#carbolising

[quill-of-thoth]

Letters from Watson: The Engineer's Thumb

Part 1: The Fun Bits

Hatherly is "exceedingly pale" and Watson mentions agitation as a cause even though he's already noted the possibility for excessive blood loss, and that railway cases are "seldom trivial." Hooray for Victorian medicine.

Fun fact: if you're fainting from blood loss you already need a transfusion. As of '89 we are two decades before safe (relatively) blood transfusions, when the ABO clotting factors were discovered. However, given the pain and stress, the cause of Hatherly's fainting doesn't have to be hypovolemic shock. Hatherly did just lose a thumb.

A carbolised bandage would have been a bandage treated with phenol (carbolic acid) as a disinfectant. I would not recommend raiding Watson's stash for it, as carbolic acid can cause chemical burns.

I cannot decide if Holmes' habit of smoking all the leftovers of his previous day's pipes is gross or endearing.

In two years, Hatherly has earned 27 pounds and 10 shillings. (Using the trusty Bank of England inflation calculator, which does not DO fractions of a pound, this is just over 2,870 modern pounds, or $3590) He is not having a great start.

Reminder that a guinea is 1 pound, one shilling. 50 guineas is almost double the amount Hatherly has ever made in his entire practice. And yet the thing that actually makes him suspicious is that the consultation is scheduled for late at night, after the trains have stopped running.

Fuller's earth is a white, highly absorbent clay, used as a chemical filter and absorber. Actual mineral composition may vary, but the use it was named for was when wool processors (Fullers) would use it to clean oils and dirt from wool. This step would have been prior to spinning or felting the fiber.

A hydraulic press would be extremely unnecessary for shaping any kind of clay, since it's... clay. The first time I read this I confused Fuller's Earth with Diatomaceous earth, which is powdery in structure and therefore might need some kind of squishing to be formed into a brick.

I was unable to find any town or city named Eyford, so I'm assuming it's another slightly fictionalized location.

The horse trick here has always struck me as a clever insight on Holmes' part: of course, he is already aware that this is a scam of some kind, and that the secrecy measures would include a lot of misdirection

[99point9percentwhump]

Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb

I entered my consulting-room and found a gentleman seated by the table. He was quietly dressed in a suit of heather tweed with a soft cloth cap which he had laid down upon my books. Round one of his hands he had a handkerchief wrapped, which was mottled all over with bloodstains. He was young, not more than five-and-twenty, I should say, with a strong, masculine face; but he was exceedingly pale and gave me the impression of a man who was suffering from some strong agitation, which it took all his strength of mind to control.

Doctor, perhaps you would kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb used to be.” He unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right out from the roots. 

“Good heavens!” I cried, “this is a terrible injury. It must have bled considerably.” 

“Yes, it did. I fainted when it was done, and I think that I must have been senseless for a long time. When I came to I found that it was still bleeding, so I tied one end of my handkerchief very tightly round the wrist and braced it up with a twig.”

 “Excellent! You should have been a surgeon.” 

“It is a question of hydraulics, you see, and came within my own province.” 

“This has been done,” said I, examining the wound, “by a very heavy and sharp instrument.” 

“A thing like a cleaver,” said he.

“An accident, I presume?”

“By no means.” 

“What! a murderous attack?”

“Very murderous indeed.”

“You horrify me.”

I sponged the wound, cleaned it, dressed it, and finally covered it over with cotton wadding and carbolised bandages. He lay back without wincing, though he bit his lip from time to time. 

- Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Pages 1-2)

  Let me pass, I say!’ He dashed her to one side, and, rushing to the window, cut at me with his heavy weapon. I had let myself go, and was hanging by the hands to the sill, when his blow fell. I was conscious of a dull pain, my grip loosened, and I fell into the garden below.

 “I was shaken but not hurt by the fall; so I picked myself up and rushed off among the bushes as hard as I could run, for I understood that I was far from being out of danger yet. Suddenly, however, as I ran, a deadly dizziness and sickness came over me. I glanced down at my hand, which was throbbing painfully, and then, for the first time, saw that my thumb had been cut off and that the blood was pouring from my wound. I endeavoured to tie my handkerchief round it, but there came a sudden buzzing in my ears, and next moment I fell in a dead faint among the rose-bushes.

 “How long I remained unconscious I cannot tell. It must have been a very long time, for the moon had sunk, and a bright morning was breaking when I came to myself. My clothes were all sodden with dew, and my coat-sleeve was drenched with blood from my wounded thumb. The smarting of it recalled in an instant all the particulars of my night’s adventure, and I sprang to my feet with the feeling that I might hardly yet be safe from my pursuers. But to my astonishment, when I came to look round me, neither house nor garden were to be seen. I had been lying in an angle of the hedge close by the highroad, and just a little lower down was a long building, which proved, upon my approaching it, to be the very station at which I had arrived upon the previous night. Were it not for the ugly wound upon my hand, all that had passed during those dreadful hours might have been an evil dream.

 “Half dazed, I went into the station and asked about the morning train. There would be one to Reading in less than an hour. The same porter was on duty, I found, as had been there when I arrived. I inquired of him whether he had ever heard of Colonel Lysander Stark. The name was strange to him. Had he observed a carriage the night before waiting for me? No, he had not. Was there a police station anywhere near? There was one about three miles off. “It was too far for me to go, weak and ill as I was. I determined to wait until I got back to town before telling my story to the police. It was a little past six when I arrived, so I went first to have my wound dressed, and then the doctor was kind enough to bring me along here. I put the case into your hands and shall do exactly what you advise.” -Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Pages 7-8)