house officer's report more convincing. No one at the Boston Lying-in {83} ever questioned Larch's decision to perform this abortion —no one ever mentioned it, but Dr. Larch could tell that something had changed.
He detected the dying of conversations upon his entering a room. He detected a general aloofness; although he was not exactly shunned, he was; never invited. He dined alone at a nearby German restaurant; he ate pig knuckles and sauerkraut, and one night he drank a beer. It reminded him of his father; it was Wilbur Larch's first and last beer.
At this time in his life Wilbur Larch seemed destined to a first-and-last existence; one sexual experience, one beer, one abortion. But he'd had more than one experience with ether, and the news, in the South End—that there was an alternative to Mrs. Santa Glaus and the methods practised 'Off Harrison'—traveled fast. He was first approached while standing at a fruüt-vendor's cart, drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice; a tall, gaunt woman with a shopping bag and a laundry basket materialized beside him.
'I ain't quick,' the woman whispered to Wilbur Larch. 'What's it cost? I ain't quick, I swear.'
After her, they followed him everywhere. Sleepily, at the South Branch, he was always saying to one colleague or another, 'It's not my turn, is it?' And always the answer was the same: 'She'says you're her doctor.'
A child of Maine, Wilbur Larch was used to looking into people's faces and finding their eyes; now he looked down, or away; like a city person, he made their eyes hunt for his. In the same mail with his catalogue of surgical instruments from Fred Halsam & Co. he received a copy of Mrs. W. H. Maxwell's A Female Physician to the Ladies of the United States. Until late in 187-, Mrs. Maxwell had operated a woma.n's clinic in New York. 'The authoress has not established her hospital simply for the benefit of lying-in women,' she wrote. 'She believes that in the view of the uncharitableness of general society towards the erring, it is fit that the unfortunate should {84} have some sanctuary to which to flee, in whose shade they may have undisturbed opportunity to reflect, and hiding forever their present unhappiness, nerve themselves to be wiser in the future. The true physician's soul cannot be too broad and gentle.'
Of course, Wilbur Larch saw that the South End was mercilessly full of evidence of uncharitableness towards the erring and that he had become, in the view of the erring, the sanctuary to which to flee.
Instead, he fled. He went home to Maine. He applied to the Maine State board of medical examiners for a useful position in obstetrics. While they sought a position for him in some developing community, they liked his Harvard degree and made him a member of their board. Wilbur Larch awaited his new appointment in his old hometown of Portland, that safe harbor—the old mayor's mansion where he had spent the half life of his childhood, the salty boardinghouse where he had caught his dose of life from Mrs. Eames.
He wondered if he would miss the South End: the palmist who had assured him he would live a long time and have many children ('Too many to count!'), which Larch understood as confirmation that, in seeking to become an obstetrician, he had made the right choice; the fortune teller who had told young Larch that he would never follow in his father's footsteps, which was all right with Wilbur Larch, who had no knowledge of lathes, no fondness for drink, and was sure that his liver wouldn't be the culprit of his final undoing; and the Chinese herb doctor who had told Larch that he could cure the clap by applying crushed green leaves and bread mold to his penis. The quack was almost right. The chlorophyll in the plants would destroy the bacteria that contributed to gangrene but.it wouldn't kill the dance couples in the pus cells, those lively gonococci; the penicillin, extracted from some bread molds, would. Years later, Larch would dream that if only Dr.
He detected the dying of conversations upon his entering a room. He detected a general aloofness; although he was not exactly shunned, he was; never invited. He dined alone at a nearby German restaurant; he ate pig knuckles and sauerkraut, and one night he drank a beer. It reminded him of his father; it was Wilbur Larch's first and last beer.
At this time in his life Wilbur Larch seemed destined to a first-and-last existence; one sexual experience, one beer, one abortion. But he'd had more than one experience with ether, and the news, in the South End—that there was an alternative to Mrs. Santa Glaus and the methods practised 'Off Harrison'—traveled fast. He was first approached while standing at a fruüt-vendor's cart, drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice; a tall, gaunt woman with a shopping bag and a laundry basket materialized beside him.
'I ain't quick,' the woman whispered to Wilbur Larch. 'What's it cost? I ain't quick, I swear.'
After her, they followed him everywhere. Sleepily, at the South Branch, he was always saying to one colleague or another, 'It's not my turn, is it?' And always the answer was the same: 'She'says you're her doctor.'
A child of Maine, Wilbur Larch was used to looking into people's faces and finding their eyes; now he looked down, or away; like a city person, he made their eyes hunt for his. In the same mail with his catalogue of surgical instruments from Fred Halsam & Co. he received a copy of Mrs. W. H. Maxwell's A Female Physician to the Ladies of the United States. Until late in 187-, Mrs. Maxwell had operated a woma.n's clinic in New York. 'The authoress has not established her hospital simply for the benefit of lying-in women,' she wrote. 'She believes that in the view of the uncharitableness of general society towards the erring, it is fit that the unfortunate should {84} have some sanctuary to which to flee, in whose shade they may have undisturbed opportunity to reflect, and hiding forever their present unhappiness, nerve themselves to be wiser in the future. The true physician's soul cannot be too broad and gentle.'
Of course, Wilbur Larch saw that the South End was mercilessly full of evidence of uncharitableness towards the erring and that he had become, in the view of the erring, the sanctuary to which to flee.
Instead, he fled. He went home to Maine. He applied to the Maine State board of medical examiners for a useful position in obstetrics. While they sought a position for him in some developing community, they liked his Harvard degree and made him a member of their board. Wilbur Larch awaited his new appointment in his old hometown of Portland, that safe harbor—the old mayor's mansion where he had spent the half life of his childhood, the salty boardinghouse where he had caught his dose of life from Mrs. Eames.
He wondered if he would miss the South End: the palmist who had assured him he would live a long time and have many children ('Too many to count!'), which Larch understood as confirmation that, in seeking to become an obstetrician, he had made the right choice; the fortune teller who had told young Larch that he would never follow in his father's footsteps, which was all right with Wilbur Larch, who had no knowledge of lathes, no fondness for drink, and was sure that his liver wouldn't be the culprit of his final undoing; and the Chinese herb doctor who had told Larch that he could cure the clap by applying crushed green leaves and bread mold to his penis. The quack was almost right. The chlorophyll in the plants would destroy the bacteria that contributed to gangrene but.it wouldn't kill the dance couples in the pus cells, those lively gonococci; the penicillin, extracted from some bread molds, would. Years later, Larch would dream that if only Dr.
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