the way of tinctures and pills in order to achieve a not only superficial but permanent classification as “unfit” when his urine was examined at recruiting time; when all is said and done, her knowledge and the results of her reading enabled her to submit his urine to a “progressive plan” (verbatim quotation from Rahel, verified by B.H.T.) that continued to guarantee sufficient albumen throughout the most varied tests even during a stay in army hospital of one, two, or three days. This information merely as consolation for all those who feel the lackof a political angle here. Unfortunately, B.H.T. lacked the nerve to pass on this “progressive plan” in all its details to potential young army recruits. “As a civic employee” he was afraid of running into trouble with his superiors.
It would probably have been a source of enormous pleasure to Rahel (Au.’s hypothesis) had she been permitted at least once to spend a week in a boarding school for boys, performing similar duties and obtaining similar insights to those she had been accustomed to perform and obtain among girls. Since the literature on the digestive differences between men and women was in those days meager, she had to rely solely on assumptions that gradually consolidated into a prejudice: she regarded almost all men as “hard stoolers.” Had her desire become known in Rome or elsewhere, she would naturally have been instantly excommunicated and expelled.
With the same passion with which she inspected the john bowls, she would look each morning into the eyes of the girls in her charge and order eye-bathings, for which she kept a small selection of eyecups and a jug of spring water in readiness; she would immediately discover any sign, even the slightest, of inflammation or trachoma, and invariably—to a far greater degree than when describing digestive processes—went into ecstasy as she explained to the girls that the retina was approximately as thick or as thin as a cigarette paper but consisted in addition of three layers of cells, the sensory cells, the dipolar cells, and the ganglion cells, and that in the first layer alone (approximately one third as thick or as thin as a cigarette paper) there were some six million cones and one hundred million tiny rods distributed, not regularly but irregularly, over the surface of the retina. Their eyes, she would preach to the girls, were an immense, irreplaceable treasure; the retina was only one of the eye’s fourteen layers, with a total of seven or eight layers each of which was in turn separated from the next. So when she then got going on ganglia, papillae, villi, and cilia, her second nickname would sometimes be murmured: Silly Billy Sister, or Sister Silly Billy.
One must remember that Rahel’s opportunities for explaining anything to the girls were occasional and limited; the girls’ timetable was fixed, and most of them really did regard her as being responsible for not much more than the toilet paper. Needless to say, she also spoke of sweat, pus, menstrual blood, and—somewhat at length—of saliva; it is almost superfluous to state that she was strongly opposed to excessive tooth-brushing; in any event she would tolerate vigorous tooth-brushing first thing in the morning only against her convictions, and even then only after vehement protests on the part of parents. As well as the girls’ eyes, she also inspected their skin—unfortunately, as it turned out, because on a few occasions she was accused by parents of immodest physical contact—not breast or abdomen, merely arms above and below the elbow. Later she proceeded to explain to the girls that, when one had acquired some personal experience, a glance at the excrements ought really only to confirm what one was aware of anyway on rising: the degree of well-being; and that it was almost superfluous—after sufficient experience—to look at them, unless one was not certain of one’s condition and needed a glance at them for
It would probably have been a source of enormous pleasure to Rahel (Au.’s hypothesis) had she been permitted at least once to spend a week in a boarding school for boys, performing similar duties and obtaining similar insights to those she had been accustomed to perform and obtain among girls. Since the literature on the digestive differences between men and women was in those days meager, she had to rely solely on assumptions that gradually consolidated into a prejudice: she regarded almost all men as “hard stoolers.” Had her desire become known in Rome or elsewhere, she would naturally have been instantly excommunicated and expelled.
With the same passion with which she inspected the john bowls, she would look each morning into the eyes of the girls in her charge and order eye-bathings, for which she kept a small selection of eyecups and a jug of spring water in readiness; she would immediately discover any sign, even the slightest, of inflammation or trachoma, and invariably—to a far greater degree than when describing digestive processes—went into ecstasy as she explained to the girls that the retina was approximately as thick or as thin as a cigarette paper but consisted in addition of three layers of cells, the sensory cells, the dipolar cells, and the ganglion cells, and that in the first layer alone (approximately one third as thick or as thin as a cigarette paper) there were some six million cones and one hundred million tiny rods distributed, not regularly but irregularly, over the surface of the retina. Their eyes, she would preach to the girls, were an immense, irreplaceable treasure; the retina was only one of the eye’s fourteen layers, with a total of seven or eight layers each of which was in turn separated from the next. So when she then got going on ganglia, papillae, villi, and cilia, her second nickname would sometimes be murmured: Silly Billy Sister, or Sister Silly Billy.
One must remember that Rahel’s opportunities for explaining anything to the girls were occasional and limited; the girls’ timetable was fixed, and most of them really did regard her as being responsible for not much more than the toilet paper. Needless to say, she also spoke of sweat, pus, menstrual blood, and—somewhat at length—of saliva; it is almost superfluous to state that she was strongly opposed to excessive tooth-brushing; in any event she would tolerate vigorous tooth-brushing first thing in the morning only against her convictions, and even then only after vehement protests on the part of parents. As well as the girls’ eyes, she also inspected their skin—unfortunately, as it turned out, because on a few occasions she was accused by parents of immodest physical contact—not breast or abdomen, merely arms above and below the elbow. Later she proceeded to explain to the girls that, when one had acquired some personal experience, a glance at the excrements ought really only to confirm what one was aware of anyway on rising: the degree of well-being; and that it was almost superfluous—after sufficient experience—to look at them, unless one was not certain of one’s condition and needed a glance at them for
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