“They're killers. Bodies just pile up here."
November 26, 2013 7:05 AM   Subscribe

The victim of the first big mistake I ever made was a gentleman to whom I had never been properly introduced (and whose name I still do not know) but who was possessed of three singular qualities: he was alone in a room with me, he was without his trousers, and he was very, very dead.
posted by Chrysostom (20 comments total) 46 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh my God:
The black lungs of heavy smokers I would weigh once, then squeeze under cold running water for fifteen minutes until they became baby pink and tripelike, and then weigh again: the difference in the two figures, often a couple of pounds or more, was the weight of the tar and nicotine that quite possibly was the killer.
That's nasty.

And what he says about the heavy fogs, I still associate a heavy, diesel-y smell (with accents of mist and fried food) with being in London twenty-odd years ago. Brings a smile to my face. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 7:23 AM on November 26, 2013


Hah! An excellent story! Thanks for posting it.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:24 AM on November 26, 2013


That was great and I never saw the ending coming.
posted by jquinby at 7:27 AM on November 26, 2013


Magnificent. Thank you.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:30 AM on November 26, 2013


Great stuff.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:34 AM on November 26, 2013


the pathologist assigned to work on the bodies I would prepare was a German, and she was named Fleishhacker, which sounded to Mr. Utton as though it should mean butcher, but actually didn't.

Not that it matters, but it does in fact mean butcher, particularly in Austrian German (although it's spelled Fleischhacker).
posted by jedicus at 7:39 AM on November 26, 2013 [3 favorites]


then squeeze under cold running water for fifteen minutes

Wouldn't there also be a lot of lung fluid in that figure?
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 7:43 AM on November 26, 2013


Wouldn't there also be a lot of lung fluid in that figure?

Yeah and further complicated by soaking up tap water?
posted by ian1977 at 7:49 AM on November 26, 2013


That was an oddly delightful piece of writing given the subject matter.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:52 AM on November 26, 2013


Yeah, there would be a degree of natural postmortem edema in the lungs, but smoker's lungs, even non diseased ones, are hella gross. Someone who has spent their lives in an urban environment will have a small amount of fringe around the alveoli from inhaled particulates- but smokers are immediately identifiable by the huge amount of black crud everywhere. Add to that the large number of these with big tumors and you have one of the most straightforward object lessons in pathophysiology you can get.
posted by monocyte at 8:34 AM on November 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


I still associate a heavy, diesel-y smell (with accents of mist and fried food) with being in London twenty-odd years ago. Brings a smile to my face.

Oh man, I thought I was the only one.
posted by scody at 8:41 AM on November 26, 2013 [3 favorites]


I highly recommend Winchester's The Professor and the Madman (original title The Surgeon of Crowthorne) about the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary.
posted by Etrigan at 8:46 AM on November 26, 2013 [5 favorites]


I highly recommend Winchester's The Professor and the Madman (original title The Surgeon of Crowthorne) about the writing of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Oh yeah. When this came up as a Quality Paperback Book Club selection, I found the subtitle irresistible: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. I was not disappointed.
posted by ogooglebar at 9:03 AM on November 26, 2013 [7 favorites]


I'd love to read a full autobiography by him. One of the most interesting parts of his Krakatoa book was the description of a summer on a Greenland geological expedition as an Oxford student. (The digression was connected to the main them by the fact that some of the rock samples they collected were used in studies establishing the reality of continental drift.)
posted by Azara at 9:37 AM on November 26, 2013


The Professor and the Madman

I keep meaning to read this and I never remember to do so. It is literally 3 feet away from me right now so I guess I know what I will be doing later this afternoon.
posted by elizardbits at 9:41 AM on November 26, 2013


Strange; my book club (including me) found The Professor and the Madman to be terrifically, surprisingly boring. I'm glad that others appreciate it.

This story, however, was wonderful! There are so many gruesome-seeming details in life, things that are necessary but remain hidden -- everything from sausage-making to autopsies. And people don't get upset about the actual process, they get upset about the rare occasions when the process is revealed. If they took the time to consider how things must be done behind the scenes, they would have known it was something distasteful. But instead, they just don't think about it. It's so interesting to me that the faux pas isn't in doing the thing; it's in accidentally allowing the outside world to know what's been done.
posted by vytae at 10:28 AM on November 26, 2013


> Strange; my book club (including me) found The Professor and the Madman to be terrifically, surprisingly boring.

I hated his The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. I haven't read The Professor and the Madman, nor am I likely to, but the first commenter on that post wrote "Some well-meaning family members gave me The Professor and the Madman for Christmas the year it came out, and I couldn't read past page three."
posted by languagehat at 10:38 AM on November 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


I enjoyed this story but found Krakatoa to be a strangely painful read even though I was interested in the subject matter. Something about his style didn't go over right with me.
posted by threeants at 12:22 PM on November 26, 2013


Good read.

I guess you either like The Professor and the Madman or not. IMO, the writing style was a bit dry, but the story was fantastic.
posted by BlueHorse at 12:27 PM on November 26, 2013


Anyone interested in the general subject might be interested in this piece by Brooke Magnanti, written long before Belle de Jour. I think I originally read it linked from here, so full circle.
posted by Grangousier at 1:14 PM on November 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


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