#mechanomorphosis

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“The necessity for Canadian industrial competitiveness also spurred the establishment of the Honorary Advisory Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, intended to strengthen the "important relation" among science, industry, and national welfare. Imitating British wartime efforts with an eye to gauging the equally-vital relationship between industrial efficiency and workers' health, the Council devised an Associate Committee on Industrial Fatigue in 1919. Composed largely of physiologists, it would play an advisory and investigative role much like that of its parent body. Its mandate was expressly "to make the knowledge and experience of Medical Science, as it bears on industrial health and efficiency, available for all industry." It would assist employers to increase production by reducing lost time, labour turnover, preventable illness, and "unnecessary hardships of working conditions." Offices were to be established in "all the chief industrial centres." Only one ever opened, at the University of Toronto, home of its chair, Dr. J.J.R. Macleod of the Department of Physiology.

Regulating human machinery necessitated scientific research and experimentation as much as did the invention and improvement of actual machines. In the immediate post-World War I years, scientists and medical researchers worked on the elimination of fatigue, regarded as the final defect of human machinery, the one last boundary to all-out efficiency and supreme productivity, to true machine status. No longer the inevitable, normal outcome of physical and mental labour, fatigue, too, was pathologized. More than a source of ill health and inefficiency, fatigue represented deviation from the mechanical ideal proclaimed normative for all rightful citizens of the modern industrial order. Illness and inefficiency exemplified the body's stubborn resistance to progress, namely, to the industrial-capitalist imperatives of increased productivity and profit. Thus the bodily inefficiency of the working class, clearly signified by the term "industrial fatigue," became another of the social body's sundry degenerative ailments, impeding progress at the very least and foreshadowing devolution at the worst. 

 The fatigue issue was initially adopted by reformers combatting exploitative working conditions. But it was quickly grasped by "Taylorites" aiming to enhance output through a scientifically-ordained exploitation that pushed bodies past the limits of physical endurance. In North America, the 1920s marked the heyday of Taylorist management, behaviourist psychology, and industrial fatigue research, all three premised on "conditioning" or regulation of the human machine, body and mind. The decade opened to the social strains of postwar readjustment and industrial unrest, typified in Canada by intensive labour organization and strike activity. If war made government and industry keen to upgrade productivity, labour's postwar propensity to organize and resist made the issue of worker management all the more critical. Where "fatigue" originally referred simply to the physiological changes leading to muscular inefficiency, its meaning now expanded to allow for the scientific delineation of optimum hours and conditions of work.

The Committee's efforts to organize research into industrial fatigue were furthered by the development of physiology, or "physiological hygiene" in the medical parlance of the day, at the University of Toronto. By 1919 the Toronto School of Hygiene was offering undergraduate and graduate instruction in "industrial hygiene," the umbrella term that encompassed an infinite variety of work-related health difficulties to be addressed for efficiency's sake. Particularly notable in the immediate postwar years were the fatigue studies conducted there by Charles Best, about to be acknowledged as part of the team that invented insulin. Best wanted to make physiological hygiene a vital aspect of preventive medicine, in the interests of maintaining the body's organs at "their maximum efficiency" while also maximizing the body's adaptations to its environment. 

Among other projects, Best conducted electrical timing experiments on athletes to measure both their peak muscular efficiency and the impact of fatigue on their performance. In keeping with the time-motion objectives of scientific management theorists and all the productivity-conscious of the nation, the most important conclusion of such studies was that, "as a subject [became] better-trained for any particular exercise, superfluous movements [were] eliminated." The human result, as fervently hoped and much expounded, was that "the subject certainly works more efficiently." 

Best, too, employed machine analogies to explain the process: "the muscle has been compared to a battery. Both are so constituted that they can discharge very rapidly a great deal of energy - in violent muscular contractions or in starting a car - and this expenditure can be made good slowly during rest after exertion, or during the time the car's engine is running." He surmised that human beings are about 25 per cent efficient. Consequently, more information about the process of training, the factors producing fatigue, and the recovery process, "could greatly increase our bodily efficiency, to good performance in sport or on the job." 

By the 1920s industrial fatigue had become the leading area in applied physiology, as researchers in western nations set their sights to studying the physiological impact of labour, its conditions and hours. A "social problem of national significance" had urged scientific experts out of their clinical role and into the mainstream of social and political influence, transforming the factory into their laboratory, making science the link between industry and humanity. 

 The idea of fatigue had a broad impact on physiology, on medicine more widely, and on psychology. It was a concept so amorphous and encompassing that it could protect the fluid boundaries between the "moral" and the scientific to good effect. Scientific experts aspiring to social power could then deliver moral judgements as objective knowledge. From the beginnings of research into bodily efficiency, moralistic notions connecting fatigue to physical laziness, mental lassitude, and the absence of self-discipline - all integral to the middle-class moral core - were the subtext of scientific discussions. 

Because "the mental and moral dimensions" made human machinery unique, physiological and psychological alignment were crucial to bodily efficiency. Alcohol, for example, was seen to "lessen the muscular power of the individual," and to "paralyse" the nervous mechanism, spurring a related moral/physical indolence, and eventually stopping the machine altogether. Modern science would uncover the objective laws to make bodies function in regular, predictable, mechanistic fashion. Subjective feelings - such as the individual's "natural" response to the labour of his or her own body, or the compulsive need for emotional solace offered by alcohol and other "deviant" drugs and activities - were objectified. They became social and medical problems requiring public regulation. 

It is no coincidence that Prohibition and successively more precise statutes defining "normal"  sexual relations marked the 1920s. Such "puritanical initiatives," Gramsci argued, served the purpose of preserving, outside of work, "a certain psycho-physical equilibrium which prevents the physiological collapse of the worker, exhausted by the new method of production." 

The short-lived Committee on Industrial Fatigue conducted a "Survey of the General Conditions of Industrial Hygiene in Toronto." Published in 1921, the survey is remarkable largely for its narrowness of scope and impressionistic findings, which belie both the scientific purpose and social scientific methodology it was supposed to represent. Investigation was conducted by personal visits to 76 Toronto plants; the investigator was "entirely dependent on the courtesy of the managements concerned," none of which are specified. The personal statements of managers were "supplemented where possible by a general and necessarily cursory inspection of the premises." 

 The surveyors discovered that little effort was being extended to industrial hygiene. There was a disheartening lack of management recognition of "its full importance as a factor in commercial prosperity." The few existing corporate welfare schemes were aimed at "keeping the man on the job" and preventing discontent rather than "as a means of maintaining health and efficiency." Managers appeared unwilling to believe that the "good working conditions" essential to good labour relations were "not vague and indefinite," but could be "accurately deter mined by science, through knowledge of the laws which govern the human body." They balked about improved working conditions because they questioned the degree of their own responsibility respecting the health of their workers. Of what use were any such employer efforts "if the same factors are bad in the home and their effects intensified by absence of personal hygiene?" 

 It was also evident that health considerations had not "played a prominent part in determining the hours of labour," most firms still demanding a 48-hour, 6-day work week. For organized labour, the debate over hours was taking on an urgency not experienced since the movement for late 19th-century factory legislation. Now, mechanization of production increased output while shortening the time required for quotas to be met. The resulting fatigue, trade unionists contended, "lessened vigour and vitality." 

"Speeding-up" made workers susceptible to a vast catalogue of physical, mental and moral ills, including "predisposition to disease, industrial accidents, lessened moral resistance, drinking, dope addiction, premature death, infantile mortality, industrial strife, demoralization of family life, loss of interest in church and community, and removal of all ambition and desire for self-improvement." The hazy definition of fatigue actually gave workers a useful scientific concept to employ in their own right, to protect and promote their own interests against those of machines and management. For workers, the question was whether the industrial system needed a "new morality" that would permit "man to become master of the machine," thereby giving to workers "that leisure and comfort which...should accrue to us" through a shorter work week.

Workers' attempts to revise and modernize the work ethic to their own benefit were counterbalanced by stronger social forces. From the side of capital, supported in this instance by medicine, shorter-hours legislation added to the costs of produc tion while encouraging "results which do not make for improvement of the morals of the working classes...events have shown how readily the working men and 78 women of this country succumb to the influence of leisure." A great many "inefficient" workers were physically-defective or diseased at the moment of hiring, and "weak material to start upon only means a subsequent breakdown and replacement." 

Not surprisingly, the fatigue investigators found managers generally agreed that there was "no question" of fatigue being caused by too long hours or too strenuous work. The majority of workers were simply not working up to capacity, "and owing to the high wages prevailing, were able to take time off at will." The few available absentee records indicated "a very high proportion of absence for minor disabilities," including, as was somehow surmised, "a considerable amount of absence for personal reasons." 

 Managers also contended that "unsettled postwar conditions" accounted for the "abnormally high" absenteeism [estimated to be 5 to 10 per cent per day]. But was the alleged "general slackness" the result of high wages, "out of all proportion to the cost of living," which made erratic worker attendance financially possible, as employers charged? Or did the high rate of absence actually point to overwork and ill health in the labour force? That workers were overpaid and could take time off at whim and at will is neither supported by the survey's own findings, nor by other official statistical studies of wages and prices during the 1920s. The latter indicate a contrary picture: nearly half the Canadian labour force could not provide for the necessities of life in a period of overall prosperity.

Broader trends in the postwar history of labour and class relations hint at reasonable explanations for high absenteeism [if we take management estimates at face value]. Even doctors occasionally recognized the validity of labour complaints. The Canadian Practitioner editorialized that, in a large proportion of the strikes taking place during 1919, the watershed year of labour unrest, "the working hours have been excessive, and, as a consequence the endurance of the workers has been overtaxed without proportionate increase in the output." The editors cited the studies on fatigue 81 performed by the War Committee in Great Britain to support this correlation. Despite the survey's express purpose and the nature of current physiological theories, the idea of adjusting hours of work to the physical capacity of workers did not arise, or at least was not acknowledged by either management or the scientific team itself. 

There is no indication of the explanations provided by workers for their absenteeism, much less of the predominance of particular reasons. Nor do we learn anything about the nature of the workforce itself, its age and gender composition. We can make a few reasonable speculations, however, given the context that we do know. Most young workers entered the factories at the legal age of school-leav ing, which was 14 years at that time. Due to the toll taken by war on those of military age, the workforce contained a disproportionate number of very young workers, workers over 40, and perhaps health-impaired returned veterans. These groups were more inclined to register bodily the impact of difficult working conditions. It is also likely that war widows with children, or mothers with war-incapacitated husbands, were not only taking up factory labour - consequently a double workload with its related health repercussions - but also had familial considerations that increased their absenteeism.

It is possible that absenteeism was a method of coping with job-related stress, resorted to at the onslaught of various bodily symptoms, especially in plants where the intensive assembly-line system was in effect. The investigators' own testimony regarding the impact of this mode of production on both workers and their product suggests its pressured and enervating effects: 

Where a number of employees are stationed along the carrier [power-driven assembly line], each with a separate piece of work to perform, the rate of speed is determined largely by the slowest worker. These workers are usually employed at piecework rates, so that any one individual retarding speed unduly finds himself in difficulty with other employees...an opportunity to measure the extent of spoiled work, due to what appeared to be excessive speed, is presented here. 

The investigators also noted the high level of noise and vibration, but adopted the employers' view that "the workers get accustomed to these," whatever the physical manifestations entailed. Later studies demonstrated that such worker accommodation/adaptation to pressure and noise did have measurable, cumulative, negative effects on health. A 1939 study, for example, revealed that only 28 of 75 machinists tested had normal hearing. 

By that year, the Director of the Ontario health department's Industrial Hygiene Division could point to a Toronto factory survey suggesting that rapidly-repetitive fixed-pace operations increased sickness, "more probably associated with their fixed pace than with their speed," the most important controlling factor being "the extent to which the machine dominates the process." The issue is not their lack of knowledge, in 1921, about these important correlates of workplace health, but the seeming willingness of scientists to accept unquestioningly these self-serving managerial impressions. 

Finally, there is the intriguing possibility that, in some small measure, worker absenteeism was a form of resistance, an individual "strike" against long hours, pressured and monotonous mechanized labour, management tyranny, and wages that did not allow the 1920s to roar for many Canadian workers. During the interwar decades, labour unrest and the rise of leftist political movements were met with fervid business commitment to mechanization, scientific management, and all-out technocracy. If workers were increasingly regarded as the human machinery of production, withdrawal of their bodies from the process was a form of industrial sabotage analogous to the deliberate removal of a cog, wheel, wire, or other component part.

The Toronto survey is most revealing of contemporary ideas and ideals in what it does not consider, in the interpretations and speculations that its participants did not make. We are left with the sense that management impressions about "abnormal absenteeism" had more to do with labour/capital antagonism in a particularly antagonistic historical moment than with the unprecedented rise in the workers' standard of living, whatever the scientific tone and rhetoric of "systematic" investigation. The tug-of-war over the "living wage" and better working conditions underpinned the managers' assessment of absenteeism, and their judgement that workers were overpaid and lazy.”

- Cynthia Comacchio, “Mechanomorphosis: Science, Management, and "Human Machinery" in Industrial Canada, 1900-45,” Labour / Le Travail, Vol. 41 (Spring, 1998) pp. 56-62

#industrial worker #research committee #research survey #industrial management #industrial relations #fatigue #fatigue studies #school of hygiene #mental hygiene #human machinery #mechanomorphosis #scientific management #birth of the technocratic state #capitalism #capitalism in canada #academic research #canadian history #working class struggle #mechanization #taylorism #fordism

[mechanomorphosis]

You needn't make such ludicrous insinuations, my boy. No one, least of all the board, thinks you are insane. All they'd like is for you to appear before a panel headed by Dr. Harkness, along with a few of the university's neurological and psychological faculty before you return to teaching. I'll be candid, professor. They did not say as much during the meeting, but they are set upon this course and they are affording you the dignity of appearing before them voluntarily. Just grant them this one indulgence and you'll be back to teaching in no time!

Miles Henstridge, Junior Member in Honorable Standing of the Dathart University Board of Regents

#steampunk #parts #mechanomorphosis #larva #two #entry #writing #fiction

[mechanomorphosis]

Ileana's Hands

For as much as I admire the Lady Doctor's intellect, it is her hands at which I marveled today. They are such tiny, fragile things that one might not think the doctor capable of the mechanical aptitude she possesses. Yet, I should warn any who might consider underestimating her that they will proven quite in error!

Yet, today's meeting did not come without what I feel was undue delay.

Yet, today's meeting did not come without what I feel was undue delay. The doctor insisted upon waiting, in her words, "another few days, at most" before coming to call, as she did not wish to waste my time doing so without the proper pieces needed to repair my arm. No amount of assurances that I should hope to share her company even without the repairs would assuage her. I could not help but wonder that she did not value my company as greatly as I hers.

This thought gnawed at me the entire week prior to our meeting, until by the time she arrived, I had grown bitter at the mistreatment, and resentful of thoughts of her. In fact, I had considered quitting the town entirely and returning home to tinker with my arm on my own.

When she arrived at Mulrainey House in her burgundy dress and carrying her pale gold parasol in one gloved hand and leather-bound toolkit in the other, all such feelings were cast aside in an instant. I welcomed her in and instructed Miss Jameson to find someone to help the doctor with her belongings, but true to her nature, Ileana handed Miss Jameson her parasol and gloves, and retained the cumbersome toolkit for herself.

As the last finger slipped free of the gloves, I at last caught full sight of the delicate hands of the doctor. I hasten to point out that her skin was tough, and scarred in more than one place. Yet for all the working hours her hands spoke of, they looked to my eye as a flower might after it had weathered a squall, its soft beauty contained in its resilient remainder. 

I am not one often prone to such deplorably vivid prose, but where Ileana is concerned I find it difficult to resist. 

After a regrettably silent lunch, Ileana and I retired to the sitting room which she turned into a makeshift workshop. I was worried about the potential damage her work might do to the end table which normally rested comfortably next to the chaise, as brass and fine cherry wood do not do well when the former is rubbed harshly against the latter. Doctor Winthrop paid it no mind, though, and set about working.

Her hands moved with such alacrity that I could not make heads or tails of what she was doing.

Her hands moved with such alacrity that I could not make heads or tails of what she was doing. She removed a long rod with a sharp snap which made me flinch. It was not a truly painful experience, but my mind conjured the echo of what such a pain might have felt like. The result was another tingling sensation in the space once occupied by my flesh limb. She discarded the brass rod on the table, whereupon it rolled off and clattered to the floor. I reached down to retrieve it, but she pressed the tips of her fingers into my chest and pushed until I sat upright again. She ignored the rod from that point on.

She withdrew a similar piece from her toolkit and snapped it into the gear assembly that had been exposed by the removal of the first. As soon as it was in place, the tingling sensation faded away. Next, Ileana took a hammer and awl and tapped two of the teeth of a gear back into place; apparently she had indeed broken the first one out. I was nothing if not thankful that metal was malleable and not brittle, like bone.

Whatever had happened to sour her to me had surfaced in that moment.

At last, when she was bolting the face plate back on to my forearm, I found the nerve to ask her why she saw fit to spurn my requests to meet socially. She replied with the wholly unsatisfactory answer that I was being impolite to ask, which now leaves more questions than answers. Whatever had happened to sour her to me had surfaced in that moment. She was discreetly casual about the time she took departing, but nor did she linger as one might around good company. At last, she bid me safe travels home.

#parts #steampunk #mechanomorphosis #larva #two #entry #fiction #writing

[mechanomorphosis]

Mister Davis, I am aware that no such device known as a flanged, reticulating cylinder exists, and I shall thank you to be less patronizing in future correspondence. To be perfectly clear: am asking you to create one. That is why I have included with this letter a more detailed schematic which I should hope a tool maker of your esteem ought to have little trouble following.

A letter from Doctor Winthrop to Charles Rook

#steampunk #mechanomorphosis #parts #two #larva #entry #quote

[mechanomorphosis]

It is most seemly that you send another in your stead, my dear. As you say, this part is but a machine and any manner of mechanic ought to be capable of handling the matter. But worry not on these affairs. I have made arrangements with New Haverdon's steamboat mechanic, Tobias Masterson, to call upon Mr. Grey at Mulrainey House on your behalf.

Lord Elias Winthrop, speaking to Doctor Ileana Winthrop over afternoon coffee.

#steampunk #mechanomorphosis #parts #two #larva #entry #quote

[mechanomorphosis]

A Nightmare of Metal

I find the relation of dreams to be a crass and wholly improper use of one's time. To my estimation, the unremembered and unremarked upon dream is the best sort: it provides fitting entertainment for an unproductive span of time, and politely leaves no trace upon the waking world nor the mind of the dreamer. Even the most unsocial and unmentionable acts are nothing more than harmless spectacle.

In less peculiar circumstances I would be loathe to to even acknowledge that I have dreams

In less peculiar circumstances I would be loathe to to even acknowledge that I have dreams, as no proper conversation results from that admission; it is almost certainly followed by idle questions about details of the dream itself which naturally follow no coherent plot and make for underwhelming storytelling. Thus, the esteem of the speaker is suitably lowered in the mind of the listener for even admitting to dreaming.

However, given my present state, and the nature of these Morphean visions, I feel compelled to record them. I should hope my qualities as a skeptic and as a scientist are not unduly jeopardized by this act. Nay, I appeal to the inquisitive mind to recognize that good science begins with good observation, and good observation is only as valuable as the completeness of one's records.

I am aided in this recording by the fact that these dreams have visited me nightly and have been strikingly similar in all instances. The initial details have varied in ways one ought to expect dreams might, filled with familiar places one has never been, familiar people credulously uttering aberrations of logic, and all manner of sensations to delight and amaze.

But invariably there is a place which is cold, or foreign.

But invariably there is a place (in as much as the sense of where exists within dreams) which is cold, or foreign. It is there, ahead and to the right of wherever I am, no matter which direction I face. Awareness of it comes as an itch might: without thought or intention I acknowledge its unwelcome existence and try to remedy it. But where an itch is a physiological phenomenon with a physical solution, this is entirely ephemeral and there exists no such cure.

All I am given is a choice of whether to go to this unknowable place, or remain in whatever fantasy my mind has conjured to entertain me that evening. Sometimes I am too entranced to pay it any heed. On those nights it grows like an aching sore until it cannot be ignored. I grow steadily less comfortable but I know not why. A sense of passionate dread overcomes me, but it is matched by an equal part longing. 

On nights I expend effort to avoid acknowledging its existence, I am compelled by dream-logic to be immediately transported there. You see, in the waking world one might say, "There exists no such thing as a gold-winged canine," and in so doing one has only created the idea of such a beast. Their statement that it does not exist remains fully and completely true. But in a dream, to create the idea is to create nothing less than the thing itself, and thereby enact whatever course of action next strikes the dreamer's fancy. 

So in both cases I am inexorably drawn to this fateful place.

So in both cases I am inexorably drawn to this fateful place. Each step I take, and each dreamlike leap of unimaginable distance brings me toward my goal and yet it remains as distant as ever. No matter whether I wake after a full night's rest, or whether I am roused by the noisy fumblings of Miss Jameson as she cleans, (the Guru, for his part, is quiet even when one wishes he were not) I never reach this place. It forever exists over the next hill or beyond the next horizon. 

I do surmise in these, my waking hours, that what I am experiencing is nothing more or less than the presence of my new hand. I have not told Ileana of these matters, and I have solicited the opinions of no other, for I should expect any claiming expertise on this to be a fraud of the first water. I fear even Ileana would be equipped only to speculate on these matters. While I would find such a conversation as pleasant as any other involving the good doctor, I would much prefer to discuss more pleasant matters. Failing that, I should like to discuss the state of my hand and its mechanical elements, as there simply are no others capable of speaking with authority.

I admit some trepidation that this alien metal wrongness will somehow break free of my nightmares and invade my waking senses.

The doctor's workmanship is exemplary, and the merits of this device deserve whole volumes to describe properly. I find it worrisome that the metal appendage that my body and mind welcome so readily by day is nothing if not estranged from the same by night. I do not know or understand what this portends; it is my hope that as I become accustomed to this new limb and it is more fully incorporated into my sense of self that these visions will cease. I admit some trepidation that this alien metal wrongness will somehow break free of my nightmares and invade my waking senses.

#steampunk #parts #mechanomorphosis #two #larva #entry #writing #fiction #transhuman

[mechanomorphosis]

When Professor Grey was invited to the mechanical biology symposium, he thought he had finally gained the respect of his peers. In truth, his colleagues simply could not be bothered. Their loss, for that was where the professor met the brilliant (and by all accounts sociopathic) Doctor Ileana Winthrop, and his mechanomorphosis began. Told in epistolary form, Parts documents the journey of Professor Grey in his most remarkable mechanomorphosis. It originally appeared online, and is republished in complete form here. 

Available now!

And thank you for your support so far.

-Miss Bradley

#steampunk #fiction #parts #mechanomorphosis #egg #one #link #for sale #smashwords

[mechanomorphosis]

The Egg Has Hatched

From the desk of your humble author to you, dear reader,

So concludes section one of Parts: Egg. In the coming days I will be collating and properly formatting the posts thus far for publishing as a single eBook via Smashwords, to be made available at places like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the iBooks store. I hope you have enjoyed the story so far as much as I have enjoyed sharing it with you. 

As a teaser of section two: Larva, I will say that things will be getting worse for Professor Grey. So if you thought the restoration of his lost limb would bring sunshine and happiness forever, boy are you in for a surprise. (Or not, as the case may be.)

And if you were afraid the story would end with a fancy prosthetic arm, then fear not, my dear intrepid biomechanopunk. Professor Grey has more Parts where that arm came from!

Your Incorrigible Artifex,

Miss Bradley

P.S. If you simply cannot wait for more, I have two short stories available as eBooks: "Mercy Killing the Dragon" and "The Last Warband". The price is whatever you feel they are worth, but they will be going to a fixed price in September. If nothing else, you may "buy" them with a tweet, Facebook, or blog post linking to them, and you may consider any moral obligation you feel to compensate artists for their work fulfilled. :) (And by Tesla's Death Ray, if you make a full blog post, send me a link!)

#From the author #mechanomorphosis #parts #steampunk #fiction #writing #publishing #smashwords #ebook

[mechanomorphosis]

Doctor Winthrop, I appreciate your enthusiasm for what stands to be a great achievement, but here at New Haverdon Hospital for Surgery and Disease, it is the patient's health which is paramount. We were kind enough to indulge your ethically questionable procedure, but your focus upon the mechanical and not the biological casts serious doubts upon your competence to continue acting as monitoring physicker to Mister Grey. But more importantly, this does not meet the high standards we expect here at New Haverdon. Please cease all mention of your contraption in your reports in the future.

Doctor Gasterhaut, "Memorandum to Lady Ileana Winthrop, Concerning Reports On the Condition of Patient Edwin Grey"

#steampunk #parts #mechanomorphosis #egg #one #quote #fiction #writing #doctor gasturhaut

[mechanomorphosis]

Mild fever, down two degrees from yesterday. Local infection has damaged the supination rotor nerve interconnection near the proximal radioulnar articulation. Swelling remains a threat to the third digital articulation assembly. The patient is recovering as well as can be expected.

Doctor Ileana Winthrop, "Daily Report on the Progress of Edwin Grey, to Michael Gasturhaut, Chief of Convalescence"

#steampunk #parts #mechanomorphosis #egg #one #entry #quote #doctor winthrop #fiction #writing

[mechanomorphosis]

Preparations

I woke today for the last time in the Mulrainey House, and will bed down this evening in the New Haverdon Hospital for Surgery and Disease in anticipation of the operation the following morning. Before departing the Mulrainey House, I took a long bath using a fine scented oil provided by my guru neighbor. He rather discourteously entered the bath chamber unannounced. Thankfully, for my dignity, I was already quite submerged. In an effort to mend relations between East and Much Further East, he returned moments later with a vial, which he emptied into my bathwater. All the while the gentleman had a broad smile; so broad, in fact, that I supposed it must have interfered with his ability to speak, for in this entire exchange, he said nothing.

Is it not through language that we remove the barriers to confusion?

I later learned from the maid, Miss Jameson, that the guru has taken a vow of silence. She heard said that it was because his order believes that to speak is to sow confusion in the mind of the listener, which any learnèd man knows is utter nonsense in contempt of all reason! Nay, is it not through language that we remove the barriers to confusion? How else should one learn what mankind has already discovered if not by lesson and lecture? Would such a vow not condemn us to languish in eternal ignorance, each generation rediscovering such meager contraptions as the wheel? I dare say there is a reason men of science are the ones who have built such wonders as the steamboat and the telegraph and not men of silent contemplation.

Only by comparing this to my prior state did I realize how tense I had been these past weeks.

The oil made the bathing experience a relaxing one, and each muscle in my form loosened. Only by comparing this to my prior state did I realize how tense I had been these past weeks. I find myself frustrated that I cannot persuade the man to tell me where a man might acquire more; if I must endure gurus (or fortune forbid, monks) interrupting my bathing each time in order to get a dram, I should quickly find that tiresome. Would only that I could have submerged my stump as well, though had I done so it would have washed away the carefully drawn markings Doctor Winthrop had placed there.

Of her, I have heard little and seen less. Since our tea, we have not spoken. She sent a message by way of an intermediary that I should prepare myself for surgery on the morning of the 29th. I found that the hospital was awaiting my arrival, and arrangements had already been made for my recovery in their long term patient ward. Word came to me that Ileana was variously hard at work fine-tuning my new prosthetic, that she was out of the country acquiring a rare part, and that she was under house arrest on the word of her dear brother. Which, if any, of these was true, I have no way of knowing. Though if I know her, I would hazard that she has been consumed by her tinkering and has seen the light of day only sparingly.

I am sorely tempted to beg of the doctor some soporific that I may rest before tomorrow's activities.

I arrived at the hospital, freshly bathed, fed, and dressed for a night at the opera. The first thing they did was bid me strip to my undershirt and handed me new clothes with the thread count of a potato sack. This garment induces an itching sensation not unlike that of ants upon arm hair. How I am to sleep in this tonight is a mystery. I am sorely tempted to beg of the doctor some soporific that I may rest before tomorrow's activities.

#mechanomorphosis #steampunk #parts #egg #one #entry #fiction #writing #transhuman

[mechanomorphosis]

Tea With Doctor Winthrop

I took tea with Doctor Winthrop this morning, the first time I had seen her since my arrival. For the sake of discretion we conspired to meet at her offices in the School of Natural Philosophy at Penderwythe College. Her brother remains ever ignorant of my presence here, and in lieu of offering her guest house, Ileana has arranged for me to stay at the college's illustrious Mulrainey House. I shall be sharing the second floor with a visiting guru from the Nilvisha Monastery. 

And thus, without a belief in a divine Creator, it was irrational on Professor Hawkins' part to live by such a constraint, much less insist others do so as well.

Of Ileana, the most which can be said is that she comports herself well for someone so stymied. She related to me the details which she omitted from her letters concerning the recent termination of her research funding. It would appear that it was the doing of one Professor Nathaniel Hawkins, a zoologist and taxonomist who (despite any signs of religiosity on his part) subscribes to Saint Aerinas' philosophy that men of science must ever remain observers. When she said this, I felt compelled to point out that the basis of Saint Aerinas' philosophy was that to do more than observe was to disrupt God's plan, and thus, without a belief in a divine Creator, it was irrational on Professor Hawkins' part to live by such a constraint, much less insist others do so as well. Ileana agreed wholeheartedly and we shared a hearty laugh. I detected a faint sadness in her eyes, likely because she realized, as I did, that no matter how strongly we were in agreement on the man's irrationality, it did not remove the impediment he had placed before Ileana.

It was then that matters turned more technical. I related to her the tale which I set down in my logbook just yesterday, but that the tingling sensation had faded today. She expressed concern when told that, unlike the day prior, today I felt nothing there and could not gain any cognizance of my arm's existence, despite my concentration. Abandoning her tea, she withdrew her stirring spoon, cleaned it with one of the college's red and gold embroidered napkins, and set about prodding my still-healing stump.

It felt as though she had stabbed my wrist with an icicle.

Her spoon-cum-probe found only numbness for the first few pokes, but she struck one point several centimeters up the anterior face from the tip that triggered a painful reflex. It felt as though she had stabbed my wrist with an icicle. I found it most curious that the sensation of pain came from a point on my body that was no longer present, but she remarked that this was utterly ordinary for a person in my position.

She donned a pair of spectacles I had not seen her wear before and moved her chair facing mine. She had abandoned all social niceties and I grew keenly aware that to her, I was no longer a guest but a patient. Gone was Lady Ileana Winthrop; before me sat Doctor Winthrop the mechanical biologist. I dare say the latter was in all ways more alluring than the former.

Doctor Winthrop retrieved a pen and ink, and made a sketch of a man's pronated forearm in her research journal, and bid me to lay my stump down such that one might view the drawing as attached to it. Next she took the convex side of the spoon and ran it gently along my arm. Whenever I reported that the sensation had been coming from my arm, she asked me to point to the place on the drawing where I felt it. She marked the spot, and with her pen made a matching mark on my skin. Her labeling nomenclature escaped me as it would switch between letters, numerals, and counting numbers. However, she moved with such purpose that I was left assuming only that she was both knowledgeable and capable on these matters. She repeated this exercise with a sketch of my arm in supinated position, and at its conclusion bid me not to wash the arm until instructed otherwise. 

When I bid farewell, only then did she appear to take notice of my imminent departure.

The doctor set about annotating her sketches, dividing with dashed lines the regions of my arm into patches until it resembled a tailoring pattern. I remarked that our tea was getting cold, and her only reply was an affirmative, "Mm." Detecting a fellow scholar had fallen into the blissful state of pure focus upon their work—work which I could not comprehend sufficiently to offer assistance—I excused myself. To this, her only reply was to repeat her admonition about washing. When I bid farewell, only then did she appear to take notice of my imminent departure. A look of surprised disappointment flashed across her face at that, but she left it with, "Good day, Edwin."

I dare say, the use of my name in the familiar lifted my spirits even more than the hope that my arm might soon be restored.

#steampunk #mechanomorphosis #parts #egg #one #entry #fiction #writing

[mechanomorphosis]

Arrival

The Spring Equinox deposited us at Unity Air Tower in New Haverdon, a lazy little community that has grown bloated upon the fat of foreign trade. I regret not taking the time to meet my fellow travelers sooner, as I only had occasion to introduce myself to the young man in the cabin beside my own as we were preparing to disembark.

His name was Douglas Aberford, and he was a pilot during the Great Air War. Mister Aberford said he had once flown airships like the Spring Equinox until his was shot down. He neglected to mention the name of his ill-fated vessel, though I suspect it was not because he had forgotten it. 

Mister Aberford had lost the use of his left leg during the crash.

Mister Aberford had lost the use of his left leg during the crash. He was spared the gangrene that had affected so many others in the Air Navy hospital he recovered in, so the doctors felt it best not to amputate it and risk infection. The leg, however, was utterly dead to sensation, and in a less-than-gentlemanly demonstration of this fact, he struck it quite swiftly with the carved hickory cane he now used.

Before we parted ways, he said something that will remain in my mind forever more, "But you know, Mister Grey, I almost wish they had taken it off. I can't move it; I can't feel it; it hardly feels like its a part of me anymore. Better to have it off and be done with it than drag it around like this."

"By Charles, I'm twenty percent corpse, already!"

In a bid to maintain the man's acquaintance (as I know only two other souls on this continent, those being the Winthrops) I asked the man what he intended to do now that he was an expatriate, or where he would be lodging. With a grin, he said, "Hadn't thought about that. I was a carpenter before the War, but I was never very good at it. Maybe I'll make coffins. By Charles, I'm twenty percent corpse, already!"

The road to Penderwythe College was well-suited to the number of pedestrians, but each time a boiler buggy rumbled by it packed us indecently close to one another. In one instance, a young lady in a blue dress and a lace-covered bonnet (I humbly beg forgiveness as I am not a milliner, but there is a name for its style and it begins with either a "P" or a "J" but it escapes me) failed to move aside and was thus forced to hurriedly stagger away, tripping in the process. I reacted swiftly by reaching out to catch her, but found the diminished length of my arm insufficient to arrest her fall. I offered to assist her up, but she recoiled at the sight of my limb. The knowledge that it had touched her a moment earlier quite horrified her, and she instead took the assistance of another kindly gentleman who had possession of all his limbs and presumably all the digits there attached.

It humbles me to write that I lost my composure when I turned away, and was forced for a moment to abandon the thoroughfare that would lead me to Penderwythe College to collect my thoughts. I found myself in an alleyway between a store that sold wooden toys, and a trader who dealt in goods from the islands to the south.

What struck me was that in the moment, when the woman was falling toward me, I had utter certainty that my arm was there.

What struck me was that in the moment, when the woman was falling toward me, I had utter certainty that my arm was there. I was filled with the anticipation of the texture of her fluffy, blue dress in my hand, and the weight of her bosom pressing down upon my forearm. A moment later, I would close my hand upon her arm and with assistance of the other, lift her back to her feet. Instead, that sensation never came. Even now I feel a raw tingling, as though a lover were teasing me by holding her hand just a hair's width above the surface of my skin.

#steampunk #parts #mechanomorphosis #entry #one #egg #transhuman #fiction #writing

[mechanomorphosis]

You have my and this faculty's complete support, as always, my friend. Though the unfortunate circumstances make your state of mind completely and utterly understandable, I urge you to rethink this act. I assure you, it is not your judgment I fear, but rather the judgment of a woman who would peddle such miracles to a person in your position. Many crippled men have had dignified lives in spite of their infirmities. Whatever this woman believes she is capable of, she cannot guarantee you will survive the process, nor will it even be your real arm.

Doctor Bailey, by wireless telegraph

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[mechanomorphosis]

His state of health troubles me, for we are no longer properly provisioned to handle any unforeseen problems. It has been many years since the war; what once was our surgeon's bay (where was carried out no small number of amputations) is now the dining parlor where the man now clumsily spoons his clam bisque. The irony of this is not lost on me. Would only that he could get less of his meal on my East Colonial rug.

Logbook of Stanley Gladstone, Captain of the free trading vessel Spring Equinox

#steampunk #parts #mechanomorphosis #quotes #egg #one #entry #writing #fiction

[mechanomorphosis]

Dearest Edwin

Dearest Edwin,

I hope this letter reaches you in good spirits, if it cannot reach you in good health. It was a surprise to hear from you again, as my brother is usually quite adept at scaring others off. But it was a welcome surprise nevertheless.

It strikes to my heart to hear of your plight. I, too, know the insult of being denied the opportunity to continue one's work. To have added that insult on top of the terrible injury you suffered is both foul and reprehensible. 

Allow me to put to rest one of your fears. Your description of a "ghostly hand" that you insist you still feel the presence of is not unusual. In fact, that you are still able to feel the missing hand is perhaps a good sign. I cannot elaborate further in the span of this letter.

Instead, I would like to invite you to come to Penderwythe College. Your suspension ought to give you ample time away from your duties, and since my own work is on hold, I would have sufficient time to examine your arm more thoroughly.

Sincerely,

Doctor Ileana Winthrop

P.S. My brother remains ever watchful of our home's wireless telegraph, and so I must ask that you continue sending these letters to Lady Trusdale.

#steampunk #parts #mechanomorphosis #one #entry #egg #transhuman #writing #fiction #letter