Poison, Pure Poison [5]
“Hurk… Bleurgh!”
Surrounded by the vivid green wallpaper and draped in the emerald gown, the condemned man was now violently retching. In truth, the ghastly pallor that had stolen over his face was almost certainly born of sheer, violent nausea. Then again, the profuse sweating might have chilled his flesh and drained his warmth as well—though to be entirely honest, I couldn't say for certain. Where on earth would I have ever seen arsenic poisoning before?
It wasn't as though our hospital back in modern Korea lacked a toxicology center. Being one of the foremost tertiary hospitals in the country, of course we had one. But poisonings had their own fashion and eras. Arsenic, of all things? Most patients rushed to our emergency room had ingested agricultural chemicals—herbicides like Gramoxone or common organophosphate pesticides. I had never laid eyes on a living case of arsenic poisoning. Chemical plants might manufacture it somewhere, but I had never possessed any reason to encounter it. In other words, this was the first time in my life I was watching an arsenic victim with my own two eyes. Everything I knew about the symptoms was gleaned purely from medical literature.
“It is undoubtedly poison,” Liston declared in a grave, authoritative baritone.
Naturally, the situation was much the same for Liston. He sounded terribly weighty and knowledgeable, but truth be told, he was almost certainly grasping in the dark. When would he have ever stood by and simply observed a poisoned wretch dying inch by inch like this? Still, being a licensed physician, he would have done something in the past—drawn a pint of blood, or perhaps sawed off a limb. Whatever bloody, incomprehensible butcher's work 19th-century medicine dictated, he would have at least attempted it.
“Could it not merely be a coincidence?”
Hearing someone utter such utterly brazen nonsense, I whipped my head around to glare at the speaker. Liston did the same. Yet, in the very next breath, both of our expressions smoothed into deferential politeness. Why? Because the man who had spoken was none other than Sir Jamie.
To be fair, I could understand his desperation. Who was it that had set off this rabid green craze across the fashionable drawing rooms of London? Granted, the pigment had already swept through Parisian high society, so it would have inevitably crossed the Channel sooner or later. But if one were looking for the immediate culprit who ignited the trend in England, Sir Jamie was the man holding the match.
A coincidence, you bloody fool?
If he hadn't been Sir Jamie, I would have planted a fist right into his jaw. A man dressed in bright green was literally choking on his own bile and dying before our very eyes, and he had the gall to call it a coincidence? But this was Sir Jamie—a true blueblood who wielded immense influence among the peers of the British Empire.
“Let us observe a while longer,” Liston said, adopting the measured calm of a man who knew precisely when to rein in his temper before aristocratic power. “If all three perish, it can hardly be dismissed as a coincidence.”
If even Liston knew enough to mind his manners before authority, who was I to contradict him?
“Quite so,” I chimed in smoothly. “Let us wait and watch for now.”
“Indeed,” Sir Jamie said, grasping at straws. “The prisoner has not yet drawn his final breath, has he?”
“No, of course not,” I replied.
Though he was currently gasping like a landed fish. It was entirely expected. In a room saturated with volatile arsenic, every ragged breath he drew pulled more of the venom deep into his lungs. And beyond that…
I'm certain the real culprit is that wallpaper.
The peculiar, sharp odor wafting from the walls—far too acrid and sickening to be brushed off as mere damp mildew. Was that the deadly vapor? Miasma? Good heavens. Had I caught the 19th-century affliction myself, blathering on about 'noxious humors' and 'miasmas' like an antique quack?
“Guh… Khhhk…”
While my mind wandered, the prisoner confined in the center chamber was drawing what sounded like his final, rattling gasps. At that sight, the faces of the two men locked in the adjoining cells shifted with dramatic terror. Up until now, they had probably assumed they were being shoved into these bizarre rooms merely to be mocked or tormented. Had they possessed an ounce of wit, they ought to have realized something dreadful was in store the moment the victims' families were ushered in. But where would scoundrels like them find common sense? Far from having received higher education, it was safe to say every one of them was stone illiterate.
“Wh-what is this?!”
“P-poison! They’ve sprayed poison on us!”
“Aaargh! Let me out!”
Driven mad by panic, one of the prisoners threw himself against the far wall—pressing his entire body flat against the emerald-patterned paper. Of all the places to flee, he pressed himself directly against the very heart of the toxin. Perhaps the encroaching arsenic was already clouding his mind with feverish hallucinations.
“Ghk! Urrgh… Bleurgh!”
Having glued himself to the toxic wall, that wretch began violently vomiting as well. No doubt psychological terror played a part. Even if he couldn't see through the partition, hearing the man beside him moan in agony before suddenly falling deathly silent was enough to turn anyone's bowels to water. Often, what lurks unseen is far more terrifying than what meets the eye.
“You madmen! You bloody, demonic butchers!”
In contrast, the prisoner clad only in the green silk dress was still remarkably lucid. Strictly speaking, in terms of sheer contact with arsenic, the gown ought to have delivered a far more potent dose than mere wallpaper. It was hardly an exaggeration to say he was coated in pure poison from neck to ankle. And yet, seeing the difference, that foul-smelling gas seeping invisibly from the wallpaper seemed to be the deadlier, far more insidious assassin.
“Listen to that bastard screech,” the deputy superintendent muttered coldly.
The prisoner was wailing with desperate fury, crying out so piteously that an outsider might have wondered if we were the monsters here. But the deputy superintendent, who had personally handpicked these three from the darkest cells of Newgate, remained utterly indifferent.
“Think on what you’ve done, you vermin,” the deputy barked through the bars. “Whatever hell falls upon you, you’ve earned ten times over!”
“Even so! How can you do this to a man?!”
“To a man? Perhaps not. But to you? Perfectly fine.”
“You son of a bitch!”
“Mind if I crack him across the teeth?” the deputy asked, glancing back at us.
His words piqued our curiosity. We had only heard vague whispers of murder and rape, never the gruesome particulars. It might sound callous, but in Victorian London, rape and murder were as common as the morning smog. Murders were so dreadfully frequent that people openly joked more than half of the city's killers walked the cobblestones as free men. Too many cases simply dissolved into unsolved, forgotten files.
“What did he do to earn such hatred?” I asked.
“That fiend…” the deputy spat. “He raped his own comrade’s wife and slit her throat. When their infant child wouldn't stop crying, he butchered the babe, then drove a blade into his friend’s gut when he walked through the door.”
“Did the friend survive?”
“He had eight inches of cold steel rammed through his vitals! How in God's name could he survive?”
“Ah. Quite.”
He wasn't merely a criminal; he was an unmitigated monster. Watching men die before my eyes had stirred an uncomfortable ember of 21st-century guilt in my chest, a lingering squeamishness that refused to settle. But the moment I heard his transgressions, that guilt washed away as cleanly as rain on a slate roof. And when the deputy added that the other two locked in the cells were guilty of even fouler atrocities, I briefly wondered if we shouldn't have devised a far more agonizing demise.
Of course, being a civilized man of the modern era, I swiftly checked the dark thought.
Lord, forgive my sinful mind.
There. Repentance concluded. With a thoroughly unburdened conscience, I turned my attention back to the condemned men.
By now, the two surrounded by the wallpaper had fallen entirely still. They were dead. Or perhaps clinging to the threshold of deep coma—either way, death was inevitable. We certainly had no intention of treating them, and even if someone attempted to, 19th-century medicine would only hasten their demise. Medical dogma in this era dictated that poison must be vigorously purged from the flesh: bleeding the veins dry, purging the bowels with violent emetics, or having the patient inhale 'beneficial' vapors like mercury to counteract the toxin. It wasn't treatment; it was state-sanctioned execution under another name.
“Urp…”
And finally, a full six hours after the first wretch had begun to heave, the man wearing only the dress collapsed to his knees and began vomiting bile. It likely wasn't solely the dress that did him in. While we had the luxury of standing back near the drafty stairwell and stepping out for fresh air, he had remained trapped in the stagnant basement air the entire time. The volatile arsenic gas leaking from the adjoining chambers had gradually poisoned his lungs as well.
“All three have fallen,” Liston remarked quietly.
“Good God Almighty…” Sir Jamie stammered, his face draining of color. “Then… it truly was no coincidence?”
“It was not,” I replied.
“What have I done… What on earth have I done?!”
The proof was absolute. In the 21st century, establishing arsenic poisoning would require rigorous blood panels and toxicological assays, but here, seeing every man exposed to the pigment drop dead was proof enough for anyone. By rights, the mood should have turned triumphant.
“Justice has been served!”
“Thank you, gentlemen! Thank you!”
“Now… now my poor brother may finally rest in peace!”
The victims' kin wept openly with relief and gratitude. Yet Sir Jamie's face looked as though he were staring into the open gates of hell. For a fleeting second, I wondered if the haughty aristocrat was still clinging to some shred of pathetic pride, and I stared at him in disbelief. But seeing the false whiskers glued awkwardly to his cheeks—a pathetic attempt to conceal the patchy beard that had fallen out after Butcher Harry castrated him—my anger faltered into pity. In all of London's nobility, there was likely no soul more thoroughly wretched than Sir Jamie. Butcher Harry had truly deserved the rope.
“I… I sent rolls of that fabric to the Royal Household as a gift…” Sir Jamie whimpered, his voice cracking.
His confession obliterated whatever composure remained in the room.
“I did it out of purest loyalty…!”
“Quickly!” Liston roared, his medical calm vanishing instantly. “Send a rider to the palace this instant!”
“Right away, sir!”
“When precisely did you send it, my lord?!”
“Weeks ago! It was delivered weeks ago! Merciful heavens, what shall become of me?!”
“Damnation! Bring my horse! I shall ride to the palace myself!”
He had delivered that lethal green into the royal palace? Was the man attempting regicide?
Wait… Surely no one of vital importance has perished yet.
If my historical memory served me right, Queen Victoria ascended the throne in the late 1830s. Which meant the reigning monarch hadn't met his end prematurely. Or had he? In the original history, had Sir Jamie been castrated by a vengeful surgeon? I had no bloody idea. If this ridiculous butterfly effect somehow led to the King's untimely death… did that mean Queen Victoria, that enthusiastic patron of our bloody anatomical demonstrations, would claim the crown even sooner? Would that be… a stroke of fortune for us?
There was no way to tell. But at the very least, Sir Jamie had finally been forced to acknowledge that the brilliant green hue was pure, unadulterated venom. That wouldn't purge Scheele's green from London overnight, of course. When manufacturers knowingly churned out white phosphorus matches that rotted the jaws off their factory girls, human decency was hardly a priority. But far fewer people would welcome the green into their homes now. Of that, I was certain.
“A fortunate outcome,” Liston breathed, wiping his brow once the chaos began to settle.
“Indeed it is,” I agreed.
“Truly… had it not been for your sharp eye, Taepyeong, catastrophe would have struck. To think a lethal poison nearly became the height of fashion across the kingdom. One lives long enough to see the most extraordinary absurdities.”
“Yes… quite so.”
Hearing a Londoner marvel at the absurdity of the world, when London itself was the capital of all human madness, stirred a strange sense of irony. Was this what they called the passage of time? Regardless, as Liston said, it was a profound relief. We had narrowly averted adding another lethal plague to a city that was already a living purgatory.
Antisepsis is steadily taking root… Perhaps now I can finally take my time and look into effective analgesics.
A heavy weight seemed to lift from my shoulders. But as I took stock of our surroundings, I realized Professor Blundell was nowhere to be seen. The thought that he had slipped away home out of exhaustion never even crossed my mind. Whatever faults 19th-century surgeons possessed, their sheer, maniacal zeal could slap the complacency clean off any modern physician's face. It felt slightly morbid to think such thoughts with three corpses cooling in the cells behind us, but would a man like Blundell abandon a pivotal moment in medical history simply because his feet were tired? Never. He was a man who would rather drop dead in his boots.
“Where did Professor Blundell go?” I asked Liston.
“Ah… word arrived of an urgent confinement in the lying-in ward. He rushed off to attend the mother.”
“Ah, an obstetrics case.”
Just as I thought. He had sprinted off to see another patient.
Come to think of it, obstetrics has made tremendous strides as well…
Washing hands. Scrubbing them with compulsive, fanatical discipline! Thanks to that relentless routine, the mysterious scourge known as puerperal fever had practically vanished from University College Hospital. The midwives, who had always maintained a slightly cleaner habit than the gentlemen surgeons, were currently being drilled and tormented with chlorinated lime by our resident zealot of hygiene, Joseph. Naturally, the infection rate plummeted. The sheer terror of Joseph's scrub regimens had caused applications to our obstetrics department to dwindle slightly, but I had faith that the medical students would eventually see the light and return. Almost no one died of childbed fever under our roof anymore.
I would have loved to boast that maternal deaths had ceased entirely, but my conscience wouldn't permit such a lie. Obstructed labor still claimed far too many mothers and infants. London's maternal mortality rate remained horrifyingly, appallingly steep.
“Ah, Pyeong! Splendid timing, you’re back!”
“Pardon?”
Lost in thought as I stepped through the hospital doors, I was told Blundell had been searching for me all morning. When I found him, the professor offered me a radiant, beaming smile. He was drenched in blood from collar to cuff.
“The mother has hemorrhaged dreadfully,” Blundell said eagerly, his eyes alight with manic scientific fervor. “Lend me that intravenous infusion set of yours, won't you? I intend to give her blood directly.”
My stomach dropped through the floorboards.
Oh, for God's sake… A blood transfusion?!
It seemed the peaceful days of quiet, unhurried research would never arrive in this godforsaken century.