‘A good doctor?’

‘Yes. I think he is very good.’

‘So I wonder why you see him as no one.’

‘I suppose I mean that he has no place in my heart.’

‘Are you certain of this? You know that acceptable offers of marriage do not come along very frequently.’

‘Yes, I know it. But this one is not acceptable. And, anyway, marriage is not on my mind.’

Emmeline was silent for a moment, then she said, ‘you probably also know that, one day – inevitably – it will be.’

‘THE DESTINY OF THE STOMACH’

Sitting in his dining room, one early morning, completing his breakfast of toasted teacakes and bacon, Sir William Adeane was reflecting upon Professor François Broussais’s conclusions about the ‘normal’ and the ‘pathological’ in disease. In particular, Sir William had always been interested in the French physician’s challenging idea that very many illnesses are caused uniquely by gastro-intestinal inflammations, and, as he chewed his bacon, he began to wonder whether, in his daily work, he paid this diagnosis enough attention.

Broussais had observed that ‘the destiny of the stomach is always to be irritated’ and it was true that very many of Sir William’s patients came to Bath primarily to find relief from this discomfort by drinking the pure waters. He treated them also by raising blisters on the skin of the abdomen. When these were punctured, allowing the fluid to run out, it was thought that any infection within the stomach would also be drawn out, and although this treatment was so painful that some patients fainted when the blister was lanced, it was thought, on the whole, to be effective.

Seldom, however, had the doctor enquired about the quality or quantity of the food his clients habitually asked their bodies to ingest. He was inclined to think that they ate too much. Their waistlines bulged and strained against their clothes. Their breath was often foul, indicating a surfeit of fat-laden acids and too much tea. But a physician is not a nursemaid; he can’t watch over a man’s daily victualling. He has to believe that his patients are not deliberately causing themselves bodily distress by gobbling too many oysters, by drinking claret until their heads begin to spin or by being unable to tolerate a jam tart unless it be heaped up with Jersey cream. And, reasoned Sir William, even if I knew this to be the case, what am I to do about it?

At this moment in his deliberations, as he was wondering whether he should make greater use of oatmeal poultices in his attempts to ease the perpetual ‘irritation’ Professor Broussais had identified, his cook Mrs Hughes came into the dining room and approached the doctor’s chair, asking if she could have ‘a word’ before his working day began.

‘Of course, Mrs Hughes,’ said Sir William. ‘Do please speak to me.’

The cook was wearing a dirty apron and she was scrunching this in her work-reddened hands, as if almost to wring it out, and Sir William deduced from this nervous gesture that some anxiety was playing upon her mind.