The Secret Life of Dr. James Miranda Barry
By Ann & Ivan Kronenfeld

  MANCHESTER GUARDIAN

AUGUST 21, 1865

"A Strange Story - an incident is just now being discussed in British military circles, so extraordinary that were not the truth capable of being vouched for by official authority, the narration would certainly be deemed absolutely incredible. Our officers quartered at the Cape may remember a certain Dr. James Barry. He enjoyed a reputation for considerable skill in his profession, especially for firmness and rapid directions.

The gentleman in question pursued a legitimate medical education at one of our most prestigious universities and received its diploma. Passed through the grades of assistant surgeon and surgeon in various regiments quartered all over the globe and had acquired celebrity for skill as a surgical operator, ultimately achieving the rank of Inspector General of Hospitals, in his last post, the Dominion of Canada.

After retirement he settled in London, where in the month past he perished in the dysentery epidemic and upon his death was discovered to be a woman. The motive that occasioned and the time when commenced this singular deception, are both shrouded in mystery.

But thus it stands as an indubitable fact, that a woman was for forty years an officer in the British service."


CHAPTER I


"Pray, forgive me, Doctor," rumbled Surgeon Major Nigel, looking down at Pandora, whose diminutive size stood in startling contrast to the man's grand height and prodigious dimensions. He was well over six feet, but it was not his height alone which made such an impressive presentation. Everything about him was king size, his hands, his feet; even the mustache which dominated his rough-hewn face was oversized. "But I do find it quizzical that a fellow such as you would be wanting to join the Army Medical Corps."

"I'm not quite clear," Pandora said, "what you mean when you refer to me as 'a fellow such as you'?"

"Why, I only meant, doctor, that we seldom see people with constitutions, how can I say, as delicate as yours. But, that aside, it seems to me a man with your qualifications is surely confronted with infinitely more comfortable possibilities than those that would be provided by an army career."

"Tropical diseases, sir," Pandora retorted.

"Now I am the one who is confused," said the Surgeon Major, leaning on his desk, his powerful hands crossed in front of him.

"My rationale is really quite simple, sir. We English are conducting our affairs with increasing regularity in equatorial regions. This presents our men with quite a different circumstance from that to which the British body is accustomed. The diseases peculiar to these climes present to any physician a unique challenge to probe the unknown and unstudied."

"Well said, young man, and all to the common good. But you yourself must be aware that you present a figure incompatible with what is considered the standard military stock."

"Ah, Doctor," Pandora said, "an understandable observation. But if you will calculate my worth based on my credentials..."

"What is needed on the field of battle, young man, cannot be found in paper qualifications. Character, the kind born in a man's bones and gristle, is what is required in the officers of the Army Medical Corps. It seems to me," his fingers drummed on the painted miniature of three women whom Pandora assumed to be his wife and daughters, "that you, with your impressive background, could easily have a flourishing practice right here in London, comfortably catering to the hysterical maladies of the rich. Now wouldn't that be more suitable for someone like yourself than heading out like Saint Francis of Assisi to some remote corner of the globe?"

I'll grant you that your conclusions are quite logical, Surgeon Major, sir, but I am afraid that I would find the practice you most aptly describe tedious and boring. I realize full well that my physical presentation is not what one usually encounters in a military mode, but an individual's spirit cannot be so readily seen. A man can be large of bulk and sparse of soul. I wish to prove of what stuff I am made."

Dr. Nigel raised his eyebrows and began examining the young doctor's papers. In the pause, Pandora looked around the stark room. Just behind the Surgeon Major, set incongruously atop his instrument case, were six splendidly carved wooden soldiers, each one dressed in appropriate military attire. One was a British Grenadier, another an Irish soldier of James II, another a Scots Fencible in full plaid kilt, a Moor, a Roman with shield, and, lastly, a Gurkha with a wide blade kukri sword.

"Your vitae is impressive indeed, Dr. Barry," the Major said. "Pupil dresser to Sir Astley Cooper. Perhaps I have been making some precipitant assumptions. Why don't we proceed to the scale and we'll begin the examination. As a matter of fact, I am an Edinburgh man myself," he said with a friendly wink.

Pandora latched onto this commonalty and began to formulate a plan. She could see the tide was turning in her favor; the dolls, Edinburgh, she had it.

"Just seven stone you are," he said, making a notation. Pandora heard disappointment in his voice. "Step to the wall sir, let's have a measure. Just under the five foot mark. Well now, son" the major sat on the corner of his examining table, one leg dangling, "I must say with candor I have rather grave doubts whether someone of your scant proportion could withstand the rigors of foreign service. Particularly in the tropics..."

"Sir!" she cried, before he could continue. "These dolls are exquisite! I cannot take my eyes off them!"

"Oh, my collection," he said, looking up at them proudly like a father does his brood. "Well, thank you, thank you. It's just a small hobby I enjoy during my leisure."

"You mean, sir, these sublime figures were done by your own hand?"

"Well, yes, but it's not all that inspiring," Dr. Nigel said, a wave of embarrassment streaking his face.

"Sir!" Pandora said, "you are much too modest. Why, craft of such a caliber demands high approbation."

"I feel that you are a flatterer, sir. You are much too kind."

"May I be so bold as to request holding one?" Pandora asked.

"With pleasure," he agreed, taking one enormous step to the cabinet and exposing his massive back to Pandora as he retrieved a doll. "This is the one of which I am most proud." He handed it to her caringly. "An Indian Gurkha, one of the world's finest fighting men. This is the famous kukri." He pointed to the delicately carved weapon.

"Magnificent!" Pandora exclaimed, taking the figure and standing it upright on the examining table. "May I say, Dr. Nigel, if your skill with a scalpel is matched by your ability with a carving knife, then I am sure I am in the presence of one of England's finest military surgeons."

"Well, young man, I wouldn't be so bold as to declare such a statement. But I will admit to the pupil dresser of such a renowned surgeon as Sir Astely Cooper that it has been said, 'If you need to lose a limb, Old Doc Nigel is the one to have do.'"

"Dr. Nigel, did you perchance ever perform in the 'Dead House' at Edinburgh, a cesarean section?"

"Lord no, Sir!" Dr. Nigel exploded, "That's a procedure I wouldn't even perform on the deceased. Why, to think of tearing out from the womb a babe that God is withholding is pagan and barbaric. I'll have no part of it!"

"Aren't you forgetting the proverb," Pandora asked, picking up his Gurkha, "'Quem non dim pervasti postvesti illium occedesti', to neglect to save a person when it is in your power to do so, is to be an accessory to death. Major, we are speaking here of the only operation where two lives may be saved." Pandora moved with dispatch and grabbed a pillow off the examining table.

"Dr. Barry, I know of no one who has succeeded with this cruel procedure."

"That is only because we have all been cowards, standing around, wringing our hands like old women, instead of performing our duty as surgeons. Let me show you exactly what I mean." A whirlwind of efficiency, she took his carving knife from his desk, slit open the top of a pillow, and gently stuffed the Gurkha into the feathers. Then quickly she slid that inside an empty pillowcase.

"This is not a dilemma of technique, but a crisis of courage and indecision." She swung herself onto the table and lay down in the labor position, placing the Gurkha-impregnated pillow on her belly. "Doctor, bring your scalpel."

Mystified and intrigued by the goings on, the Surgeon Major secured one from his case. "Now," she instructed, "make a longitudinal incision on the outside of the rectus muscles."

She saw him look a bit stunned at the large feather-filled obtrusion. "Between the navel and the angle of the osillium," she encouraged. He bent forward and executed her instructions on the first layer.

"Now, Sir," she hardly gave him time to breathe, "divide the membrane adipose, about eight or nine fingers in length. There you would pass through the oblique and transverse muscles. Carefully," she warned from raised elbows, looking down on his work. "Now through the pertoneum, a small puncture must be made." He did just so into the pillow, at which point several goose feathers escaped.
"Excellent, Doctor! Further divide until the opening appears large enough to extract the fetus." Dr. Nigel, now fully engrossed, gently felt through the feathers, which began to fly every which way, until he found the doll. At this point, he victoriously pulled it from the pillow and with genteel dispatch presented it to Dr. Barry. "Well done, sir," said the patient. "Now would you suture, please'" Both doctors broke into a broad laugh.

"Well, blood and wounds!" Dr. Nigel said, feathers vibrating on his dampened mustache. "It does seem quite a simple matter."

"It is indeed, but only if done with such care and dispatch as yours."

"Thank you, doctor."

"Well, major," Pandora stood at a modified attention, "do you think the British Army could find use for someone the likes of me after all?"

"I must admit," the Surgeon Major said, "you are a most remarkable young man.


CHAPTER II


1794 had been a bad year for bread, wine and children. The soil of France nourished best chaos and blood, and all her citizens lived in fear of the great blade that instantly separated brother from sister, husband from wife, and mother from child.

The quiet river drew witness as it wound its way westward, bisecting Paris right from left. It swallowed the severed body parts of those tossed into it like unwanted rubbish. It cleansed itself of their blood with its current and in its twisting path to the sea it carried away their agonizing cries.

Under a bridge in a gentle bend of the river between the Garden of Tuilleries and the Champs de Mars lived a child alone and abandoned. It was dark and dank under the bridges that passed over the Seine. Even the sun was unwilling to share its warmth with the creatures who dwelt beneath. Fierce, red-eyed rats watched keenly in the darkness as little hands dropped bits of scavenged food into makeshift fires, which laced the humid air with heavy acrid smoke. Flying insects and giant cockroaches scurried from the light to darker, safer sanctuaries. And the passing Seine licked at the walls of the quay as if it hungered for the human waste deposited along its edges. It ignored the nocturnal screams of the abandoned children who huddled for safety under the bridges, only to be tormented in their sleep by the savage pictures of torture and dismemberment they witnessed by day.

From under one of these bridges a small red-headed urchin appeared in the hazy morning light. Stretching and shaking herself, catlike, she made her way to the edge of the quay and captured in her palms a trickle of water from a nearby drainpipe. Bringing it to her lips, she paused briefly to savor the wetness in her parched mouth. Then she examined the new patches of molted insect bites she'd acquired during the night.

Paris was filled with such orphans as this, casualties of changes they could not possibly fathom ....