View From a Kite by Maureen Hull Page A

rain and blowing wind, although there hasn’t been much of that lately. A good snowfall, sprinkled on a great heap of blankets, with me in the middle like a sausage folded in pastry, would be good for my health, according to the old texts from the days of the sanatoriums at Lake Sarnac. But it’s summer, so I’m shit out of luck.
    I’ve been continuing my research into tuberculosis cures through the ages in hopes of finding some long-forgotten nugget of medical wisdom, but it’s hard going, I tell you. I’ve just recently read that in the last century they encouraged tubercular young ladies to get married or even go so far as to have illicit love affairs because sex was supposed to be beneficial. It could save your life, they thought. They assumed the men wouldn’t need any encouragement to screw for the good of their lungs, I guess, because there’s no mention of any necessity to prod them along (take two harlots and call me in the morning?). This century they’ve changed their minds and sex-as-a-cure has gone out of fashion—hence the saltpetre and prim rules about open doors.

CURES AND THERAPIES, 1750–1950
    1.Joseph Priestly (1733–1804, discoverer of oxygen) attributed the cure of his daughter-in-law to the fumes of a cow barn. It is uncertain what the recommended number of inhalations per minute were, and how long it took to effect a cure. Priestly does not specify dairy barn, but one can assume.
    2. Drink the blood of slaughtered animals.
    3. From the neighbourhood pharmacy: Piso’s Cure For Consumption; Schenck’s Pulmonic Syrup; Hembold’s Buchu Extract; Radam’s Extract.
   These brightly coloured jewels-in-a-bottle contained herbs to stimulate the lungs, and a handsome shot of narcotics and/or alcohol to make the patient feel better and to promote a healing sleep.
    4. Hydrogen sulfide gas and medicated oxygen as inhalation therapy while the patient sat in a glass cabinet. The inexpensive version (see Anna Karenina) was to breathe noxious chemicals from a bottle with a paper cover with pin holes in it. The peasants, one supposes, smashed rotten eggs under their nostrils.

CHAPTER 19
    Edith is definitely getting worse. She’s troubled more easily, more often. Some days she’s quiet for hours at a time, but when she’s not she comes after me, plucking at my arm, her face all crumpled up and scared.
    â€œHe won’t stop crying,” she says. “Please help me. I can’t make him stop crying.”
    â€œIt’s okay,” I tell her. “I’ll take care of it.”
    I make her tea and soothe and distract her. An hour later she’s pulling at my clothes again. “Robert’s crying. I can’t make him stop crying and Papa is so angry.”
    That’s when I call for help and Elizabeth comes over. Sometimes she stays all night. George says it’s near time to put Edith into a home, but I won’t talk about it, I just leave the room. I think it will kill her. She won’t stay next door with them, either. When they tried it she got up in the night and wandered around the fields until she found her way back here. I know they’re just waiting until I go to the Royal Alex before they cart her off. They know I know. I want to scream at these people, tell them they can’t, they can’t, they can’t. But they look so upset all the time—so I can’t. I hate the way the world is. I hate the way things change and get old and fall apart and leave you.
    Elizabeth has got Edith to take a pill, and Edith is snoring in the downstairs bedroom. Elizabeth and I are having a cup of tea and some shortbread and not talking about Edith. Elizabeth’s making a little blue sweater.
    â€œDonna’s having a baby this fall,” she says, knitting little eyelets into the border for ribbon to run through. Donna is my second cousin, or first, once removed. Something like that. She lives a