Among other things, Joe Bell
May. 8th, 2025 07:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootMore time to be spent with the vets today, so we can get a bit more understanding on the options. They got medication and food/fluids into her over the past two days and describe her mood as 'bright.' I am not sure if the current treatment is palliative or what. We'll know more soon.
Remind me never to do this again. When this bunch have gone, never again. R says the love and fun of what, 17? 21? years is more than worth it and I know he's right. This is sorrow talking, the very worst guest who arrives early and leaves late having never been invited in the first place.
I will hold on to my beautiful cats happiness today, tomorrow, for as long as we have. It might be better than I know.
For this reason I cannot speak to Mum at all. This is most unfortunate. We took our ILs on a series of mini-excursions, and each day I've been sending her photos and info, so I have little else with which to divert her and dare not speak to her of this because the creeping ghoulery will start; 'Is she in pain? What kind of pain? Do not touch the cat. Do not touch the soil of that place. Sell the house and get out, go live somewhere else...'
I just cannot bear any of it. I must find something else to talk about, which is hard when this matter takes up so much of my headspace.
We made at least one trip that would have fascinated her. It's just as well the Surgeons Hall in Edinburgh wasn't open when I studied at uni; had Mum known of it she might well have moved in. This museum charts the development of surgery, based from and around Edinburgh's time as a centre of medical studies. The history is fascinating with its separation of barbers and doctors, tales of the resurrection men and body snatching, the evolution of ether and anti-septic practices etc, the movement of medical theory from humours to microbes and beyond, all fascinating.
Then one goes upstairs to the Wohl Pathology Museum which is horrible, every lamentable combination of biology and bad luck preserved here, bones and tumours and eyeballs and intestines, hearts and bowels and far more than these, so much to make one aware of the body as extraordinary machine, complex and vulnerable.
There was one aside that tickled me; it was all about Joseph Bell, a surgeon at the Edinburgh Infirmary described by Arthur Conan Doyle:
"Bell was a very remarkable man in body and mind. He was thin, wiry, dark, with a high-nosed acute face, penetrating grey eyes, angular shoulders, and a jerky way of walking. His voice was high and discordant. He was a very skilful surgeon, but his strong point was diagnosis, not only of disease, but of occupation and character [...]
In one of his best cases he said to a civilian patient:
"Well, my man, you've served in the army."
"Aye, sir."
"Not long discharged?"
"No, sir."
"A Highland regiment?"
"Aye, sir."
"A non-com. officer?"
"Aye, sir."
"Stationed at Barbados?"
"Aye, sir."
"You see, gentlemen," he would explain, "the man was a respectful man but did not remove his hat. They do not in the army, but he would have learned civilian ways had he been long discharged. He has an air of authority and he is obviously Scottish. As to Barbados, his complaint is elephantiasis, which is West Indian and not British." [...]
I thought of my old teacher Joe Bell, of his eagle face, of his curious ways, of his eerie trick of spotting details. If he were a detective he would surely reduce this fascinating but unorganized business to something nearer to an exact science. I would try if I could get this effect. It was surely possible in real life, so why should I not make it plausible in fiction? It is all very well to say that a man is clever, but the reader wants to see examples of it — such examples as Bell gave us every day in the wards. The idea amused me."
Arthur's creation based on that guy was this guy.
Remind me never to do this again. When this bunch have gone, never again. R says the love and fun of what, 17? 21? years is more than worth it and I know he's right. This is sorrow talking, the very worst guest who arrives early and leaves late having never been invited in the first place.
I will hold on to my beautiful cats happiness today, tomorrow, for as long as we have. It might be better than I know.
For this reason I cannot speak to Mum at all. This is most unfortunate. We took our ILs on a series of mini-excursions, and each day I've been sending her photos and info, so I have little else with which to divert her and dare not speak to her of this because the creeping ghoulery will start; 'Is she in pain? What kind of pain? Do not touch the cat. Do not touch the soil of that place. Sell the house and get out, go live somewhere else...'
I just cannot bear any of it. I must find something else to talk about, which is hard when this matter takes up so much of my headspace.
We made at least one trip that would have fascinated her. It's just as well the Surgeons Hall in Edinburgh wasn't open when I studied at uni; had Mum known of it she might well have moved in. This museum charts the development of surgery, based from and around Edinburgh's time as a centre of medical studies. The history is fascinating with its separation of barbers and doctors, tales of the resurrection men and body snatching, the evolution of ether and anti-septic practices etc, the movement of medical theory from humours to microbes and beyond, all fascinating.
Then one goes upstairs to the Wohl Pathology Museum which is horrible, every lamentable combination of biology and bad luck preserved here, bones and tumours and eyeballs and intestines, hearts and bowels and far more than these, so much to make one aware of the body as extraordinary machine, complex and vulnerable.
There was one aside that tickled me; it was all about Joseph Bell, a surgeon at the Edinburgh Infirmary described by Arthur Conan Doyle:
"Bell was a very remarkable man in body and mind. He was thin, wiry, dark, with a high-nosed acute face, penetrating grey eyes, angular shoulders, and a jerky way of walking. His voice was high and discordant. He was a very skilful surgeon, but his strong point was diagnosis, not only of disease, but of occupation and character [...]
In one of his best cases he said to a civilian patient:
"Well, my man, you've served in the army."
"Aye, sir."
"Not long discharged?"
"No, sir."
"A Highland regiment?"
"Aye, sir."
"A non-com. officer?"
"Aye, sir."
"Stationed at Barbados?"
"Aye, sir."
"You see, gentlemen," he would explain, "the man was a respectful man but did not remove his hat. They do not in the army, but he would have learned civilian ways had he been long discharged. He has an air of authority and he is obviously Scottish. As to Barbados, his complaint is elephantiasis, which is West Indian and not British." [...]
I thought of my old teacher Joe Bell, of his eagle face, of his curious ways, of his eerie trick of spotting details. If he were a detective he would surely reduce this fascinating but unorganized business to something nearer to an exact science. I would try if I could get this effect. It was surely possible in real life, so why should I not make it plausible in fiction? It is all very well to say that a man is clever, but the reader wants to see examples of it — such examples as Bell gave us every day in the wards. The idea amused me."
Arthur's creation based on that guy was this guy.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2025-05-08 11:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-09 06:16 am (UTC)