- Project Runeberg -  The story of San Michele /
158

(1929) [MARC] Author: Axel Munthe - Tema: Medicine
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half-faint from the stench of carbolic acid in the
empty train I stepped out on the deserted Piazza
late in the evening, how I passed in the streets
long convoys of carts and omnibuses filled with
corpses on the way to the cholera cemetery, how
I spent the whole night amongst the dying in the
wretched fondaci of the slums. But there is no
description of how a couple of hours after my
arrival I was back once more in the station eagerly
inquiring for the first train for Rome, for Calabria,
for the Abruzzi, for anywhere, the further the
better, only to get out of this hell. Had there
been a train there would have been no ‘Letters
from a Mourning City.’ As it was, there was no
train till noon the next day, the communications
with the infected city having been almost cut off.
There was nothing to do but to have a swim at
Santa Lucia at sunrise and to return to the slums
with a cool head but still trembling with fear.
In the afternoon my offer to serve on the staff of
the cholera hospital of Santa Maddalena was
accepted. Two days later I vanished from the
hospital having discovered that the right place
for me was not among the dying in the hospital,
but among the dying in the slums.

How much easier it would have been for them
and for me, thought I, if only their agony was
not so long, so terrible! There they were lying
for hours, for days in stadium algidum, cold as
corpses, with wide-open eyes and wide-open
mouths, to all appearances dead and yet still
alive. Did they feel anything, did they
understand anything? So much the better for the
few who could still swallow the tea-spoonful of

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