Past lives: times change, people remain the same

Last January and the January before that found me in an Australian university library reading the letters and journal entries of a Scottish doctor from the 1800s.

Thomas Graham’s journal held in the University of Queensland Fryer Library.

Letter after letter to his sister Catherine, the stoic Ecclefechan postmistress who raised him when their parents died, spoke of gratitude and familial affection.

I can assure you, dear Catherine…on these ground letters become agreeable messengers, anxiously looked for and when come, hastily opened, and their contents eagerly scanned affording accordingly to their imports, gloomy reflections or bright and pleasant ideas carrying one back to scenes, at a distance from me, in which you and other friends are the actors and which are ever near and dear to me.

Thomas Graham was a graduate of the world-leading Edinburgh School of Medicine. He left all he knew behind and travelled by coach and train to London to meet with the Medical Superintendent of the Royal Navy, seeking a posting as an assistant ship’s surgeon.

As I read his letters to Catherine a clear picture of their relationship developed. She was right behind him: funding his education, discussing his career options, exchanging opinions about the people around them, choosing the fabric and cut of his clothes. All worthy ways to support a young man.

But increasingly as that young man matured he would stand his ground on decisions. He started with his new coat.

As I cannot send you coat for a measure as the only one that fits me well is the one I wear, could you send the cloth. I could get it made in London as I think it could be made as cheap at least with a very slight difference—as Annan.

It was a small assertion in the greater scheme of things but as I read these letters my main thought was it’s just the same. I pictured Catherine receiving the letter and understanding (or not) a young man’s need for autonomy.

I, too, have been raising a young man and medical student. My son Lachlan will graduate next month and make his way in the world. Despite the century and more between them, I’ve seen him sketching anatomy into notebooks just like Thomas Graham did. I see him reaching for independence.

The very detailed correspondence about expenses in the Graham letters was also surprisingly familiar and modern.

Thomas Graham’s letters to his sister, Catherine, the Ecclefechan postmistress. (UQ Fryer Library)

You said you were surprised at the amount of the order for money at the commence of the summer session, but you will be more surprised when you know that there is more required, however by my getting it this summer it will cause the money required next winter to be less.

And the young doctor’s fascination in science was the same. I couldn’t wait to share this passage with my son.

Yesterday I visited the Polytechnic Institution and had the pleasure of going down in a diving bell and apart from a little pain in my ears it was an exciting experience. Amongst other curiosities was a very strong oxy-hydrogen microscope—you would be astonished to see what monsters it makes of the small animalculae inhabiting a drop of water.

I was overcome with emotion when I read a particular passage from Graham. My son has promised me a meal out when he receives his first paycheck next year. I can’t wait, it’s an honour.

I have just received my second quarter’s pay and as I find I can spare some of it, I by your acceptance of the five pounds to buy yourself a dress or any other thing you think will be most useful. I am only sorry that I cannot at present make it more, but you must take it as an earnest of which I will do if every Fortune puts me in the right way.

It is the first present I have ever made you and I hope it shall not be the last, and I hope you will excuse me when I say that it is with satisfaction I am enabled to share with you the produce of my services.

When I read the final entries in Thomas Graham’s journal and the letter from the Royal Navy home to Catherine I wept. The journal has a line through it and another hand has written: no further entries. He died of malaria in Hong Kong aged 32 after treating and surviving a brutal cholera outbreak on his ship. How did Catherine cope with this terrible loss? I felt for her even though she’s been dead for decades.

As far as my son Lachlan goes, he has been the first reader of my manuscript that draws on Graham’s story as inspiration for my character, ship’s surgeon, Hugh Ramsay. He made a notation that approved of Hugh using bicarbonate soda to treat a patient. He rang to say he was proud of me. I think he understood the young doctor from 1840. Perhaps he also understood the woman who raised him.

I keep encouraging my son to journal, to keep a record of how he thought at 25, what he was seeing and doing, his road to independence.

“Yeah, Mum, so some writer a hundred years can read it? Not so sure about that!”

I hope so, how wonderful would that be.