The Devil's Grin: Illustrated Edition (An Anna Kronberg Thriller Book 1) by Annelie Wendeberg Page A

Snow’s reports on the last cholera outbreak and how he found the pump on Broad Street as the vector of transmission. The man investigated the history of the cholera fatalities, and only that allowed him to successfully prevent any further spreading of the disease. When you wake up in the morning — every morning! — I want you to think of the only thing we know for sure, which is that in fact, we know very little. After you have done so, throw away one of your favourite preconceptions.’

    Detail of Dr. John Snow’s map illustrating cholera cases near Broad Street, London, 1854. (10)

    McFadin’s colour turned back to a normal shade and he almost looked proud to have been of such excellent service. Everyone was glued to my lips, and the show could begin.
    ‘Now, if you please…’ I waved them forward. That was unusual for anatomical demonstrations. Normally, students were asked to keep a respectful distance. Not during my lessons, though. I wanted them to observe closely, but I had to keep an eye on the faint-hearted ones; it usually helped them when they had something to do. So far, however, everyone looked brave. ‘Now tell me, what do you observe?’
    Several students answered.
    ‘His clothes are dirty and old.’
    ‘He is thin.’
    ‘He is poor.’
    ‘He has brown hair.’
    ‘He is about forty years old.’
    ‘His body is distorted.’
    I interrupted. ‘Thank you very much! We can safely assume that the man was poor, has brown hair, and was probably thirty years old. Poverty often makes one look older than one really is. And his body is distorted. Can anyone say where the man came from?’
    Everyone shook his head.
    ‘Exactly. So far, we can’t tell.’ I searched his pockets and found them to be empty, then fetched a pair of scissors and cut away trousers, shirt, and underwear. I took off his shoes and placed everything next to the slab on the floor.
    ‘What can we see now?’ I asked the group.
    ‘He is naked!’ someone shouted, and we all had to laugh.
    ‘Excellent observation! I should have asked my question a little differently: what can we not see?’
    That was always the hardest, detecting things that were off-pattern. As expected, all faces looked clueless.
    ‘How do people contract tetanus, typically?’ I hinted.
    ‘Through dirt in a deep wound,’ someone replied.
    ‘Do you see any?’ I asked.
    The young men craned their necks and after a while, they shook their heads.
    ‘Shall we turn him?’ We did, but there were no wounds on his back, either.
    ‘How else can tetanus enter the body?’ No one answered, so I did. ‘You could eat an animal that had tetanus, for example.’
    Suddenly, I remembered the Hampton man. I examined the man’s wrists and ankles but found no restraint marks. Then I checked the bends of both his elbows — nothing. The students looked at me enquiringly.  
    ‘What else could produce these symptoms?’
    Silence. Well, most of them hadn’t had toxicology yet, so I answered my own question again. ‘The alkaloid of the strychnos tree, commonly known as strychnine, killed Alexander the Great, for example.’
    Murmurs filled the room and I waited for silence before I continued. ‘To be able to distinguish between the two, we have to open the man.’  
    I moved the table with my utensils closer to the slab. As expected, the new students pushed farther back the moment I took my largest knife and ran it through the corpse’s skin.
    I could not find any infected areas in his gastrointestinal tract, but his heart had a swollen and dark, almost black area. I cut it open and held it to my nose — it stank. I couldn’t explain to my students how tetanus had got into the man’s heart. We were all mystified. I opened the cranium, sliced the hemispheres in sections, and found the typical liquid-filled lesions that only tetanus would produce, and not strychnine. I straightened up then and said, ‘It appears that Scots do play the bagpipes after all.’ McFadin