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1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz: Chapter Five
Last updated: Wednesday, June 15, 2016 21:14 EDT
Dr. Phil’s Piles
Saturday December 7, 1624, Basel
Phillip chewed at his mustache as he read the letter from his landlord’s lawyer. Bad news came in threes. On Thursday his friend Professor Gaspard Bauhin died. Today he had been served notice that his lease would not be renewed. He didn’t want to image what the third event would be.
He slowly turned; staring at the various aspects of the laboratory he’d been using for the last thirty months. It had started to feel like home, and had collected the detritus of living a home usually accumulated. Did he really want to go through the experience of moving everything to a new laboratory, or should he take this as a sign that it was time to leave Basel?
He was busy contemplating his future when, after a perfunctory knock on the door, Jean Bauhin walked in. The sight of the youth in his laboratory so soon after his father’s death didn’t bode well. “How are you?” Phillip asked
“Surviving,” Jean said. He stood back and looked at Phillip; his eyes failing to maintain eye contact.
“Do you have more bad news?” Phillip asked.
“More? Oh, you mean in addition to Papa?” Tears started to form in Jeans eyes, and he let them fall.
Phillip passed him a clean handkerchief and pulled out the letter from his landlord and offered it to Jean. “I’ve been given notice that my lease won’t be renewed.”
Jean snorted vigorously into the handkerchief. “That didn’t take them long,” he said as he wiped his nose.
“What didn’t take who long?” Phillip asked.
Jean gave Phillip a grim smile. “There are people at the university who are scared of you.”
Phillip’s brows shot up. “Scared? Of me?” he asked, pointing to his chest. “Why would anyone be scared of me?”
“Because you manage to show them up,” Jean said.
Phillip still didn’t understand. “Show who up?”
“Doctors like Dr. Laurent.”
Phillip blew a snort of contempt. “Who worries about a man of his poor talent?” he asked.
“There are people who respect Dr. Laurent, Dr. Gribbleflotz, and they remember what you did to him a couple of years ago.”
“All I did was show his paying customers the correct way to conduct an amputation.” Phillip started pacing. “It’s just like Padua. People like Professor Fabricius would hold demonstrations where they pontificated on their favorite topic, which had little to do with the knowledge the examiners were going to test the students on. Phillip smiled at Jean. “Really, I was doing the university a favor.”
Jean nodded, but there was still a sign of worry on his face. “Dr. Laurent and his followers have managed to engage Professor Stupanus in the proposal to ban all private dissections.”
That was bad news. Professor Emmanuel Stupanus’s inaugural lecture when he joined the University of Basel faculty had been entitled De fraudibus Paracelsistarum, and from what Phillip had heard, the man’s opinion of anyone who claimed to follow the Paracelsian school of thought hadn’t improved. “Maybe it is time for me to move on,” he mumbled.
“Are you thinking of leaving?” Jean asked.
Phillip nodded. “I miss your father and our discussions, especially his ideas of how to classify botanical discoveries. There’s nothing here for me now.”
“Where will you go?”
Phillip smiled. “Give me a chance. I’ve only just now decided to leave. For now I think I’ll take a barge down the Rhine.”
February 1625
The trip down the Rhine turned into a trip down the Waal and eventually Phillip found himself in Dordrecht, in the United Providences. He’d barely landed his baggage when a colleague from his days in the service of the counts of Nassau-Siegen discovered him.
“Phillip, how have you been?” Wilhelm Dorschner asked as he approached and hugged Phillip.
“Okay. And yourself?”
“I can’t complain.” Wilhelm put on a smile. “After Gradisca I went north and joined the forces of Ernst von Mansfeld. I’m still with him.”
Phillip recognized the name and winced. “Were you at Wimpfen?” he asked, naming the 1622 battle which von Mansfeld had lost.
Wilhelm nodded. “We were holding our ground,” he sighed and dropped his head, “until a cannon shot hit the magazine and . . .” He shook his head again. “I was lucky to get away unhurt.”
“So you’ve been in the United Provinces since then?” Phillip asked.
“Sort of,” Wilhelm said. “We’ve just recently crossed from Dover with an army to relieve Breda, which has been besieged since August. If you’re looking for a position, I’m sure they’ll be happy to take you on.”
Phillip hesitated. He had a supply of maggot extract that he was simply dying to try out, and a siege would be an ideal situation in which to test his new treatments. One tended to stay in one place, and few if any of the casualties that passed through his hands would have family who were likely to interfere with his experiments.
“We need you, Phillip. We are almost seven thousand soldiers, and only a handful of physicians.”
Phillip had to smile. It seemed his opportunities to experiment would be even greater than he’d thought.
The campaign produced a lot of work for Phillip and his colleagues. The only way for Sir Horace Vere and his seven thousand Englishmen to approach the siege lines was along a network of causeways. After a short engagement they managed to capture a redoubt, but the resulting Spanish counterattack forced Sir Horace to retreat, taking heavy casualties.
His work didn’t end there as, with Sir Horace’s attempt to break the siege failing, the siege lasted another four months. When in June of 1625 Breda finally surrendered only about half the original seven thousand man garrison survived, including about six hundred Englishmen. Phillip accompanied the English wounded when they were repatriated back to England, where he stayed with them for a year while he improved his English before taking to the road and working his way north, stopping in villages as he passed to offer his professional services or to learn medical uses of plants from the locals. It was thus that he finally ended up near Kingston upon Hull, known locally simply as Hull.
May 1630, Anlaby, 3 miles west of Kingston upon Hull, England
Phillip paid the messenger from the book shop he patronized in Hull for the letter and package he’d delivered and retired back into his laboratory to inspect them. He laid the post on his work bench and washed the grease from the spit-roasted duck he had been eating from his hands before hunting out his letter opener.
The letter was from his old colleague from the Dalmatian expedition. Michael Weitnauer was in Jena, working at the university’s botanical gardens, and he wrote that he had hopes of being put in charge of the facility. His letter went on to describe some of the changes he wanted to make. Phillip could only feel that Jena would be well served by employing Michael as the director of the botanical garden.
He laid down Michael’s letter and picked up the package. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. Phillip carefully untied the string and added it to the ball of string he was creating from short lengths he saved. Then he carefully opened the brown paper wrapping to reveal a brand new copy of Dr. William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis. It was bound in human skin, just like his copy of Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, which probably explained why it had taken so long to arrive. He placed the manuscript to one side while her folded up the wrapping paper and put it into a drawer for use at some later date. Only then did his eyes turn to his new book.
At a mere seventy-two pages, including illustrations, Phillip didn’t think it would take him long to skim through the manuscript. That meant he could probably afford to look at it while his laborant ground green vitriol, because, he thought, not even Robert could get into trouble doing that.
He was wrong. It wasn’t that he was wrong thinking Robert couldn’t get into trouble grinding green vitriol, he was wrong in assuming that he could afford to read the manuscript instead of closely monitoring what Robert got up to. The youngster was the latest of a line of hopefuls he’d tried as assistants, and Phillip was having trouble repressing his delusions of grandeur.
What this meant was that while Phillip was distracted with his book, Robert finished grinding up the green vitriol, and having time on his hands, did a little experimenting of his own. Phillip was deeply into Dr. Harvey’s discussion of the evidence for his new theory that rather than being made in the liver, that blood actually circulated through the body when a panic laden scream from Robert burst through his reader’s trance. He looked up in time to see Robert grabbing a flask emitting a red vapor and dashing outside with it. Phillip dropped the book onto the bench top and gave chase.
By the time he caught up with Robert he’d already thrown the glass flask away. It shattered on the stone wall, splashing whatever the liquid was all over some willow branches from which the bark had been removed. Almost immediately the willow branches started to blacken. “What did you do that for?” Philip demanded. Unfortunately he didn’t stop there and wait for an answer. He exploded with more questions. “What did you do? What was in the flask?”
Robert stammered that he didn’t know and Philip went bombastic. “What do you mean you don’t know?” he demanded. He glanced at the smoking wood. He had to know what had caused that. “Haven’t I told you to record everything?” he shouted.
Phillip was normally mild-mannered, but right now he was overly excited and coming over as aggressive. Robert panicked and ran, leaving Phillip to shout curses at his rapidly disappearing back. When Robert disappeared from view Phillip walked over to where the flask had broken and examined the damage. The burns on the wood suggested the liquid had probably been acidic. He hurried back into the laboratory for some Litmus Paper.
The liquid tested positive for acid, leaving Phillip with a problem. He’d never seen any of his acids affect a piece of willow wood quite like that. He broke off a few lengths and retired into his laboratory. At the bench where Robert had been working he laid down the wood and studied the flasks Robert could have used. Nothing leapt out at him, so he carefully tested a little of each container on a piece of wood.
All that managed to confirm was that none of the acids he made was as strong as the acid Robert had created. That meant it had probably been a combination, just like how aqua regia, a combination of aqua fortis and acidum salis, was much stronger than the individual acids used to create it.
While he experimented Phillip went back to chewing on his roast duck. It was cold now, but he was used to eating cold food.
It was late, and his candles had burned low before Phillip discovered a combination that yielded a red vapor such as he’d seen coming from Robert’s flask. The beaker was hot to the touch, which might explain why Robert had thrown his flask once he got outside. Phillip dripped a few drops onto a piece of willow and waited to see what happened.
Phillip stared at the black marks that appeared where the drops had fallen in disbelief. A quick re-examination of his notes confirmed that all he’d done was add concentrated Oil of Vitriol to concentrated aqua fortis. Neither of the acids individually was as strong as the new combination, but aqua fortis was just Oil of Vitriol and saltpetre. How was it possible to make something stronger than aqua fortis by simply adding more Oil of Vitriol?
It was a question that Phillip decided would have to wait for another day as the candles started spluttering. He added his latest thoughts to his notes of his experiments before pinching the wicks out and fell into his bed, his mind awhirl as he tried to explain what he’d seen.
The next day Phillip returned to reading Dr. Harvey’s book. The mathematical argument was compelling. If a heart did pump about one and a quarter drachm of blood with each beat of the heart, and if a heart were to beat two thousand times an hour, then, in the course of a day the heart would pump sixty thousand drachm of blood a day. That was, as Dr. Harvey claimed, more than five hundred pounds of blood that the liver would have to produce every day. Phillip nodded his agreement with Dr. Harvey’s conclusion. There was certainly no way his liver was producing five hundred pounds of anything — he was sure he would have noticed if it did.
He laid down the book. It was all very well reading about Dr. Harvey’s theory, but Phillip liked to see his own proofs. The first thing to do was check the claimed volumes for a heart. Phillip dressed for a visit to the local butcher.
Phillip’s initial tests with human sized animal hearts tended to confirm Dr. Harvey’s numbers, so he moved on to the next stage. He could have tied off veins and arteries, like Dr. Harvey had, to show that veins flowed into the heart while arteries flowed out, but he preferred a much more direct approach. He bought a live pig.
It wasn’t a very large pig, because Phillip was operating alone he’d settled for an animal of less than thirty pounds, but he still dosed it with Laudanum to calm it down before he tied it down to a heavy work table. Even after a heavy dose of Laudanum it still struggled and squealed when he cut it open. Phillip bound the pig’s snout with rags to quieten it before going on to cut through the ribs to gain access to the animal’s beating heart.
He stared at the beating heart in wonder for a while before using his thumb and forefinger to pinch off in turn the veins and arteries leading in and out of the organ. By this simple expedient he was able to confirm Dr. Harvey’s contention that veins let blood into the heart while arteries let the blood out. His final test was to cut the Pulmonary artery and measure the blood being pumped out.
He counted off ten heartbeats as blood squirted into a small flask. He put that to one side before slicing through the remaining veins and arteries connected to the heart so he could remove the organ. He held it in the sunlight streaming in through the window so he could examine the still beating heart more closely. It was a suitable size for the pig, which meant it was considerably smaller than the other hearts he’d examined, so he was going to have to measure the volume of blood it could hold. He set to doing that.
A couple of days later
As a trained surgeon Phillip had the skills and the tools to butcher the pig, but it would have taken time he could better spend on his research, so he’d had the dead pig collected by the local butcher, who had cut it up and was now in the process of making ham, sausage, and bacon from it. He’d already delivered some pork chops and Phillip was chewing on one of them when there was a knock at the door. “Coming,” he called. He grabbed a cloth and wiped his hands clean as he hurried to the door. He pulled it open to reveal not one, but both local vicars — Rev Edmund Garwood from the parish of Hessle and Rev William Wilkinson from the parish of Kirk Ella.
“Mr. Garwood, Mr. Wilkinson, how can I be of assistance?” he asked.
Edmund turned to William. Their eyes met before they turned Phillip. “There is a story going around the parishes that you have been engaging in witchcraft and devil worship,” Edmund said.
“That’s preposterous!” Phillip said.
“We’re sure it is, Dr. Gribbleflotz,” William said, “but you have been observed cutting the still beating heart out of a living animal, and in the eyes of some of the locals, that signifies devil worship.”
“Who could have seen that?” Phillip demanded. Someone would have had to been looking through the windows of his laboratory to do that.
“You admit it?” Edmund asked.
“Of course,” Phillip said. He noticed the wide-eyed looks he was getting and remembered the claim of devil worship. “But it’s not devil worship,” he said. “I was merely conducting a scientific experiment.”
“A scientific experiment that involved cutting a still beating heart out of an animal?” William asked.
Phillip took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’re both educated men,” Phillip said. Both William and Edmund smiled. One could say they straightened and put on airs in response to being called educated men by the very learned Dr. Gribbleflotz. Phillip barely managed to hold back a smile. “Please, come in and I’ll explain.”
Phillip led the two country vicars into his laboratory and guided them to his work bench where he had a number of drawings of hearts laid out on its surface. He located Dr. Harvey’s book and added that to the papers on the bench. “It’s really quite simple,” he started.
Edmund laid down the remains of the pork chop he’d been chewing. “So what you’re saying,” he said as he wiped his greasy hands on his thighs, “is that your experiment confirmed Dr. Harvey’s contention that blood circulates around the body?”
Phillip nodded.
“But why has no one discovered this earlier?” William asked between nibbles at his own pork chop.
Philip shrugged. “That’s a very good question, and my only answer is that medical science has been blinkered by its blind adherence to the writings of Galen and his followers. It’s only by experimentation that we can improve our knowledge of how the body works.”
“That’s all very well and good, Dr. Gribbleflotz, but why did you have to cut the still beating heart out of the pig?” Edmund asked.
“That wasn’t intentional,” Phillip said a little red faced. “I’d just taken a sample of arterial blood from the heart, and I wanted to measure how much blood the heart could hold. To do that I needed to cut the heart out. It just so happened that the pig was still alive when I started to cut the heart free.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “It did come as a bit of a surprise how long it continued to beat.”
“Why did it continue to beat?” William asked.
Phillip shook his head ruefully. “You really like asking the easy questions, don’t you?”
“So you don’t have any idea?” Edmund asked.
“Not yet.” Phillip smiled at Edmund and William. “Maybe both of you gentlemen would like to assist me next time I operate on a living animal and we could investigate the problem together.”
“I’d like that,” Edmund said as he struggled to his feet. “I’d better be getting on my way then.” He turned to William. “Are we satisfied that Dr. Gribbleflotz is not engaged in devil worship?”
William got to his feet as well. “Quite satisfied.” He turned to Phillip. “It’s been most interesting talking to you, Dr. Gribbleflotz, and I too would be interested in assisting you next time you operate on a living animal.”
Phillip walked with the two men to the door and watched them walk through the village. They waved and stopped to talk to Phillip’s neighbors, no doubt reassuring them that Phillip wasn’t a devil worshiper.
A few days later
Phillip made a mad dash for the chamber pot, barely getting his pants down before he emptied his bowls, again. He wiped his bottom clean. That activity was starting to hurt. He gently felt around, and realized he had hemorrhoids forming. He’d met them in the past, on patients, so he knew how to treat them.
He carefully made his way to his workbench where he had some chopped Plantago major in hot water. The infusion was a treatment for people with diarrhea. It didn’t actually treat the diarrhea, but he’d found time and again that patients suffering from diarrhea who were given the infusion to drink did a lot better than those who just drank water or small beer. If it was good enough for the people he treated, Phillip felt it was good enough for him. He emptied the infusion through a cloth filter into a mug and stirred in the usual spoonful of honey he’d learned to add to improve the taste so patients would drink it. He sipped the infusion while he checked his journals to find a treatment for hemorrhoids, finishing his drink just in time to make another emergency call of nature.
He was getting better. Phillip reminded himself of this fact as he sat on the chamber pot. The first three days had been the worst. He’d only left his bed to use the chamber pot, or to get a drink. Food had been the last thing on his mind, then. But now he was getting better, Phillip was able to think about the cause of his discomfort. He’d met diarrhea often enough before — only in a professional capacity of course — to know the probable cause.
Usually, when he’d tried to track down the cause of an outbreak of diarrhea in the military, he’d traced it back to a common issue of food that the initial batch of afflicted men had all eaten. Phillip considered what he’d eaten in the last week. There had been the duck. He’d eaten that over a couple of days, but he hadn’t fallen ill for days after eating that. This left the pig. He’d been eating that right up until the time he fell ill. He spared a thought for Rev Garwood and Rev Wilkinson who’d also eaten some of the pork and sausage and hoped, for their sakes, that they weren’t similarly afflicted.
The wiping of his bottom was again a painful act, so the first thing he had to do was make up a soothing ointment. He compared the ingredients he had on hand with the recipes he’d collected and made up an ointment, which he promptly applied.
That evening
It was getting late, but the sun was still well above the horizon, when a child ran into Phillip’s laboratory calling out in a panicky voice. “Dr. Gribbleflotz, Dr. Gribbleflotz.”
Philip recognized the son of a former patient. “What’s the matter, John, is someone ill?”
“Papa says the village is ill,” John said.
That response lacked clarity. “Who needs my professional services?” Philip asked.
John stared at Phillip. “No, no, Dr. Gribbleflotz. No one needs your professional services. Papa says you need to escape before the angry villagers get here. A dozen people in the village have been ill these last few days and Mr. Sissons, the butcher, is claiming that you, the Devil Worshiper, are the cause. Right now he’s trying to rouse the village to march on your laboratory and burn you as a witch.” John paused to stare at Phillip. “Are you a Devil Worshiper?” he asked.
“What? No, of course I’m not a devil worshiper.” Phillip swallowed a couple of times. “Are you sure about this?”
John nodded. “I was there with Papa. Mr. Spofford and Mr. Craike both spoke up in your defense, but Mr. Sissons pointed out that both Rev Garwood and Rev Wilkinson fell ill soon after visiting you. Papa says ‘things are going to get nasty’, so he sent me to warn you.”
Phillip wanted to protest his innocence, but John wasn’t interested in his guilt or innocence. It was the crowd he had to worry about, and no doubt they would be all fired up and unwilling to listen. “What can I do?” he asked. “Where can I hide?”
“Papa says you should take what you can and hide in one of Mr. Legard’s barns. He told me to guide you.”
Phillip started grabbing things. “What is your father doing?”
“He said he would try and delay the crowd, to give you time to escape.” John hurried over to the window and looked outside. “They’re coming.”
Phillip hurried to his bedroom to grab some clothes and his valuables. He paused in front of his library. His and his great grandfather’s journals were irreplaceable, so he added those to the bundle he was creating with a blanket from his bed. He ran a finger along the leather bound books in his library, and sighed over their size and weight. He had to make a choice between taking his books or taking the medical kit and apothecary’s box that contained his livelihood.
“Hurry!” John called out. “They’re almost at the corner.”
It was with great reluctance Phillip abandoned his library in favor of the tools of his trade and ran back into the laboratory. John had raided Phillip’s sadly depleted larder and had a stale loaf of heavy rye-bread in his hands. He hand it to Phillip. “We have to go now, otherwise they’ll catch us!”
Phillip added the bread to the clothes and journals he’d already bundled into the blanket and thrust it into John’s hands and grabbed his medical kit and apothecary’s box. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Phillip sat at the loading hatch of Mr. Legard’s barn idly rubbing his fingers over his lucky crystal while he watched the flames claim his laboratory. He stared at the crowd gathered around his former home, trying to identify them, but it was too far, the light was bad, and his eyes weren’t the best. Still, his eyes were good enough to count individuals, and by his calculations, over half the adult population of the village were gathered there. That didn’t bode well for his continued safety in Anlaby.
Phillip sat down in the moonlight to check what he’d managed to save. It wasn’t much. In addition to his own and his grandfather’s journals he’d managed to save a summer weight coat, a hat, and couple of changes of clothes, and a spare pair of leather boots on the woolen blanket. He also had his medical kit and his apothecary’s kit, and finally, a very stale loaf of rye-bread. He hacked off a bit with his belt knife and manfully chewed on it. It wasn’t much, but it quietened his grumbling stomach. With his stomach settled Phillip reassembled his possessions and set out for Hull.
Phillip entered Hull early the next morning. His mind was set on getting out of the city before the stories of him being a devil worshiper could catch up with him, but his first order of business was to get a proper meal. Only after he’d eaten did he walk over to the Holy Trinity Church where he explained to Rev Richard Perrott why he was leaving and to ask him to pass on some money to young John’s father.
“I’ll ride over to check on William and Edmund tomorrow. Then, if they’re fit, we’ll drop in on Anlaby to talk to the villagers,” Richard said. “Will you hang around in Hull long enough for me to get back, just in case we’re able to salvage anything from the ruins?”
Reluctantly, Phillip nodded. “I’ll wait.” he dug some coins from his merger supply and handed them to Richard. “Could you pass this on to John Beecroft, a shepherd in the employ of Robert Legard Esq as thanks for sending his son to warn me what was happening. I owe him my life.”
Richard counted the coins. “A pound?”
“Is it too little?” Phillip asked, concerned that he might not be adequately rewarding John Beecroft for his help. Unfortunately, he couldn’t afford much more, not after losing most of his possessions in the fire.
Richard hastily closed his fist around the coins and shook his head. “No, no. Dr. Gribbleflotz. A pound is more than adequate recompense for the service Beecroft performed for you.”
Phillip released a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
Phillip had time while Rev Perrot was gone to think about where he should go next. It had helped that amongst the few things he’d save had been Michael Weitnauer’s letter. The Danes had recently signed a peace treaty with the Emperor, so it should be relatively safe to travel from Hamburg to Jena, so Jena was where he would go.
Rev Richard Perrot was only gone a day, and when he returned he had a few of Phillip’s possessions. There was his portable fire assay kit. That had probably survived the fire because it and the cupels were supposed to operate at temperatures hot enough to melt gold. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for any of his fine clothes or books. They’d all been lost.
Richard made apologies on behalf of the good people of Anlaby, and asked that he reconsider leaving, but Phillip’s mind was made up.
“I have a friend I haven’t seen for over ten years who has recently taken a position in Jena. I think it’s time I dropped by to see how he is doing.”
Richard nodded his acceptance of Phillip’s departure. “The good people of the parishes of Hessle and Kirk Ella will miss your medical services.”
Phillip wanted to shout that they should have thought about that before they burned him out of house and home, but you couldn’t say things like that to a minister of a church, so instead he settled for a silent smile. Rev Perrot seemed to understand the silent message and took his leave of Phillip.
Phillip bought a donkey in Hamburg and set off along the main trade route south to Erfurt, a distance of some two hundred and thirty miles. A teamster moving cargo by pack animal would normally make the trip in ten or eleven days, but Phillip wasn’t in any hurry. Instead he followed his usual practice of stopping at every village to talk to the locals, discovering uses for local plants and providing his professional services in exchange for food and lodgings.
It was August, some two months after he left Hamburg, before he reached Erfurt. He found stabling for Dapple (the third of that name) and a room for himself. After washing off the dirt of the road Phillip went for a walk around the city. He didn’t need the exercise, but he was desperately in need of intelligent conversation.
He found the conversation in an inn, naturally. A group of people were talking when one of their number, a wine merchant by the name of Casparus Menius, announced that he’d been offered the chance to buy land in which a magical plant grew. The plant was magical because pollen gathered from the plant in the light of a full moon on the evening of the summer solstice could be turned into gold.
That caught Phillip’s attention and he responded without thinking. “That’s impossible.”
Casparus turned to glare at Phillip. “I have seen it,” he said.
Phillip did some rapid mental calculations. “What did you see? Did you see them harvesting the pollen?” he asked. “The last full moon on the evening of the summer solstice happened sixteen years ago.”
“No,” Casparus admitted reluctantly, “but I watched as they showed me the pollen they’d collected being turned into gold.” Casparus smiled at his colleagues before returning his attention to Phillip. He pulled out his purse and extracted a small bead of gold. “Tell me that’s not gold,” Casparus said as he placed the bead on the table.
Phillip looked at the bead. It certainly looked like gold. He pointed to it. “May I handle it?”
Casparus nodded and Phillip picked up the bead. It certainly felt heavy enough to be gold, “I’m a trained assayist and I have a touchstone with me. May I test this ‘gold’ on it?”
“Of course,” Casparus said.
Phillip pulled his portable assay kit out of his satchel and proceeded to test the bead. “It’s pure gold,” he declared, handing the bead back to Casparus.
“See,” Casparus said with a meaningful look at one of his more vocal colleagues. “I told you it was gold, Jacob.”
“But I doubt that was made from some wondrous magical pollen,” Phillip said.
Casparus turned to glare at Phillip. “How can you say that?” he protested. “You weren’t there. I saw them with my own two eyes use their magic pollen to make gold.” Casparus stared suspiciously at Phillip. “You just want to beat me to the gold.”
Phillip shook his head. “Sometimes something is just too good to be true,” he said. “Tell me, why would these people be willing to sell your this ‘gold mine’?”
That’s simple,” Casparus explained. “Their father didn’t know what he had when he collected the pollen sixteen years ago, so he didn’t collect very much, and it took years to discover how to turn it into gold.” Casparus smiled smugly. “Now they find themselves in need of money and unable to wait until the next full moon falls on the evening of the summer solstice.”
“They can’t wait three years? Just how much are they asking for this land?” Phillip asked.
“They tried to sell it to me for ten thousand thaler, but I’ve beaten them down to five thousand,” Casparus said smugly.
Phillip could only whistle in admiration at the audacity of the individuals. “So you’ve paid these people five thousand thaler for a bit of marshland you don’t even know exists?”
“Of course not,” Casparus protested. “I’m not stupid. Five thousand thaler is a lot of money you know. I have deposited the money with my lawyer while he checks the legal title on the land.”
Phillip did know it was a lot of money. Whoever these people were, they’d picked out their mark with care. “I think you should inform your lawyer you are no longer interested in buying the land and get your money back.”
“Why?” Casparus demanded, “I could be sued for breach of contract?”
Phillip shook his head. “I really doubt these people will want to take the matter to court.”
“You seem very sure of this,” one of Casparus’ colleagues said.
“All Herr Menius’ lawyer would have to do is insist the sellers demonstrate that they can make gold from pollen gathered on the land in question.”
“Which they can do,” Casparus said. “I’ve seen them do it.”
“But have you?” Phillip asked. “If you’d like to follow me back to my lodgings, I’m sure I can replicate what they showed you,” Phillip said.
“You can make gold from pollen?” Casparus asked.
Philip smiled. “Wait and see.”
Half a dozen people followed Phillip back to his lodgings. He dug out his portable assay furnace and some cupels, and his apothecary’s box and took it out to the inn’s courtyard, where he set everything up. By the time he was ready to start quite a crowd had gathered.
“Prepared to be amazed as I, Dr. Phillip Theophrastus Gribbleflotz, The World’s Greatest Alchemist, demonstrates to you, this day, the alchemical wonders of my magic pollen.”
That introduction caught the interest of his audience as Phillip removed a jar containing a yellowy-brown powder. He held it up so everyone could see. “This jar contains magical pollen I collected from rushes in a marsh near Augsburg in the light of the full moon of the evening of the summer solstice sixteen years ago.”
“Where is this marsh?” Casparus asked.
Phillip shook a silencing hand at Casparus. “Please don’t interrupt, Herr Menius.” Phillip paused to take a deep breath to get his thoughts back into line before continuing. “I will carefully measure out ten grains of my magic pollen and place it into a cupel.”
Phillip emptied the powder into a cupel. “To this I add some quicksilver, to give weight, as everyone knows gold is heavy while pollen is light.” He added a small spoonful of mercury to the yellow powder. “Now some sulphur, because everyone knows gold is yellow, and born of fire, just like sulphur.” Phillip smiled at his audience. It felt wonderful to have everyone waiting on his every word. He really should do this sort of demonstration more often, he thought.
“To this I shall also add a little salt, because according to Paracelsus, all matter is made up of quicksilver, sulphur, and salt.” Phillip smiled at his audience while he gently stirred the mixture. “Now we must add a special elixir, without which nothing will happen — the sacred Quinta Essentia of the Waters of Wine — the secret of which I was taught by a Jewish alchemist as a reward for saving the life of his son.” Phillip poured a couple of spoonfuls of alcohol over his mixture and continued to stir it. “I must expose my mixture to fire, for only fire can combine the ingredients to form the noble metal that is gold.”
Philip placed the cupel in his portable assay furnace and shut the door. “We must now wait for the furnace to get hot enough.”
“Are you really making gold?” a man dressed like a farm laborer asked.
“Wait and see,” Phillip said as he used a small bellows to boost the temperature of the fire in his portable furnace.
Phillip checked the progress of his sample regularly, until he was sure it was ready, he then used metal tongs to lift the red-hot cupel out of the furnace and poured the contents into a large iron kettle full of water. The water spat as the red-hot gold hit the water.
Phillip placed the still glowing cupel on the ground before fishing around in the kettle with his fingers for the gold. He collected several beads of gold, which he displayed to his audience. “Now to see how much gold we have made.”
Phillip was aware of the intense interest of the crowd, but he was enjoying the attention, so he drew the weighing of the gold out. “And there we have it, a grand total of ten grains of gold.”
“But you started with ten grains of pollen,” Casparus said.
There were murmurings of agreement from Philip’s audience. “Fancy that,” he said with a smile. He picked up his jar of “pollen”. “Of course, this isn’t really pollen. It is in fact pure gold, as I will now demonstrate.”
Phillip measured out ten grains of his gold powder into a fresh cupel and placed it in the furnace. Minutes later he was picking beads of gold out of the kettle again. And again he had ten grains of gold.
“But he didn’t use the magic elixir,” a stable hand protested loudly.
“That’s because he didn’t need it,” one of his companions said, “the powder was always gold.”
Casparus walked up to Phillip as looked at his jar of gold powder. “But it doesn’t look like gold,” he said.
“It is gold, Herr Menius. Lift the jar and notice how heavy it is,” Phillip suggested. While Casparus hefted the jar, Phillip continued speaking. “It is gold in a very fine powdery form. For some reason it lacks the sheen of larger particles of gold.”
Casparus laid down the jar of gold powder and looked at Phillip. “They lied to me. There is no magic pollen,” he said.
“I’m afraid not,” Phillip said. “But hopefully your money is safe.”
Casparus sighed and looked from Phillip to his colleagues. “Nothing could save me from making a fool of myself in front of my colleagues, but at least you have saved me five thousand thaler. For that I thank you. What is your name again?”
“Dr. Phillip Theophrastus Gribbleflotz.”
“And where are you headed?”
“To Jena,” Phillip said. “An old friend of mine wrote that he was applying for the position of director of the university’s botanical garden.”
“You’re an old friend of Professor Werner Rolfinck?” Casparus asked.
“Who?” Phillip looked at Casparus in surprise. “No, my friend is Dr. Michael Weitnauer.”
“Then I’m sorry to have to tell you that your friend failed to get the position. Professor Rolfinck is the director of the botanical gardens.”
Phillip was taken aback for a moment. Then he shrugged. “I’ve come this far, I might as well continue on to Jena.”
“Then I must give you my direction, for I am heading there shortly,” Casparus said.
“Just as soon as he’s found a doctor to treat his piles,” one of Casparus’ colleagues called out.
Phillip could only feel sympathy for a fellow sufferer. “I have a most excellent ointment for piles,” he said.
“Every quack has an excellent cream or ointment for any ailment,” Casparus’ noisy colleague said.
Philip had to concede that point. His natural father had been one such person. “However, I have personal experience of the ability of my ointment to treat piles.” he smiled ruefully. “I suffered a bout of diarrhea, which resulted in painful hemorrhoids. I couldn’t sit down for days, until I stumbled upon a formulation which relieved the pain, and reduced the swelling.”
“I’m willing to try it,” Casparus said.
October 1630, Jena
Phillip swirled the wine in the glass and inhaled the bouquet. With a smile on his face he took a sip. Having a wine supplier as your patron had certain advantages, he thought to himself.
A knock on the door disturbed his moment of peace. With a heavy sigh Phillip put down his glass and hurried to the door of his laboratory. He opened the door to none other than his patron. “Herr Menius, how nice it is to see you,” he said. Right now he was remembering why he preferred not to have a patron — they thought they could interrupt you at any time. “How can I help you?”
“I would like some more of your pile ointment.”
Phillip bit his lip as he quickly ran his eyes over Casparus. “They still haven’t gone down?” he asked.
Casparus threw up his hands. “Oh, no, it’s not for me. One of my colleagues is in need of some, and as I was dropping by, I offered to get him some.”
And, Phillip thought, naturally I’m expected to drop everything and make up a fresh batch just for his colleague. This kind of interruption was why Phillip preferred not to have a medical practice. At least his fellow alchemists knew to place an order that could be picked up at a later time. Unfortunately, patients, and more especially patrons, expected to be served immediately. “Please, come into my laboratory while I mix up the ointment.”
Casparus followed Philip, his eyes darting around the laboratory as he followed Phillip. “You’re finding the laboratory satisfactory?” he asked.
“Yes,” Phillip answered. What else could he say? Casparus had purchased the lease on the building and presented it to Phillip as a gift. To be fair, Phillip admitted, it was a very good laboratory, by most standards.
“You don’t seem too sure, Herr Dr. Gribbleflotz.”
Phillip waved towards the distillation furnace. “While I was in Basel my assistant, Johann Glauber and I developed some designs for superior furnaces.”
Casparus’ brows shot up. “Johann Glauber? Not Johann Rudolf Glauber? The man who discovered Glauber’s Salt?”
Phillip hid a smile as he nodded. Johann had done very well for himself in the years since he served as his laborant. Putting his name to a product was exactly the kind of self-promotion he would have expected of Johann, who had constantly said that Phillip would never amount to anything while he refused to promote himself.
Then Phillip saw the look on Casparus’ face. He wasn’t sure how to interpret it, but there was a hint of prideful ownership in his eyes that worried him. He’d heard horror stories from other alchemists about being treated as little more than a performing animal for a patron, so he leapt into describing his preferred topic of research. “I have recommenced my studies into the invigoration of the Quinta Essentia of the human humor,” he said.
Casparus’ reaction was a bit of a surprise. He listened to all Phillip had to say and even asked intelligent questions. When, a little over an hour later, he waved Casparus goodbye it was with an invitation to make a presentation of his research to a handful of Casparus’ friends.
November 1630
Phillip watched the last of Casparus’ guests leave the room. He was feeling quite kindly towards his patron as he cleaned up the remains of his seminar on the invigoration of the Quinta Essentia of the Human Humors. The seminar had been well received, and some of Casparus’ colleagues had even asked intelligent questions. Now, as became the evening’s entertainment, it was time for Phillip to leave, by the tradesmen’s’ entrance of course.
Phillip passed his traveling apothecary’s box to a menial, who swung it up onto his shoulder, and after graciously accepting a small leather drawstring purse from Casparus’ majordomo they left.
It would have been uncouth to have examined the contents of the purse in front of Casparus’ majordomo, even if the man probably already knew what was in it, so Phillip waited until they were a reasonable distance down the street before opening the purse to assess how much his patron considered his time was worth. He was pleasantly surprised to find the contents totaled five thaler, which was about five times what a doctor might charge for a consultation. It seemed his patron had plenty of money he was willing to spend. Phillip walked home thinking about what projects he might be able to persuade Casparus to fund.
December 1630
Phillip was hard at work in his laboratory keeping up with orders for his high purity acids when Casparus walked in with a man in his late thirties.
“Ah, Dr. Gribbleflotz,” he said as he led his companion into the laboratory. “My friend here has voiced an interest in meeting you.”
Phillip quickly checked on the state of the various retorts before approaching Casparus and his friend. He held out a hand to Casparus’ friend. “A pleasure to meet you,” he said.
“I’m Dr. Zacharias Brendel,” Zacharias said. “I’m a professor of Iatrochemistry at the university, and I’ve been hearing a lot about the quality of your acids.”
Phillip positively beamed at the compliment. “Would you care for a demonstration?” he asked. “I make the purest, and the strongest acids you’ll ever see.”
“Yes, thank you,” Zacharias said.
“I’ll leave you to show Professor Brendel anything he wants to see then, Dr. Gribbleflotz,” Casparus said.
Phillip had completely forgotten about his patron. He hastily said all that was needed and saw him out before returning to Zacharias, who was staring at the line of retorts on the distillation furnace.
Zacharias pointed to the lineup of retorts. “I see you’re distilling Oil of Vitriol,” he observed.
Phillip looked at the lineup. “There are a couple of retorts of acidum salis being concentrated as well.”
“As well?” Zacharias made a more detailed examination of the retorts around the distillery furnace. “So you are.” He shook his head in gentle disbelief. “You say that as if it is normal to concentrate acidum salis while also distilling Oil of Vitriol.”
“Depending on what I need to produce I’ve had Oil of Vitriol, aqua fortis, acidum salis, aqua vitae, and water all on the furnace at the same time,” Phillip said with a touch of smug pride. He’d never met anyone with even half his ability on the distillation furnace.
“You’re a real master of the distillery furnace!” Zacharias said. Suddenly his brows shot up and he stared at Phillip. “Professor Casseri’s last apprentice was supposed to have been a master of laboratory techniques. Was that you? Were you Professor Casseri’s last apprentice?” he asked excitedly.
Phillip nodded warily.
Zacharias clapped his hands on Phillip’s shoulders. “It’s an honor to meet you, Dr. Gribbleflotz,” he said. “I understand you were making some of the best acids the university had ever seen? And now you’re in Jena?”
“That’s right.”
“And already you’re making an impression on the local market for alchemical supplies I hear,” Zacharias said with a smile. “Now I know exactly who you are, I’m no longer surprised at how quickly you have managed to dominate the market for premium quality acids.
“What have you been doing since you left Padua?” Zacharias asked.
Phillip gave him the short version of his adventures, concentrating on his time as a military physician and surgeon and finishing with his being burned out of house and home in England.”
“But what were you doing to bring such an action upon you?” Zacharias asked.
“I’d just read Dr. Harvey’s De Motu Cordis, and I wanted to test his theory for myself,” Phillip said. He related how he’d been seen holding a still beating heart in his hands.
“That was most unfortunate,” Zacharias said. He stared into the distance for a while before speaking again. “I wonder how long a human heart could continue to beat.”
“I’d like to know the answer to that myself,” Philip said, “but I can’t image being permitted to conduct the experiment, not even on a condemned criminal.”
Zacharias released a heartfelt sigh. “There are so many rules that seem to have no other purpose than to limit our ability to understand our world.” He shook his head gently before looking back at Phillip. “And what are you experimenting with now?”
Phillip couldn’t resist an opportunity to talk about his long time interest. “I’m looking for a way to invigorate the Quinta Essentia of the Human Humors,” he said, and from there he went on to describe the current state of his investigations.
Zacharias walked away from Phillip’s laboratory in a bit of a quandary. Phillip was known in Jena as Dr. Gribbleflotz, and it had crossed his mind that maybe Phillip wasn’t entitled to the title. Some things were just accepted, such as the idea that people who claimed doctorates had them, unless someone had good reason to doubt it. Zacharias didn’t exactly doubt Phillip’s doctorate, but he did know that Professor Casseri’s last apprentice hadn’t earned his doctorate before his, Professor Casseri’s, death.
That in and of itself didn’t mean Phillip didn’t have a doctorate. All it really meant was that he hadn’t been awarded one by Padua before Professor Casseri’s death. It was possible, he thought, that Phillip had earned his degree at some other university, such as Basel or Leiden, which raised another point. Phillip’s lack of proper academic training was obvious. So how did he find a school willing to let him take their exams? Without a bachelor’s degree no reputable medical school would accept him. Except, that is, unless he found himself a new sponsor. Zacharias smiled. He’d seen with his own two eyes Phillip’s ability to attract sponsors. Happy that it was possible Phillip had in fact been awarded a doctorate, the proof of which had unfortunately been lost when his home and laboratory had been burned down, Zacharias turned his mind to other things, such as the experiments he could conduct with Phillip’s new, super strong yellow aqua fortis.
Winter 1630-31
The public anatomy demonstration was running night and day so as to maximize the learning opportunities before the stench of the decomposing body being dissected became too strong, so it was near midnight when Phillip stumbled out of the anatomy theater at Jena and joined the flow of spectators leaving after the last session of the day.
“Is it always like this?” Casparus asked Phillip.
Phillip raised a brow to his patron. “The long hours?” he asked.
“That, and the stench,” Casparus said.
“There’s not a lot you can do about the long hours,” Phillip said with a smile. “Once it’s been cut open a cadaver might last three days before the stench becomes intolerable. So it’s normal practice to continue night and day until the stench is unbearable.”
“This cadaver is into the fourth day,” Casparus pointed out.
“And it smells like it too,” Phillip agreed. “Professor Rolfinck’s problem is he only has two cadavers to dissect over the duration of his anatomy course compared with the up to nine Professor Casseri had for his anatomy courses in Padua. He’s obviously trying to get as much teaching time out of each of them as he can, but I think he’s going to have to accept that he can’t continue with this cadaver and dissect some animals until the other convict is executed.”
“Ah, yes, that reminds me.” Casparus smiled at Phillip. “I’m putting together a party to attend the execution. Would you care to join us? I have a table with a good view of the scaffold.”
Phillip managed not to cringe. Death was no stranger to him, but watching a man being led to his death amidst a cheering and jeering crowd turned his stomach. “Thank you for the offer, Herr Menius, but if you don’t mind, I don’t want to miss any of Professor Rolfinck’s lectures.”
“You’ll be missing a fine spectacle,” Casparus said.
“Yes,” Phillip agreed, “but unfortunately, I need to attend all of Professor Rolfinck’s lectures if I want to keep abreast of discoveries and developments in our understanding of the human body.”
“Ah, you think you might learn something new to help in your investigations into the invigoration of the Quinta Essentia of the Human Humors?”
“Yes!” Philip said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. There had already been Dr. Harvey’s theory of the circulatory system since he left Basel, and surgeons had been bleeding patients for centuries in an attempt to balance the human humors. No doubt there were plenty of other, less well publicized, advances that had passed him by in the five years he’d been in the relative backwater of Anlaby, England.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you in the theater again first thing tomorrow morning,” Casparus said.
Phillip and waved Casparus away before setting off for his lodgings.
A week later
Phillip should have gone to the execution with Casparus. It wasn’t that Casparus deliberately set out to cause trouble, but his memory of what Phillip had actually said when he compared dissections in Padua with those in Jena wasn’t the best, and if Phillip had been there, he could have provided corrections or clarifications. But he hadn’t been there, and comments attributed to him took on a life of their own as each person repeated what they thought they’d heard to the next person in the chain. Thus, what finally reached Professor Werner Rolfinck’s ears bore little resemblance to Phillip’s original comments. Of course, Werner didn’t know that. As a result, instead of entering the medical faculty staff room buoyed by a successful public anatomy course, he entered the staffroom fuming at the insult he believed had been leveled at him.
“What do any of you know about this Dr. Phillip Theophrastus Gribbleflotz?” Werner demanded of his senior teaching staff.
“I’ve heard that in Erfurt he claimed to be able to make gold from pollen,” Conrad “Kunz” Herbers, a lecturer in iatrochemistry and theories of medicine, said.
“That’s impossible,” Werner said. “You can’t make gold, and anyone who claims that they can is a fake and a charlatan.”
“My informant was most insistent that he saw Dr. Gribbleflotz make gold from nothing more than some magic pollen, quicksilver, sulphur, salt, and some mystical elixir, the secret of which he learned from a Jewish scholar,” Kunz said.
“That only convinces me he’s a charlatan,” Werner said. “He should be chased out of Jena.”
“I’ve heard that he makes a most excellent ointment for hemorrhoids,” Wilhelm “Willi” Hofacker, a senior lecturer in iatrochemistry and medical botany, offered.
“Really?” Kunz asked. “How well does it work?
“Kunz!” Werner roared.
Kunz jumped back in surprise. “I’m sorry, Professor Rolfinck.”
“And so you should be. We have a charlatan in our midst, and all you can think about are your hemorrhoids.”
“You have hemorrhoids, Kunz?” Willi asked.
Kunz nodded. “They’ve been bothering me for over a week now, and nothing I’ve tried has . . .”
“Dr. Herbers!” Werner roared. “I said we were not interested in your hemorrhoids. I wish to discuss how we can get rid of this charlatan.”
“Ah, Werner,” Zacharias said.
Werner spun round to face Zacharias. “What? Are you suffering from hemorrhoids too?”
Zacharias shook his head. “I think you should know that Dr. Gribbleflotz was apprenticed to Professor Giulio Casseri, and studied medical botany under Professor Prospero Alpini. He also spent a couple of years with Professor Gaspard Bauhin in Basel.”
Werner stared hard at Zacharias. “And how do you know this?”
“Dr. Gribbleflotz told me,” Zacharias admitted.
Werner snorted. “All three men are dead,” he pointed out. “We have only the charlatan’s word that he knew them.”
Zacharias shook his head. “Dr. Gribbleflotz matches the descriptions I’ve heard of Professor Casseri’s last apprentice, and Professor Alpini’s son is still in Padua,” he said. “And,” he added, “Dr. Gribbleflotz said he got to know Professor Bauhin’s son in Basel.”
“He’s a charlatan,” Werner insisted. “And I want him run out of Jena.”
“I wouldn’t be so fast, Werner. Dr. Gribbleflotz has a patron,” Zacharias warned.
“A patron?” Werner scoffed. “Who cares if the charlatan has a patron? I’ll soon have this Dr. Gribbleflotz out of Jena, and his patron will be thanking me for saving him from the charlatan.”
“Casparus Ludovicus Menius,” Zacharias said in the middle of Werner’s tirade.
Werner froze. “Our Casparus Ludovicus Menius?” he asked.
“Yes,” Zacharias agreed, “the wine merchant responsible for the high prices the Winzerla vintages have been receiving lately. Oh, and who is also a close friend of Jacob Berger in Erfurt.”
Werner swallowed. The income from the Winzerla vintages was one of the major sources of the university’s financial support, and both Casparus Menius and Jacob Berger were major players in the trade. If he went after That Charlatan Gribbleflotz, they could put pressure on the university, and he could lose his position. “Then I shall have to collect evidence that this Dr. Gribbleflotz is nothing but a charlatan. Then the university’s governors will have no choice but to deal with the charlatan.”
Willi looked up smiling. “Does that mean it’s okay for me to buy some of Dr. Gribbleflotz’ hemorrhoid ointment?”
Werner glared at Willi. “Do what you want,” he said before stalking out of the room.
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