From Medical Myths by Albert Runch, pgs 92-7.
(.......)Channel is primarily famous for being the supposed birthplace of William Alexander Dubose, the forefather of bloodletting, or "bleeding" of patients as a medical practice in Europe. The history of bloodletting goes back to antiquity and the historical accuracy of the so-called "Dubose" myths have long been in question. Dubose is said to have been a priest with multiple illegitimate children. His favorite of these was a young girl named Alexandria. Alexandria became very ill, most likely with a blood disorder based on the sketchy accounts available of her symptoms. Histiocytosis has been suggested by some, but cannot be confirmed in light of lacking evidence. Enraged and impotent at God's lack of intervention in Alexandria's plight, Dubose rowed into the middle of the channel late at night, overcome with emotion. He berated God and renounced his faith in the midst of a mighty storm. It was likely that his boat would capsize and kill him. If his darling Alexandria had to die, then he would die too. He would accept such a fate. But Dubose did not die. His boat was capsized and he nearly drowned. Had it not been for a gardener trying to save his plants from being drowned in the storm, Dubose would have perished. The gardener pulled him from the channel, Dubose long since unconscious. He lay unconscious for weeks, and it was widely believed that he would never wake up. When he did wake up, it is said that he sat bolt upright and declared:
“I can save her!”
He immediately got up from the bed, naked as the day he came from the womb and started telling the first person he saw what wonders he had discovered. This unfortunate soul was likely only a house servant.
"God has given me the answer! I can not only save Alexandria but the world from suffering!"
Dubose was shocked and appalled to learn that no one wanted to listen to him, especially once they heard what he had to say. He told anyone who would listen, and this was increasingly few, though never none as many remembered him as a man of God, that he had been shown at the bottom of the channel, the future. In the future, he said, great trees would grow at the bottom of the channel, and in these trees would live great birds, nesting ocean creatures. It was in this world he had learned of the importance of human blood and its effect upon the humours.
“It is imperative!” he shouted, “That we bleed the sick, and let their blood run into the channel freely. Only then will they be cured.”
While others were unmoved-
A crash rang out in the house, bringing me back from the twelfth century to Mr. Blud’s library. I stood up, careful to mark my place in the delicate, old tome. Its pages were brittle and its binding tenuous, though the words crackled with life. I stood and opened the door into the hallway, calling out.
“Mr. Blud, is that you?”
“Nothing to worry about!”
“Are you alright?”
Stolen novel; please report.
Receiving no answer, I walked down the hall and turned a corner, trying my best to recall the layout of the strange house. To my great luck, or perhaps not, Mr. Blud was around that corner. He was on the floor, trying in vain to pick up the many pieces of the vase that had smashed to the floor, clearly the noise that had awoken me from my reverie. His work was not going well. He was shaking fiercely, his body vibrating in alarming undulations.
“Let me help you.”
“No, no I’ve got it. Nothing to worry about. Quite under control.”
“Did you knock it over?”
“I can be terribly clumsy sometimes.”
It would have been charitable to call him clumsy at that moment, as every bit of evidence pointed to the greater likelihood being his own frailty and uncertainty on his feet being the cause of the break. I dared not to venture any such theory.
"Mr. Blud," I ventured. "I think you might need to go to bed and allow Riven to take care of you? If you will accept my intrusion. I don't mean to presume."
Mr. Blud was...crying. No, crying would not quite do it justice, reader. My landlord was sobbing balefully, his robe coming off his shoulders and revealing a frighteningly bony frame, his ribs protruding like so many chins, his skin translucent, his heartbeat clearly visible. He fumbled to return his robe to his shoulders, his shaking hands finding the job difficult.
“You’re right, of course, Grady. You’re right. Could you…”
“Of course, Mr. Blud. Of course. The work of a moment.”
I found my way through the scarcely furnished house back to the front and out into the garden where Riven was still working.
“Mr. Blud needs your assistance.”
“I know that.”
“I mean to say that he requests it.”
“Are you certain?”
“I believe I convinced him of it, yes.”
Riven stood up and dusted himself off. He was wearing the natural clothes of a gardener, clothes which I had never seen him in before; overalls and wader boots, a bandanna tied around his head, his empty socket in the open air. He looked me over with his eye, meeting my own two and showing if I was not very much mistaken, an emotion I had not seen in him before. I believe it was respect.
“Very well. Will you need anything in the library after I’ve finished?”
“I think I’m going to go home for the day. Do thank Mr. Blud for his hospitality, but it leaves a sour taste with me to presume to use a fellow’s library while he lies ill.”
“I’ll let him know.”
“Thank you, Riven.”
“Mr. Grady.”
I left disappointed, but not in doubt as to my decision. I desperately wanted to keep reading about Dubose the priest and his near-drowning and subsequent coma and madness, but decorum required me to finish it later. I believed Mr. Blud to be ill, but I did not give it the thought I should have, did not mark the seriousness of his symptoms as I normally might have, had my mind not been so otherwise occupied. The retelling of the beginning of the Dubose myth took up the better part of my evening in the cottage. A fierce storm hit that night, lashing the windowpanes and even creating enough draft to put out the fire in my grate twice while I worked late into the night. The raindrops dyed artificially red by the light across the channel were blurred in my vision as my occasional break from the typewriter left my eyes foggy and unfocused, fixed out the window but unseeing. They looked inward, at the same channel, the same opaque water, the same myth-laden corner of the world, ruled by blood.