Flights

The narrator writes the story of the anatomist Philip Verheyen, who in 1689 meets with one of his former students, Willem van Horssen. Once a celebrated scholar and rector at the University of Leuven, Belgium, Verheyen has become increasingly reclusive while studying his preserved, amputated leg. When van Horssen arrives, the two eat dinner and discuss their tickets to a dissection Ruysch will perform in Amsterdam.

Verheyen has been dissecting and studying his own amputated leg: “It’s hard to believe that parts of one’s own body are discovered as though one were forging one’s way upriver in search of sources” (186). Verheyen shows van Horssen a sample taken from his leg. He has named the tissue he discovered the Achilles tendon. Van Horssen is impressed by the name Verheyen has chosen, reflecting that a symmetry between the human body and mythological gods feels pertinent to Enlightenment philosophy. Verheyen admits that he has been experiencing phantom pain in his amputated limb. He has become obsessed with researching this pain. The next morning, the pair leave for Amsterdam and Ruysch’s demonstration.

The narrator switches to van Horssen’s account of Verheyen’s life, written after the latter’s death. Verheyen was born in 1648 in Flanders, Belgium.