More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Make something of yourself with it.”
queer suggestions.
His mother thinks becoming a doctor isn't a suitable profession.
Scraffles
The nickname implies that the son and mother arent close with the father
and by then nobody remembered the position of the grave.
You may become a greater surgeon than Hunter, a finer obstetrician than Simpson, a better healer than Lister, but unless you acquire a touch of smooth lordliness or easy-going humour no patient will trust you, other doctors will shun you.
Even though he is cleary brighter than his peers, he is being told that if he doesn't dress/present himself as higher class, he will never succeed.
conversaziones
Conversations of scholarly subjects, arts, etc.
instinctive imitation.”
He'll have to learn to imitate or do an impression of them.
(for I had not been invited to sit)
The professor doesn't have any respect for him
I pocketed my fists to avoid punching his teeth. Instead I told him I came from a part of Galloway where folk disliked begging for charity, but since he had a high opinion of my talents we could arrange to profit us both.
Our main character clearly does not like being looked down upon for the way he was raised (and rightfully so)
but I think I am a safe investment. What do you think? Shall we try it?”
He's using the professor's own words against him.
Godwin Baxter was the only one I talked with as an equal because (I still believe) we were the two most intelligent and least social people attached to the Glasgow medical faculty.
brains were heaped like cauliflowers,
Baxter is (too) comfortable around objects like brains and such.
Despite the ogreish body he had the wide hopeful eyes,
pantomime
Dramatic gesture
This was the only son of Colin Baxter, the first medical man to be knighted by Queen Victoria.
Godwin Baxter's father is a big deal.
a clean-shaven, sharp-faced, thin-lipped man who looked nothing like his son.
Posssibly not the biological child of Colin Baxter?
“Sir Colin’s lack of interest in female beauty was legendary,” one of the gossips told me, “but his offspring proves he had a peculiar appetite for female ugliness.”
Perhaps Colin was Queer? Or just attracted to women who were not conventionaly pretty
Nothing definite was known of Godwin’s mother.
What happened to Godwin's mother is unknown
He was a brilliant student apart from hospital work, where his strange appearance and voice
frightened patients and offended the staff, so he did not graduate but continued as a research assistant.
Godwin is older than other students, he never graduated.
Most thought him a scientific dabbler, but I also heard that he gave unpaid help to a clinic attached to an east-end iron foundry, and treated scorched limbs and fractured spines uncommonly well.
It appears Godwin is a good person, not just another smart guy.
does life mainly evolve through small gradual changes, or through big catastrophic ones?
jocularity,
Humour
“I’m sorry we laughed McCandless, but to hear you steadily quoting Comte and Huxley and Haeckel in your broad Border dialect was like hearing the Queen opening Parliament in the voice of a Cockney costermonger.”
once again, our main character isnt being taken seriously
The response to the last speaker’s sensible argument shows the mental quality of the mass.”
Baxter stood up for our main character.
fortnight
2 weeks time
“Medicine is as much an art as a science,
“I am refining on some of Sir Colin’s techniques.” “Sir Colin?” “My famous progenitor.” “Did you never call him father?” “I never heard him called anything but Sir Colin.
Both characters can bond over not being close to their fathers
“The public hospitals are places where doctors learn how to get money off the rich by practising on the poor. That is why poor people dread and hate them, and why those with a good income are operated upon privately, or in their own homes.
Despite his own wealth, Baxter is very aware of how the poor are treated vs how the rich are treated.
He was a true artist—he
Baxter admired his father, despite not being close with him.
His voice was repulsive but his words highly interesting.
Miss Nightingale
As in Florence Nightingale!
Sir Colin never spoke of her except once in my teens, when he said she was the cleverest, most teachable woman he knew.
He had very little interest in people, except as surgical cases.
Like father, like son.
I thought I had never needed one because I was big from the start.”
begat
Human reproduction
Each morning and evening he recorded my temperature and pulse, took samples of my blood and urine, then analysed them.
Colin treated his own son like he was an experiment, rather than a human being.
Because of a chemical imbalance my system needs alternating doses of iodine and sugar.
Godwin is possibly diabetic?
This preserved my self-respect when I learned how most people feel about my appearance.”
Godwin has similar views on physical appearance like his father did
“A sad childhood—worse than mine.” “I disagree. Nobody was cruel to me and I got all the animal warmth and affection I needed from Sir Colin’s dogs. He always had several of them.”
Our man character feels pity for Godwin. Godwin swears he had a good childhood nonetheless. His comment about how the only warmth and love he recieved came from dogs just shows how cold his father was to him. The worst part is that Godwin doesn't realize how messed up that is.
vivisectionist?”
Performing on live animals
He halted and confronted me with his mournful, huge, childish face which somehow made me feel
like an even smaller child.
He said, “I have never killed or hurt a living creature in my life, and neither did Sir Colin.”
Despite experimenting on animals, it seems Colin andGodwin never killed any.
I told him, “I wish I could say that.” He stayed silent for the rest of the walk.
Our main character has killd an animal at some point. Godwin seems upset by this. Godwin has more respect for animals than humans
“You told me that once before, Baxter, but it is not a satisfying answer.
Our main character is showing some impatience
“I hate mysteries Baxter!” I told him, “especially the manmade sort which are always a fraud.
In a faltering voice he asked if I, too, thought he was that. I said, “If you don’t answer my questions frankly, what else can I think?”
It is important to Godwin what our main character thinks.
natural freak.
The little beasts were works of art, not nature.
