White Jacket; Or, The World on a Man-of-War

by Herman Melville

  CHAPTER LXI.

  THE SURGEON OF THE FLEET.

  Cadwallader Cuticle, M. D., and Honorary Member of the mostdistinguished Colleges of Surgeons both in Europe and America, was ourSurgeon of the Fleet. Nor was he at all blind to the dignity of hisposition; to which, indeed, he was rendered peculiarly competent, ifthe reputation he enjoyed was deserved. He had the name of being theforemost Surgeon in the Navy, a gentleman of remarkable science, and aveteran practitioner.

  He was a small, withered man, nearly, perhaps quite, sixty years ofage. His chest was shallow, his shoulders bent, his pantaloons hunground skeleton legs, and his face was singularly attenuated. In truth,the corporeal vitality of this man seemed, in a good degree, to havedied out of him. He walked abroad, a curious patch-work of life anddeath, with a wig, one glass eye, and a set of false teeth, while hisvoice was husky and thick; but his mind seemed undebilitated as inyouth; it shone out of his remaining eye with basilisk brilliancy.

  Like most old physicians and surgeons who have seen much service, andhave been promoted to high professional place for their scientificattainments, this Cuticle was an enthusiast in his calling. In private,he had once been heard to say, confidentially, that he would rather cutoff a man's arm than dismember the wing of the most delicate pheasant.In particular, the department of Morbid Anatomy was his peculiar love;and in his state-room below he had a most unsightly collection ofParisian casts, in plaster and wax, representing all imaginablemalformations of the human members, both organic and induced bydisease. Chief among these was a cast, often to be met with in theAnatomical Museums of Europe, and no doubt an unexaggerated copy of agenuine original; it was the head of an elderly woman, with an aspectsingularly gentle and meek, but at the same time wonderfully expressiveof a gnawing sorrow, never to be relieved. You would almost havethought it the face of some abbess, for some unspeakable crimevoluntarily sequestered from human society, and leading a life ofagonised penitence without hope; so marvellously sad and tearfullypitiable was this head. But when you first beheld it, no such emotionsever crossed your mind. All your eyes and all your horrified soul werefast fascinated and frozen by the sight of a hideous, crumpled horn,like that of a ram, downward growing out from the forehead, and partlyshadowing the face; but as you gazed, the freezing fascination of itshorribleness gradually waned, and then your whole heart burst withsorrow, as you contemplated those aged features, ashy pale and wan. Thehorn seemed the mark of a curse for some mysterious sin, conceived andcommitted before the spirit had entered the flesh. Yet that sin seemedsomething imposed, and not voluntarily sought; some sin growing out ofthe heartless necessities of the predestination of things; some sinunder which the sinner sank in sinless woe.

  But no pang of pain, not the slightest touch of concern, ever crossedthe bosom of Cuticle when he looked on this cast. It was immovablyfixed to a bracket, against the partition of his state-room, so that itwas the first object that greeted his eyes when he opened them from hisnightly sleep. Nor was it to hide the face, that upon retiring, healways hung his Navy cap upon the upward curling extremity of the horn,for that obscured it but little.

  The Surgeon's cot-boy, the lad who made up his swinging bed and tookcare of his room, often told us of the horror he sometimes felt when hewould find himself alone in ins master's retreat. At times he wasseized with the idea that Cuticle was a preternatural being; and onceentering his room in the middle watch of the night, he started atfinding it enveloped in a thick, bluish vapour, and stifling with theodours of brimstone. Upon hearing a low groan from the smoke, with awild cry he darted from the place, and, rousing the occupants of theneighbouring state-rooms, it was found that the vapour proceeded fromsmouldering bunches of lucifer matches, which had become ignitedthrough the carelessness of the Surgeon. Cuticle, almost dead, wasdragged from the suffocating atmosphere, and it was several days ere hecompletely recovered from its effects. This accident took placeimmediately over the powder magazine; but as Cuticle, during hissickness, paid dearly enough for transgressing the laws prohibitingcombustibles in the gun-room, the Captain contented himself withprivately remonstrating with him.

  Well knowing the enthusiasm of the Surgeon for all specimens of morbidanatomy, some of the ward-room officers used to play upon hiscredulity, though, in every case, Cuticle was not long in discoveringtheir deceptions. Once, when they had some sago pudding for dinner, andCuticle chanced to be ashore, they made up a neat parcel of thisbluish-white, firm, jelly-like preparation, and placing it in a tinbox, carefully sealed with wax, they deposited it on the gun-roomtable, with a note, purporting to come from an eminent physician inRio, connected with the Grand National Museum on the Praca d'Acclamacao, begging leave to present the scientific SenhorCuticle--with the donor's compliments--an uncommonly fine specimen of acancer.

  Descending to the ward-room, Cuticle spied the note, and no sooner readit, than, clutching the case, he opened it, and exclaimed, "Beautiful!splendid! I have never seen a finer specimen of this most interestingdisease."

  "What have you there, Surgeon Cuticle?" said a Lieutenant, advancing.

  "Why, sir, look at it; did you ever see anything more exquisite?"

  "Very exquisite indeed; let me have a bit of it, will you, Cuticle?"

  "Let you have a bit of it!" shrieked the Surgeon, starting back. "Letyou have one of my limbs! I wouldn't mar so large a specimen for ahundred dollars; but what can you want of it? You are not makingcollections!"

  "I'm fond of the article," said the Lieutenant; "it's a fine coldrelish to bacon or ham. You know, I was in New Zealand last cruise,Cuticle, and got into sad dissipation there among the cannibals; come,let's have a bit, if it's only a mouthful."

  "Why, you infernal Feejee!" shouted Cuticle, eyeing the other with aconfounded expression; "you don't really mean to eat a piece of thiscancer?"

  "Hand it to me, and see whether I will not," was the reply.

  "In God's name, take it!" cried the Surgeon, putting the case into hishands, and then standing with his own uplifted.

  "Steward!" cried the Lieutenant, "the castor--quick! I always useplenty of pepper with this dish, Surgeon; it's oystery. Ah! this isreally delicious," he added, smacking his lips over a mouthful. "Try itnow, Surgeon, and you'll never keep such a fine dish as this, lyinguneaten on your hands, as a mere scientific curiosity."

  Cuticle's whole countenance changed; and, slowly walking up to thetable, he put his nose close to the tin case, then touched its contentswith his finger and tasted it. Enough. Buttoning up his coat, in allthe tremblings of an old man's rage he burst from the ward-room, and,calling for a boat, was not seen again for twenty-four hours.

  But though, like all other mortals, Cuticle was subject at times tothese fits of passion--at least under outrageous provocation--nothingcould exceed his coolness when actually employed in his imminentvocation. Surrounded by moans and shrieks, by features distorted withanguish inflicted by himself, he yet maintained a countenance almostsupernaturally calm; and unless the intense interest of the operationflushed his wan face with a momentary tinge of professional enthusiasm,he toiled away, untouched by the keenest misery coming under afleet-surgeon's eye. Indeed, long habituation to the dissecting-roomand the amputation-table had made him seemingly impervious to theordinary emotions of humanity. Yet you could not say that Cuticle wasessentially a cruel-hearted man. His apparent heartlessness must havebeen of a purely scientific origin. It is not to be imagined even thatCuticle would have harmed a fly, unless he could procure a microscopepowerful enough to assist him in experimenting on the minute vitals ofthe creature.

  But notwithstanding his marvellous indifference to the sufferings ofhis patients, and spite even of his enthusiasm in his vocation--notcooled by frosting old age itself--Cuticle, on some occasions, wouldeffect a certain disrelish of his profession, and declaim against thenecessity that forced a man of his humanity to perform a surgicaloperation. Especially was it apt to be thus with him, when the case wasone of more than ordinary interest. In discussing it prev
ious tosetting about it, he would veil his eagerness under an aspect of greatcircumspection, curiously marred, however, by continual sallies ofunsuppressible impatience. But the knife once in his hand, thecompassionless surgeon himself, undisguised, stood before you. Such wasCadwallader Cuticle, our Surgeon of the Fleet.