeled back, revealing the muscles, which glistened wetly. Beside the tray rested two metal wires connected to an electrostatic machine.
There were several long tables situated about the room, but no chairs. Victor took position behind one of the tables, facing Van Helsing, and waited for the rest of his classmates to arrive. When they had all appeared, Van Helsing began his lecture.
“Luigi Aloisio Galvani was an Italian physician and biologist who discovered bioelectricity in animals,” Van Helsing said as he paced in front of them. “At the University of Bologna in Italy, on January 26, 1781, while dissecting a frog near a static electricity machine, Galvani’s assistant accidently touched a scalpel to a nerve in the frog’s leg and it jumped. Researchers at the time knew that electricity produced violent spasms, but Galvani speculated that electricity might also cause muscle contractions. In 1786, he discovered that when a frog’s legs are touched by both a copper probe and a piece of iron at the same time, they twitch.”
Van Helsing demonstrated this by picking up the copper and iron wires, turning on the electrostatic machine, and touching the electrodes to either side of the large muscle of the frog’s leg. It promptly twitched up into the upward position, causing several of the students, including Victor, to gasp.
“Galvani theorized that electricity resided inside the frog itself and the iron and copper arch merely conducted the electricity from one part of the frog to the n
erve. This came to be known as Galvanism.
“He originally attributed this phenomenon to a vital fluid.” Upon this statement, Van Helsing glanced in Victor’s direction with a small smile. “But in the past forty years since Galvani’s findings, we have made many strides in our understanding of electricity and the human body. In fact, there are things done today in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the very men who discovered electricity. Now, can anyone tell me what bioelectrogenesis is?”
A few hands went up. Victor’s hand remained in his lap, having never heard of such a thing.
“Yes, you in the back. Richard, isn’t it?”
Victor turned in his seat to see a young man of average height and a baby face.
“Bioelectrogenesis is the production of electricity, or transfer of electrons, in the tissues of living organisms. Each of our brain cells, called neurons, produces about 70 millivolts of electric potential and our muscle cells about 95 millivolts.”
“Correct. Bioelectricity is made up of the electric potentials and currents produced by or occurring within living organisms. When the delicate balance of these fields are upset, the flow of life energy is disrupted, leading to illness,” Van Helsing explained.
Upon the chalkboard Van Helsing wrote Biomechanics of Frog Skeletal Muscle.
“This is your assignment for today. Come to the front of the room and choose a frog.” Van Helsing pointed to a group of buckets located on the side of the room by a large basin of water and lye soap. “You will perform the same task that you have just seen me perform. This exercise is designed to demonstrate some of the mechanical and physiological properties of skeletal muscle using the femoris muscle of a frog.
“The frog muscle is used in place of mammalian muscle in this laboratory exercise because of its tolerance to temperature change and handling. The results are similar to what would be seen in more carefully controlled mammalian experiments.
