Max Dreyssig, Human Skeleton

By Joe Jeney

Max Dreyssig, human skeleton, sits in the South Australian Museum in its Biodiversity Unit, a bluebird perched on his hand. Max Dreyssig, the man, was born in 1850 Germany, and moved to Australia in 1874. He died in the North Adelaide Private Hospital in 1913, two weeks following surgery at the hand of one of the age's great medical professors, Doctor Archibald Watson. Pulling together what little we know about Max's life, this story examines his relationship with the inimitable Professor Watson and the reasons for him leaving his home in Germany following the Franco-Prussian War, in which he fought. His was a time when the old world, Germany, became a newly confederated European powerhouse and the new Australian city, Adelaide, led the world in political reform and medical experimentation. Giving pony rides to children along Adelaide foreshores during his final years, Max lived alone but was never lonely. Max Dreyssig, Human Skeleton, the story, finally gives 'ole' Max Dreyssig' a voice - and a heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Light River Books
• Release date: Jan 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9780994436412

Joe Jeney

Joe has practiced law and worked professionally in legal education for many years. During his early working life, he worked in building, engineering, and agricultural fields. He has spent much of his life writing stories. Joe also writes under the pen name "JJ. Co."

Book preview

Acknowledgments

Iam indebted to the work of John Healey and his article, Putting some flesh on the bones: Max Dreyssig 1850-1913, Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, No. 26, 1998: 21-38, and to the work of Jennifer M. T. Carter, Painting the Islands Vermillion: Archibald Watson and the Brig Carl," Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-522-84853-2.

Max Dreyssig, Human Skeleton

DEAD THINGS on the beach didn’t interest Max Dreyssig today. How could anything interest him while his back pained him as it did? The tide was not in or out. The sand was not white or grey. The shoreline was not long or short. The water near the shore was meek, windless. Farther out it was ripped with white caps, though small ones, insignificant ones, the small white caps of an old, isolated, hardly used sanctuary. Windless, this old antipodean bay, uninteresting to anyone, and uninterested in anything.

Max tried taking an interest in the white caps and the sandy beach, and he tried forgetting his back pain. He tried taking an interest in the tide and in the shoreline, and the way in which the distant waves appeared higher than the sand on which he stood. Why didn’t they roll in upon him, for example, these tall, meek waves? What stopped them? What was the science in these matters, in the Gulf St. Vincent?

Scientists would classify the dead thing on the beach if he took it to them. Students might ponder its mysteries in the days, weeks, and years to come and, who knows, discover the meaning of things, as scientists do from time to time, especially the young ones. The young ones are so smart nowadays. They know so much, so early in their lives. Why the this was that, why the that was this. Science had led Captain Cook to capture his southland from the oldest of the people newly arrived to it. Science gave rise to state and industry and mighty war and weapons such as the breech-loading rifle, which a far younger Max used in battle with the French, he had indeed. Scientific rationalism, not disinterest, laid the plans for Adelaide, it neat and new and but eighty years grown from clay. Science - medical science - would clarify things for Max Dreyssig when he visited Herr Doktor’s surgery this afternoon.

Progress, progress, progress, change, and progress. He lived in a city of progress.

And of possibility!

Who knows what marvels 1913 will yet bring?

He stifled two coughs with his curled sexagenarian hand. This afternoon he would tell Herr Doktor about his lumbago, and how it pained him. He would seek clarity on it. He would speak to him about feeling ill too. He would ask for clarity on it.

How would he call it, feeling ill? Out of sorts, as the English say, while they sip tea. He - a Saxon - was out of sorts, yes, out of sorts. His old mare, Marie, his carpentry tools that were precious to him, his home that he feared the municipal council would condemn and remove him from. The dogcart in his yard, and his dog beside him on the beach now. Out of sorts, all.

It was summer in Leipzig, the city he left forty years ago to arrive here, the city he arrived in, Adelaide.

The last days of an antipodean winter were hardest.

He looked to the jetty jutting into a midwinter windless sea and at the boats moored to it and at the small bodies running around the boats and along the jetty. He looked over his right shoulder toward a city he couldn’t see from where he stood on the beach. He looked to his left, to the south, at the wide white sand, the long curved bay. He looked down to his feet at the dead thing on the beach.

He scooped it into his hand, the dead thing on the beach, leaned over and picked it up, and flicked it with his fingers. It was small like he was small.

His back pained him oh so terribly as he straightened himself with the help of his cane. He clenched his pipe between his worn teeth. He turned and limped with the dead thing through the sand until he reached the metal street.

Perhaps he would find science in it. The dead thing. He could donate it to the museum. Someone - students - could search for the science in it, and cure life’s ills with their discoveries.

His dog trotted home with him along the street. His mare, Marie, greeted them in time, he and the dog, at his tin sheet and wood home.

Later in the morning, he would walk to Glenelg. From there, he would catch the tram to Adelaide. Then he would walk to the surgery of the German-speaking, tea drinking, Australian born professor of medicine, Herr Doktor, in North Adelaide. Herr Doktor would investigate what ailed him, for certain. For something, certainly, ailed him.

He left the dead thing at his door where his dog wouldn’t get at it. He and his dog entered the house.

Let him rest. Let him forget change and progress till he left for the city in an hour.

HE WOULD GROW VEGETABLES in his yard once Marie was gone. After all, how much longer could she hold on, poor thing, past thirty years of age as she was? Meanwhile, he would eat bagged potatoes and beetroots that he bought from the greengrocer in Glenelg. He would eat tinned meat with them which, preserved, kept for months. Frankly, his appetite had waned during the recent weeks. He dry retched most mornings, something he didn’t like admitting. And his stomach was bloated day and night, and he expressed terrible gas on occasions.

He counted minutes until he left for town. It’s the waiting that’s worst.

His dog thumped her tail twice and rolled to her side. The earthen floor was smooth with use. The kitchen stove burnt coals lit five hours earlier when Max rose from a restless sleep. He pushed thick, short fingers through a hessian bag of unpeeled potatoes. He felt out a beetroot amongst them. Mould rose to his nose. Smells reached him rarely nowadays. Peculiarly, his sense of smell had withered, which was ironic and miserable, because he favored his sense of smell above his other senses.

The new world and its smells - the motor vehicle, sewage, rotting livestock alongside roads, mold cradled in damp corners of his home, and those unmentionable smells that emanated from his bloated belly. They had become so offensive that his senses in all likelihood shut down rather than bear the insult of putting up with them.

Max Dreyssig shivered as he tasted something foul in his mouth that made him think he was sick with a respiratory ailment. He felt a lump in his throat when he swallowed. Yet it was strange because he knew he wasn’t catching a cold or a cough.

It was ten in the morning, and he felt like covering himself with bedding to quit this shivering and to warm himself and to build his reserves for his appointment at the North Adelaide Private Hospital this afternoon. But he wouldn’t risk crushing his woolen coat and trousers by lying down in them again. He remained seated at the kitchen table beside the dying embers of the stove, uninterested in rebuilding the fire given that he was leaving his house for the remainder of the day.

The house would be cold when he came home tonight. He would be home after dark when even the best of fires would have burned to cinder and ash.

He built a fire this morning so that he could boil water to wash in, in preparedness to meet with the hospital staff in the afternoon. The ordeal of preparing to meet with the hospital staff had exhausted him, simply exhausted him, and he wished he didn’t have to go meet with them. He was completely tired, and he felt ill, perhaps ill with a cold. Actually, he would much prefer to stay home today, call off his meeting with Herr Doktor, and stay home. 

He listened to Marie shuffle about the yard. He watched the dog stretch. He thought about home on the other side of the world, which he told himself was not his home now, for Australia was his home now, and had been since 1874 when he left for it upon the ‘Somerset.’

He heard a fuss on the street. He rose and hopped somewhat to the kitchen door, where he collected his cane and his overcoat and hat before he walked to the front door.

Mr. Dreyssig, a woman called from the street.

Max watched the woman from his box veranda. She was fat and dressed in black, and she wore an apron.

He closed the door behind him.

Your donkey is stinking out our street. Your dog barks, she explained.

The woman, Mrs. Emmie, a neighbor from a few doors along, spoke with an eastern European accent, although Max had never asked her or anyone else where she came from originally. She reached for the disused water pump beside the fence to steady herself.

She smiled as she pointed out his animals’ shortcomings, which offended him deeply, that she should point out their shortcomings. His animals were his sole household companions, and his sole possessions, aside from the small block of land his shack leaned on, and aside from his tools. He took offense at her pointing out the shortcomings of his animals while knowing they were all he had in life.

Take them to the children, she said to him quieter because he was now right beside her as she leaned over the fence to accost him. Take them to the beach and make the children pay to ride the donkey, and let the dog run after you and bark.

Mrs. Emmie, Max Dreyssig said, it is winter. What responsible parent, even in these modern times, would allow their children to run about with my mare and dog on the beach?

It is not so bad a day today. There was no her seeing reason.

He reached for the gate.

Where do you go in such a hurry? she asked.

I go to the city of Adelaide to see a surgeon. 

He stepped through the gate and waved his hand over his shoulder, leaving her to wonder if he had waved her goodbye or if he had waved her away. 

She called after him because she had to release her breath in the shape of words, I will feed your donkey and your dog if you haven’t returned by nightfall.

I thank you, and he waved in the same way, but this time letting her interpret it as a friendly wave.

His horse and dog had ignored him as he left his house in Brighton to commence his two-mile trek to Glenelg. There he would catch the tram to the new gleaming city of Adelaide and thereby keep his appointment with the eminent Professor Watson, Herr Doktor. 

LEAVE HIM, THE WOMAN shouted after her boy, but it wasn’t much use.  He had shot off from the grocery store and was near the saddler’s shop on Moseley Street corner before her words reached him. Leave the poor man, she added more as a consolation to herself than to her son.

Mr. Dreyssig, Mr. Dreyssig, how are you Mr. Dreyssig? Is Marie the mare with you, sir? Is Marie the mare with you today?

No Arthur, Max Dreyssig replied.

My apologies, Mr. Dreyssig, Arthur’s mother, Mrs. Bauldestone, said when she caught the boy.

She screwed up her face, ready to interpret the foreigner’s reply, for she always had trouble understanding his accent. He was not English, you see. Not Australian neither. The child, Arthur, never had trouble understanding Mr. Dreyssig. Arthur understood what Mr. Dreyssig said, he always did, as did other children and those children