Exactly this.

The nurse in those quiet hospital corridors. Years and years later, just remembering that dead-silent sequence makes me wince. Perfectly shot horror.

Hey, no problem at all - I wasn't super-clear in the first place. But thank you so, so much - though the Knick pulls from reality all the time, I had no idea that they'd referenced a specific item for that joke! But what you describe is exactly what bewildered me at first: why would Algernon and Opal have plans to…

Is the second joke - the happy hangman, the delighted gravedigger - not a deliciously subversive insult that the white audience never recognised?

If I remember right, rabies can either cause or present AS meningitis. Which I'll admit was my first thought when he touched his baby with that hand.