INVALIDED.
Callias found it very hard to sit out the banquet and the entertainment
that followed it. He had felt a headache before sitting, or to speak
more correctly, lying down, and this grew so bad during the evening that
he gladly took the earliest opportunity of leaving. The fact was that he
had been ailing for some days; the excitement of the games had carried
him through the labors of the day, but he suffered doubly from the
reaction, and before nightfall he was seriously ill.
And now he found the advantage of having followed Xenophon’s advice and
taken up his quarters in the town. Had he been reduced to such nursing
and attendance as the camp could have supplied, his chances of moving
would have been small indeed. At the house of Demochares, on the
contrary, he had everything in his favor, an exceptionally good nurse,
and an exceptionally skillful physician. In those days neither branch of
the healing art, for nursing has certainly as much to do with healing as
physicking, was very successfully cultivated. Women nursed the sick,
indeed, often with kindness and devotion, for woman’s nature was
substantially the same then as it is now, but they did it in a blind and
ignorant fashion. As for the practice of medicine it was a mass of
curious superstitions and prejudices, leavened here and there with a few
grains of experience, and, if the practitioner happened to have that
inestimable quality, of good sense. Of systems there was only the
beginning. The great physician Hippocrates had indeed acquired a vast
reputation, and was beginning to influence the opinion of the faculty
throughout Greece; but the medical profession has always been slow to
adopt new ideas--what profession, indeed, has not?--the means of
communication, too, were very limited, and as yet his teaching had had
but little effect.
But Callias happened to be exceedingly fortunate both in his nurse and
in his doctor. The house of Demochares was kept by his sister, a widow,
who after her husband’s death had returned to her old home, and had
devoted herself to a life of kindness and charity. The young Athenian
had won her heart, not only by his sunny temper and gracious manners,
but by his resemblance to a son of her own whose early death--he had
been slain in a skirmish with the barbarian neighbors of Trapezus--had
been the second great sorrow of her life. His illness called forth her
tenderest sympathies, and nothing could have exceeded the devotion with
which she ministered to her patient.
The physician, Demoleon by name, was a very remarkable man. He was a
native of the island of Cos, and was at this time between fifty and
sixty years of age. He had been one of the first pupils of the famous
Hippocrates, who was a native of the same island, and had lived on terms
of great intimacy with his teacher whom he assisted in his private
practice. When Hippocrates was summoned to the plague-stricken city of
Athens, Demoleon accompanied him, and, by a curious coincidence, in the
course of his residence there had treated the father of Callias.
Whatever the benefit that followed the prescriptions of Hippocrates, it
is certain that the fact of his being called in to administer them by
the most famous citizen of Greece, largely increased his reputation, and
that even beyond the border of Greece. The great physician’s return from
Athens was speedily followed by an invitation from Artaxerxes, King of
Persia.[78] The plague that had devastated Greece had passed eastward,
and was committing destructive ravages throughout the Persian Empire.
Artaxerxes implored Hippocrates to give him and his subjects the benefit
of his advice. He offered at the same time the magnificent _honorarium_
of two talents of gold yearly.[79] The patriotism or the prudence of
Hippocrates led him to refuse this offer, tempting as it was. He would
not, he said, and doubtless with sincerity, give the benefit of his
advice to the hereditary enemy of his country. At the same time, we may
suppose, he reflected to himself that he would be putting himself,
without any possibility of appeal, at the mercy of a tyrannical and
unscrupulous master. But one of the Persian envoys succeeded in doing a
little business of the same kind on his own account. He found the pupil
less resolute against the temptations of a great bribe than the master
had been. Accordingly he engaged Demoleon to come in the capacity of
physician to himself and his household. The King would have the
opportunity of availing himself of his advice if he pleased. Artaxerxes
was disappointed at the refusal of Hippocrates, but he did not disdain
the help of a man who had shared his practice, and was probably
acquainted with his system. Demoleon prescribed at Susa and Persepolis
the remedies which his master had employed at Athens, the burning of
huge fires in the street and squares, and the use of an antidote. The
pestilence either yielded to these influences, or, as is more probable,
had exhausted its force. At any rate Demoleon got the credit of having
vanquished the enemy, and was rewarded by a munificent present from the
King and by an enormous practice.
He might have accumulated great wealth but for an unlucky complication
for which he can scarcely be considered to have been to blame. Necessity
sometimes compelled a departure, in the case of the physician, from the
strict rules of seclusion with which the Persian women were surrounded.
Demoleon was called in to visit the daughter of a Persian noble. She was
a beautiful girl, or rather would have been beautiful but for the fact
that she was blind. It was a case of cataract, and the Greek physician,
who was as bold as he was skillful, ventured on an operation which at
that time had scarcely been attempted, or even thought of. It proved
entirely successful. The gratitude of the father was shown by a
munificent present of gold and jewels; that of the daughter by the gift
of her heart. One of the very first objects on which her eyes rested
when the bandage was permitted to be removed was the form of the young
physician who had restored to her one of the greatest joys of life.
Under any circumstances it was likely to please her; and Demoleon was in
the bloom of early manhood, and his fair complexion and golden hair
showed in attractive contrast to the swarthy hues of her countrymen. The
result was that she fell deeply in love. Demoleon was not without
prudence, and would have hesitated to listen to any promptings of his
own heart, for he too had been greatly impressed by the beauty and grace
as well as by the pathetic patience of the sufferer. Amestris--that was
the young lady’s name--guessed readily enough that the physician would
not venture to speak, and she took the matter into her own hands. She
did not speak herself; for that, passionate as was her affection, would
have been impossible; but she got some one to speak for her. Her
nurse--the nurse was generally the _confidante_ of antiquity--undertook
the task of communicating with the young man. One day she gave him a
pomegranate, saying at the same time that he would find the fruit
especially sweet. Her words would have seemed ordinary enough to any one
that might have happened to hear them; but the young physician, whose
feelings made him susceptible, suspected, he could not say why, a
particular meaning. Opening the fruit he found a ring engraved with a
single Greek word--_Be Bold_. The next day he thanked the giver of the
fruit with emphasis. “It was sweet to the core,” he said.
After that the affair proceeded rapidly. The young man, who, as may be
guessed, did not hurry the case of his patient, found an opportunity of
declaring his love, and in the following summer the two lovers fled
together. All the arrangements had been carefully made. The girl
feigned sickness, and the physician prescribed a residence among the
hills and a simpler life and plainer diet than the patient was likely to
get in her father’s house. Her foster-mother was the wife of a sheep
master who rented some extensive pasture on the hills of Southern
Armenia, and it was settled that Amestris should pay her a visit. The
lady was sent off under a small escort, no one dreaming that the family
of an influential noble would be molested on its journey. Yet, curiously
enough, a band of brigands was bold enough to enter the caravanserai
where the party was lodging on the fourth night after their departure
from Susa. Certainly the keeper of the inn, and, possibly, the commander
of the escort, had been bribed--Demoleon’s successful practice had put
him in the command of as much money as he wanted. For a long time
Amestris absolutely disappeared. Her father searched everywhere and
offered munificent rewards for information, but he could find and hear
nothing. No one knew that a couple of travellers, who might have been
two brothers journeying in company and followed by three well armed
servants, were in fact Demoleon, Amestris, and the pretended robbers.
The party followed much the same route as was afterwards taken by the
Ten Thousand, and, after not a few hair-breadth escapes, arrived in
safety at the same destination,--the city of Trapezus.
Three years of happiness followed. Then the beautiful Persian died. She
never repented of having given her heart to the young physician, who was
the best and most affectionate of husbands. But she missed her family
and all the associations of her early life, and pined away under the
loss. Return was impossible; she could not go back without her husband,
and to return with him would have been to expose him, if not herself, to
the certainty of death. The hopelessness of the situation broke her
heart; and all her husband’s skill, even the more potent influence of
her husband’s love, failed to work a cure.
The widower could not prevail upon himself to leave the place where he
had enjoyed his short-lived happiness. He might have gained wealth and
fame in larger cities, but he preferred to spend the rest of his days at
Trapezus. There, indeed, he was almost worshipped. He had a singularly
light and skillful hand; his experience, though, of course, not so large
as he might have collected elsewhere, was always ready for use; and he
had the rare, the incommunicable gift of felicitous guessing--guessing
we call it, but it is really the power of forming rapid conclusions from
a number of trifling, often half discerned indications. Anyhow he
achieved some very marvellous cures; performed with success operations
which others did not venture to attempt; diagnosed diseases with
remarkable skill, and was extraordinarily fertile in his expedients. It
was specially characteristic of him that while he was never satisfied
till he had thoroughly enquired into the causes of disease, he was
unwearied in his efforts to relieve the inconvenience and painfulness of
a patient’s symptoms.
So alarming did the condition of Callias become after his return from
the banquet, that Demoleon was called in without loss of time. All that
he could do at the moment was to give a sleeping draught, intending to
make a thorough examination of the case next morning.
Shortly after sunrise he was by the bedside. Callias was conscious
enough to be able to describe his feelings; what he said indicated
plainly enough that his illness had been developing for some days past,
and had been postponed by sheer courage and determination. It was in
fact something like what we call gastric fever; and the experienced
physician saw enough to convince him that he should have a hard battle
to fight. The patient was young, vigorous, apparently sound of
constitution, and, as far as he could learn, of temperate habits. All
this was in favor of recovery; but it was not more than was needed to
give a glimpse of hope.
Demochares, who had a strong regard for the young man, as indeed every
one had that had been brought into contact with him, intercepted the
physician as he was leaving the house after a prolonged examination of
the patient.
“How do you find him?” he asked.
Demoleon shook his head. The gesture was not exactly despairing, but it
indicated plainly enough that the situation was serious.
“You will put him all right before long?” returned the merchant, alarmed
at the gravity of the physician’s manner.
“All these things lie on the knees of the gods,” said Demoleon, quoting
from his favorite Homer. (It was a maxim of his that a man who did not
know his Homer was little better than a fool.) It may be said that the
physician was more than a little brusque in manner and speech. Twenty
years of solitary life had made him so, for since his wife’s death he
had held aloof from all the social life of the place.
“What ails him?” enquired the merchant.
“A fever,” was the brief reply.
“Does it run high?”
“Very high indeed.”
“You have bled him, of course.”
The physician’s answers to enquiries were generally as short as the
rules of politeness permitted; occasionally, some of his questioners
were disposed to think, even shorter; but there were remarks that always
made him fluent of speech, though the fluency was not always agreeable
to his audience.
“Bleed him, sir,” he cried, “why don’t you say at once stab him, poison
him? No, sir, I have not bled him, and do not intend to.”
“I thought that it was usual in such cases,” said the merchant timidly.
“Very likely you did,” answered Demoleon, “and there are persons, I do
not doubt, who would have done it, persons, too, who ought to know
better.” This was levelled at a rival practitioner in the town for whom
he entertained a most thorough contempt. “Do you know, sir,” he went on,
“where men learnt the practice of bleeding?”
“No, I do not,” said Demochares.
“It was from the hippopotamus. That animal has been observed to bleed
himself. Doubtless the operation does him good. But it does not follow
that what is good for an animal as big as a cottage is good also for a
man. Doubtless there _are_ men for whom it is good. When I have to deal
with a mountain of a man, one of your city dignitaries bloated by rich
feeding, by chines of beef and pork and flagons of rich wine, I don’t
hesitate to bleed him. His thick skin, his rolls of fat flesh, seem to
require it. In fact he is a human hippopotamus. But to bleed a spare
young fellow, who has been going through months of labor and hard living
would be to kill him. I wonder that you can suggest such a thing.”
“I am sure I am very sorry,” said the merchant humbly.
“Happily no harm is done,” replied the physician, cooling down a little.
“And, after all, this is not your business, and you may be excused for
your ignorance, but there are others,” he went off muttering in a low
voice, “who ought to know better, and ought to be punished for such
folly. It is sheer murder.”
I do not intend to describe the course of the long illness of which this
was the beginning. There were times when even the hopefulness of the
physician--and his hopefulness was one of his strongest and most helpful
qualities--failed him. Relapse after relapse, coming with disheartening
frequency, just when he had seemed to have gathered a little strength,
brought him close to the gates of death.
“I have done all that I can,” said Demoleon one evening to Epicharis the
nurse. “If any one is to save him, it must be you. If you want me, send
for me, of course. Otherwise I shall not come. It breaks my heart to see
this fine young fellow dying, when there are hundreds of worthless
brutes whom the earth would be better without.”
Epicharis never lost heart; for a nurse to lose heart is more fatal than
the physician’s despair. For nearly a week she scarcely slept. Not a
single opportunity of administering some strengthening food did she
lose--for now the fever had passed, and the danger lay in the excessive
exhaustion. At last her patience was rewarded. The sick man turned the
corner, and Demoleon, summoned at last, to alleviate, he feared, the
last agony, found, to his inexpressible delight, that the cure was
really begun.
“You are the physician,” he cried, as he seized the nurse’s hand and
kissed it; “I am only a fool.”
Winter had passed into spring, and spring into summer, before Callias
could be pronounced out of danger. Even then his recovery was slow. Some
months were spent in a mountain village where the bracing air worked
wonders in giving him back his strength. As the cold weather came on he
returned to his comfortable home in Trapezus. Though scarcely an
invalid, he was still a little short of perfect recovery. Besides it was
not the time for travelling. Anyhow it was the spring of the following
year, and now more than twelve months from the time of his first
illness, when he was pronounced fit to travel. Even then it was only
something like flat rebellion on the part of his patient that induced
Demoleon to give way. The young man was wearying for home and friends.
He had heard nothing of them for several months, for communication was
always stopped during the winter between Athens and the ports of the
Euxine, while the eastward bound ships that always started after the
dangerous season of the equinox had passed, had not yet arrived.
FOOTNOTES:
[78] Artaxerxes Longimanus, so called from the circumstance of his right
hand being longer than his left. He reigned from 465 to 425.
[79] About £5,200, ($25,000), if gold is to be reckoned at thirteen
times the value of silver. This is Herodotus’ calculation, and it
probably held good in Greece for a century or more from his time, until,
in fact, the enormous influx of gold from the Asiatic conquests of
Alexander altered the proportion.