Free The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd

he would look up at me, with no particular expression in his eye beyond that of calm observation. Eventually he spoke. “My father had an interesting apprenticeship. From the age of fourteen he worked for Dr. John Hunter. Do you know that name?”
    “Indeed. Very well.” Hunter’s reputation as a surgeon and anatomist had reached me even in Geneva, where his Natural History of Teeth had been translated into French.
    “Dr. Hunter was a great observer of the body, Mr. Frankenstein. He made it his profession.”
    “So I have read.”
    “His surgical work was second to none. My father has known him to remove a bladder stone in less than three minutes.”
    “Truly?”
    “And the patient did not die.” Armitage concentrated once more upon his plate, where he was now very deliberately mopping up the crumbs with a portion of bread soaked in wine. “My father still has the stone.”
    “The patient did not want it?”
    “No. Dr. Hunter called it treasure-trove.”
    “But what happened to the eyes?”
    “I told you. The patient was still alive. Much to his surprise.”
    “Not his. The other eyes that were preserved in water. I presume that they were taken from the bodies of the less fortunate.”
    Armitage stared at me with the same curiously dispassionate gaze. “If the patient has died in the operating theatre, then to whom does he belong?” I said nothing, believing that I had already said too much. “Dr. Hunter took the view that, having been entrusted into his care, the body was his responsibility. It became, in a sense, his property.”
    “I would not disagree.”
    “Excellent. I am speaking to you now in the utmost harmony of good companionship. These facts are not widelyknown beyond the confines of the medical schools.” My mouth had become dry, and I swallowed a glassful of the wine. “Dr. Hunter believed that the limbs and organs of the deceased patient were of more value to his students than to the soil in which they would otherwise lie. There was a young man, one of Dr. Hunter’s assistants, who had a particular interest in the spleen. So—” Armitage stopped, and surprised me with a broad smile. “As we say in Cheapside, Mr. Frankenstein, it passed under the counter.”
    “And your father had a particular interest in eyes?”
    “He had always possessed perfect eyesight. It was remarked of him at a very early age. He became interested in the subject, as boys do. I do not know if you have in your country the travelling telescope?” I shook my head. “They are set up in the thoroughfare, and for a small sum you can purchase their use for five minutes. There was always one in the Strand. As a boy, my father loved it. So by degrees he became interested in the relationship between the lens and the eye. Do you know that the eye has its own lens, as permeable as a gas bubble?”
    “I was aware of it.”
    “It is covered by an exceedingly thin and fine film of transparent substance that my father has named the orb tissue.”
    “Your father is an experimentalist, then?”
    “I do not know if that is the word, Mr. Frankenstein.” Armitage poured us both another glass of wine. “I will tell you another secret. There were occasions when the patient did not die, of course. That was a source of great satisfaction to Dr. Hunter. But it posed another problem.”
    “Of what nature?”
    “Scarcity, sir.”
    “I believe I understand you. Scarcity of corpses. The readies.”
    “It is not a subject that normally arises in conversation. But it was a constant topic among Dr. Hunter and his assistants.”
    “How did it resolve itself?”
    “You have heard of the resurrectionists, I suppose?”
    “Only by report.”
    “They are not much mentioned in the public prints these days. But they operate still.”
    I was acquainted with the activities of these grave-robbers, or “resurrection men” as they were more generally known. There had been occasional reports of their activity even in Oxford, but there had