Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

The title "Beginnings" (plural) accurately describes Chapter 1. The year is 1664. We meet Robert Merivel, in the first person. He first describes his thirty-seven-year-old body in very disparaging terms. He is very dissatisfied with all his appendages and describes his stomach as large and freckled and looking like a flight of moths has landed on it. He is balding and wears a wig, which often becomes sweaty and itchy.

His first beginning is many years before, in 1636, when Robert is nine years old. Using kitchen utensils, he performs an autopsy of a starling (a small bird). This leaves a lasting impression on him. The second beginning, in 1647, is while he is attending Caius College, Cambridge (medical school), where he performs autopsies and meets his friend Pearce. While there, he meets a man with an open chest wound which exposes the man's beating...