“SEND FOR FATHER O’GRADY.”
“What! do they study?”
“No, father, but they feel!”
“Feel! I comprehend thee not!”
_Sir. E. B. Lytton._
Such men, in other men’s calamities, are, as it were, in season,
and are ever on the loading part; not so good as the dogs that
licked Lazarus’ sores, but like flies that are still buzzing upon
anything that is raw.—_Bacon_.
As a resident dresser, it often devolved upon our hero to reason with
troublesome patients who offered opposition to the methods of treatment
proposed to be adopted in their particular case.
One day an ambulance deposited at the door of the hospital, an
Irishman, who had just fallen from a high scaffold, and had been
carried thither by the police.
Dr. Wilson had carefully examined the poor man, and had determined to
amputate one of his legs. Dr. Wilson had what has been aptly termed the
“_furor operativus_” the operative madness. He had a burning desire to
do everything that anybody had ever been known to do on the human
subject in the way of surgery. He did not want his period of office to
expire till he had had an opportunity of adding to his list of cases
the most difficult and dangerous operations set down in books. Now the
Hibernian subject just brought in would do very well for a trial of a
new method of amputating the leg at the thigh; and as the man objected
to any such interference with the integrity of his ambulatory
apparatus, the strongest pressure was brought to bear upon his
obstinacy.
“Send for Father O’Grady, he’ll manage it. I won’t lose my chance if I
can help it!” And the newly appointed house-surgeon looked defiantly
round on his little band of dressers, who shared his anxiety that so
good an operation should not slip through his fingers without a final
effort. Pat was determined he would not have his leg off. “What would
he be good for with a wooden leg? How would the wife and childher go on
if he were maimed like that? Let me be out of this! By the mercy o’ God
and His blessed Mother I’ll get well again and kape me leg. Just boind
it up, mates, and let me go. God bless ye all, I know ye mane it for me
good. Don’t be thinkin’ me a coward: it isn’t that at all. Ye might cut
me in little paices, if it wasn’t for the missis and the bits of
childher.” And poor Pat began to cry bitterly, not for his pain, which
was bad enough, but at the recollection of his dear ones at home, for
whom he could do no more work for many a week, perhaps might never
climb a ladder again.
The dressers were rough but warm-hearted, and some had difficulty in
restraining tears that were undresser-like and derogatory to their
authority.
The house surgeon had long ago got over that nonsense. He was there in
the interests of science. Sympathy was for women and clergymen. What
had he to do with a patient’s calling and his home concerns? He walked
up and down the receiving room with his hands in his pockets, musing
thus: “Conservative surgery is all very well, but it isn’t brilliant.
When a fellow has taken off a dozen or two lower extremities, he can
afford to be conservative; but if I let this go, I may complete my term
of office without another chance of doing anything half so good. That
conceited ass Gayworth, is crowing over me already. He did a better
hernia than I ever had the chance to do; but I shall beat him if I get
this. Perhaps I could save the poor devil’s leg—at any rate, Laxton
thinks so; but, hang it, what’s a fellow to do? I go off next week, and
I shall never have anything like this again! Here comes the priest; he
will bring him to reason.”
Cheery, bustling, kindly Father O’Grady runs up the hospital steps, and
is met in the entrance hall by our ardent young operator. “Sorry to
bother you, father, but one of your people here who has a compound
fracture of the thigh refuses to undergo the necessary operation to
save his life.”
“Won’t have his leg off, I suppose?” said the priest.
“Just so.”
“Is it _really_ necessary, doctor dear?”
“Decidedly, and I wouldn’t answer for his living the week out if it
isn’t done at once.”
And the surgeon looked as dogmatic and authoritative as though he were
the President of the College of Surgeons himself. The good priest
looked at this youth, only just turned twenty-two, and wondered, if he
were older and wiser, with the knowledge that comes not from books and
lectures, but from experience and meditation, the true correctives for
so many medical theories—wondered if he would be as positive as he was
now.
“You are sure you couldn’t save his leg anyhow?”
“Quite sure.”
It was not for the good clergyman to argue the case, so he went to the
couch on which lay the crushed form of his suffering countryman and
co-religionist, bent over him and whispered loving words in his ear,
and commanded him in the name of the Church to submit to lose his limb
that his life might be saved, as the doctors desired.
Without another word of resistance the man obeyed, and gave the surgeon
permission to do as he would with him. The good priest blessed the man,
and, with tears in his eyes, turning to the grateful young doctor, said
in a whisper,—
“But I hope it is really necessary.”
“Oh, certainly, father, or I wouldn’t think of it.”
His reverence did not seem quite so convinced on that score as he might
have been, and left the place with a sigh. A message was immediately
sent to the visiting surgeon of the week, who lived close by and who
had long promised the young doctor “something good before he went off.”
He soon arrived, approved of Wilson’s suggestion, and congratulated him
on his “opportunity,” for he was an amiable and benevolent teacher, who
liked his pupils “to feel their feet” as he used to say.
Of course it was given out that the great man was to operate (that
was a precaution always taken) the teachers never shirked any
responsibility, their backs were broad enough for everything, and when
the anæsthetic had done its work,“who was to know? That’s the beauty of
chloroform,” said Wilson. “_Qui facit per alium, facit per se_,” added
the professor,“that is an axiom in law and that must be right!” So the
bell was rung that called the students to assemble in the theatre where
the operations took place, and all was ready. Mr. Wilson was not quite
easy in his mind; his conscience told him he was sacrificing this Irish
labourer’s chance of preserving his injured limb (and that limb meant
so much more to him and his than to a rich man) to his own advancement
in the surgeon’s art. But that conscience was soon silenced. He had
learned how to crush out all feelings of pity that interfered with his
“work” long ago in the physiological room. He was tender, kind, and a
lover of the lower animals when he began his course there, when he
first obeyed the order of his teacher to slice off a piece of a living
frog’s eye and rub lunar caustic on the injured organ. He shuddered
when the professor said: “It won’t be nice for the frog, but it will be
useful to you!” But he shuddered less next time, and when he had
conquered his aversion to the torture of living dogs which licked his
hands before he began, it was not difficult to do any work in the
operating theatre on human beings which science might demand.
“So patients must suffer that surgeons may learn,
And women must weep when their husbands return
With their limbs left behind at St. Bernard’s.”
And he whistled merrily to think how his capital operation had come in
the nick of time.
* * * * *
Poor Pat was quite resigned; he had obeyed the voice of the Church; and
Faith bade him reflect that God would look after his family when he
went out with a wooden leg and his calling gone in this life. It is not
absolutely certain that this mediæval attitude of mind is so very
inferior to that of the free and independent Protestant way of looking
at things, after all. Patrick Flynn’s day-book and ledger would not
make a bad figure when the auditing angel came along, notwithstanding
his complete ignorance of any learning save his rosary and the
non-possession of the key of his own conscience.
“I could have saved that leg if it had been my case,” said Senior
Surgeon Bishop after the operation; “but it would have been hard on
Wilson to make him lose his chance.”
It was this same Wilson who so horrified Elsworth by compelling him to
tear off the thumb-nail of a patient for whom such an operation was
necessary, without the use of any anæsthetic. “If we gave chloroform
for every trifling job like that,” he said, “we should have enough to
do.” He had become so case-hardened against feeling pain in others that
he could only attribute to weakness and incompetence that hesitation to
cause a single unnecessary pang in any sentient being which is the
unvarying qualification of all the greatest and noblest men and women
of whom we know anything. The blood-madness of some of the Dukes of
Milan no doubt began early with unrestricted torture of animals. Not
all at once do men bring themselves to hunt their prisoners with dogs
fed on human flesh. Ecelin had to learn his cruelty as men learn any
other business, slowly and by degrees qualifying for the title of “The
Cruel” which men gave him. It would doubtless be some satisfaction to
flies and other insects tortured by ill-trained children, if they could
know that their tormentors would soon exercise their skill on their
fellows, and so avenge the innocent world below them. Elsworth had done
his best to get the man to consent to his mutilation, but his
conscience troubled him for many days afterwards.