All Creatures Great and Small Read online

  I have a vivid recollection of a summer evening when I had to carry out a rumenotomy on a cow. As a rule I was inclined to play for time when I suspected a foreign body—there were so many other conditions with similar symptoms that I was never in a hurry to make a hole in the animal’s side. But this time diagnosis was easy; the sudden fall in milk yield, loss of cudding; grunting, and the rigid, sunken-eyed appearance of the cow. And to clinch it the farmer told me he had been repairing a hen house in the cow pasture—nailing up loose boards. I knew where one of the nails had gone.

  The farm, right on the main street of the village, was a favourite meeting place for the local lads. As I laid out my instruments on a clean towel draped over a straw bale a row of grinning faces watched from above the half door of the box; not only watched but encouraged me with ribald shouts. When I was about ready to start it occurred to me that an extra pair of hands would be helpful and I turned to the door. “How would one of you lads like to be my assistant?” There was even more shouting for a minute or two, then the door was opened and a huge young man with a shock of red hair ambled into the box; he was a magnificent sight with his vast shoulders and the column of sunburned neck rising from the open shirt. It needed only the bright blue eyes and the ruddy, high-cheekboned face to remind me that the Norsemen had been around the Dales a thousand years ago. This was a Viking.

  I had him roll up his sleeves and scrub his hands in a bucket of warm water and antiseptic while I infiltrated the cow’s flank with local anaesthetic. When I gave him artery forceps and scissors to hold he pranced around, making stabbing motions at the cow and roaring with laughter.

  “Maybe you’d like to do the job yourself?” I asked. The Viking squared his great shoulders. “Aye, I’ll ’ave a go,” and the heads above the door cheered lustily.

  As I finally poised my Bard Parker scalpel with its new razor-sharp blade over the cow, the air was thick with earthy witticisms. I had decided that this time I really would make the bold incision recommended in the surgery books; it was about time I advanced beyond the stage of pecking nervously at the skin. “A veritable blow,” was how one learned author had described it. Well, that was how it was going to be.

  I touched the blade down on the clipped area of the flank and with a quick motion of the wrist laid open a ten-inch wound. I stood back for a few seconds admiring the clean-cut edges of the skin with only a few capillaries spurting on to the glistening, twitching abdominal muscles. At the same time I noticed that the laughter and shouting from the heads had been switched off and was replaced by an eerie silence broken only by a heavy, thudding sound from behind me.

  “Forceps please,” I said, extending my hand back. But nothing happened. I looked round; the top of the half door was bare—not a head in sight. There was only the Viking spreadeagled in the middle of the floor, arms and legs flung wide, chin pointing to the roof. The attitude was so theatrical that I thought he was still acting the fool, but a closer examination erased all doubts: the Viking was out cold. He must have gone straight over backwards like a stricken oak.

  The farmer, a bent little man who couldn’t have scaled much more than eight stones, had been steadying the cow’s head. He looked at me with the faintest flicker of amusement in his eyes. “Looks like you and me for it, then, guvnor.” He tied the halter to a ring on the wall, washed his hands methodically and took up his place at my side. Throughout the operation, he passed me my instruments, swabbed away the seeping blood and clipped the sutures, whistling tunelessly through his teeth in a bored manner; the only time he showed any real emotion was when I produced the offending nail from the depths of the reticulum. He raised his eyebrows slightly, said “ ’ello, ’ello,” then started whistling again.

  We were too busy to do anything for the Viking. Halfway through, he sat up, shook himself a few times then got to his feet and strolled with elaborate nonchalance out of the box. The poor fellow seemed to be hoping that perhaps we had noticed nothing unusual.

  I don’t suppose we could have done much to bring him round anyway. There was only one time I discovered a means of immediate resuscitation and that was by accident.

  It was when Henry Dickson asked me to show him how to castrate a ruptured pig without leaving a swelling. Henry was going in for pigs in a big way and had a burning ambition to equip himself with veterinary skills.

  When he showed me the young pig with the gross scrotal swelling I demurred. “I really think this is a vet’s job, Henry. Castrate your normal pigs by all means but I don’t think you could make a proper job of this sort of thing.”

  “How’s that, then?”

  “Well, there’s the local anaesthetic, danger of infection—and you really need a knowledge of anatomy to know what you’re doing.”

  All the frustrated surgeon in Henry showed in his eyes. “Gaw, I’d like to know how to do it.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “How about if I do this one as a demonstration and you can make up your own mind. I’ll give him a general anaesthetic so you don’t have to hold him.”

  “Right, that’s a good idea.” Henry thought for a moment. “What’ll you charge me to do ’im?”

  “Seven and six.”

  “Well I suppose you have to have your pound of flesh. Get on.”

  I injected a few cc’s of Nembutal into the little pig’s peritoneum and after some staggering he rolled over in the straw and lay still. Henry had rigged up a table in the yard and we laid the sleeping animal on it. I was preparing to start when Henry pulled out a ten-shilling note.

  “Better pay you now before I forget.”

  “All right, but my hands are clean now—push it into my pocket and I’ll give you the change when we finish.”

  I rather fancy myself as a teacher and soon warmed to my task. I carefully incised the skin over the inguinal canal and pulled out the testicle, intact in its tunics. “See there, Henry, the bowels have come down the canal and are lying in with the testicle.” I pointed to the loops of intestine, pale pink through the translucent membranes. “Now if I do this, I can push them right back into the abdomen, and if I press here, out they pop again. You see how it works? There, they’ve gone; now they’re out again. Once more I make them disappear and whoops, there they are back with us! Now in order to retain them permanently in the abdomen I take the spermatic cord and wind it in its coverings tightly down to the …”

  But my audience was no longer with me. Henry had sunk down on an upturned oil drum and lay slumped across the table, his head cradled on his arms. My disappointment was acute, and finishing off the job and inserting the sutures was a sad anticlimax with my student slumbering at the end of the table.

  I put the pig back in his pen and gathered up my gear: then I remembered I hadn’t given Henry his change. I don’t know why I did it but instead of half-a-crown, I slapped down a shilling and sixpence on the wood a few inches from his face. The noise made him open his eyes and he gazed dully at the coins for a few seconds, then with almost frightening suddenness he snapped upright, ashenfaced but alert and glaring.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “I want another shillin’!”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  VETS ARE USELESS CREATURES, parasites on the agricultural community, expensive layabouts who really know nothing about animals or their diseases. You might as well get Jeff Mallock the knacker man as send for a vet.

  At least that was the opinion, frequently expressed, of the Sidlow family. In fact, when you came right down to it, just about the only person for miles around who knew how to treat sick beasts was Mr. Sidlow himself. If any of their cows or horses fell ill it was Mr. Sidlow who stepped forward with his armoury of sovereign remedies. He enjoyed a God-like prestige with his wife and large family and it was an article of their faith that father was infallible in these matters; the only other being who had ever approached his skill was long-dead Grandpa Sidlow from whom father had learned so many of his cures.

  Mind you, Mr. Sidlow was a just and humane man. After ma