Sublime

By 1932, the historian Henry E. Sigerist had noted that medicine’s systemizing impulses were “no longer concerned with man but with disease,” as Anderson and Mackay point out.

He popped the blister packet he pulled from his back pocket, chewing the two purple tablets en route to the kitchen, the taste bitter on his tongue. He didn’t know what was in them – the Harley Street medic prescribed them. “In the circumstances, Michael…” that is to say “bearing in mind you’ll be dead soon, you can have these experimental drugs”.