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day, and frequently after each individual procedure; Alec Comrie was a workman, and a workman respects his tools. Above the table was a cabinet, containing bottles and vials — ointments and liniments, some alcohol, and a small supply of laudanum, though Mr Comrie did not set much stock by it, laudanum being of limited efficacy against substantial pain. He took the view that pain was the patient’s concern, to be coped with on a private basis.
    On the walls were anatomical drawings: a cross-section of the brain, and human figures with skin stripped away to reveal the inner organs. Mr Comrie was in the process of supplementing this collection as I watched from the doorway, hanging a framed drawing in a prominent position: a black-lead sketch by the surgical artist Charles Bell, depicting a gunshot wound of the scrotum sustained at the Battle of Corunna. Mr Comrie had treated several such scrotums himself. The injury was more common than you’d like to think, being normally sustained when Tom Lobster knelt with bits a-dangle to fire. He had found the drawing yesterday at a street stall in Holborn, and had exclaimed with heartfelt admiration.
    It was in truth superb. Bell’s artistry was like Mr Comrie’s own: detailed, meticulous, and appalling. The sketch was a close-up view, just thighs and abdomen, with the horribly swollen scrotum in the middle. Very much, indeed, like an immense fig in a still-life painting, except a fig will not normally have an entry wound on one side and an exit wound on the other, with a tail of fig-guts protruding. It had its own weird beauty; the question was whether it should be hanging on the wall.
    I asked this question gingerly. You were careful when you questioned Alec Comrie.
    He bristled. “What’s wrong with it?”
    Nothing, I assured him. Just — the wall of his surgery. Where patients would come, in a state of trepidation to begin with.
    Other surgeons had skeletons, he objected. Atherton had a skull.
    â€œStill,” I said. “A scrotum.”
    At length he gave a grudging nod. “Fair enough,” he conceded. “The ladies.”
    I had actually been thinking about the gentlemen. One look at that particular scrotum was enough to send you fleeing down the stairs to the gin-shop. But I didn’t push the point, and after a moment he took the drawing down again, setting it reluctantly on one of the chairs.
    â€œThey will come,” he said again.
    â€œThey will.”
    â€œA question of time.”
    â€œThat’s all it is.”
    â€œI will learn the trick of it.”
    He meant the skill that men such as Astley Cooper had. Atherton too. Both of them could radiate such empathy that patients breathed deep and unclenched their sphincters, at least until the instruments came out. When you went to Atherton’s surgery in Crutched Friars, you met with earnest reassurance. Here above the gin-shop was a growling Scotchman with a bonesaw.
    â€œI know my shortcomings, William,” he muttered. With a shame-faced look towards Your Wery Umble — as if he was letting me down. Which he’d never done, not once, in all the years we’d been together. And never would do, neither, in everything that was to follow.
    â€œI know my shortcomings, and I can change.”
    But of course he couldn’t. We never can, can we?
    That’s when we heard raised voices, down below. Missus Maggs, demanding the business of some newcomer, and a woman insisting that she must see the surgeon.
    â€œâ€™Ere, you can’t just barge . . .”
    â€œLet go of me!”
    A hammering of footsteps, and the woman came round the corner of the stair. Wiry and slight, her hair hanging wild. Great dark eyes in a narrow face. Too sharp-featured to be pretty, but almost beautiful nonetheless, in the way that a small fierce thing can have beauty. She was ragged from running, and her breath came in tearing gulps.
    â€œThey’ve done for him