It was the afternoon of the next day. Gerard was no longer lightheaded,
but very irritable and full of fancies; and in one of these he begged
Denys to get him a lemon to suck. Denys, who from a rough soldier had
been turned by tender friendship into a kind of grandfather, got up
hastily, and bidding him set his mind at ease, “lemons he should have in
the twinkling of a quart pot,” went and ransacked the shops for them.
They were not so common in the North as they are now, and he was absent
a long while, and Gerard getting very impatient, when at last the door
opened. But it was not Denys. Entered softly an imposing figure; an old
gentleman in a long sober gown trimmed with rich fur, cherry-coloured
hose, and pointed shoes, with a sword by his side in a morocco scabbard,
a ruff round his neck not only starched severely, but treacherously
stiffened in furrows by rebatoes, or a little hidden framework of wood;
and on his head a four-cornered cap with a fur border; on his chin and
bosom a majestic white beard. Gerard was in no doubt as to the vocation
of his visitor, for, the sword excepted, this was familiar to him as the
full dress of a physician. Moreover, a boy followed at his heels with
a basket, where phials, lint, and surgical tools rather courted than
shunned observation. The old gentleman came softly to the bedside, and
said mildly and sotto voce, “How is't with thee, my son?”
Gerard answered gratefully that his wound gave him little pain now; but
his throat was parched, and his head heavy.
“A wound! they told me not of that. Let me see it. Ay, ay, a good clean
bite. The mastiff had sound teeth that took this out, I warrant me;”
and the good doctor's sympathy seemed to run off to the quadruped he had
conjured, his jackal.
“This must be cauterized forthwith, or we shall have you starting back
from water, and turning somersaults in bed under our hands. 'Tis the
year for raving curs, and one hath done your business; but we will
baffle him yet. Urchin, go heat thine iron.”
“But, sir,” edged in Gerard, “'twas no dog, but a bear.”
“A bear! Young man,” remonstrated the senior severely, “think what you
say; 'tis ill jesting with the man of art who brings his grey hairs and
long study to heal you. A bear, quotha! Had you dissected as many bears
as I, or the tithe, and drawn their teeth to keep your hand in, you
would know that no bear's jaw ever made this foolish trifling wound. I
tell you 'twas a dog, and since you put me to it, I even deny that it
was a dog of magnitude, but neither more nor less than one of these
little furious curs that are so rife, and run devious, biting each manly
leg, and laying its wearer low, but for me and my learned brethren, who
still stay the mischief with knife and cautery.”
“Alas, sir! when said I 'twas a bear's jaw? I said, 'A bear:' it was his
paw, now.”
“And why didst not tell me that at once?”
“Because you kept telling me instead.”
“Never conceal aught from your leech, young man,” continued the senior,
who was a good talker, but one of the worst listeners in Europe. “Well,
it is an ill business. All the horny excrescences of animals, to wit,
claws of tigers, panthers, badgers, cats, bears, and the like, and
horn of deer, and nails of humans, especially children, are imbued with
direst poison. Y'had better have been bitten by a cur, whatever you may
say, than gored by bull or stag, or scratched by bear. However, shalt
have a good biting cataplasm for thy leg; meantime keep we the
body cool: put out thy tongue!-good!-fever. Let me feel thy pulse:
good!--fever. I ordain flebotomy, and on the instant.”
“Flebotomy! that is bloodletting: humph! Well, no matter, if 'tis sure
to cure me, for I will not lie idle here.” The doctor let him know that
flebotomy was infallible, especially in this case.
“Hans, go fetch the things needful, and I will entertain the patient
meantime with reasons.”
The man of art then explained to Gerard that in disease the blood
becomes hot and distempered and more or less poisonous; but a portion of
this unhealthy liquid removed, Nature is fain to create a purer fluid to
fill its place. Bleeding, therefore, being both a cooler and a purifier,
was a specific in all diseases, for all diseases were febrile, whatever
empirics might say.
“But think not,” said he warmly, “that it suffices to bleed; any paltry
barber can open a vein (though not all can close it again). The art is
to know what vein to empty for what disease. T'other day they brought me
one tormented with earache. I let him blood in the right thigh, and away
flew his earache. By-the-by, he has died since then. Another came with
the toothache. I bled him behind the ear, and relieved him in a jiffy.
He is also since dead as it happens. I bled our bailiff between the
thumb and forefinger for rheumatism. Presently he comes to me with
a headache and drumming in the ears, and holds out his hand over the
basin; but I smiled at his folly, and bled him in the left ankle sore
against his will, and made his head as light as a nut.”
Diverging then from the immediate theme after the manner of enthusiasts,
the reverend teacher proceeded thus:
“Know, young man, that two schools of art contend at this moment
throughout Europe. The Arabian, whose ancient oracles are Avicenna,
Rhazes, Albucazis; and its revivers are Chauliac and Lanfranc; and
the Greek school, whose modern champions are Bessarion, Platinus, and
Marsilius Ficinus, but whose pristine doctors were medicine's very
oracles, Phoebus, Chiron, Aesculapius, and his sons Podalinus and
Machaon, Pythagoras, Democritus, Praxagoras, who invented the arteries,
and Dioctes, 'qui primus urinae animum dedit.' All these taught orally.
Then came Hippocrates, the eighteenth from Aesculapius, and of him we
have manuscripts; to him we owe 'the vital principle.' He also invented
the bandage, and tapped for water on the chest; and above all he
dissected; yet only quadrupeds, for the brutal prejudices of the pagan
vulgar withheld the human body from the knife of science. Him followed
Aristotle, who gave us the aorta, the largest blood-vessel in the human
body.”
“Surely, sir, the Almighty gave us all that is in our bodies, and not
Aristotle, nor any Grecian man,” objected Gerard humbly.
“Child! of course He gave us the thing; but Aristotle did more, he gave
us the name of the thing. But young men will still be talking. The
next great light was Galen; he studied at Alexandria, then the home
of science. He, justly malcontent with quadrupeds, dissected apes, as
coming nearer to man, and bled like a Trojan. Then came Theophilus, who
gave us the nerves, the lacteal vessels, and the pia mater.”
This worried Gerard. “I cannot lie still and hear it said that mortal
man bestowed the parts which Adam our father took from Him, who made him
of the clay, and us his sons.”
“Was ever such perversity?” said the doctor, his colour rising. “Who is
the real donor of a thing to man? he who plants it secretly in the
dark recesses of man's body, or the learned wight who reveals it to
his intelligence, and so enriches his mind with the knowledge of it?
Comprehension is your only true possession. Are you answered?”
“I am put to silence, sir.”
“And that is better still; for garrulous patients are ill to cure,
especially in fever; I say, then, that Eristratus gave us the cerebral
nerves and the milk vessels; nay, more, he was the inventor of
lithotomy, whatever you may say. Then came another whom I forget; you do
somewhat perturb me with your petty exceptions. Then came Ammonius, the
author of lithotrity, and here comes Hans with the basin-to stay your
volubility. Blow thy chafer, boy, and hand me the basin; 'tis well.
Arabians, quotha! What are they but a sect of yesterday who about the
year 1000 did fall in with the writings of those very Greeks, and read
them awry, having no concurrent light of their own? for their demigod,
and camel-driver, Mahound, impostor in science as in religion, had
strictly forbidden them anatomy, even of the lower animals, the which he
who severeth from medicine, 'tollit solem e mundo,' as Tully quoth. Nay,
wonder not at my fervour, good youth; where the general weal stands in
jeopardy, a little warmth is civic, humane, and honourable. Now there is
settled of late in this town a pestilent Arabist, a mere empiric,
who, despising anatomy, and scarce knowing Greek from Hebrew, hath yet
spirited away half my patients; and I tremble for the rest. Put forth
thine ankle; and thou, Hans, breathe on the chafer.”
Whilst matters were in this posture, in came Denys with the lemons, and
stood surprised. “What sport is toward?” said he, raising his brows.
Gerard coloured a little, and told him the learned doctor was going to
flebotomize him and cauterize him; that was all.
“Ay! indeed; and yon imp, what bloweth he hot coals for?”
“What should it be for,” said the doctor to Gerard, “but to cauterize
the vein when opened and the poisonous blood let free? 'Tis the only
safe way. Avicenna indeed recommends a ligature of the vein; but how
'tis to be done he saith not, nor knew he himself I wot, nor any of the
spawn of Ishmael. For me, I have no faith in such tricksy expedients;
and take this with you for a safe principle: 'Whatever an Arab or
Arabist says is right, must be wrong.'”
“Oh, I see now what 'tis for,” said Denys; “and art thou so simple as
to let him put hot iron to thy living flesh? didst ever keep thy little
finger but ten moments in a candle? and this will be as many minutes.
Art not content to burn in purgatory after thy death? must thou needs
buy a foretaste on't here?”
“I never thought of that,” said Gerard gravely; “the good doctor spake
not of burning, but of cautery; to be sure 'tis all one, but cautery
sounds not so fearful as burning.”
“Imbecile! That is their art; to confound a plain man with dark words,
till his hissing flesh lets him know their meaning. Now listen to what
I have seen. When a soldier bleeds from a wound in battle, these leeches
say, 'Fever. Blood him!' and so they burn the wick at t'other end too.
They bleed the bled. Now at fever's heels comes desperate weakness; then
the man needs all his blood to live; but these prickers and burners,
having no forethought, recking nought of what is sure to come in a few
hours, and seeing like brute beasts only what is under their noses,
having meantime robbed him of the very blood his hurt had spared him to
battle that weakness withal; and so he dies exhausted. Hundreds have I
seen so scratched and pricked out of the world, Gerard, and tall fellows
too; but lo! if they have the luck to be wounded where no doctor can
be had, then they live; this too have I seen. Had I ever outlived that
field in Brabant but for my most lucky mischance, lack of chirurgery?
The frost chocked all my bleeding wounds, and so I lived. A chirurgeon
had pricked yet one more hole in this my body with his lance, and
drained my last drop out, and my spirit with it. Seeing them thus
distraught in bleeding of the bleeding soldier, I place no trust in
them; for what slays a veteran may well lay a milk-and-water bourgeois
low.”
“This sounds like common sense,” sighed Gerard languidly, “but no
need to raise your voice so; I was not born deaf, and just now I hear
acutely.”
“Common sense! very common sense indeed,” shouted the bad listener;
“why, this is a soldier; a brute whose business is to kill men, not cure
them.” He added in very tolerable French, “Woe be to you, unlearned
man, if you come between a physician and his patient; and woe be to you,
misguided youth, if you listen to that man of blood.”
“Much obliged,” said Denys, with mock politeness; “but I am a true man,
and would rob no man of his name. I do somewhat in the way of blood, but
not worth mention in this presence. For one I slay, you slay a score;
and for one spoonful of blood I draw, you spill a tubful. The world is
still gulled by shows. We soldiers vapour with long swords, and even in
war be-get two foes for every one we kill; but you smooth gownsmen, with
soft phrases and bare bodkins, 'tis you that thin mankind.”
“A sick chamber is no place for jesting,” cried the physician.
“No, doctor, nor for bawling,” said the patient peevishly.
“Come, young man,” said the senior kindly, “be reasonable. Cuilibet
in sua arte credendum est. My whole life has been given to this art. I
studied at Montpelier; the first school in France, and by consequence in
Europe. There learned I Dririmancy, Scatomancy, Pathology, Therapeusis,
and, greater than them all, Anatomy. For there we disciples of
Hippocrates and Galen had opportunities those great ancients never knew.
Goodbye, quadrupeds and apes, and paganism, and Mohammedanism; we bought
of the churchwardens, we shook the gallows; we undid the sexton's work
of dark nights, penetrated with love of science and our kind; all the
authorities had their orders from Paris to wink; and they winked. Gods
of Olympus, how they winked! The gracious king assisted us: he sent us
twice a year a living criminal condemned to die, and said, 'Deal ye with
him as science asks; dissect him alive, if ye think fit.'”
“By the liver of Herod, and Nero's bowels, he'll make me blush for the
land that bore me, an' if he praises it any more,” shouted Denys at the
top of his voice.
Gerard gave a little squawk, and put his fingers in his ears; but
speedily drew them out and shouted angrily, and as loudly, “you great
roaring, blaspheming bull of Basan, hold your noisy tongue!”
Denys summoned a contrite look.
“Tush, slight man,” said the doctor, with calm contempt, and vibrated
a hand over him as in this age men make a pointer dog down charge; then
flowed majestic on. “We seldom or never dissected the living criminal,
except in part. We mostly inoculated them with such diseases as the
barren time afforded, selecting of course the more interesting ones.”
“That means the foulest,” whispered Denys meekly.
“These we watched through all their stages to maturity.”
“Meaning the death of the poor rogue,” whispered Denys meekly.
“And now, my poor sufferer, who best merits your confidence, this
honest soldier with his youth, his ignorance, and his prejudices, or a
greybeard laden with the gathered wisdom of ages?”
“That is,” cried Denys impatiently, “will you believe what a jackdaw in
a long gown has heard from a starling in a long gown, who heard it from
a jay-pie, who heard it from a magpie, who heard it from a popinjay; or
will you believe what I, a man with nought to gain by looking awry, nor
speaking false, have seen; nor heard with the ears which are given us
to gull us, but seen with these sentinels mine eye, seen, seen; to wit,
that fevered and blooded men die, that fevered men not blooded live?
stay, who sent for this sang-sue? Did you?”
“Not I. I thought you had.”
“Nay,” explained the doctor, “the good landlord told me one was 'down'
in his house; so I said to myself, 'A stranger, and in need of my art,'
and came incontinently.”
“It was the act of a good Christian, sir.”
“Of a good bloodhound,” cried Denys contemptuously. “What, art thou so
green as not to know that all these landlords are in league with certain
of their fellow-citizens, who pay them toll on each booty? Whatever
you pay this ancient for stealing your life blood, of that the landlord
takes his third for betraying you to him. Nay, more, as soon as ever
your blood goes down the stair in that basin there, the landlord will
see it or smell it, and send swiftly to his undertaker and get his third
out of that job. For if he waited till the doctor got downstairs, the
doctor would be beforehand and bespeak his undertaker, and then he would
get the black thirds. Say I sooth, old Rouge et Noir? dites!”
“Denys, Denys, who taught you to think so ill of man?”
“Mine eyes, that are not to be gulled by what men say, seeing this many
a year what they do, in all the lands I travel.”
The doctor with some address made use of these last words to escape
the personal question. “I too have eyes as well as thou, and go not by
tradition only, but by what I have seen, and not only seen, but done.
I have healed as many men by bleeding as that interloping Arabist has
killed for want of it. 'Twas but t'other day I healed one threatened
with leprosy; I but bled him at the tip of the nose. I cured last year
a quartan ague: how? bled its forefinger. Our cure lost his memory. I
brought it him back on the point of my lance; I bled him behind the
ear. I bled a dolt of a boy, and now he is the only one who can tell his
right hand from his left in a whole family of idiots. When the plague
was here years ago, no sham plague, such as empyrics proclaim every six
years or so, but the good honest Byzantine pest, I blooded an alderman
freely, and cauterized the symptomatic buboes, and so pulled him out
of the grave; whereas our then chirurgeon, a most pernicious Arabist,
caught it himself, and died of it, aha, calling on Rhazes, Avicenna,
and Mahound, who, could they have come, had all perished as miserably as
himself.”
“Oh, my poor ears,” sighed Gerard.
“And am I fallen so low that one of your presence and speech rejects my
art and listens to a rude soldier, so far behind even his own miserable
trade as to bear an arbalest, a worn-out invention, that German
children shoot at pigeons with, but German soldiers mock at since ever
arquebusses came and put them down?”
“You foul-mouthed old charlatan,” cried Denys, “the arbalest is
shouldered by taller men than ever stood in Rhenish hose, and even now
it kills as many more than your noisy, stinking arquebus, as the lancet
does than all our toys together. Go to! He was no fool who first called
you 'leeches.' Sang-sues! va!”
Gerard groaned. “By the holy virgin, I wish you were both at Jericho,
bellowing.'
“Thank you comrade. Then I'll bark no more, but at need I'll bite. If
he has a lance, I have a sword; if he bleeds you, I'll bleed him. The
moment his lance pricks your skin, little one, my sword-hilt knocks
against his ribs; I have said it.”
And Denys turned pale, folded his arms, and looked gloomy and dangerous.
Gerard sighed wearily. “Now, as all this is about me, give me leave to
say a word.”
“Ay! let the young man choose life or death for himself.”
Gerard then indirectly rebuked his noisy counsellors by contrast and
example. He spoke with unparalleled calmness, sweetness, and gentleness.
And these were the words of Gerard the son of Eli. “I doubt not you both
mean me well; but you assassinate me between you. Calmness and quiet are
everything to me; but you are like two dogs growling over a bone. And
in sooth, bone I should be, did this uproar last long.”
There was a dead silence, broken only by the silvery voice of Gerard,
as he lay tranquil, and gazed calmly at the ceiling, and trickled into
words.
“First, venerable sir, I thank you for coming to see me, whether from
humanity, or in the way of honest gain; all trades must live.
“Your learning, reverend sir, seems great, to me at least, and for your
experience, your age voucheth it.
“You say you have bled many, and of these many, many have not died
thereafter, but lived, and done well. I must needs believe you.”
The physician bowed; Denys grunted.
“Others, you say, you have bled, and-they are dead. I must needs believe
you.
“Denys knows few things compared with you, but he knows them well. He is
a man not given to conjecture. This I myself have noted. He says he has
seen the fevered and blooded for the most part die; the fevered and not
blooded live. I must needs believe him.
“Here, then, all is doubt.
“But thus much is certain; if I be bled, I must pay you a fee, and be
burnt and excruciated with a hot iron, who am no felon.
“Pay a certain price in money and anguish for a doubtful remedy, that
will I never.
“Next to money and ease, peace and quiet are certain goods, above all in
a sick-room; but 'twould seem men cannot argue medicine without heat and
raised voices; therefore, sir, I will essay a little sleep, and Denys
will go forth and gaze on the females of the place, and I will keep
you no longer from those who can afford to lay out blood and money in
flebotomy and cautery.”
The old physician had naturally a hot temper; he had often during this
battle of words mastered it with difficulty, and now it mastered him.
The most dignified course was silence; he saw this, and drew himself up,
and made loftily for the door, followed close by his little boy and big
basket.
But at the door he choked, he swelled, he burst. He whirled and came
back open-mouthed, and the little boy and big basket had to
whisk semicircularly not to be run down, for de minimis non curat
Medicina-even when not in a rage.
“Ah! you reject my skill, you scorn my art. My revenge shall be to leave
you to yourself; lost idiot, take your last look at me, and at the sun.
Your blood be on your head!” And away he stamped.
But on reaching the door he whirled and came back; his wicker tail
twirling round after him like a cat's.
“In twelve hours at furthest you will be in the secondary stage of
fever. Your head will split. Your carotids will thump. Aha! And let but
a pin fall, you will jump to the ceiling. Then send for me; and I'll not
come.” He departed. But at the door-handle gathered fury, wheeled and
came flying, with pale, terror-stricken boy and wicker tail whisking
after him. “Next will come--CRAMPS of the STOMACH. Aha!
“Then--BILIOUS VOMIT. Aha!
“Then--COLD SWEAT, and DEADLY STUPOR.
“Then--CONFUSION OF ALL THE SENSES.
“Then--BLOODY VOMIT.
“And after that nothing can save you, not even I; and if I could I would
not, and so farewell!”
Even Denys changed colour at threats so fervent and precise; but Gerard
only gnashed his teeth with rage at the noise, and seized his hard
bolster with kindling eye.
This added fuel to the fire, and brought the insulted ancient back from
the impassable door, with his whisking train.
“And after that--MADNESS!
“And after that--BLACK VOMIT
“And then--CONVULSIONS!
“And then--THAT CESSATION OF ALL VITAL FUNCTIONS THE VULGAR CALL
'DEATH,' for which thank your own Satanic folly and insolence.
Farewell.” He went. He came. He roared, “And think not to be buried in
any Christian church-yard; for the bailiff is my good friend, and I
shall tell him how and why you died: felo de se! felo de se! Farewell.”
Gerard sprang to his feet on the bed by some supernatural gymnastic
power excitement lent him, and seeing him so moved, the vindictive
orator came back at him fiercer than ever, to launch some master-threat
the world has unhappily lost; for as he came with his whisking train,
and shaking his fist, Gerard hurled the bolster furiously in his face
and knocked him down like a shot, the boy's head cracked under his
falling master's, and crash went the dumb-stricken orator into the
basket, and there sat wedged in an inverted angle, crushing phial
after phial. The boy, being light, was strewed afar, but in a squatting
posture; so that they sat in a sequence, like graduated specimens, the
smaller howling. But soon the doctor's face filled with horror, and he
uttered a far louder and unearthly screech, and kicked and struggled
with wonderful agility for one of his age.
He was sitting on the hot coals.
They had singed the cloth and were now biting the man. Struggling wildly
but vainly to get out of the basket, he rolled yelling over with it
sideways, and lo! a great hissing; then the humane Gerard ran and
wrenched off the tight basket not without a struggle. The doctor lay on
his face groaning, handsomely singed with his own chafer, and slaked a
moment too late by his own villainous compounds, which, however, being
as various and even beautiful in colour as they were odious in taste,
had strangely diversified his grey robe, and painted it more gaudy than
neat.
Gerard and Denys raised him up and consoled him. “Courage, man, 'tis
but cautery; balm of Gilead, why, you recommend it but now to my comrade
here.”
The physician replied only by a look of concentrated spite, and went out
in dead silence, thrusting his stomach forth before him in the drollest
way. The boy followed him next moment but in that slight interval he
left off whining, burst into a grin, and conveyed to the culprits by an
unrefined gesture his accurate comprehension of, and rapturous though
compressed joy at, his master's disaster.