Genre:

Short Fiction, Drollery

Relevant illustrations:

wdct.

Illustrators:

T Hood

Subjects:

Medical Practitioners, Expertise, Astronomy, Meteorology, Physics, Medical Treatment

    Medical men seldom agree about their theories: 'the differences of doctors have, indeed, passed into a proverb' (1). However, almost all agree in advising bathing with an empty stomach: 'The famous Doctor Krankengraber [i.e. 'sick-bury'], in his most famous book, called "Immersion deeply Considered", forbids, under all kinds of corporeal pains and penalties, the use of the cold bath, after the mid-day meal' (2). The narrator, however, sets himself up against this high authority and offers the opposite advice. He gives an account of his encounter with 'Christiana F——', his one waltz with whom left his head forever spinning like 'the harmonious everlasting revolutions of the planets' (3). It was like the 'mysterious influence' of the whirlwind in Coblentz in May 1835, which left all those present waltzing. Seeing her dance with another man, the narrator observes: 'Possibly I should have ended, like certain rotary fireworks, with an explosion,—at all events I should have flown off to my quarters, when a few gracious words [...] converted the centrifugal into a centripetal impulse' (7). Having been invited to dine, he recalls, 'how I spun!—or else I had become conscious of the earth's revolution!' (8). Taking a swim on the way to the dinner engagement, he is bitten by leeches, and cannot remove them. He wishes that he had been 'affected with Hydrophobia, ere that fatal bath' (12). The leeches having finally fallen off, the narrator arrives late at the chateau. During the ball he finds dancing difficult, and fancies that he feels 'the circulation in every vein and artery, becoming more and more rapid from such gentle exercise' (16). His love ultimately dances with, and marries another. Thus it is through the advice of Dr Krankengraber that he loses his love, for she thought his constant glances at his legs a sign of vanity. The illustration 'A Finished Drawing' (facing 12) depicts a pained man running from a house with the name 'Cartwright' on the door, clutching a handkerchief to his mouth; the maidservant at the door is smiling, the man in a top-hat at the window has a scarf wrapped round his jaw.

See also:

CA1/8p