Montmorency on the Rocks [antikvár]

Chapter 1 Summer 1885: The Turkish Bath Doctor Robert Farcett had had a bad day. He had been looking forward to demonstrating his latest operating technique to an audience of medical students and hospital dignitaries. He had been confident that his new method of cutting and stitching round a gall bladder would reduce the time needed for the procedure and improve survival rates. He had been sure that he could break his own speed record from the first incision to the final closure of the wound. He had even permitted himself a slight bow to the gallery as enthusiastic applause greeted his arrival in the operating theatre. Within minutes everything started to go wrong. Had he slipped? Or had this patient some anatomical abnormality that made him more likely to haemorrhage? W^hatever the reason, the abdominal cavity had flooded with blood, Doctor Farcett's hands had slithered and fumbled in a hopeless attempt to reunite the arteries and veins, and after a struggle which left his clothes and the floor stained with gore, he had looked up from his lifeless victim to the silent crowd: some of them ashen with shock, others incapable of concealing their joy that the rising star of the London medical scene had made a fatal, and public, mistake.