Outlander Book Club: A Breath of Snow and Ashes Chapter 11 breakdown

Just the Outlander chapter

We start with Claire in her surgery. She’s explaining a little about blood to Bobby, as she discusses malaria and the parasites in the blood. This is something she’s treating Lizzie for, and she even tells Bobby that it’s Lizzie’s blood cells that she’s looking at.

Now she moves on to Bobby. She asks him about a rash that he may have seen before getting the fainting spells. When he confirms, she is sure that she has the diagnosis right. Bobby may have hookworms. She gets the diagnosis while looking at the parasites in Lizzie’s blood. That gets her thinking about other parasites.

Hookworms would certainly cause the fainting spells. She needs to look for the eggshells in his stools to confirm this.

The good news is that if he does have hookworms, Claire knows of a cure. She’ll be able to make something that would be poison to the hookworms but not poisonous for Bobby. That would get rid of the critters for good, and Bobby won’t have the fainting spells anymore.

He’s a shy young man, though. We learn he’s only 23 in this chapter, and in a previous chapter, we know he didn’t want to talk about his piles. It’s not surprising that he thinks living with the hookworms would be better than letting Claire look at his stools under a microscope.