“I have been not only a close witness, but actually an actor – or co-actor – to her surgical operations which were devoid of any kind of anesthesia or asepsia, or even basic cleanness, with no electric light – only a gloomy wax candle, with a dirty rusty knife (more so than Arigo’s), opening with her bare, dirty, bloody hands skin, flesh, tissues, bones, extracting tumors, exchanging whole femurs, or stomachs … and transplanting whole brains (!), both kidneys, or a whole uterus. I personally, with my own hands, have helped to keep open both sides of a woman’s skull while Pachita extirpated the woman’s whole brain, and put in its place a whole new one, with bulb hanging and all … Something Frankesteinian indeed.”