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I had a few hours to kill in the school library earlier, so I tracked down the title story of 'A Medicine for Melancholy'. It's a weird story written in a fairy-tale like style. I didn't see any similarities between the character and the story, but I scribbled down a summary anyway:

The daughter of the Wilkes family, Camellia, is deathly ill. No one is able to diagnose her precise ailment, and can only say that she's "not well" and "doing poorly", which is obvious. Many physicians have been consulted and many 'sovereign remedies' tried, but to no avail.
The story begins as the latest unsuccessful physician departs the Wilkes house. The parents talk enigmatically of 'bringing the Dustman up', but the younger brother Jamie has another suggestion; move Camellia and her bed outside, so that passerby on the busy street outside may offer medical advice; one of them is bound to be right, after all. At their wits' end, the family decides to do so.
One of the first visitors is a gaunt woman who intones "Vapors. Lung-flux. A medicine for melancholy is needed." She recommends powdered mummy, and bids them come to her shop later. Another visitor is a girl who walks up and stares at Camellia, seeming to know what ails her... but when pressured to reveal it, she flushes and runs off after giving Camellia a look of "deepest sympathy."
Late at night, Mr. Wilkes has collected two hundred remedies from the mob. But there is one final visitor; a Dustman "...of no particular size or shape, his face masked with soot from which shone water-blue eyes and a white slot of an ivory smile." He has one piece of advice; leave Camellia out in the light of the full moon that will rise this night. Mrs. Wilkes is doubtful, but Camellia herself wants to try it. The family leaves her and her bed outside.
When the moon rises, a well-dressed man with a lute steps out of the shadows. He converses with Camellia, telling her he knows her illness. First he lists the symptoms: "Raging temperatures, sudden cold, heart fast then slow, storms of temper, then sweet calms, drunkenness from having sipped only well water, dizziness from being touched only thus-" He them diagnoses: "The name of the ailment is Camellia Wilkes."
Cue bed-warming and other sexual allegories, though nothing too explicit. Also it's revealed that the troubador is the Dustman. (The Dustman? A Dustman? The story used both particles.)
Come morning, Camellia is well again. "The sovereign remedy," she murmurs in her sleep. "A medicine for melancholy." When she awakens, she asks her mother and father to dance with her. "Celebrating they knew not what, they did."

So yeah. The only connection I noticed is that, from the spartan description we're given of them, Medicine could be said to resemble the Dustman/Dustmen. She isn't covered in dust and soot, though. Maybe she's based on a different story in the volume?

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I'm interested to hear where the theory of the small doll is the real medicine melancholy originates.


Where does this whole Medicine-Eirin connection come from? I've seen it hinted among fans, so it had to have started SOMEWHERE.

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