The Miniature Wife: and Other Stories

Harold Withy Keith: A Meritorious Life

KEITH, H. W. (1839–1905). Inventor, scientist (botany, zoology, orismology). Place of birth: Asheville, North Carolina. Full name: Harold Withy Keith. One of two brothers, twins. According to hospital records, Harold and Martin Keith were born simultaneously, and, never quite the younger or the elder twin, H. W. Keith was referred to by family members as the Left Twin.

As young children, Harold and Martin spent their days in their father’s cellar working with grains, ground cornmeal and rice flour. As shown by the extensive notes found in Harold’s diary, the brothers made certain progress in their experiments to create a food “that would satisfy hunger without inflaming the passions” in the tradition of Graham and Kellogg. Their experiments, however, came to an abrupt and incomplete end when overshadowed by a young and healthy competition over the affections of the handsome Margaret Lillian Mauve.

Little is known about the courtship of Margaret Lillian Mauve, only that, in the end, Harold won Margaret’s heart, and the two were married in 1860. Harold’s twin, Martin, served as best man, and it was shortly thereafter that the two brothers again began experimenting with grains. On his own, however, unsatisfied with the repetition of grinding grains and baking crackers, Harold Keith began exhaustive scientific and medical research into unknown viruses and bacteria and the possible causes of sudden and painful deaths. It was during this time that H. W. first envisioned the need for the invention and construction of human organ substitutions. “Clearly,” Harold wrote, “if a man’s liver and kidneys and stomach fail, he will die.”

These experiments in organ substitutions, as far as historians can tell, took place in secret and in a separate laboratory. Some have speculated that H. W.’s work was commissioned by the leading generals of either the North or the South, though this theory appears unlikely since Keith’s work continued well past the end of the Civil War. Diagrams copied out of early journal entries show that Keith initially hoped to build organ substitutions using the shells of squash — acorn, snake, spaghetti — scooped out by hand and then internally supported by a collapsible yet sturdy construction of miniature wooden beams. After six months, though, this idea was abandoned, although historians are not sure why, as the subsequent journal pages are missing, presumably removed by Keith.

Intrigued by the newly discovered and recently named vascular system of plants (1861), H. W., following the schematics of various complex plant forms, then constructed a life-sized prototype — colored tubes pinched together with clips and impeccable knots — which he then used to represent the intricate system of translocation, storage, support, and conduction that are the major functions of xylem and phloem. His idea involved the installation of vascular bundles in place of or to help compensate for failed organic functions, “for do not plants perform the same basic functions of life in that they consume, store, and then release energy as food, calories, and waste?” A large mimetic reconstruction of this system — built late at night and early into the morning, each section conceived of and molded in the kitchen of his and Margaret’s one-bedroom house, the sections then pieced together in a nearby and abandoned toolshed — provided a model from which he designed an apparatus suitable for surgical insertion into a test subject. In his mind, a vascular system performed more effectively than the bulky system of organs already in place: If part of an organ was pierced or somehow punctured, the organ required immediate repair or else would possibly cause failure in the functions of the body, whereas with a vascular system, any number of strands could be cut, punctured, or lost and, so long as there remained other strands, the system would continue to function, albeit at a lower rate of efficiency.

During this period of time, Margaret gave birth to two sons and a daughter, Solomon, Jeremiah, and Mary Ann. Harold’s twin brother, Martin, would, in years to come, take their schooling into his own hands. He would, in fact, come to take the entire household into his own hands, and, eventually, the five of them would quietly become a closer family than ever they were with H. W.

Once his prototype was completed, H. W. Keith then outlined a three-step procedure that involved, first, surgically lining the body with the redesigned vascular system, one which would be appropriate for Homo sapiens, in which the bundles of human xylem and phloem would run throughout the body and would, if possible, be attached to the blood vessels already present. Appropriate numbers of bundles would be installed in the esophagus and around the stomach and the intestines, near the kidneys, the liver, and connected to the urethra. The second stage involved the patient’s adjustment through a new and scientifically formulated diet of liquids and soluble nutrients suitable for the human vascular system, in order that the new system learn its functions (in part by mimicking the old system). For this, he strayed from his earlier experiments in grains, concentrating instead on the nightshade family of fruits and vegetables, e.g., tomatoes and eggplants. The diet would be gradually increased to include more solid foods of the kind normally taken in by the traditional organic system. Once a normal diet had been achieved, the third stage could proceed, which involved the systematic removal of the traditional human organs, “not to include the Heart, which was, of course, the storehouse for the soul, and which was that organ which separated, in the end, Man from Plant.” The completion of this project became H. W. Keith’s lifelong obsession, everything else — Margaret, his brother, Martin, experiments in grain, his children — all in turn forgotten. It would be nearly forty-seven years later before the work would be finished, and the Human Vascular Bundle System ready for surgical insertion.

H. W. Keith was the first recipient of his patented Vascular Bundle procedure. Twenty minutes into the procedure, as documented by Keith himself, the young man assisting him in the surgery fainted. Undeterred, and with the help of a large beveled mirror of his own design, Keith made one incision after another, and then, feeling light-headed but “confident and with steady and unhesitating hands,” completed the operation. Yet due to complications unexplained and unforeseen, he passed away shortly thereafter.