Page 17 (1/2)
Chapter One
Leicester, September 1857
“IN HER CONDITION,” DOCTOR PARWINE WAS SAYING from the other side of the room, “she must particularly beware foul miasmas”
The atmosphere in the roolooirl, no matter the situation she’d found herself in—sat stiffly on a chair across the roon of the changes that would shortly coirls in her situation would weep She siht ahead, hands folded Maybe she didn’t understand what had happened to her
He’d seen her a tiirls just a few years ago, rolling a hoop down the street and shrieking with laughter, ribbons trailing after her
She still looked hter about her now
“Foul irl’s mother breathed “What are foul miasmas?”
“Miasmas,” Parwine intoned, “are the cause of all disease, and are particularly noxious to…” He glanced down at the girl, and then narrowed his eyes “To expecting mothers,” he finished “There are a number of miasmas which one must avoid There is the idio-kino miasma, produced by…”
Jonas Grantham barely restrained himself from a roll of the eyes In a matter of weeks, he was due to start his course of e in London He’d beat out students with pedigrees froe to win a prized three-year Warneford scholarship He was itching for the first lecture—scheduled for the first of October at eight PM, a noramuses like Parwine made his hands itch all the more
Truly, e? The theory of miasmas had been conclusively disproven three years past Only benighted fools still spouted that gibberish But Jonas had asked to spend tireement in place to take over the man’s practice as soon as he’d finished his education Parwine had been ed, but as an untutored (the older man’s words) youth, he was expected to keep silent So here Jonas stood, listening to an old man ramble on about miasmas
“Finally,” Paras saying, “there is the perkoino miasma, the cause of yellow fever—but surely you will not expose your daughter to that”
Her parents exchanged glances “No, doctor, of course not But what is to be done?”
The last weeks following the reat deal about how not to be a physician from Parwine The doctor y that none of his patients understood, all of it supposition that had been rejected by scientific men within the last decades It took all of Jonas’s self-control—never excellent under ideal circu hied Barely
Parwine frowned “For the prevention of nausea and vo, which is so often associated with this delicate condition, I suggest a solution of lettuce water and prussic acid Take it liberally and there shall be no ill symptoms I shall leave a direction for such with the apothecary”