".......
I mounted therefore, unbidden, the Bed stead - & M. Dubois placed me
upon the mattress, & spread a cambric handkerchief upon my face. It
was transparent, however , & I saw through it, that the Bed stead was
instantly surrounded by the 7 men and my nurse. I refused to be held; but
when, Bright through the cambric, I saw the glitter of polished steel -
I closed my eyes. I would not trust to convulsive fear the sight of that
terrible incision......."
Fanny also saw the surgeon draw a cross and a circle
upon the breast and realised that the intention was to.......
"......take off the WHOLE. Excited by this idea
I started up and threw off my veil........& explained the nature of
my sufferings.......I was heard attentively but in utter silence, and M.
Dubois then replaced me as before and spread my veil over my face........Hopeless
then, desperate, & self-given up, I closed once more my eyes,
relinquishing all watching, all resistance, all interference......."
"Yet--when that dreadful steel was
plunged into the breast - cutting through veins - arteries - flesh - nerves
- I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that
lasted unintermittingly during the whole time of the incision - & I
almost marvel that it rings not in my Ears still ? So excruciating was the
agony......."
".......When the wound was made, & the
instrument was withdrawn, the pain seemed undiminished, for the air that
suddenly rushed into those delicate parts felt like a mass of minute but
sharp & forked poinards, that were tearing the edges of the wound but
when again I felt the instrument - describing a curve - cutting against
the grain, if I may so say, while the flesh resisted in a manner so forcible
as to oppose and tire the hand of the operator, who was forced to change
from the right to the left - then indeed I thought I must have expired.
I attempted no more to open my eyes which remained hermetically shut......."
"........I concluded that the operation was
over - Oh no ! presently the terrible cutting was renewed - & worse
than ever, to separate the bottom, the foundation of this dreadful gland
from the parts to which it adhered. Again all description would be baffled
- yet again it was not over. Dr Larry rested but his own hand, & - Oh
heaven - I then felt the knife rackling against the breast bone, scraping
it. This performed while I yet remained in utterly speechless torture.....".
The operation
lasted seventeen and a half minutes, Fanny fainted twice. On being lifted
from her bed she was conscious and looked into Dr Larry's face.
FANNY (FRANCES) BURNEY was born in 1752, the fourth child and second daughter of Dr Charles Burney and his wife Ester. When her first novel "Evelina" was published in 1778 it became an instant best seller and remains in print today. Aged 41 she married a French refugee M. D'Arblay and in 1794 gave birth to her only child Alexandre. M. D'Arblay went back to France in 1810 and Fanny, with the baby, joined him in Paris the same year. In the summer of 1811 she noticed an inflammation and the appearance of a lump in the right breast. By 1812, when she was 50, the lump had become cruelly painful and, she could hardly use her right arm. Dr Dubois, a doctor to the Empress Josephine, was of the opinion that surgery to remove the lump was unavoidable if she were to live. Months afterwards Fanny wrote a narrative describing the ordeal in a long letter to her sister Hetty.
