"I need a reason—a reason I have to be here." Kraft ran his fingers through his damp hair, smoothing it back, then came in and found himself a seat.
He shouldn't have gone out in weather like this. At least, he didn't think he should have.
About two hours ago, he'd still been in the packed clinic, seeing his thirty-fourth patient of the morning and calculating when he might get to lunch.
They didn't have appointments in those days. The clinic had tried limiting the number of patients in similar ways, but soon discovered that limits not tied to anyone's identity just meant free money for middlemen.
So things had ended up like this: predicting the next day's patient numbers was harder than predicting the weather. At least the weather could actually be predicted, while Kraft had no idea whether he'd get lunch in the afternoon or the evening.
The clinic was now treating patients for more than just Tuberculosis. They also had to screen people to see whether they were suitable candidates for Foxglove, which was much harder.
Unlike Tuberculosis, whose symptoms were fairly distinctive, "heart failure" was a concept that most people—including many doctors—knew little to nothing about. After all, explaining how its symptoms arose really did require some knowledge of Anatomy.
Even blood circulation hadn't yet established itself as the undisputed academic consensus. According to the Four Humors Theory, blood bubbled up from the liver like spring water and flowed to every corner of the body. Some of it was absorbed and consumed, while the rest evaporated through the pores and dispersed. This was known as the "dissipation theory."
According to that theory, edema occurred when the Red Fluid reached its destination but couldn't all be consumed or dissipated, so it got stuck there and caused swelling.