Chapter 2 #2
“Pinch his foot,” Mrs. Franklin ordered, then lowered herself for one more puff. Nora obeyed, and his limp fingers opened like a five-pointed star bursting to life in the sky. He sputtered indignantly, purple face reddening as he let out an objecting wail.
“Oh, my heart.” Mrs. Franklin exhaled, her head dropping in relief. “He’s fine, love,” she reassured Betsy as she wiped away the white coating of vernix. “Sometimes they’re too stubborn to take their first breath and we have to make them.”
She delivered the child into Betsy’s arms while Nora pulled out her threaded needle to suture the cut. In her experience, if she worked quickly now, the mother’s exhaustion and joy dulled the pain.
It took another hour to deliver the placenta.
When all was settled, and the nervous father and grandfather brought into the room to watch over Betsy and bestow extravagant praise on the baby, Mrs. Franklin steeped some tea and pushed a cup toward Nora across the rickety table in the sitting room.
The room was too hot and stuffy for it, but Nora accepted the cup gratefully, if only as an excuse to quiet her nerves.
“You did well,” she told Mrs. Franklin. “I know it’s harder with someone you know and love, but blowing into the lungs worked.”
Mrs. Franklin closed her eyes. “A fair mite better than swinging them around. I swear on my life I once saw a doctor take a babe by his feet and swing him like a cat.”
Nora lifted an eyebrow, praying the unnamed doctor wasn’t Horace. He was never afraid to be unconventional. No, it couldn’t have been him. His favorite maxim was to treat things quietly. “Did it work?”
Mrs. Franklin’s nose twitched in disgust. “Aye. But I thought the head might snap off. Not to mention the baby could have slid straight out of his grip and gone flying across the room. I’d never let anyone try that on a baby in my care, especially not my sister’s grandson.
” Her eyes lowered and her words slowed.
“I felt like my sister was watching today, and I suspect she was as terrified as I was.”
“It was a difficult birth,” Nora agreed, collecting her thoughts as she indulged in the sweeter sips at the bottom of her cup. “Betsy will have a slow recovery, most likely.”
“I want to know more about those metal instruments you used,” Mrs. Franklin said, cocking her eyebrow. “I’ve only seen one doctor use them, but it was on a dead child.”
“They can save lives if you’re trained, but they’re dangerous in the wrong hands. I learned the use of these ones in Italy and taught Dr. Croft and my husband.”
Mrs. Franklin turned her cup around in her saucer. “Could you teach me?”
Nora stopped mid-sip.
She lowered the teacup, her mind racing through scenarios, laws.
She’d have to study the restrictions. Doctors and surgeons were protective of their privileges, and certain methods were only allowed to be taught in hospitals and universities by instructors approved by the Royal College of Surgeons.
She could lose her license if she misstepped.
Three years ago, she’d nearly cost Horace his, so she knew better than most the consequences of medical experimentation.
She’d conducted an emergency surgery under anesthesia to save a man’s life.
But she hadn’t been licensed. And she was female, so how could she possibly be considered a pupil or an apprentice?
It didn’t matter that she’d begun making anatomical drawings while still a child.
(Horace found her talent a convenience, but Mrs. Phipps, who’d largely taken charge of orphaned Nora’s upbringing, was the one who’d brought in a drawing master.) By the time she was twelve, Horace was using her as an assistant in preparing cadavers and, soon after, as an extra hand on living patients.
By the time she was twenty-two, she’d received as deep and full a medical education as any of his students.
If any other aspiring doctor had repaired that man’s hernia, he’d have been celebrated, but because she’d done it, the surgery was, in the words of one newspaper, “a travesty and a scandal.” The doctors of London had called for everything from censure to fines to stripping Horace’s licenses.
Some had even argued for prison. Luckily, Horace’s prestige and her hasty escape had deflected these scenarios.
She’d dodged their ire by absconding to Bologna, Italy, where they allowed females in their university, and earned her own medical license. She now worked quietly among the grudging London surgeons, winning a few over with her obstetrical expertise. But she needed to tread carefully.
“I’d very much like to teach you,” Nora said slowly, returning to Mrs. Franklin. “But…” She forced a smile. “I could get in trouble training you outside of a hospital.”
But then, she possessed a hospital owned by the most respected surgeon and lecturer in London.
While she studied in Italy, Horace had enlarged and renovated his home, building a small but modern hospital that he’d turned over to Nora the moment she returned to London.
He knew it would be the only place she was allowed to practice in peace—if one called the continual criticism and censure she received peaceful.
Horace’s name and reputation had always provided considerable protection. Even with her license, she relied on it every day. There might be a way to train Mrs. Franklin without getting either of them dragged into court, but only within the walls of her hospital at 43 Great Queen Street.
Her thoughts flashed to the letter tucked away in her instrument bag.
Magdalena knew. If they didn’t train more women, the door Nora had forced open for herself might be closed forever.
Magdalena had complained about fewer women training in medicine, but here in London, Nora was the sole female representative of the profession, and there were fewer midwives working every year, largely because of male doctors advocating that they were better skilled for the job.
Midwives were scorned by the scientific community as uneducated nuisances, useful only for poor patients who couldn’t afford real physicians.
As patients turned increasingly to doctors, midwives’ unique and undervalued skills—like Mrs. Franklin blowing into Betsy’s boy’s lungs—might be lost.
Nora looked away from Mrs. Franklin’s sharp brown eyes, frustrated by the latent intelligence crouching there. Mrs. Franklin had safely brought more children into London than scores of doctors combined. She’d performed flawlessly today. If she wanted to learn to use short forceps, she deserved to.
Magdalena would teach her, so why couldn’t she? While Nora intended to be careful, this looked like an instance where she needed to stick her foot in a door, forcing an opening again. “You know, I happen to be giving a demonstration lecture tomorrow at my hospital. I’d be happy to have you join.”
“Hospital instruction?” Mrs. Franklin straightened her shoulders, a grin creeping over her mouth. “If it were a lecture by some doctors I’ve seen at work, I’d save my time. But after seeing your forceps, I think you may have some tricks to teach me.”
Nora smiled, recalling the quick release of the baby’s tiny feet freed by Mrs. Franklin’s capable hands. Her fearless exhalation into the child’s mouth. “Perhaps we have things to teach each other.”