On Reading About the Illness and Death of Darwin's Daughter Annie

320 When orthodox medicine fails, Darwin turns to a dessert spoon of white wine every hour, sea bathing, mustard poultices, gargle of sulfate of aluminum and potassium. He packs the patient in damp towels— anything to shock the body into fighting, settle the coughs into submission. He reads her Genevieve, the story of a poor village woman in the Alps. On good days, Annie rides a pony. In the only photo, she wears a gingham dress and has her braids pinned up by her ears. He takes notes. This excruciating log of his, her days chronicled with well almost very, well not quite, poorly a little, poorly, and her nights: wakeful, good, good not quite. The problem is how to distinguish pattern: treatment and cure, as when I visited the acupuncturist and he looked at my tongue and said too much cold in the uterus, then handed me a brown bag of herbs that looked like they’d been swept from under the fall trees; I took evening primrose oil, black cohosh, false unicorn root, and kept my log: Day 38: Few cramps Day 39: Still no signs of bleeding On Reading About the Illness and Death of Darwin’s Daughter Annie Lynn Pedersen third place contest winner 321 It’s said Darwin had a sinking feeling at the beginning of the Beagle’s journey. Imagine his helplessness at Annie’s death. How he loses himself in his work. To his surviving children he gives a handful of shells from the voyage, shells he cannot identify. ...