Hemlock & Silver

Two interrelated questions drive the action of Hemlock & Silver: what is killing Snow, and how it can be stopped. The novel thus unfolds as a search for truth, with Anja putting her skills of observation and experimentation to use to find the poison and its antidote. Her empirical approach stands in stark contrast to the stagnant traditions of formal medicine, revealing the importance of questioning received knowledge when seeking answers. Yet the novel also explores the limitations of a purely rationalist perspective, which it suggests must be similarly interrogated.

Anja’s intellectual journey is founded on skepticism toward classical scholarship. Her tutor, Scand, catalyzes this shift by encouraging her to question the work of the revered Harkelion the Physician, asking, “What if he was wrong?” (22). This question reframes ancient texts not as infallible sources of truth but as theories to be tested. Anja’s subsequent work embodies this principle, as she pursues a practical, evidence-based methodology of directly testing poisons and antidotes on animals and herself. By contrast, the kingdom’s traditional physicians rely on outdated practices like bleeding and blistering, accomplishing nothing because their methods are based on repeating the errors of the past rather than observing the patient before them. This serves as a tacit commentary not only on the dangers of unquestioning deference to precedent but also on the power structures that perpetuate such dogma; as a woman, Anja is on the margins of the scientific community, yet her methods prove superior to those that are generally accepted.

At the same time, the novel cautions against any framework that positions itself as the ultimate word in discerning truth. While the mirror-world does indeed have “rules” that Anja can observe, learn, and put to use, those rules resist scientific explanation in the strictest sense. Indeed, they frequently resemble the more figurative logic of Anja’s early readings on poison: The notion that a reflection must consume its counterpart’s heart to exist in the real world echoes Materia Botanica’s claim that a poison can be neutralized by consuming its opposite, or “mirror image.” Other rules are still more obscure. For instance, Anja struggles to understand why one can easily transport a living plant between worlds but not a living animal, and Graying’s explanation—that animals are potential “gods”—is metaphysical rather than scientific.

Ultimately, the novel does not wholly dispense with Anja’s empiricism, but it does modify it. The cure for Snow—distilled chime-adder venom—combines science with the more allegorical logic of fairy tales. It works in a way that Anja can readily describe in scientific terms, speeding a sluggish heartbeat, but it also functions as the apple’s “opposite”; in the four humors framework that Anja references, chime-adder venom is “sanguine,” while she describes the mirror-world as “anti-sanguine.” Similarly, Anja herself comes to accept the limitations of her scientific worldview, chiding herself for not listening more carefully to fairy tales and remarking that it is the very existence of “mysteries” that spurs curiosity and investigation. In this way, the novel endorses humility in the face of unknowns while suggesting that empiricism and other modes of knowledge can complement one another.