H: Hermetic Haematology
A common rumour about doctor Victoria v. F. West was that she had decorations made out of sealed laboratory flasks and glass tube, both filled with blood samples. They were said to be kept inside glass cabinets in both her office and personal home. She was said to enjoy the way the installations caught the light.
Dr. West began her training as a medical student and worked tirelessly trying to save “soldiers” in Claire Vérité’s “army”, where West joined just as a first year medical student. Despite none of the active combat personal returning alive, she returned with all of her clothes ruined by blood. Along the way back to the Free City of Jubylon, she also found religion somewhere in her second year at university and joined a ridiculously small student organisation of followers of Hermes Trismegistus, where she became their sixth member that year. The other members were her closest social circle in her studies. All of their members did well both in school and in practise, a fact that all of them attributed to Dr. Victoria West giving them feedback and pointing out any mistakes.
After she graduated and took her Hippocratic oath, Dr. West both practised as a surgeon, taught and carried out research. She specialized in blood and was said to get more out of a blood sample than anyone else. Especially when compared to her actually talking to a patient. I have not been able to locate any of her actual research papers, but all mention her research as cutting edge for the time. She was well respected by her peers. Others joined her religion as well, though she saw her personal belief as fully separate from her scientific research and results. Regardless, her Hermetic religion was her only social life apart from her colleagues in research and surgery. She never had children, never married. But none who ever saw her in action would think of her as a cold or distant person. She never talked much with people, but she clearly cared for her patients. She had a giant library of blood samples taken from over 10.000 people. Records of a human being’s health at a specific point in time, frozen in time and kept in cold storage in a cellar at the university.
West was said to have predicted her own death from a sample of her own blood. She was only two days off, as she fell and died from her office on the way to teach. Cause of death: Cardiac arrest. Her remains were cremated in accordance with her will. Her home and equipment were given to the University, her library of both medical and occult books were given to close friends from her Hermetic circle, the University and surgery. She only asked that her dead body was drained of blood. Her blood was then exhibited in a glass closet with tubes and flasks designed by doctor West herself, decorated with Hermetic symbols and writings. It also included instructions on how to add demineralized water to kept her blood liquid. That way a medical student could see forever exactly how much blood a human body contains.