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"It's gotta be pure poison," Mrs. Eames's tough daughter remarked to Wilbur Larch, who dabbed a little of his beloved ether on the bottle's stained label, cleaning it up enough to read.
FRENCH LUNAR SOLUTION
Restores Female Monthly Regularity!
Stops Suppression!
(Suppression, young Larch knew, was a euphemism for pregnancy.)
Caution: Dangerous to Married Women!
Almost Certainly Causes Miscarriages!
the label concluded; which, of course, was why Mrs. Eames had taken it and taken it.
Larch had studied the abuse of aborticides in medical school. Some--like the ergot Larch used to make the uterus contract after delivery, and pituitary extract--directly affected the uterus. Others ruined the intestines--they were simply drastic purgatives. Two of the cadavers Larch had worked with in medical school had been victims of a rather common household aborticide of the time: turpentine. People who didn't want babies in the 1880s and 1890s were also killing themselves with strychnine and oil of rue. The French Lunar Solution Mrs. Eames had tried was oil of tansy; she had taken it for such a long time, and in such amounts, that her intestines had lost their ability to absorb Vitamin C. Thus did she turn herself into Muenster. She died, as the pathologist had correctly observed, of scurvy.
Mrs. Eames could have chosen several other ways of attempting to abort the birth of another child. There were stories that a rather notorious abortionist in the South End was also the district's most successful pimp. Because he charged nearly five hundred dollars for an abortion, which very few poor women could afford, in their indebtedness they became his whores. His quarters--and others like his--were called, simply, "Off Harrison"--appropriately vague, but not without meaning. One of the facilities of the South Branch of the Boston Lying-In was established on Harrison Street, so that "Off Harrison," in street language, correctly implied something unofficial--not to mention, illegal.
It did not make much sense to have an abortion "Off Harrison," as Mrs. Eames, perhaps, had reason to know. Her daughter also knew the methods of that place, which was why she gave Wilbur Larch a chance to do the job--and gave herself a chance to have the job done well.
"I said I ain't quick," Mrs. Eames's daughter told young Larch. "I'd be easy. I'd get out of here in just a couple of minutes."
It was after midnight at the South Branch. The house officer was asleep; the nurse-practitioner, an anesthesiologist, was also asleep. The colleague who had woken Larch--he'd gone to sleep, too.
The dilation of the cervix at any stage of pregnancy usually leads to uterine contractions, which expel the contents of the uterus. Larch also knew that any irritant to the uterus would usually have the desired effect: contraction, expulsion. Young Wilbur Larch stared at Mrs. Eames's daughter; his legs felt rocky. Perhaps he was still standing with his hand on the back of Mrs. Eames's seat on that swaying train from Portland, before he knew he had the clap.
"You want an abortion," Wilbur Larch said softly. It was the first time he had spoken the word.
Mrs. Eames's daughter took
the sea-gull feather out of her pigtail and jabbed Larch in the chest with the quill end. "Shit or get off the pot," she said. It was with the words "shit" and "pot" that the sour stench of cigar reached him.
Wilbur Larch could hear the nurse-anesthesiologist sleeping--she had a sinus condition. For an abortion, he wouldn't need as much ether as he liked to use for a delivery; he would need only a little more than he routinely gave himself. He also doubted it was necessary to shave the patient; patients were routinely shaved for a delivery and Larch would have preferred it for an abortion, but to save time, he could skip it; he would not skip ether. He would put red merthiolate on the vaginal area. If he'd had a childhood like Mrs. Eames's daughter, he wouldn't have wanted to bring a child into the world, either. He would use the set of dilators with the Douglass points--rounded, snub-nosed points, they had the advantage of an easy introduction into the uterus and eliminated the danger of pinching tissue in withdrawal. With the cervix dilated to the desired size, he doubted that--unless Mrs. Eames's daughter was well along in her third or fourth month--he would need to use forceps, and then only for the removal of placenta and the larger pieces. A medical school textbook had referred, euphemistically, to the products of conception: these could be scraped from the wall of the uterus with a curette--perhaps with two different-sized curettes, the small one to reach into the corners.
But he was too young, Wilbur Larch; he hesitated. He was thinking about the time for recovery from ether that he would need to allow Mrs. Eames's daughter, and what he would say to his colleagues, or to the nurse if she woke up--or even to the house officer if it turned out to be necessary to keep the girl until the morning (if there was any excessive bleeding, for example). He was surprised by the sudden pain in his chest; Mrs. Eames's savage daughter was stabbing him with the sea-gull feather again.
"I ain't quick! I ain't quick, I said!" the Eames girl screamed at him, stabbing him again and again, until the feather bent in her hand; she left it stuck in his shirt. In turning away from him, her heavy braid brushed his face--the braid's odor overwhelmingly conveying smoke. When she was gone and Larch plucked the sea-gull feather from his breast, he noticed that the oil of tansy--the French Lunar Solution--had spilled on his hands. Its smell was not unpleasant, but it momentarily overpowered the smell Larch liked and was used to--it overpowered the ether; it put an end to his peace of mind.
They did not use ether "Off Harrison." They didn't concern themselves with pain there. For pain "Off Harrison," they used music. An outfit called The German Choir practiced Lieder in the front rooms "Off Harrison." They sang passionately. Perhaps Mrs. Eames's daughter appreciated it, but she made no mention of the music when she was brought back to the South Branch a week later. No one was sure how she got there; she appeared to have been flung against the door. She also appeared to have been beaten about the face and neck, perhaps for failing to pay the usual abortion fee. She had a very high fever--her swollen face was as hot and dry to the touch as bread fresh from the oven. From the fever and the tenseness of her abdomen, rigid as glass, the house officer and the night nurse suspected peritonitis. The reason they woke Wilbur was that Mrs. Eames's daughter had a piece of paper pinned to the shoulder of her dress.
DOCTOR LARCH--
SHIT OR GET OFF THE POT!
Pinned to her other shoulder--like a mismatched epaulette, pulling her dress askew--was a pair of ladies' underwear. They were her only pair. It was discovered she wasn't wearing any. Apparently, her panties had been pinned there in a hurry; that way they wouldn't be lost. Wilbur Larch didn't need to examine Mrs. Eames's daughter very thoroughly in order to discover that the abortion attempt had failed. A fetus with no heartbeat was imprisoned in her uterus, which had suffered some haywire contraction and was in a state of spasm. The hemorrhage and infection could have come from any of the several methods employed "Off Harrison."
There was the water-cure school, which advocated the use of an intrauterine tube and syringe, but neither the tube nor the water was sterile--and the syringe had many other uses. There was a primitive suction system, simply an airtight cup from which all the air could be sucked by a foot-operated pump; it had the power to abort, but it also had the power to draw blood through the pores of the skin. It could do a lot of damage to soft tissue. And--as the little sign said on the door "Off Harrison," WE TREAT MENSTRUAL SUPPRESSION ELECTRICALLY!--there was the McIntosh galvanic battery. The long leads were hooked up to the battery; the leads had intravaginal and intrauterine attachments on insulated, rubber-covered handles; that way the abortionist wouldn't feel the shock in his hands.
When Mrs. Eames's daughter died--before Dr. Larch could operate on her and without her having further words with him (beyond the "Shit or get off the pot!" note that was pinned to her shoulder), her temperature was nearly 107. The house officer felt compelled to ask Larch if he knew the woman. The note certainly implied an intimate message.
"She was angry with me for not giving her an abortion," Wilbur Larch replied.
"Good for you!" said the house officer.
But Wilbur Larch failed to see how this was good for anyone. There was a widespread inflammation of the membranes and viscera of the abdominal cavity, the uterus had been perforated twice, and the fetus, which was dead, was true to Mrs. Eames's daughter's prediction: it had not been quick.
In the morning, Dr. Larch visited "Off Harrison." He needed to see for himself what happened there; he wanted to know where women went when doctors turned them down. On his mind was Mrs. Eames's daughter's last puff of cigar breath in his face as he bent over her before she died--reminding him, of course, of the night he needed her puffing cigar to find his clothes. If pride was a sin, thought Dr. Larch, the greatest sin was moral pride. He had slept with someone's mother and dressed himself in the light of her daughter's cigar. He could quite comfortably abstain from having sex for the rest of his life, but how could he ever condemn another person for having sex?
