The Vorrh

William, if I might have a moment?’
    Gull, startled at his voice, looked closer. ‘Mister Mireburn?’ he questioned.
    ‘Yes! Muybridge!’ the other answered energetically.
    The doctor excused himself from the students and led him to an impressive suite of rooms, one much larger than the turret chamber Gull had previously occupied. ‘How are you, sir?’ Gull asked, indicating a seat.
    ‘Oh, I’m well, thank you, I have done very well.’
    ‘And your health?’
    ‘Since I last saw you, I am greatly improved. I have had a few bouts of nerves, but I grow stronger each day. Your advice has held me in great stead.’
    ‘Good, good,’ Gull answered, not really knowing why this man, who now looked like a wild prophet, was here. Muybridge saw this and responded.
    ‘I have brought you some of my pictures by way of thanks.’ He lifted up the small portfolio by the side of his chair, untied the strings, and opened it out onto the massive desk.
    ‘This is really very kind of you,’ Gull said, genuinely taken aback.
    Muybridge had brought a collection of ten prints, five of which were of the wild places Gull had advised him to seek out all those years ago. He laid them out on the grand mahogany desk and stood back, allowing the doctor a clearer view.
    Gull ignored the magnificent views of Yosemite valley, the panoramas of San Francisco, the ice mountains of Alaska. He even ignored the running horse, Muybridge’s most famous work. Instead, he homed in on the four other, more diverse images, pushing the landscape master works aside to see them.
    ‘What are these?’ he murmured with obvious excitement. On the table lay a picture of an ancient sacrificial stone from his visit to Guatemala, a print of the Ghost Dance, and another, from the same time, of two medicine men of the Shoshone. The final image was his composite of Phases of the Eclipse of the Sun. Gull pored and clucked over them, wanting to know their exact history and meaning. It became obvious by his questions that he had not the faintest interest in his artistic talent or technical skill; he was interested only in the subject of the photographs. He drew the four images closer to him.
    ‘May I keep these?’ he asked.
    ‘They are all for you,’ answered the dispirited artist.
    ‘Remarkable!’ he said to himself. The doctor seemed to have forgotten Muybridge completely. ‘Look at the intensity of those faces; such men could do anything!’ he said, as if speaking to the photographs themselves. ‘Truly remarkable!’
    ‘I wondered if my photographs might help your patients?’ Muybridge said.
    ‘What? Sorry, what did you say?’
    ‘I only wondered, Sir William, if my photographs might be of help to your patients?’
    ‘How?’ Gull asked cautiously.
    ‘If patients, like the one we saw today, had an actual image of themselves, then could they, perhaps, compare it to their misconceptions and find a treatment in the photograph’s truth?’
    Gull thought for a moment. ‘It would not work, I tried giving them all mirrors, they don’t use them the way we do. A picture would be the same,’ he said dismissively.
    Muybridge was deflated by such an obvious comparison; surely his offer was worthy of a little more consideration?
    ‘Have you heard what Charcot is doing in Paris?’ Gull asked.
    The name was familiar. He ran it through his memory, but Gull was oblivious to his ponderings and proceeded to tell him anyway.
    ‘He is a clinical doctor, like me, good old solid anatomy, body mechanics. But, like me, he is moving into the machinery of the soul, the invisible stuff that doesn’t bleed and won’t be sewn, perhaps the true centre of malady and health. This year, he will open a new department to investigate that which cannot be seen: the hidden pulses of the body. I envy him that. We both have our private wards, but this is something altogether different. If I were twenty years younger, I too would throw away the bone saws and totally engage in the surgery of the mind.’
    Muybridge was a little confused and said nothing.
    ‘Anyway, the reason I tell you of this is that he is using photography, not just to make pictures of a patient, but as a therapy in itself. I have no idea how it works, but one of our junior doctors was there last year and he saw what they were doing. You should go and see it.’
    It was all beginning to sound like the kind of spurious fiction Muybridge so thoroughly distrusted, and it being a French innovation only made