The Port-Wine Stain Read Online Free Page A

of diseased tissue, bone, and bloody bandages to the incinerator. The good man would one day surprise me by paying my tuition to attend the medical school—class of 1853. In time, I became his protégé, taking notes during surgery, seeing to the instruments, and, later, administering diethyl ether or nitrous oxide under his direction. I’m very much in his debt, although I sometimes wish I had chosen another profession. The practice of medicine is gratifying for thosewho cherish a high opinion of themselves. But beyond the vainglory, there’s a danger of overly valuing one’s skill, of becoming too self-assured in the presence of life. Edgar, to the contrary, seemed at home in its absence.
    What I mean by life, Moran, is the fuse lit by the Creator and snuffed out by Death. The best of us can alleviate suffering and sometimes extend life, but we cannot hope to understand it, no matter how many corpses we pick apart. I saw too many during the war to think otherwise. They soured my sense of a priestly vocation, to which I’d been called, with the vinegar of pessimism. If I’d not been an army surgeon, if I’d not performed so many amputations in the field and lost so many men at the moment of their Calvary, who knows but I might have been cheerful.
    In 1844, I had not yet drained the bitter cup. I was a frank and friendly young man. I endeared myself to Dr. Mütter, who was esteemed by his patients as much for his genial manner as for his surgical finesse. My God, the man’s hands were a blur during an operation, astounding his students and peers alike! Ambidextrous, he could work twice as fast as any other Jefferson surgeon, perhaps any other practitioner in the city. I vividly recall the operation to reconstruct Nathaniel Dickey’s monstrous facial deformity: The instruments flashed under the gaslights as the unfortunate young man endured twenty-five minutes of scarcely imaginable agony, sitting in a chair, with nothing to mitigate the pain except for Mütter’s calm, gentle eyes to fix his own upon. That surgery was the closest thing to a miracle I’ve ever seen. Equally transfixed, Poe was sitting in the visitors’ gallery. When Mütter held up a shavingmirror and Nathaniel smiled for the first time in his life to see a human face reflected there, Poe exclaimed, “Eureka!”
    I was one of Dr. Mütter’s assistants when I first laid eyes on Edgar Poe, although I didn’t know his name then. Mütter was too intent on showing off his specimens to think of introducing me. And so, having finished my catalogue notation on the skull of a bargeman with a large, high cranial vault, who’d died of cerebral apoplexy, I left them to themselves. I’d only glanced at Poe, but I was struck by a hectic light in his eyes. Moreover, I had the impression that his face, which later I thought handsome, was at that moment warped as if by a gigantic strain. I’d seen such faces and such eyes before, in patients strapped to the table when Mütter lifted one of his shining instruments from the crimson plush, like a priest offering the chalice to the Almighty.
    Later that afternoon, while I was pickling a liver recently taken from a carpenter dead of cirrhosis, Mütter entered with a pleased expression. He had changed his waistcoat and stock—dandyism was his only folly. For all his fastidiousness, he was not an egotist. He was cultured and urbane and, like Poe, absorbed in problems of aesthetics—in his case, those of the human body. He understood that a disfigured face can cause suffering every bit as keenly felt by the patient as a disease of the organs or corruption of the blood. He brought home to America the innovations in reparative and reconstructive surgery he’d learned in Paris.
    â€œDo you know who that gentleman was, Edward?” Dr. Mütter asked, rubbing his hands in satisfaction.
    â€œNo, sir, I can’t say that I