My dear sister, today I was surprised by a burst of inclement weather that brought with it a cold I had not felt since early April. Rainwater was pooling and streaming into my little nest and I was roused when a rivulet licked me on the cheek. My clothes were already waterlogged and I shivered. To regain some warmth, I jumped up and started marching in place, my arms flapping. A few crumbs of bread and a hard piece of cheese had to serve as breakfast. I waited for the sun, only to realize that it could not manage any light or warmth through the thick clouds. Luckily the rain started to abate and I saw no sense in waiting any longer so I began walking towards town. The weather has always affected my mood, as you surely remember. In an attitude of thoughtful reflection, I decided to face what I had all too long pushed off into the future.
A quick walk brought me to a pastoral landscape and into the Meadowland with its drafty houses where the gaps in the planks were sometimes wide enough to put your hand through and touch those who were sleeping inside. The neighborhoods were still deserted but down at Artillery Yard there was already bustle and movement. Soldiers were running to and fro or marching in formation under the command of stern provosts.
From the fish market I saw the laundry women down at the pier at Cats’ Bay, where they were scrubbing the dirty linen white and beating it as dry as possible in the wet air. The sight made me think of my own appearance, covered in soot and dirt. At the Seraphim Hospital, which was where I was planning to go, a more spruced-up look would be in my favor, which spurred me to leap out onto the pier with the purpose of talking one of the women into turning her attention to my shirt. Most of them were too busy to pay me any attention and the ones who did only snarled at me. At the shore, one of them was watching a flock of children, the smallest one very little and carried in her arms, and she sang to it as she offered it her breast. The melody was melancholy and the words I heard were a tad serious for a lullaby:
So our destinies are cast and so our years pass by, the next breath drawn may be our last, then on the bier we’ll lie.
When I stopped to listen, I noticed that one of the women on the pier had paused in her work and that tears were running down her cheeks. She looked at me without saying a word but then stretched out her hand. Maybe she had lost a son and maybe I looked like him. I quickly wriggled out of my coat, pulled my shirt over my head, and held it out to her. She submerged it in her soapy tub, gave it a quick scrubbing, rinsed it at the edge of the dock, and handed it back to me after a couple of beatings with her stick. I bowed in thanks and pulled the shirt back on, now clean and white.
Straight through the shallow Klara Lake, a jetty has been built, dressed with planks and some thousand ells long in order to allow the citizens of the town to stay dry on their walk to King’s Isle. For a long time, I hesitated at the railing by the Red Sheds. Out in the water, white peaks were forming and waves heaved up the stone walls and drenched the wooden railings. A woman holding a muddy pig by a leash laughed as she walked past. “Watch yourself now, boy! If you hold on, you should be able to cross over without the selkies sinking their teeth into you and dragging you down into the depths!” I swallowed heavily and, with whitened knuckles around the rope that had been fastened along each side, I started to cross to the far shore.
Once I was back on land, I found myself almost immediately at my destination: a handsome door set in an archway that rose to a point at the top. Over the door could be read the words ROYAL HOSPITAL and two lions held a golden coat of arms between them. Next to this, a beautiful chestnut tree was in full bloom. I stepped inside, walked through the archway, but soon had to stop and gaze in awe. The main building rises to four floors, flanked by two side buildings. This is the Seraphim Surgical Hospital, the Seraph, as everyone in town calls it. Behind its front doors I found a large entry hall and I excused myself for getting in the way of a young man hurrying across the stone floor on his way to some urgent matter. I told him who I was looking for. “Professor Martin,” the young man replied, “has not been seen here at the Seraph since the year of Our Lord 1788 and that is something for which we should be grateful since that was also the year of his passing.” I was rendered speechless. The man gave me a sympathetic look. “Is it Roland Martin personally that you were after or will his replacement do? In that case, you’ll find Professor Hagström in the north anatomical theater.” I didn’t know what else to do other than nod. “One floor up and then to the right.”
Halfway up the stairs I was confronted with a smell that I know well and will never forget: the smell of the dead. A door stood ajar at the top of the stairs, and through the gap I was greeted by a macabre sight. On the table was the body of a man, cut open from his head to the end of his torso. The skin had been curled back in sections and revealed his innards. The chest had been prized open with strong hooks. Of his face, only half was left, since the cranium and the facial muscle structure had been revealed. Two milky white orbs stared up at the ceiling. Only now did I notice the man who stood next to the stretcher.
“Are you looking for me?” he asked as he resumed his excavation of the dead man’s chest.
“I am looking for Professor Hagström,” I said, and noted that my voice trembled a little, less due to the presence of the corpse than to that of the professor. I estimated that he was around forty, and looked to be in excellent health, with only a waistcoat over his shirt, the sleeves rolled up, and with a leather apron wrapped around his middle.
“At your service. Please feel free to come in as long as this scene does not upset you too much.”
He put down his knife and started to wash his hands in a porcelain bowl.
“How may I help you?”
“My name is Johan Kristofer Blix,” I said, and slipped my cap from my head. “I was in Karlskrona in ’88, apprenticed as a navy surgeon under Master Hoffman.”
“Emanuel Hoffman?”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Then it’s no wonder that you are so little affected by a sight that has caused many a visitor to pale and lean out the window,” Hagström said. “If you spent the war years in Karlskrona, then it is you who are the professor and I the student, at least when it comes to the sight of death and corruption.”
Professor Hagström asked me to sit down and politely questioned me about my experiences in Karlskrona while he rang for a pot of coffee, which was carried in after a few minutes by a woman in white. The words poured out of my mouth. I have never told anyone about the terrible years of the war, not even you, my dear sister, and so it is high time that I tell my tale.
The naval fleet returned from across the Baltic in the winter of 1788 with a ship taken from the Russians at Hogland. Her name was Vladislav, a line ship of seventy-four guns. The fleet had hardly arrived into their home harbor when the ice came, and from the Vladislav men emerged with a kind of ship’s sickness that had not been seen before. Those that fell ill quickly developed fever and chills. Their skin yellowed, and blemishes appeared on their arms and legs. In some, the illness went into their lungs and they coughed until their lips turned blue. The fever disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, only to return half a week later with renewed strength. I saw the strongest men survive some ten cycles of this before they succumbed, then as old men with hunched backs and empty gazes. It was a harsh winter and every board became someone’s bed. More and more fell ill, not only sailors but also the citizens in our town, until the naval hospital was overflowing. I became an errand boy and later, around the turn of the new year, an apprentice to Master Hoffman until his death, after which I remained at the hospital for another three years.
The master hoped that the epidemic would wane in the spring, but if anything, it grew even worse. Thousands died while, from other parts of the country, new recruits streamed in to take their place, only to grow sick in turn.
The professor interrupted me.
“Was it the recurring fever that took Hoffman? I only know him by reputation.”
“No,” I answered. “It was a Russian thirty-six-pounder who became my master’s bane.”
In June, the fleet sailed east in order to continue the Russian campaign and Hoffman went with them. Since there was a shortage of field medics, I was allowed to accompany them, aboard the Courage, built by Chapman in Karlskrona to bear sixty-four guns. We met the Russians south of Öland and exchanged fire before the enemy decided to flee with the wind at their back. I had climbed up into the rigging, as I had never witnessed a battle at sea before and could not resist the temptation. I had helped the master spread sawdust on the floor to soak up the blood and prevent us from slipping as we attended to the injured, and I seized my opportunity in a moment of inattention. I was so high up that I could observe the Courage in her entirety and I saw the cannonball come flying across the water. It struck us high on the broadside and, after impact, I saw a ravaged body fly straight out on the other side in a cloud of burning sawdust.
Thus was Hoffman’s end and both I and the ship’s crew were grateful that the battle ended with that single exchange because I would not have been much of a surgeon for an entire ship without the master’s instructions.
The fleet returned to Karlskrona and I remained there for the rest of the war. The fever grew even worse. A tent city was created from the sails of the ships, large enough for five thousand men, and we thanked God that the autumn of ’89 was so cold that we could store the dead outside. That spring we saw fewer cases and the worst of it seemed over. I remained there to help as long as it was needed. When the corpses of the winter had been buried, we could go from house to house and gather the dead from their beds where they had been lying since the sickness took them.
Professor Hagström observed me with a steady gaze when I was finished with my story.
“And then you came to Stockholm. Am I right in thinking that you have come to me in hopes that you may continue your career in medicine?”
“I can’t deny it.”
Hagström sighed.
“We see many like you, Blix. All too many. During the war years the need was great, and anyone with a pair of hands was better as a sawbones than none at all. But that is not the case any longer. Look at our hospital here! We have wrested medicine and surgery out of the hands of the craftsmen and turned it into a science.”
The professor stood up, fired up by his own speech, and placed himself next to the body.
“Blix, can you tell me the name of this bone?”
I was forced to admit I could not.
“Where is the best place to bleed the artery that runs along here?”
Again, I could only shake my head.
“Did Emanuel Hoffman ever tell you what he believed in regard to the origin of the fever?”
At this question, I brightened, as I finally had something to say for myself.
“The master told me that it was caused by fumes emanating from stagnant pools and marshy land.”
Hagström smiled but his eyes remained sad.
“Such was his understanding. Today we have another explanation. I am afraid that your master was of the old school, capable of using his knife to sever limbs from their unfortunate owners but hardly anything else.”
Hagström looked around and, from a shelf, lifted a thick leather-bound book that he handed to me.
“Do you understand anything of this?”
The letters were familiar but they did not form any words from which I could derive any meaning. I told him as much and Hagström’s shoulders sank at this answer.
“I am afraid there is not much I can do for you at the moment, Blix.” But then, his eyebrows still drawn together in a frown, he appeared to remember something and his expression lifted.
“Wait here a little while,” he said, turning and leaving me with the dead man.
In that moment I took something, sister. I admit it and I regretted it in the same moment in which it was done, but just as I reached back into my knapsack to restore the stolen object, I heard Hagström in the corridor and the moment was lost. In he came with a small pamphlet written in a language I could understand.
“Worse men than you have become capable surgeons without being able to read French,” he said, and put the pamphlet in my hand. “This summary is something I have written on my own initiative in order to help the studies of my students. If you apply yourself, you may be able to qualify to begin your studies next year, even if I cannot promise anything.”
Hagström scrutinized me again with a look of concentration on his intelligent, open face. “You have blood on your jacket, Blix. Is it yours?” I shook my head. Hagström took a step closer and leaned towards me. “Your eyes have a yellow tint where they should be white. How are you living, Blix? Are you drinking strong spirits?” I felt myself blushing, which gave Hagström the answer that he needed. “Come over here, Blix, and see this.” He lifted a flap of skin on the dead man’s body and revealed a stinking clump, covered in lumpy growths. “This is the man’s liver, and it is what has ended his life. Had he had the sense to drink in greater moderation he would still be among us. Organs in this state of destruction are hidden in all too many bellies in this city and it drags men to their graves like a magnet. Let this be a lesson to you in the virtues of temperance.”
The consternation must have been easy to read in my face, as his eyes took on a look of sympathy. From a waistcoat pocket he pulled out an embroidered purse and counted out coin after coin on the table before he seemed to change his mind and simply emptied out the contents. “Take this, Blix, and see that you take care of yourself so I will have the pleasure of seeing you in my lecture hall next spring.” I had no words. There must have been almost twenty dalers on the table! It was a treasure beyond my wildest dreams. I gathered up the coins and put them in my pockets, bowing again and again. The tears burned on my cheeks, in part from gratitude but mainly out of shame in having stolen from this Samaritan, this kindly gentleman whose goodwill I had already repaid so ill. I even saw that his eyes grew shiny in response to my emotions. He held out his hand, which I took in my own and kissed it.
When I was almost out of the door, he posed a final question in a quavering voice. “One last thing, Johan Kristofer. How old are you?”
“This winter I will be seventeen, God willing,” I answered in the same unsteady voice.