Anatomy: A Love Story

Hazel dons a respectable dress and uses her privilege as a noblewoman to enter the Royal Edinburgh Anatomists’ Society. She expects Dr. Beecham to be angry that she attended his lectures in disguise, but he is fascinated instead and says, “When you’ve lived as long as I have, my dear, you take novelty wherever you can find it, and you are nothing if not novel” (145). She tells him everything about her family, her lifelong fascination with medicine, and her brother’s death. Having lost his own son, Beecham says, he can sympathize with her grief and with her motivation to practice medicine. However, he won’t force Dr. Straine to teach her.

Hazel proposes an experiment: If she can pass the Royal Physician’s Exam without attending the lectures, then Drs. Beecham and Straine will allow women to enroll in their class. Dr. Beecham accepts the wager, warns her that passing the exam without observing dissections will be all but impossible, and raises the stakes by promising her an apprenticeship at the university hospital if she succeeds. When they shake hands, Hazel observes that the doctor’s perpetually gloved hands are icy cold, and she glimpses something golden in his pocket.