The Hospital That Boiled Its Sheets: Vienna, 1847
The Hospital That Boiled Its Sheets: Vienna, 1847 — a science story. 10 illustrated pages, narrated, free to read on Wonder Science.
Page 1
The front wheel of the dead-cart dropped into a flooded rut with a crack like a gunshot, and the whole bed lurched sideways, six plain coffins sliding toward the mud-slicked boards and the open gap in the rail. The stocky bull-necked man threw his bleached forearms under the axle and roared for help, and the beanpole boy scrambled through the muck on his clogs to wedge his bony shoulder beside him, both of them heaving until the iron rim groaned up out of the ooze. On the driver's bench, a bundle let out a thin wail, and the short barrel woman lunged up on her toes, blackthorn stick tucked under her arm, to catch the wrapped newborn as it was thrust down to her. The stooped giant in the stovepipe hat steadied himself against a lime tree, lifted his silver ear trumpet, and began counting the lids aloud, one through six, over the creak of straining wood and the suck of mud, St. Stephen's spire grey and distant above the rooftops.
Page 2
The woman went over the iron bedstead's rail like a dropped sack, knees first, and then she was crawling, the bloody sheet still twisted around one ankle and dragging behind her across the boards. She hauled herself forward by her elbows, inch by inch, toward the far door where the midwives' side lay quiet and clean. "She means to birth over there, not here," Rosalia barked, already moving, planting the blackthorn stick and levering herself down beside the woman's shoulders. Semmelweis got an arm under the woman's ribs and together they lifted, her whole weight sagging between them, back toward the bed. Franzl, scrambling out of the way of flailing legs, caught the basin stand with his hip and sent the tin basin skating off its ledge, water sheeting across the floorboards in a bright fan. He went down on one knee trying to catch it and missed. Behind them the cellar door banged and a file of students tramped in, coat-sleeves rolled, hands grey with the dead-house still on them, stepping carelessly through the spreading water toward the beds.
Page 3
The knife jumped. A student's blade, meant to part muscle from rib, skated sideways off bone and opened Kolletschka's left forefinger to the white of it. Blood sheeted down across his knuckles before he even cried out. He staggered back against the zinc-cold slab, his tall stooped frame folding, and the ear trumpet at his hip swung loose and clattered to the sawdust floor. Franzl lunged to catch him, clogs skidding, and in the same motion knocked the lantern from its hook; it hit the sawdust and flame leapt up blue-yellow. He stamped and stamped, wooden soles thudding, until the fire died under his heel. Semmelweis was already there, seizing Kolletschka's bleeding hand, folding a rag hard around the wound and clamping it shut with both scalded fists. Rosalia snatched up the fallen trumpet, wiped it on her apron, and pressed it back into the old man's grip. "Hold still, Herr Professor," she barked, "or you'll lose the finger entirely." Kolletschka only nodded, grey-faced, breath coming short through his nose.
Page 4
The rain came down in grey ropes across the Fifth Courtyard, hammering the clipped limes and drumming on the arcade tiles. The stooped giant staggered under his armful of admission registers, his bony legs buckling without warning, and he pitched sideways into the flooded cobbles. The ledgers burst from his arms, pages fanning open and sailing across the puddles like loosed birds. Semmelweis was first to him, dropping to his knees in the running water, shouting for the stretcher kept under the arcade. Franzl came pelting barefoot in his clogs, dragging the canvas stretcher free of its hooks, and together they rolled the long body onto it, the bleached hands gripping one side while the boy's raw red fists gripped the other. Rosalia waded in after the scattering pages, hooking them toward her one by one with the knobbed blackthorn stick before the gutter could swallow them, stamping her wooden soles against the current. Water streamed off every face. The stretcher poles creaked as they lifted him clear of the flood, his stovepipe hat floating free beside the pump well.
Page 5
Rosalia drew the sheet back and the stooped tall body lay bare on the zinc table, waist-high, cold under the skylight's grey glass. Semmelweis stepped close, his notebook open in one scalded hand, and bent over the opened chest where the ribs had been spread. Pus sat white and glistening in pockets along the lung, the same ruin he had drawn a hundred times in dead mothers' bellies. His hand shook; the notebook trembled against the wound. He stumbled back against the specimen rail, and a shelf jar toppled, struck the boards, and burst — spirit and a pale coiled thing sliding across the floor in a wave that lapped every pair of shoes. Franzl leapt sideways to keep from the glass. Rosalia planted her stick and steadied the rocking rail with her shoulder before more jars went. Semmelweis knelt among the shards, matching page to wound with a shaking finger, unable to look away.
Page 6
The rope ran taut over the hatch-lip, and Semmelweis threw his weight back against it hand over hand, boots skidding on the wet flags. Franzl braced below, shoulder under the rising cask, calling up through the steam that it was catching, catching — then the fibre scorched through where it scraped stone and the whole barrel dropped the last three feet, bursting its hoops on the flagstones in a white chest-high cloud of lime. Both of them reeled back coughing, waving the cloud from their faces. Through it, unannounced, came Professor Klein, cane under his arm, walking straight into the drifting powder so that his black coat and his scarlet ribbon went ghost-grey to the knee before he even understood what had hit him. He stopped dead, slapping at his sleeves. Behind them all, Rosalia tipped the first basketload of sheets hissing into the boiling copper, not even turning to look, her stick hooked over the rim to steady herself as steam rolled up around her forearms.
Page 7
The plank went down across the stair like a bar flung over a gate, knee-high, and the bull-necked man was already on the student before anyone could pass it. He caught both wrists, thin as broomsticks, and drove them down into the basin of chlorine water waist-high on the landing, holding them under though the boy yelped and tried to twist free. "You will stink of it before you touch a woman," he said, teeth set. Then the cane came whipping sideways — the stout man in the scarlet sash hooked the basin bracket clean off the stone wall, and the whole flood of lime-water went sheeting down the steps in a grey tongue. The boy dropped to his knees at once, scrabbling the bracket up off the wet stair, mouth full of nails, hammering it back into the wall with the heel of his fist for want of a mallet. Above them all the broad barrel-shaped woman shouldered past and up, a tower of boiled sheets stacked higher than her winged cap, picking her way round the spreading water without once losing a sheet.
Page 8
He climbed onto the chair-seat, knees level with the lectern's brass rail, and let the roll fall from his bleached hands. Fourteen feet of chart unspooled down over the lectern and kept going, slapping flat across the floorboards in a cascade of columns and red ink. Before the applause could start Klein was already moving, grabbing the bottom edge in both fists and wrenching it sideways in one tearing stroke that split the chart diagonally, corner to corner. The torn half slid loose and the rest of the roll toppled off the lectern, spinning toward an overturned inkwell on the front bench. Franzl went down on his knees and dived full-length across the aisle, catching the roll on his forearms an inch short of the spreading black puddle. Rosalia's blackthorn cracked twice against the bench rail, sharp as pistol shots, and the muttering rows went quiet. "Count the dead on your own chart, Herr Professor," Semmelweis said from the chair, not moving. Klein held up the torn half like a trophy. "I count insolence." "Two in a hundred," Semmelweis answered, "against yours."
Page 9
The chute above the ward mouth was taller than a man standing, and it spat straw mattresses down one after another, each landing with a dusty thump on the pile already burning waist-high in the yard. Semmelweis drove his fork again and again into the stack, tossing bedding into the flame, sweat cutting lines through the soot on his bleached forearms. A gust off the tower wall caught a scatter of burning straw and flung it against the stone, and Franzl came running with a sheet dragged dripping from the trough, beating the fire flat against the wall with his whole long body swinging. Rosalia knelt by the slate propped against the Narrenturm's iron-barred door, chalk scratching: two in a hundred. Klein arrived at a waddle, took a nail and a small hammer from his waistcoat pocket, and drove his notice into the door's wood beside her slate without a glance at the fire or any of them, then turned and walked off across the yard.
Page 10
Cart after cart came jolting down the river track and tipped its load of boiled linen onto the meadow grass, and the women fell on it, shaking out each sheet to its full span and pegging the corners flat, until the slope below the vineyard terraces was white as far as the water. Rosalia sat heavy on an upturned basket, a living newborn bundled against her apron, rocking it while she bit a wooden peg between her teeth. A gust off the Danube caught a loose sheet and lifted it whole, ballooning it down the hill; Franzl kicked off his clogs and went pelting after it barefoot over the wet grass, arms flung wide, and threw himself flat to pin it before it reached the barges. Semmelweis stood thigh-deep in the rinsing trough, forearms sunk to the elbow in grey water, wringing out linen fold by fold, and paused to look back at the small far spire of St Stephen's standing over the plain.
About this story
- Audience: general readers
- Format: 10 illustrated pages, narrated, free to read on Wonder Science
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