To study the progress of syphilis and other venereal diseases, we would vivisect the women at various intervals after they were infected. It was important to understand the effects of the disease on living organs, and vivisection also provided valuable surgical practice. The vivisection was sometimes done with chloroform, sometimes not. We usually vivisected the subjects for the anthrax and cholera experiments without use of anesthesia since anesthesia might have affected the results, and it was felt that the same would be true with the women with syphilis.

This was not the first time I had read this letter. I had seen it once before, as a little girl. It was one of my mother’s treasured possessions, and I remember asking her to explain all the faded characters to me.

“He was very proud of his literary learning,” my mother had said. “He always closed his letters with a tanka.”

By then Grandfather was well into his long slide into dementia. Often he would confuse me with my mother and call me by her name. He would also teach me how to make origami animals. His fingers were very dextrous—the legacy of being a good surgeon.