Later on.
There had been an outbreak of the ailment commonly called “coals of fire,” or, in a fancier word, anthrax; and Eszterhazy, both as a qualified physician and as a member of the Higher Consultancy of the Royal and Imperial Hospital (commonly called “The Big Sickhouse”), had been discussing the outbreak with Doctor Umglotz, the Assistant Supervisor. Umglotz declared himself to be a “regular old-fashioned physician,” given to the traditional and the tried and true. None of your fads for Umglotz.
“Bleeding, blistering, cupping, purging,” he said. “If they don’t work, well, then nothing works.”
Eszterhazy nodded. “I see. Well, which have you tried for anthrax?” “Tried all of them.”
“I see. Well, which one works?”
“None of them works,” said Umglotz, with immense calm.
And he was quite right. None of them did work. Reading the write-ups on the afflicted, Eszterhazy observed something else. “All of the victims, Doctor, are employed at the Ister Woolen Works, it seems.”
“They are? Yes, yes. I see. They are. Well. No surprise. Where folk are working in that line — where you find wool and hair, you know, well, there you find anthrax. Dirty work. The beasts of the field, my good Eszterhazy, they do not employ the shower-bath," he employed the English term: the shower-bath was not greatly used in Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania; “but what would you? We cannot always wear cotton and linen. Every trade has its troubles, hatters go mad from the felting-mercury, vintners die from the acid gas in the great vats, trainmen are smashed in wrecks, and . . . and . . . and so it goes. Hazards of the chase, my good Eszterhazy, hazards of the chase. The dirts of the wool and hair get into the lungs. The sick, like the poor, are always with us, you know. Else what should we physician fellows do for our living; eh?” He shrugged and chuckled, then made to ring his bell. “Our good Royal and Imperial master sends us here regularly a pipe of excellent Rainwater madeira, and I am going to make you drink a glass of it before you go.”
His good Eszterhazy knew better than to suggest that even a glass of it be sent instead to one of the dying. “Willingly,” he said. Then his head jerked. “A sudden thought, Assistant Supervisor. When wool-working was what the English term ‘a cottage industry,’ when a single family raised sheep, sheared, carded, spun, wove, and all —”
Umglotz rang his bell, begged his good Eszterhazy’s pardon. “Yes, yes, quite. Go on, please.” Eszterhazy went on to say that in such a situation, if a family had the misfortune to encounter a tainted fleece, the outbreak of anthrax might be at least contained within that cottage and family. Whereas, when a tainted fleece was worked upon by an entire factory-full of people — “Yes, yes. Quite. I quite see your point. Well, what would you? People don’t want to stay in their cottage. They want to come to our beautiful,
exciting Big Bella. And who can blame them; not I. Ah, here it is! Let me fill your glass. Sercial is nice, Bual is nice, but as the Emperor is benevolent enough to send us Rainwater, I am loyal enough to maintain that Rainwater is the nicest madeira of all; drink up, my good Eszterhazy. Drink up!”
Having drunk up, and having declined a second glass, and acknowledging that being sent on one’s way with a glass of good wine was better than being kicked down a flight of stairs, Eszterhazy nevertheless left The Big Sick- house with a rather disturbing trend of thought still trending its way through his mind. Not even the beautiful, reflective Ister, of the sight of which anywhere on its course he never tired, was able to distract him. Excellent as Engineer Brozz’s intentions were to provide his native nation with a new (and clean) system of power and manufacture there seemed always some objection, and always some further objection, to arise. And it was of this, in general, and of this latest potential objection in particular, of which he thought and was thinking as he made his way over the beautiful Swedish Bridge, towards his home.
He was not thinking of what the Honorable Hiram Abiff Abercrombie, sometime United States Minister to the Triune Monarchy, termed The Remarkable Law of Coincidence as Exemplified by One-Legged Men Wearing Blue Baseball Caps. General Abercrombie (who had been drinking prune brandy purely, as he said, to “maintain the integrity of his intesrmeal tract”) explained that baseball was a game native to his own Great Republic, that the players wore caps of various colors, that such caps were sometimes worn by men not at the moment playing baseball, that you might go a hundred years without seeing a single one-legged man wearing a blue baseball cap, and that — tarnation! — one afternoon you’ll see three of them! And Abercrombie was moved to explain to his young friend Elmer Bert the full details of a great game of baseball played on the 4th of July in the year 1800 and 63, at Fort Fillmore, Missoula Territory, between the 15th Mounted Infantry and Indian Friendlies: but his young friend (without much difficulty) persuaded him to have another glass of prune brandy for his stomach’s sake. And for his other infirmities.
Yet something of this so-called Law seemed to be at work; for, on Eszterhazy’s having barely attained his chamber, there entered Kresht, the day porter, with a card on the flat palm of his hand. (Kresht, later succeeded by Lemkotch, had been provided with a tray for this purpose, but had persisted in using the tray as a way-stop for his glass of coffee, his glass of borsht, and his glass of tea with sliced citron and cherry preserve; until he had finally been excused the use of the tray for holding cards at all.) And the card, engraved in a crisp script, read Engineer Hildebert V. B. Brozz.
“Bring the gentleman up, Kresht.”
“Yurp, Lord Doctor.” And, having brought the gentleman up, Kresht brought himself down again, there to devote himself to his glass of rye- bread-beer, his glass of raspberry juice and hot water, and his glass of whatever else was his by kindness of the upper-kitchen woman with whom he had formed an entangling alliance. Kresht was later (not much later) succeeded by Lemkotch, who never drank anything at all. . . except whatever was in the flat black bottle which reposed in the pocket of his overcoat hanging Winter and Summer in the lower front hall closet: and for this Lemkotch required neither glass nor tray.
But as for Brozz —
Brozz did not look well.
“How are the tuned harmonic turbine, the vacuum-pump, and the compressed-air engine, Engineer?”
Engineer made a gesture. “I have not come to consult you about that. At least . . . not exactly. I have come to consult you as a doctor of medicine.” Again . . . was it that absurd “Law”?
“I am such, it is true, certainly. But it is certainly true that I became such chiefly to mark a milestone on the march to knowledge, not to practice and have patients. Have you consulted, for instance,” naming a well-known and “modern” physician, “Dr. Slawk?”
“I have.”
“And what did he say?”
“That my liver was out of order. And he offered me a black pill.” Brozz gazed at the beautifully-articulated skeleton in its cabinet, but its beautiful articulations did not seem to soothe him.
“Hmm. Well, but - Dr. Hrach?”
“Dr. Hrach, too.”
“And he -?”
“Said that my bowels were sluggish. And offered me a blue pill.”
There was one more suggestion to make, and Eszterhazy made it. “The Scottish surgeon is —”
“Dr. Maclllivery. Oh yes. Him, too. He said that the acid in green tea, when over-indulged in, affected the connective fibre of the nervous tissue. Have I over-indulged in the use of green tea? Sir, I have never indulged in green tea at all. And as for the witch —”