Strange What Scientists Used to Believe

The Nature of Monsters by Clare Clark






The most interesting part of this book for me – excellent book – was the fact that medical science had things so completely wrong so very recently. The book is set in 1718, in London, and follow the life of Eliza Tally. She has grown up North of London, the only surviving child of a now-deceased father and a mother who is the midwife and provider of herbal remedies for the local village. ‘Ma Tally” is shrewd and poor, but sees opportunity when the son of the local wealthy family takes an interest in Eliza. A “jumping over the broom” wedding happens, and so sex is then permitted, but when Eliza becomes pregnant, the wealthy family quickly disagrees that the two are married. The son is sent of on a ship bound far away, and Eliza, through maneuvering by her mother and the wealthy family, Eliza is sent to be a maid for an apothecary in London. Then the story really starts.



Eliza only wants to be rid of “the worm” as she calls it, and assumes the apothecary will induce a miscarriage and she will work for him for a year to repay him. She knows her mother knew herbs that women took for that, so figures the apothecary would, too. But when she arrives, she finds a strange and tense household. Mr. Grayson Black, the apothecary, is of the belief – common at the time – that a pregnant woman’s emotions effect the child’s development. After all, he has a large birthmark that we call a “port wine stain” disfiguring much of his face that he attributes to the fact that his own pregnant mother fled the Great Fire of London in 1666, and turned to watch. He is bitter, driven, and also an opium addict.



The dark and unpleasant household is comprised of Mr. and Mrs. Black, Edgar – the lewd, conniving and opportunistic apprentice, and another servant Mary, who is mentally retarded and born with a hare lip. But the room Eliza is given to share with Mary under the eaves of the house looks out on the grand dome of St. Paul’s cathedral, and she marvels at that, and keeps it as a point of hope and wonder. She gradually realizes that she will not be “getting rid of the worm” but instead that Mr. Black is studying her pregnancy, in great detail, and means it to carry to term. She delivers, and is told afterwards her baby died. When Mary becomes pregnant, the realizes her own son was probably dissected by Mr. Black, and he means to do the same to Mary, whom she has come to love.



The book draws you along, and is interspersed with Mr. Black’s notes and correspondence to colleagues, and one can watch his mental status deteriorate as the opium addiction progresses. It is quite gruesome, and does not spare us any details of medicine at that time, and the strange things people quite seriously believed and did to others in the name of “medicine” and “scientific advancement.”



How Eliza matures, learns and is determined to save both her simple friend and herself make for a fascinating story, but not, as I have said, one for the squeamish.



Aren’t you glad you live now, when no one believes in the “four humours” (phlegm, blood, black bile, and yellow bile), gives you expectorants and emetics and just daily bleeds you for “health”? Ewww, yuck. And I know my asthma is an inherited condition, not something I can blame my mother for looking at during her pregnancy, or feeling or thinking!