Doctor Tobias Grymbalde Analysis

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Doctor Tobias Grymbalde prods delicately at the smooth, hard lump protruding from the neck of the young man lying in the alley before him. Standing, he pulls a small rag from the recesses of his great overcoat and delicately wipes at his goggles before nodding to his custodian to have the man added to the cart. His face is obscured by a curious mask, its long beak-like nose stuffed with straw and various aromatics to forestall the foul miasma seeping from the infected. He is only thirty-seven but moves with the ponderous gait of a much older man, the various plague outbreaks that he has seen having taken their toll years before. His once hearty frame is now a bent shadow of its former self and under his wide-brimmed doctor's hat his head is shaved smooth for convenience. With practiced efficiency his procession makes their way…show more content…
He never could quite figure out how to balance his studies with his love of the theater and, more importantly, the illicit activities that could be found there. These activities were far more interesting to him than poking around in dead bodies, but his father insisted that he follow in his footsteps. Then one day word came about a new outbreak of the plague in London, followed swiftly by the news that his entire family had succumbed to the sickness. Alone, penniless, and expelled from the university, he did what he could to survive but he had no actual skills to speak of other than the small amount of information he had managed to glean from the lectures he bothered to attend. Using the last of his money he purchased the costume of a plague doctor and passed himself off as an established, well educated physician. This was actually quite easy as most of the city's real doctors had fled to the countryside at the first sign of the plague. They knew that there was absolutely nothing they could do to help the
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