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“A Surfeit of Melancholic Humours” was purchased by Shawna McCarthy, and appeared in the March 1984 issue of Asimov’s, with an illustration by Ron Lindahm. It was one of more than eighteen sales that Farber has made to the magazine since her first sale here to George Scithers in 1978, making her one of the magazine’s most frequent contributors. She has also made sales to Omni, Amazing, and other markets. Recently, for reasons of her own, she has decided to start another writing career under a pseudonym—and the stories written under that name have proved equally as popular with the readership, and have shown up on major award ballots. Born in San Francisco, she now lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
In the elegant and richly detailed story that follows, she takes us to a world being swallowed up by an apocalyptic disaster, a world whose dwindling inhabitants have given themselves up to hopelessness and despair, and shows us that, in such a world, you take what help you are offered, no matter who it is who offers it…
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Letter; Wm Praisgode, M.D. of London, to Dr Tho:
Sydnam
19 August, 1665
Dear Sir; Never wold I reproach your Leaveing. You have the Ladies and Children to protect and your Patients were left before you. So Pitiefull is the Devastation of our Metropolis. Of this Weeke last did perish 5,319 Soules of which 3,880 were of Plague, ace. to the Weekely Bills. Any Distemperature is feared as Pest, and the Victim foresaken. Yestereve was I summoned to Silver Streete to see a Man they did wish to shut up with all his Householde. Seeing he had rather the Dropsy, I took 3 oz. of Bloud, and he was much relieved. Fair Nonsense is to be heard. Plague is, they say, a Punishment, even as our Defeates with Holland, and they hearken to the Omen of the Comet of Last Yeere. Our Friend Mr Halley wold not term that a Portent, but he is fled as well. You knowe me a Man of Science, not Superstition. The Infection results of Miasmas from the Foetid Bowels of the Earth and the Conjunctions of divers Starres and from Odours of Carrion. Though the Dogges and Cattes have been killed by Order of the Lord Mayor so that the Rattes might be expected to Flourish, still do the Rattes die in great Multitude, from the corrupt and poysonous Vapours. The People are frighted and have turned against Jewes and Quacks and Forraigners, saying they spread Pestilence…
William Praisegood walked along Cheapside, past the fine Tudor row of the Goldsmiths Guild, now closed and empty. Houses were boarded up, deserted, or else had a red cross and Lord Have Mercy Upon Us painted on the padlocked door, and watchmen without. Refuse lined the street, stopping up the gutters, so that the odor reminded Praise-good of the laystalls outside the city limits. The entire world seemed quiet, except for the screams of the ill and the lamentations of the healthy.
The doctor saw another figure approaching on the empty street, wearing a long-nosed bird mask, and carrying the gold-headed cane of the medical profession. The man crossed over to avoid a rat-gnawed corpse, then noticed Praisegood.
“Will?” called the birdman.
Praisegood halted some paces from his colleague. “Aye.”
“Will—‘tis I, George Thomson. What are you at, standing here with no mask or posie to halt the effluvia?”
“What does it signify, George? Our physic is bootless.”
The other studied Praisegood’s ungroomed wig, his lined young eyes, his dejected stance, then backed away.
Praisegood gave a hollow laugh. “ ‘Fear me not, George. My melancholy is an old companion, not a symptom of the Pest.” He spread his arms. “I am free of botch and token. But I cannot free my mind of the words of de Chauliac. ”Charity is Dead and Hope Destroyed.“ ”
“ ‘Sblood, Will, I cannot stand for this. There are few enough doctors left. You’re needed! Look to your health. Send to me, friend—I shall give you of my own lozenges and preventative liquor.”
Praisegood held out a reassuring hand. “ ‘Tis merely that my humors are imbalanced. I will bleed myself.”
“Nay, you’ll diminish your parts. Eat temperately, sleep well, and wear a powdered toad next your skin—my friend Sharkey has it so.” He looked as if about to leave, then paused again.
“ ‘Will, I have a mind to anatomize a victim, that we may see wherein the Pest sits—in the organs, in the similar parts, whether it stops up the bile or inflames the dura… Have you interest?”
“Aye!”
“Good; your friend Sydenham has not totally corrupted you. Now I must be off.”
They parted, Praisegood headed east, walking aimlessly. Grass grew between cobblestones that had been worn smooth by coaches and porters, beggars and balladsingers. The setting sun cast a red pall upon the sky, reminding the wanderer of blood pooling under the skin of the doomed and dying.
“The Hand of God is upon us!” cried a voice. Praise-good looked up to see a madman, wearing only breeches. “A judgment, a visitation!” He approached the doctor, arms outstretched, a fevered glint to his eyes.
“Keep back,” Praisegood said, holding up his cane.
“Repent. Own your sins!” the man continued.
Praisegood spun about and fled, the delirious man close behind, calling out endearing words. Turning into a lane, Praisegood ran headlong into a link. The torchman pushed him aside, cursing, and his fellow took Praisegood and pulled him to his feet beside the deadcart. They held the torch before his face. “What do…”
Their mare tossed up her head and snorted. They all turned to see the madman run forward, ignoring Praise-good, and leap into the deadcart. He lay atop the piled bodies and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Now am I bestowed aright.”
The driver rose from a body he had been stripping of its valuables. “Get off,” he commanded, grabbing the man by the feet and tossing him onto the stones.
“But see my tokens. I am dead,” complained the fallen man. He pointed to the blackened, swollen glands in one armpit.
“Dead soon, I’ll warrant, but too lively yet for our lot,” a link said.
The driver stroked his chin. “ ‘ee may follow us, lad, so when ’ee falls, we’ll be right by and take ‘ee to the pit.” They tossed the naked body from the street into the cart.
Praisegood watched them go, the laden cart with the fevered madman stumbling behind. One of the links was ringing a bell, and the driver called “Bring out your dead.” They rounded the corner.
The doctor looked about. He was almost to Houndsditch. “Fool,” he muttered. “Courting death as a man courts a mind.”
He found an open tippling house near Aldgate. The tavern’s former name was not known to him, but a freshly painted sign read Deaths Arms. There was a bright portrait of the patron,“ a crudely-drawn skeleton bearing an arrow and an hourglass. ”Too many ribs,“ Praisegood muttered, and went in.
The tavern seemed as noisy and crowded as it might have been before the plague. It was filled with unemployed journeymen, ropemakers, seamen, porters, and bawdy women.
Praisegood paid for a mug of ale and found a seat, laying his handkerchief over the gilt canehead to preserve his anonymity. A large man was dominating the conversation, loudly mocking both the dead and the mourning survivors. Many of the drinkers had found employment as watchmen of quarantined houses or as plague nurses, and were openly bragging of the mischief they caused the captive families under their care.
A strumpet sat beside Praisegood. “Come with me, my gallant. I’ve the French disease.”
He gazed at her through narrowed eyes.
“Ever’one knows pox keeps off the plague. Else why should we nuns still live and the schoolmaids not?” Finding no response, she put out a hand. “The pox lasts but a while, and ‘tis easy cured by quicksilver from some quacksalver.”
“Begone,” Praisegood snapped, glaring until she complied. If only life were as simple as the woman seemed to find it, he mused. Paracelsus wrote that a particular remedy exists for every disease, even as mercury arrests the pox that beset the shepherd Syphilis. If Praisegood were a Par-acelsan, he would at that moment be in an alchemical elaboratory, searching hopefully for a specific cure for the plague. But while Praisegood admired Paracelsus’ other views—that a physician should be ascetic, should travel widely, scorn money, and treat the poor for free—he doubted the existence of Specificks.
He looked up as a man came down the stairs, pressing through the crowd towards the door. The ruffian moved to block the path, crying, “But here’s the real cause of misery.” All were silent in anticipation. “Foreigners. Belike ‘tis they as brought the plague.”
“Forsooth, can one nation call down the wrath of God on another?” the man answered with a quiet voice, accented in some way unfamiliar to Praisegood. “More likely ‘twas the virtues I see displayed here, than any intercession of mine own.”
Impressed by the foreigner’s calm manner and neat appearance, Praisegood stood for a better view. The man had deep black hair, but a complexion pale as parchment, his lips a dusky hue. He was dressed in the old-fashioned way, with doublet and long coat; all his clothes were gray or black.
“It an’t right,” the big ruffian called. “That honest Englishmen turn blue and die, while Frogs go unmolested.”
He swung a massive fist. The small foreigner caught it, closing his hand about the other’s. Praisegood heard a bone crack. The large man fell, shrieking. The others moved closer.
Praisegood banged his cane upon the floor. “Stay! Let this gentleman pass or, I swear’t, thy friend shall be denied physic.” They paused. “No physician nor chirurgeon nor the humblest apothecary’s prentice will give him aid, when I have published his wickedness. But allow this fellow to pass, and I shall bind up the hand myself.”
The black-clad man left the tavern, walking proud as a king to his coronation. He stopped at the door, momentarily fixed Praisegood with his eye, and was gone.
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25 August
Not an House in Twenty is unmarked by Plague, nor a Merchant in an Hundred still at Businesse. You would be surprist to see the River empty as it were with Ice, but for Boates with Corn. I have heard even the Curator of the College of Physitians is fled, and Thieves have made off with the Strongchest and Silver. Dr Burnet as I told you afore, Friend Thomas, took sick and declared it; and shut himself up in his House, which was very Handsome of him. After some Months, thinking himself well, he resumed Practise. But Burnet took Feaver againe and has perished. I have heard Laughter that a Doctor should die—of his own Medicaments they say. Now do such a Multitude lie dead that they may no longer be buried twixt Sunset and Dawne, and the Waggons are always full.
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William Praisegood walked homeward, his mind populating the desolation with accusing ghosts. “You’re a doctor,” they moaned. “What did you do for us?”
“I tried to help,” his spirit rejoined. “I cannot stay the plague, but still there are the usual patients…”
“You cure them but to die another death,” the ghostly voices replied.
He thought of his patient Mistress Blackwood. Her two infant daughters, Mrs. Sally and Mrs. Alice, had been sent to stay with their uncle soon before that entire household fell to plague. The news of her children’s deaths had sent Mrs. Blackwood into labor early, going two days without the aid of a midwife, for all those women were more lucratively employed as plague nurses and searchers of the dead.
When Praisegood had at last been summoned he had been forced to use the experimental forceps, a secret gift from his professor at Leiden. The baby was large and healthy enough, but Mrs. Blackwood had gradually lapsed into a hectic fever, which was unrelieved by purging or emetics. Today the doctor had called to find the babe suckling at a dead breast, and the father hysterical with grief. He had bled the husband two ounces, but the infant was beyond help—there were no wet nurses to be found.
A year ago this tragedy might have brought tears to Praisegood’s eyes. Now he only shrugged it off, numbed to any further horrors, like a sheaf in the harvest.
The low evening sun and the shadows of overhanging houses turned the streets as dark as night, few windows glowing to light the way. As Praisegood began to enter one shrouded lane, an old woman hailed him from the shadows.
“Stay, sir, an‘ you value your life.”
“How, goodwife?” He could see now that she carried the white wand of an examiner of the dead.
“A pestilent lunatic,” she replied, “lying in wait by the bakehouse.”
“Most likely mad from pain,” Praisegood said. “Let me come on him cautiously and give my elixir of poppy.”
“Sich will not be soothed,” the old woman cackled. .“He will salute ye and by his kisses give release. Already he hath greeted his kin and friends until none be unmarked. But Deacon hath sent for his brothers who are already with token, and they shall make him fast.”
Praisegood thanked her and hurried on in another direction, passing his parish church. Part of the yard had become a communal burying ground, a grave that had at first seemed ready to receive all the parishioners (save the parson, who had gone to the country as early as June). Surprised, the doctor noted that where that grave had been, now stood a hillock, and a new pit had been dug not far off. Ringed with warning candles, it gaped open like a lanced impostume, three men’s height by four.
“Prepared to accept us all,” Praisegood whispered.
A deadcart arrived. The bearer, beating his horse with a red staff, backed the cart up to the rim of the pit and discharged its load. Watching aghast, Praisegood saw the bodies tumbling down. The bearer appraised him.
“A cloak?” he asked.
“Pardon?”
“Buy a cloak, sir? Fine velvet for a gentleman,” and he flourished the article in question.
“Knowest thou not, such articles cany plague? I’ve seen it oft.”
“Dead men’s clothes, their stinking carcasses, the air it-self, matters not,” the bearer shrugged. “Make the most of the breath you’ve left.”
“Help!”
Praisegood leapt away from the cart. “How—”
The thin cry came again from the grave. “Save me. Is’t there?”
The bearer snarled. “Another raving fool, b’God, masquerading as my stock.” Noticing Praisegood’s pallor, he laughed rudely. “Or a drunk belike, or oft-times a strick man thinks to save us the bother of burial and does it his-self.” He took up a long shepherd’s staff and walked to the pit’s edge, holding out a candle.
“Bless you,” the voice called.
“Take hold—Nay!” The bearer sprang back, making an old-wife’s signal against the evil eye.
“Ar’t ill?” asked Praisegood.
“The dead walk,” whispered the man.
Praisegood took the candle from his trembling fingers. “No, ”tis as thou said’st. Some hapless victim entrapped in the ditch___“
Wild eyes turned on him. “I saw him carried out from the inn, white as a virgin’s shroud, cold as snow. When I took the buttons of his waistcoat, I cut him accidental—no sound or move did he make. No deader man have e’er I seen! The Warlock of Houndsditch…”
“For love of God…” came the voice. The bearer turned and fled. Praisegood looked uneasily at the gaping grave.
“Ha,” he thought. “What would Tom say? ”Ghasties and spirits, Will? This is 1665!“ ” Taking a deep breath, he strode to the side of the pit and held up the candle.
“Who calls? Where are you?”
“Here,” the voice quavered. Praisegood looked down into the noisome pit. The floor was a solid layer of dead bodies, naked or clothed or shrouded, each holding some haphazard position, the cadavers heaped at the edge where the cart had dumped its contents. Like a still pond they lay, with one half-covered man making feeble movements that set the other bodies quivering, ripples spreading along pale dead limbs. The man lifted up his head like a swimmer gasping for breath, and Praisegood recognized the foreigner from the Death’s Arms tavern.
He lowered the shepherd’s crook. “Catch hold.” The man took the end. Footsteps sounded on the stones as the bearer returned with the deacon and another man.
“See?”
The deacon stood by Praisegood. “Thou’st been at the spirits, not seeing them, Alf.” He nodded to the doctor. “You’ll never land him alone.” All together, they took hold of the staff and hauled up the man, until he lay at their feet gasping like a fish. Losing interest, the others left him with Praisegood.
Praisegood gazed after them. He had no wish to stay with a man so lately come from a plague-ridden grave.
“Will you leave me as well?” the foreigner asked. “I have not the plague.”
“Why were you in the pit?”
“I have a—a sickness, that I sleep so deep I seem dead. The innkeeper must have come in against my orders.” His voice had a sincere quality that raised Praisegood’s pity.
“Shall I help you back to your inn?”
He shook his head. “No doubt they’ve stolen my goods, and would murther me before they’d welcome me.”
“I can’t leave you here.” Praisegood lifted the man to his feet. He supported him along the darkened streets, the man holding up his hands to cover his eyes against the occasional glimpse of sunlight. They arrived at Praise-good’s door to find a number of patients waiting. Seeing the doctor half-carrying a stumbling man in black, they backed away.
“Too much brandy,” Praisegood cried heartily. “Here, lad, help me get him to bed.” They deposited the man on Praisegood’s own cot.
The apartment was dark and musty, the windows having been closed up against effluvia. Praisegood lit some candles and consulted with his patients, allaying their fears and ordering up medications. As he saw the last patient, a plethoric asthmatic widow, he heard some stirring in the bedcloset. He bled the woman from her right forearm, bound up the wound, and escorted her downstairs, barring the door behind her. It was deep night.
“Now for my final patient,” he called as he came back up the stairs. “Come forth…” He stopped.
The dark-clad man stood in the midst of Praisegood’s room. His face flickered black and yellow in the dancing candlelight. Mis eyes were wide and red, and he held the bowl that had caught the old woman’s blood.
The bowl was empty, and his lips were red.
“Madman,” Praisegood rasped, backing to the hearth and taking up a fire iron. All was silent, except for the distant sound of wheels on stone, and a lone wavering cry of “Bring out your dead.”
The man stirred, putting down the bowl. He took one step forward. Praisegood held the iron between them, like a sword.
“It is a cure recommended by the doctors of Prague,” the stranger said softly. “I must apologize for not asking permission…”
“It is barbaric.”
The man continued soothingly. “ ‘I had planned to consult English physicians, but found plague here and was trapped…”
“We’d never prescribe human blood,” Praisegood said, trusting the man in black, though he could not say why. He put down the iron. “Tell me your symptoms.”
“But you’re exhausted—”
Praisegood smiled. “The doctor’s health is unimportant. But you’re right. Plague has made me busy as a bee in a rose patch, where before I had so few patients as to crave charity myself.”
“If I might stay the night… I would sit up a while and read your texts.”
Praisegood paused, then said, “As you will.” He could not cast the man out onto a curfewed street inhabited solely by the dead.
The stranger continued, “My disease is called a ‘Cyclic Catalepsis,” or by some a ’Coma.“ I sleep only by day, and look as a dead man. You will find no sign of breath, not even with the most cunning mirror. My pulse is so faint as to be immaterial, and I will feel frigid and stiff. But see— I am always cold.” He held out his hand.
Praisegood grasped it. “ ‘I am William Praisegood, Doctor of Medicine.”
“Guido Lupicinus. Your name is well-chosen, Doctor.”
Praisegood went to his bed, but caution demanded he bolt the door.
Upon rising the next morning he found Lupicinus in a chair, Culpeper’s translation of Pharmacopoeia Londinen-sis open upon his lap. The doctor tried to take away the book, but the sleeping man’s fingers were frozen about it. He was indeed cold, without movement, pulse, or breath. Praisegood’s first temptation was to declare the body to the parish searcher, but the signs were exactly as Lupicinus had described them.
“I give you until this evening to wake,” he muttered.
He walked to Smithfield, the heat already oppressive despite the day’s youth. St. Bartholomew’s Hospital was a hive of activity, but Praisegood found time to query the apothecary Frances Bernard on sleeping sickness.
“Never heard tell of it,” Bernard said. “Ask Gray,” and they hailed Thomas Gray, the chief of Barts’s volunteer physicians.
“Sleep as if dead? I’ll tell you what it is, Will. You and I have not had a virtuous full night abed since May. Perhaps Morpheus, god of sleep, has given our surplus to your patient.”
“Aye, ”twould be that,“ Praisegood grinned, and forgot the subject as he worked. While preparing to leave, he was summoned to see a young man with plague, whose buboes were firm and full of pus.
The surgeon attending him said, “An‘ we bring it out, he may live.”
Nodding, Praisegood sent a messenger to tell his own patients he would be late, and he and the surgeon began the task of lancing the abscesses. The young patient screamed, fainted more than once, and lost much blood, but Praisegood went home pleased that he had rescued one man from a pestilential death.
His home was empty, his guest gone. Praisegood found a meat pasty and some ale laid out for him. “Not so dead after all,” he said, and reread a favorite section of Burton while he ate. There was a knock at the door.
Lupicinus entered, bearing a heavy trunk. Praisegood helped him set it down. “You walk silently.”
“A skill God has given me.” He sat upon the trunk. “I went back to the tavern. They were displeased to see me. As I’d thought, they’d robbed me. Had I not already seemed dead, they would have split my skull as I slept.” He grinned. “You see, I persuaded them to give me fair return.”
Seeing Praisegood’s guarded expression, he hastened, “Fear me not. I’ve been a warrior in my time, but have never harmed a benefactor, or a friend. Except once, of need, in Egypt when my comrade took a fever…”
“Egypt? You’ve been there?”
Lupicinus smiled, and began a tale of that far country. Despite his youthful appearance he was well traveled, with many stories that were only mildly embroidered, not the fantastic tapestries woven by those who travel only in wishes and in books.
The waning summer was as pleasant as it could be, with the heat and the plague and the record death tolls listed in the weekly Bills of Mortality. Each morning Praisegood went to Baits, leaving a dead man in his chair. Each night he saw his patients, while Guido Lupicinus either went out walking or else helped with the physic. Then the men would talk of exotic lands and better times.
The dropsical widow came again, barely able to labor up the steps. Her son said, “She cannot lie to bed, but wakes gasping for breath.”
Praisegood shook his head. “ ‘Tis an ill disease. I must bleed her now, to relieve her, but cannot revive the humors sufficient to cure her.”
“I’ll get the lancet,” Guido offered, and he held the bowl as the blood rushed in, an eager cast to his face.
“See how thin and pale the blood is,” said Praisegood. “You must give her dark wine.” The woman began to breathe easier, and he sent her home with various medicinal powders.
The foreigner was still holding the bowl when he returned. “Will, th’art my friend and I would not disturb thy sensibility. Yet I must have this blood.”
“The prescription was foolish…”
“There was no prescription. I lied to thee, Will. I must drink blood because I am a vampire.”
“ ‘Vampire?”’
Guide laughed. “They would know me for this in Italy or Hungary or even France, but your northern realm seldom hosts my sort. A vampire is a dead man who rises each night to seek blood.”
Praisegood said, “You’re delirious. Let me search you for tokens.”
“If delirium it be, ”tis a lasting one. How old do I seem to thee? Thirty? Thirty-five? Thirty score years have I lived.“
Praisegood smiled ingratiatingly. “And how did you become this—vampire?”
“I was bit by one. A lamia, my cousin.”
“Then it is spread by direct contagion, as is measles?”
“Do not mock me! I am not mad, nor a fool.” He raised the bowl to his lips and gulped down the red liquid.
Praisegood turned away in revulsion, speaking to the window. “I was once called to consult with the parents of a youth who suffered Lycanthropica. He thought he became a wolf, and would get himself upon hands and knees, and howl and bay. He begged me to lock him up, lest he kill a child and rend its flesh. This was delusion, or ‘hallucination,” we term it.“
“Pliny wrote of men who truly became wolves,” Guido said. “Forgive me, Will. I did not wish to discover thee my curse, but I needed the blood. I’ve not hunted these past few nights… I honor thy learning, but do not let disdain of superstition dull thee to the truth.”
He shrugged out of his waistcoat. The ribs stared through his pale, hairless skin. “Find a pulse, physician, if thou canst.”
Praisegood took his friend’s wrist. It was somewhat warmer than when he felt it that first morning, but there was no pulse.
He put his hand over the precordium, and at last laid his ear over the heart. There was no heartbeat.
The doctor sank into his chair and looked at the empty fireplace. “There must be a scientifical explanation,” he said weakly.
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Thomas my Friend, I know your Scorn for Anatomisation. Would the Pest gone and we might take a Bowie of Coffee againe at Garways and heere of your Theories.—Take manie Patients with the Same Disease, observe the Coarse of the Diathesis, you have oft tolde me. Of late I have observed an entire Hoste with the Contagion, as manie as there are Leaves in a Forest, to no useful Expansion of my Knowledge, and so shall take Liberty of recounting you of an Anatomisation.
We gathered in George Thomson’s Yard. Sharky was there, the Alchymist who has beene in America, and Hodges with a Posie ever to his great Nose, and an Antipestilential Electuary. Young Kreisell who was at Bologna was ever quoting those Masters; and divers Others of curious Temperament attended. The swollen putrifying Carcasse was of a Servant Lad, an. XIV, dead two Days. The Wether is still warm and dry (a bilious Time). With such an awful Heate and a Foetor of the Bodie, we welcomed the Sulphur which Thomson burned below the Table. Thomson wold not have me here for Feare I catch Pest, till I swore I was now well-fed and wanted not Sleepe. Then Dr Kreisell quoted Salerni, viz: “Use three Physitians still, first Dr Quiet, next Dr Merryman and Dr Dyet.” Sharky returned that Kreisell was wont to be Dr Merryman but had better been Dr Quiet. And so to the Anatomisation.
The Bodie was black and blew as if all Bloud was gone from the Veins into the Subcutaneal Tissues. We tooke first the Tokens, of which one in everie Groine, eache so big I cold not close my Hand round them, and More in the left Arrnepit and the Neck. They were firm and inside red without such Purulent Matter as dwells in most large Apostems. The Similar Parts were swoll and red. Next to the Dissimilar Parts, first the Viscera. The Liver was engorged but without Blemish and the Gallbag without Feculence or troubled Chylus. The Spleene I wondered to beholde, and Kreisell could not containe but quoth Paracelsus much, to see it huge as the Head of a Mastiff. It was an uncommon red Hue and brake into small Bittes as we removed it. The Stomack was swoll and contained Clottes and the membrum was red. Hodges was disappoynted for he thinks the Stomack to be the Centre and Metropolis of the Bodie to which the Pest’s Venom is channelled, the Plantation and Nursery of all Feavers he said, and yet we found it lesse Remarkable than any other Organ.
Next Kreisell quoth Wm Harvey that the Heart is as King of the Bodie, and prognosticked we should find much ill Health there. The intestines were as such: the Gutt, especial the Ilion, was thick and soft with manie Places black with Gangreene, and much festering Matter. So foule the Odour that I knew, if ever an Atmospheric Effluvium should catch me, it were then. The Lights were heavie and sagging with Bloud, in parts like Liver, though only yellow Humour with manie small Clottes could be expressed. The Heart was seeming Normal, at which Hodges directed much Laughter at our young Colleague for quoting so manie Authorities but having no Sense. But unabashed Kreisell quoth Horace—Nullius addictus jurare are in verba Magistri. We dranke our Hostes Wine and so to our Homes and Practises. Of the Animated Wormes seen by Kircher in Plague, we found no trace not even with a strong Glass.
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The windows of the crumbling half-timbered house near Exchange Alley were boarded up, but no cross or padlock graced the door to signify plague. Praisegood stared at the clapboard Merlinshead with its legend, Here lives a Fortune-Teller. The second word had been defaced to read lies. Another ‘sign noted the availability of Dr Sylvesters Universal Elixir of Sovereigne Virtue.
The doctor sighed, then banged his cane against the door. Receiving no answer, he called, “Sylvester! Ope‘!” and thumped again. Finally a voice came from inside.
“Desist. I’ve a gun.”
“I an’t a thief,” Praisegood called. “ ‘Tis I, Will Praisegood.”
There was a sound of latches being undone, and the door slowly swung open. Praisegood faced an old man with a raised blunderbuss.
“Ha. Will indeed. You can’t enter.”
“I’ve no wish to.”
“This is my sanctuary. No plague will find me here.”
“Keep your home, uncle. I only desire the benefit of your learning.”
The gun lowered, and the man peered outward, a bag of herbs held to his nose. “You want my knowledge? My nevvy, the learned physician? Next you’ll say the dead walk.”
“ ‘Struth, I shall. Tell me of vampires, Sylvester. A—a friend thinks himself one.”
“Vampires, heh?” The old man chuckled and came out one step further, blinking in the sunlight. His skin was pale and dry, and a filthy coat hung over his bony frame.
Praisegood sighed, remembering the last time he’d seen his uncle. The man had been resplendent in the costume of a successful fortune-teller, with velvet jacket and a black cloak. “Look, Will,” Thomson had said, “one of those ungodly quacks who list in The Intelligencer.” And Praise-good and Sylvester had each looked upon the others without acknowledgment.
“I do not feel at all well,” Sylvester said.
“I have medicines…”
“And do I not, lad? If not my Universal Elixir, then I’d rather Anne Love’s Pomander or See’s Internal Balsam, than your approved pharmacopoeia.”
“Peace, uncle. Vampires…”
“Vampires. Walking corpses who drink blood; accursed, evil beings. The French call them Broucalaques, and say they be men who have perished by violence, or were murthered unavenged, or took their own lives, or have eaten a sheep killed by a wolf. They say to stop them you must put a wooden post through their heart, or catch them in sun’s light—you do that by scattering millet seeds, and the vampire is compelled to count them though the sun rises…”
That’s ridiculous, thought Praisegood, but he said politely, “What more?”
“The Roumanians say the vampire is the stillborn bastard of parents who are both bastards. The vampire’s child will be a witch—on this, all agree. The gypsies think that a woman may marry a vampire, and he will help her with the cooking and housework. He is invisible, and only his child may see him. He must sleep each day in soil from his native land…”
“Ah,” Praisegood thought. “A particle of truth. For what is earth but cold and dry: a metaphor for the melancholic humor that prevails in these vampires.”
The door began to close.
“Wait. Is there anymore?”
“Yes,” the old man laughed. “He who is slain by a vampire, becomes a vampire himself.” The door slammed shut.
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5 September, 1665
Still the Plague grows. I cannot tell of the Horrors I see dayly, lest I disturb your Sleepe, and give you Dreames to reflect mine waking Houres. In its stead, may I give Discourse on a certain Condition I have of late been discovered. Vampyres, the Animated Dead, do exist. I pray you, Thomas, do not set aside this Letter and say—Will is Distracted, he hath gone Mad.
I have met a Vampyre, a Man who walks and talks even as you or I, yet his Bloud is cold and thick and flows not, and he lacks any Pulsations. But I write to refute Superstition. Vampyres are not Magickal, but Diseased. As with all Scientinckal Subjects we may from a Bodie of First Principles deduce the Particulars. I shall theorize in the Principles of the Schools in which I am learned, though I have read Van Helmont’s indictment of the Humours. Perhaps our Friend Master Boyle might convince me the Vampyre has a Derangement of the Hydraulico-pneumatical Engine which is his Bodie, or even a Disruption of his Attorns, but I miss the Company of Robt and must forge on myself. As none of the Authorities has touched upon this Matter, I must justify my Theorems by Conjecture and inference alone, without benefit of Forebears, a Dwarf without a Giant’s Shoulders on which to stand, Burton might say. And we have seen that the Authorities are not always Correct, for did not Dr Harvey shew that the Arteries carry Bloud and not Pneuma?
NOTES ON VAMPYRISM BY Wm PRAYSGODE, M.D.
(LEYDENSIS)
We know that there are basic Properties necessary to endow Life; these are an innate Heate, primitive Moysture, and Innate Spirit. Also there are the four Primary Qualities, and any Derangement of them leads to Disease. Vampyrism is such a Disease of the Similar Parts and their nutritive Functions, being a Lack of Heate and Wetnesse (those Sanguine Qualities) and therefore a Compound Distemperature.
The Principle Cause of the Disease is an increase in Black Bile or the Melanchollic Humour. The Accessory Cause is a Lack of the Pulsific Faculty. The Indispensable Cause is a resultant Weakness of the Liver and Deficiency in Sanguinification. From these Causes we may understand the Diathesis.
From the Increase in Black Bile comes the Vampyre’s Preponderance of the manifest Qualities of Colde and Dry, and his Melanchollic Temperament. The usual Source of Black Bile is Foode, but there must exist an independent Supply in Vampyres, perhaps generated in one of the Organs. Than to prevent more Black Bile, the Vampyre will not Partake of Foode. But as Chyle is made from Comestibles which enter the Intestine, and Bloud is generated by the Passage of Chyle through the Liver (which is here Overloaded with Bilious Matter), so there is a further Decrease in Heate and Wet by those very Attempts to increase them, for no Bloud is made.
Though no Bloud is generated in the Vampyre, still does he Require it, and so he must take it by Drinking the Bloud of other Personnes. For I am tolde that the Bloud of Animals, nor Wine or Elixirs, may not substitute. Upon drinking the Bloud of Man or Woman, a Vampyre gains more Moysture than Warmth, and becomes Flegmatic. Thus do Vampyres differ from Ordinary Men in that they commonly have two Temperaments. After taking their Fill they are safe to other Mortalls, and are like to Sleepe.
—So dead their Spirits, So dead their Senses are Still either Sleepeing, Like to Folk that Dreame . . .
To become fully Sanguine would require all the Bloud of manie Men’s Bodies. I must note that my Vampyre Friend prefers the Bloud of Women, not only that they are Weaker and so easier persuaded to give up that which he Requires, but by the natural instincts of a Male. Though he lacks the cruder generative Desires, I have been informed. Alas that Woman’s Bloud is colder and moyster than Man’s, and so gives less Warmth than a Vampyre might crave. And the Suns Light they avoide, as it warms but drys and so Desiccates the unwary Vampyre.
That there is no Pulsinc Faculty is understood by the Purpose of such Pulsations. The Dilation of the Arteries (such as is called Diastole) draws in Ayre to the Lungs to temper the Bodie’s Internal Heate. This the Vampyre does not Require, as he is already Colde, and so the Heart does not beate and the Arteries do not carry their Bloud to the Lungs. But the beateing Heart, as has long been known, produces Vital Spirits and so the Vampyre is deficient in these, and tries again to Gaine them from Others.
Notwithstanding that the Vampyre is an immortal Being, and so might seeme to have the perfect Balance of Humours. But as well a well-paynted Hovel may seeme more attractive than a fine-built but less ornate House, the Vampyre’s Superiornesse is an empty Facade or Shell, for it is based upon a pathological Dominance of Colde. The Vampyre is not a happy Creature, and because he may not Die except by Violence, does not carry the Hope of Heaven and is Abandoned to Salvation.
Moreover, Melancholly is a daungerous Humour, as all Physitians know, and leades to Destruction and Self-Destruction. As the Vampyre goes without fresh Bloud for longer than a few Days, he becomes Dryer, and the Surfeit of Melancholly makes him Mad.
—Both Sport and Ease and Companie refusing, Extreme in Lust sometime yet seldom Lovefull, Suspitious in his Nature and Distrustfull.
So too the Yeeres of Melancholly may build an unwholesome and Evil Character.
I must treate on the Method of Spread of this Dis-temperature. Vampyrism is not disseminated by Miasmas, but seems to require a direct Contagion as does the Smallpocks and the Measles, as by the Seminaria of which Fracastorius of Verona speaks. That it is a poysonous Venom is shewn by this, that Garlicke protects from Poyson and from a Vampyre also, though this may result from the Odour of the Bulbe and from the acute Senses of the Vampyre, of which I shall another Time write. That it is Spread by Specifick Contact is shewn by this Fact, that he who is bitten by the Vampyre shall become a Vampyre in his Turn, but he whose Bloud is drank from a Bowie lives unscathed. By this we may suggest that Vampyres ought become Physitians and Chirurgeons and so earne their Day’s Bloud in an honest and virtuous Manner.
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The heat was oppressive and the air wet, heavy, and smelling of smoke. The sky glowed a soft red.
Guido closed the shutters. “These fires make the air intolerable.”
Praisegood raised his head slightly. “The College of Physicians suggested it. Hippocrates ended the plague in…”
“He died millennia ago, Will, and thy College has fled like frightened puppies. See, here is written their other counsel. ”Pull off the Feathers from the Tails of living Cocks, Hens, Pigeons or Chickens, and holding their Bills, hold them hard to the Botch or Swelling and keep them at that Part until they die; and by this means draw out the Poison.“ ”
Praisegood leaned his head down upon his hands. His saturnine friend gazed on him with concern, then began again. “Oh, you scholars of physic—here are more cures you publish. Powdered toads and mastiff pups…” Seeing no response, he dug the knife in further. “Figs boiled in vinegar—Wait, here’s a fine one.” He waved one of Praisegood’s favorite books. “ ‘Methodus methendi: Take of Moss that hath growne on a dead man’s Skull’—and thou wilt accuse me of dabbling in magic…”
“Enough,” Praisegood groaned. “I will not rail with thee, Guido.”
The vampire reached one hand out, and grasped his friend. “Thou wert always ever ready to dispute—Will! Th’art hot as a brand!”
“And thy hand is cold as death,” replied the doctor. “George Thomson told me to live temperate, eat well, sleep aplenty, yet he would work to exhaustion. Now I hear he has taken plague and is closed in his house, as are others who were at the anatomization…”
Thunder split the stillness, and rain began to tap against the walls.
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10 September
It was the first Raine since April, and in that next Day did die four Thousands of Soules. There are too Few to close the Houses or Bury the Dead or dig new Pits, so that Corpses lie in Publick, Fodder for Vermin and Birds, and floate in the River. Grass growes in Whitehall. Madmen run on the Streetes. I fear that soon no one shall Live to bury the Fallen, and all London shall be a Mausoleum. As to myself: I felt a Melancholly I thought my Usual, but then an Icy Chill taking holde, I knew it was the Ferment insinuating itself into my Bodie’s Juices. Next I knew a grypeing of the Gutts and a Headayche as the poysonous Spicula did prick and vellicate the Membrums of my Braine. Soon came a Feaver with Palpitations and Unease. So did I eagerly search my Frame for Blisters or Whelks or an Apostem in the Groine, for oft these Tokens signal some feeble Hope of Survival. Instead I found the Stigmata Nigra, most ill of the Pest’s Forms, saving only that which manifests with bloudy Sputum. And so I find myself a Dead Man soon. Ah veryly, Thomas, I would save myself an‘ I could, though all the World be so bleak. Few are the Physitians to treate the suffering People, fewer still now George and I are doomed. Would I might Rise from this Bed, and go my Rounds at Baits, see my Patients and de-ale out their Regimens. But now I am unable to do More than Lament and Regret. So swiftly now, before the Phrensy that strikes one plague-rid Man in two, I shall own myself in my Last Moments to be your Friend and to commend my Soule to your Prayers…
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Guido lifted the man’s head, placing the wine glass to his lips. “Drink, Will,” he said, finally cozening the doctor into taking a sip. Praisegood half-opened his eyes.
“Guido?” he rasped.
The vampire laid one cool hand on the fevered forehead. “‘Tis I, Will.”
“My blessings…”
“Will!” Guido shook him back awake. “List‘ to me, Will! Wouldst thou live?”
“My time is come…”
“Wouldst live?”
The dying man laughed. “Aye, I’d live. I’m a doctor, and the entire city my patient, now abandoned.”
“Wouldst thou live, Will? To continue thy work? Even at the cost of thy soul?”‘
The man closed his eyes, and whispered. “I would live.”
Guido undid his friend’s collar. “Then sleep, Will,” he said softly. “And wake to a better life than this thou leavest.”
He leaned forward and placed his teeth to Praisegood’s neck.
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20 September 1665
Tho: Sydnam from his Friend, Wm Praysegode of London
Sir: I have by the Grace of God survived the Siege of this Epidemical Disease, and am in no way Impayred by having catched the Distemper. Furthermore am I returned to my Duties, though it seemes a Wonder there are any Patients to treate, as 8,297 died this last Weeke and 7,690 the Weeke before. But I am a Physitian againe, and shall live or die with the Citie, and my Hope is Renewed. The Plague may be defeated. If by the wondrous Mercy of the Almighty this Plague shall end, then I have a Minde to see the World, and perhaps to travel to other Cities so afflicted and work amongst their ill, for I feel myself now quite immune to the Pest. Gwldo Lupicinus has offered to be my Guide in any Travels I shall chose to Undertake. And so, my Friend Thomas, if we do not meete again in this World, be assured that I am
Yr humble and obdt Colleague and Servant
William Praysegode