Middlemarch

Lydgate’s Fever Hospital Plans and Farebrother’s Guidance

Lydgate’s Fever Hospital Plans and Farebrother’s Guidance

When affairs have reached this stage, Lydgate opens the subject of the Hospital to Dorothea. The New Hospital, funded entirely by Bulstrode after everyone except Lord Medlicote refused to contribute, is to be reserved for fever in all its forms, with Lydgate as chief medical superintendent empowered to pursue comparative investigations, the other medical visitors having only a consultative influence. General management is to rest with five directors associated with Bulstrode, voting in proportion to their contributions, with the Board filling its own vacancies. Every medical man in the town immediately refuses to become a visitor. Undaunted, Lydgate arranges for a capable house-surgeon and dispenser, secures Webbe from Crabsley to come over twice a week, and calls upon Protheroe from Brassing for exceptional operations; he has given up his post at the Infirmary and is in high spirits. Mr. Brooke of Tipton has already pledged his concurrence and a yearly contribution, the sum unspecified but likely modest—a man perhaps defined as one who will originate nothing and always vote with Bulstrode. Later, talking confidentially in Farebrother’s study, Lydgate confides that he has a good opportunity and is pretty sure of income enough for his wants, and grows more convinced that it will be possible to demonstrate the homogeneous origin of all the tissues, following Raspail and others. Farebrother, puffing thoughtfully at his pipe, offers two pieces of advice born of experience: keep himself as separable from Bulstrode as possible, and take care not to get hampered about money matters. Lydgate takes the hints very cordially, though he would hardly have borne them from another man; he cannot help remembering some recent debts, but intends for now to keep house simply.

Lydgate’s Reflective Moment of Personal Contentment

Lydgate’s Reflective Moment of Personal Contentment

Many thoughts cheer Lydgate at this time, and justly so. A man conscious of enthusiasm for worthy aims is sustained under petty hostilities by the memory of great workers who had to fight their way not without wounds and who hover in his mind as patron saints, invisibly helping. That same evening, after chatting with Mr. Farebrother, Lydgate stretches his long legs on the sofa, throws his head back, and clasps his hands behind it in his favorite ruminating posture while Rosamond sits at the piano and plays tune after tune. Her husband only knows, like the emotional creature he is, that the melodies fall in with his mood as if they had been melodious sea-breezes. There is something very fine in Lydgate’s look just then—the placidity in his dark eyes, mouth, and brow that comes from the fullness of contemplative thought, the mind not searching but beholding, and the glance seeming to be filled with what is behind it. Presently Rosamond leaves the piano and seats herself on a chair close to the sofa, opposite her husband’s face.

CHAPITRE XLV.

The chapter opens with Rosamond finding Lydgate lost in thought during a quiet moment at home, and asking him what is distracting him, leading him to share the story of Andreas Vesalius that frames their subsequent conversation about his work as a doctor.

Rosamond Questions Lydgate’s Distraction

Rosamond notices Lydgate is deeply preoccupied, leans forward to ask him directly what is absorbing his attention, and prompts him to name the historical figure he is contemplating.

Lydgate Tells the Story of Vesalius

Lydgate reveals he is thinking of Andreas Vesalius, a pioneering anatomist from roughly 300 years prior, and explains that Vesalius could only advance anatomical knowledge by secretly exhuming bodies from graveyards and execution sites at night.

Rosamond Reacts to Vesalius’s Grave-Robbing Methods

Rosamond reacts with visible disgust to Vesalius’s grave-robbing tactics, says she is glad Lydgate is not Vesalius, and playfully warns him not to take up similar body-snatching, referencing the local anger over the Mrs. Goby case and his existing enemies.

Lydgate Recounts Vesalius’s Conflicts and Death

Lydgate explains that Vesalius faced fierce backlash from established medical authorities who adhered to Galen’s outdated theories, was slandered as a liar and “poisonous monster”, burned much of his work due to the harassment, and later died miserably after being shipwrecked while traveling to take a position at Padua.