It was good to have an idea, but the confidence behind it depended not on the doctor himself, but on another group of people whose hair had taken a terrible beating over the past few weeks.
After reporting two weeks of progress to the duke and learning about his condition, Kraft snatched a piece of bread from his lunch plate and hurried to the Workshop to inspect the craftsmen's work.
A jeweler with a rather grim expression showed him something unexpected.
"How did you manage this?" Kraft carefully pinched the slender silver tube from the velvet pad between two fingers and held it up to the light.
The light passing through its center showed that it was indeed hollow. Its walls were thin and even, one end was sharp, and its surface had been polished smooth. A few remaining hammer marks suggested it had been shaped from a sheet of hammered silver.
He had thought he would never see anything so fine in his life. He had narrowly avoided the dreadful prospect of using a feather or a fine bone for a needle. This would require blood vessels of an impractically large diameter if used as a syringe, but it just barely met the standard for a Thoracic Puncture Needle.
His only concern was the material's strength. Bending would be manageable; breaking would be a real disaster.
The needle had been fixed to a Wooden Plug, which fitted the Leather Tube Kraft had requested. The craftsmen had made the tube from thin strips of leather wound together, with some kind of adhesive applied to the overlapping seams. It was tougher and less flexible than a rubber tube, but its airtightness was reliable.
"Will this glue dissolve?"
"You could use it to blow bubbles underwater."
The craftsman's assurance put Kraft at