He murmured to Keptah, “Surely it would be merciful to give him a potion to bring him peace and death.”
Keptah shook his head slowly. “Hippocrates has declared that is forbidden. Who knows at what instant the soul shall recognize God? Shall we kill the sufferer tonight when in the morning the recognition would come? Besides, man cannot give life. Therefore it is not for him to give death. These are reserved only for Him, who is unknowable to our natures, and who moves in mysteries.”
“Kill me!” cried the slave, lashing on his bed. He seized the physician’s arm in a skeletonized hand. “Give me death!” His voice gurgled in a rush of blood.
Keptah turned to Lucanus, who was looking with horror at the sufferer. He touched his arm, and Lucanus moved his head and stared at him with obdurate severity and pleading. “Would you have deprived Rubria of one hour of her life? And I tell you she suffered as much as this, and even more.”
He soaked a pad of linen in a portion of a white liquid which he poured from a vessel. Lucanus clenched his teeth with hatred. What had this poor slave, a gardener, done against the gods to deserve this? He had been a gentle and innocent soul, delighting in the flowers, proud of his borders, loving his lilies, soothing as a father to his roses. There were millions less worthy of peace and life than he. The world was filled with monsters who ate and drank and laughed, and whose children danced in the pleasant gardens of their homes and knew no blight.
Keptah, with great gentleness, took the slave’s darting hand and held it firmly. “Listen to me,” he said, “for you are a good man and will understand. There are those who have this disease but of the spirit, and I tell you they endure more than you. Where your mouth gushes blood, their souls gush violence and venom. Where your flesh is torn, there their hearts are torn. Niger, I swear to you that you are luckier than they.”
The slave began to whimper, and his eyes became full and still. He whispered through his blood, “Yes, Master.”
Wild scorn was like an acid in Lucanus. He watched Keptah lay the soaked linen on the awful and disfigured face. The slave panted. The other slaves, less afflicted, watched from their beds. Then, at last, into the slave’s eyes there came a moist relief, a tremulous surcease. A tear ran from the corner of his eyelid. Keptah took a goblet and put his arm under the slave’s head and lifted it as tenderly as a mother lifts a child, and he put the goblet to the twisted lip, and slowly Niger drank with touching obedience. When Keptah replaced his head on the pillow, Niger had already fallen into a sleep, moaning softly. Keptah contemplated him enigmatically for long moments. His dusky face with its hooded eyes was unreadable.
“It has already invaded the larynx,” he murmured. “He will not live long.” He turned to one of the slaves. “Give him this potion whenever he cannot bear it any longer, but never more than every three hours, according to the water clock.”
“And that is all you can do!” exclaimed Lucanus.
“No. Had he come to me when the first small, hard white sore had appeared on his inner cheek, I could have burned it out with a hot iron. He did not come to me until it was very difficult for him to swallow and the inner parts of his mouth were already bleeding and corroded and sloughing away. Remember that whether it is an illness of the spirit or of the flesh, it is best to seek counsel and help at the very beginning. Later all is lost.”
They moved to the bed of a young female slave who was hardly less tormented than Niger. Her bed was foul with drainings from her vagina. Keptah swung on a slave and exclaimed, “Have I not told you to keep the linen dry and pure? This is poison which is leaving her. I shall report you to the overseer, so prepare yourself for a flogging.”
“Master, I have other duties,” whined the slave.
“There is no greater duty than to heal or alleviate suffering. Truly, medicine is the divine art. Enough. Do your work better, and I shall forget the flogging.”
The slave girl, in spite of her dishevelment and fever, was pretty and appealing. Keptah touched her forehead, feeling its heat. He said to Lucanus, “She attempted an abortion on herself with a filthy and primitive instrument which the savages use. This is the result.”
“I could not have a child born into slavery!” wept the girl.
Keptah said somberly, “The thought was virtuous; the deed was not. You should have clung to the virtue. Have you a bad master? Had you asked him for a husband he would have given you one. This is a virtuous household. But you dallied, out of wantonness and lust. You had no excuse. You were taught to read and write, to spin and to sew, to cook and to render other valuable services. You were not as the slaves in Rome, summoned to the bed of the master at his will. Ah, well. Let us look at you.”
But first he washed his hands with water and then rubbed them with pungent oil. Then he examined the weeping girl, and touched her inflamed and pus-streaming parts. “Will I die, Master?” cried Julia in terror.
Keptah did not reply. He twisted a piece of linen into a thin cone of whiteness. He dipped it into fluid from one of his vessels. The girl blanched. But Keptah firmly separated her legs and thrust the cone into her body. She screamed. The air was filled with an aromatic odor. “Let the tampon remain until night,” Keptah directed his slave assistant. “Then remove it and destroy it. It is contaminated and dangerous. Afterwards wash the parts with flowing clear water, make another tampon, and let the girl herself insert it. By then it will be less painful.”
He patted the girl’s wet hands, gave her something to drink. He said to her, “You will not die, I pray. You will live to sin some more, I am afraid.”
He looked at Lucanus. “Visit her at nightfall. Enforce my orders.”
“Why do you reproach this poor child?” asked Lucanus, resentfully. “Is she greater than her nature, with which your God endowed her? He gave her her normal instincts.”
“Where normal instincts can be dangerous, then one controls them,” said Keptah. “And what is normal? The world? One must have discipline to defeat the urgings of the world, or man is no more than a beast.”
The girl, somewhat relieved, smiled at Lucanus coquettishly. He turned away, sad but revolted.
The windows were open to the cool wintry air, and breezes filled the room. “Air and light are enemies of disease,” said Keptah, against all the advice of other physicians. “Cleanliness is also an enemy. Not to mention self-respect and esteem for the flesh in which the spirit is clothed.”
They stopped at the bed of a young and comely woman with a huge belly. Beside her crouched her equally young and handsome husband, whose face was stained with tears. He rose eagerly and looked at Keptah with bright and urgent eyes. “Ah, Master!” he said. “Surely she is with child, and it is about to be born?”
Keptah sighed. “I have told you, Glaucus. This is no child but a great tumor. She must be relieved of it, or she will die. I have left it in your hands, though I could have operated before. You have waited, and so diminished the chances for her life. It cannot wait any longer. Make your choice now.”
“Master, I am only a slave. You have only to command,” said Glaucus tearfully.
Keptah shook his head. “No man is a slave, no matter how bound and chained, until he admits he is a slave. You are a man. Shall I save your wife now, or will you wait and let her die? She will surely die without the operation; she may live if I perform it.”
He turned to Lucanus. “Palpate the belly,” he said. Lucanus was full of pity for this stoic young woman who did not cry but only smiled bravely. He lifted her shift. The belly was as smooth and veined as marble, and glimmered with stretched tension. He felt it carefully, closing his eyes so as to concentrate through his gentle fingers. It was like feeling stone over her right side, but there was a gurgling of liquid, and a sponginess as he moved his fingers to the umbilicum. “I am certain it is not carcinoma,” he said to Keptah, who nodded in a pleased way. “It is a lipoid and serum tumor,” said the physician. “Very common. It should have been removed many months ago, but this is a couple who
longed for a child and believed the tumor was one, after three years of marriage. It is fastened to the right ovary, which will have to be removed also.”
“Then she will have no child!” wept Glaucus. “Or only a girl!”
“Do not be foolish,” reproved Keptah. “Aristotle dismissed the ancient theory that one ovary produces a girl, or a boy, or one teste produces only one sex. Your wife will have her left ovary, and it is the mysterious choice of God whether she will later have a son or a daughter.”
He ground some fresh and acrid leaves in a pestle, added a little wine, and gave the result to Hebra, who took it obediently. Keptah said to one of the slaves, “Stay with her and give her a large goblet of wine, and then another. When she sleeps call me.” Hebra’s eyes were beginning to close, while her husband watched her fearfully. She languidly raised her kind hand and touched his cheek in consolation. “Women, you observe, are less afraid of death and life than are men,” Keptah said to Lucanus as they moved to another bed. “Is it faith? Or, as women are realists, do they accept reality with better spirit?”
Lucanus glanced at him sullenly. Perhaps, he thought, all these remarks which had been directed to him this first morning of his return to the house of Diodorus and his lessons were subtle barbs for his sensibilities, and reproofs. He was angered and ashamed.
The man in the next bed was grossly fat and as white and flaccid as dough. He regarded Keptah in resentful silence. Keptah looked at the little table beside him, on which stood a pitcher of water and a goblet. “You have drunk all this water today, my friend?” The man muttered something in his throat. An odor of apples, or hay, floated in his heavy breath.
“I warned you months ago to limit your love for pastries and breads and honeys,” said Keptah, sternly. “I told you you had the sweet sickness, and that if you did not take care your very muscles and bones would run from you in a river of urine. But I see that you have not confined yourself to lean meats and vegetables, both of which are plentiful in this household, which believes in sufficient food for its slaves. If you do not control your pig’s appetite then you will die very soon in convulsions. Yours is the choice. Take it.”
He turned to Lucanus and gave him a brief talk on the subject of the sickness. “Always, a man is his own disease,” he said. “He who is afflicted with the sweet sickness, where the very urine is saccharine, is often found to be of a self-indulgent temperament which arises from a selfish refusal to cherish others, but only himself. Thus others do not love him; to satisfy his natural human craving for love, he eats of the sweets of the earth rather than of the sweets of the spirit. There are other manifestations of this disease, especially in children, who invariably die of it. It would be interesting to talk with these children, who, even in their tender years, are possibly of a greedy disposition, caring only for self. We can do nothing but prescribe the leanest of meat, the starchless vegetables and fruits, and restrict or omit the sweets and the starches. Little, however, will be accomplished except painful deprivation and prolonging of a restricted life, unless the patient has an awakening of the spirit and thus is enabled to love beyond himself.”
He looked at the sulky slave, who had been watching him with rapidly blinking eyes. “Look on your wife with love,” he admonished. “Say not, ‘She belongs to me, and she will serve me!’ Say in your heart, rather, ‘This is my beloved wife, and what can I do to make her the happiest of women, so that she will say she is married to the kindest and noblest of men?’”
As they moved away, Lucanus said, “Then this is not an organic disease?”
Keptah stopped and pondered. He finally said, “There is no separating the flesh from the spirit, for it is through the flesh that the spirit manifests itself. You are wondering how it is that some people contract illnesses in epidemics and others do not. Hippocrates talked of natural immunity in those who escape. One of his pupils believed that those who escape manufacture some essence in themselves which repels the disease. But why? Could it be that certain temperaments resist infection whereas others do not? Immunity? If so, then it is the immunity of the spirit, though other physicians do not believe this. I am not speaking of good and evil. I am speaking only of temperament.”
They came to the last bed. Here lay a youth in high fever, his right leg contracted so that the muscles stood out on it like ridges. He had a sharp dark face with unusually intelligent, bold eyes, and an angry expression. Keptah looked at one of the attendant slaves. “I have said that this leg must be wrapped constantly in hot woolen compresses, day and night, as hot as he can endure it. Give me no excuses!” Vexed, he lifted his hand and struck the slave on the cheek. “Have we nothing here but men and women who seek only their own pleasures and satisfactions? Go to!”
He looked down at the young man on the bed. He said to Lucanus, “Here is a youth of a haughty, proud and inconsiderate nature, overweening in self-esteem, and arrogant. He despises ignorance and dullness. He has a mind like the thin blade of a very sharp knife. He loathes his fellow man, who rarely has his intelligence. He has no patience, no kindliness. I have taught him to read and write; he has access to my own library; he comes and goes at will. He never thinks with his heart, but only with his brain. You will discover that such as he are very susceptible to this crippling disease. You will also discover that the more stupid, the more bovine, rarely contract it, even among children.”
Diomed was smiling with mingled pride and ill-humor. “Thank you, Master, for your words about my intellect,” he said. He was evidently in great pain, but his pride would permit no expression of it.
“I am not flattering you,” said Keptah. “It was almost inevitable that you have this miserable illness, which, I am afraid, is going to leave you with a limping leg.”
“I care little for my body if I may nourish my mind,” said Diomed.
Keptah looked at Lucanus. “You will observe this trait in people afflicted like this. Why should a man despise his flesh, and the flesh of others, when it is a marvelous invention of God’s and can be more beautiful than any other living thing? It is through his flesh that he communicates with others. Men like Diomed wish no communication. They crave only obeisance and flattery for their truly fine minds. I say to parents with children like these, ‘Teach your child to love, and to give, and train him in reverence for God’.”
Lucanus’ lip curled, but he said nothing. Keptah said to Diomed, “I shall have some books sent to you this afternoon. I see you have finished those I have previously sent. In the meantime there is that maiden, Leda, who often writes the letters for the Lady Aurelia. She is a pretty child, intelligent and loving, and she adores you. Take her love, but return it with your whole heart. I know such a thing will be hard for you, but you can will yourself to love if you wish. Nothing is impossible with a seeking and determined and intellectual mind. The Lady Aurelia is so attached to this girl that she has told me that when she wishes to marry she will receive her freedom. Will you withhold that gift from her?”
Diomed began to sneer. Then his face softened, and he suddenly turned it to his pillow. His thin shoulders heaved. Keptah said softly, “There have been more souls saved through humble tears than all the potions in the world.”
Lucanus said defiantly in himself, He simplifies too much. But he was moved by the sobbing of Diomed, who could not control himself though all his muscles were contracted in the effort. Keptah said, “Hasten and get well, Diomed. I shall need you as my assistant when you can feel pity and love for others.”
Diomed reared his tear-wet face from the pillow, and joy shone in his eyes. He caught Keptah’s hand. “You will let me attend you, Master?” he cried, incredulously. Keptah smiled. “You will make an excellent helper, Diomed. When you love and have mercy, and feel another’s pain in your own body.”
They returned to the bed of Hebra, who was as one asleep, gently breathing. Keptah ordered screens, which were placed about the bed. He drove Glaucus from the enclosure. He placed a tray on the small table, and on it were ne
edles and sutures and a large and two small scalpels. He said to Lucanus, “It is time for you to see your first operation. If you vomit, kindly use this bucket, but say nothing. If you faint, I shall let you lie. There is a life to save. I will need your help. Take up that pad of linen and dip it in this pungent oil. There is infection in the very air.”
Lucanus began to tremble. But he obeyed orders silently. He looked down at the drugged girl, who was sweet in her slumber. He was filled with a passionate commiseration. Why should any god so afflict a child who wanted only children and the love of her husband, and a tranquil life? Oh, You who do this evil to men, I despise You! he thought. Would not even the basest of men be more compassionate?
Keptah exposed Hebra’s gleaming, taut belly. He palpated it with care. Then with sure strokes of his scalpel, as one drawing a careful diagram, he drew the knife over the white flesh. Its path was followed by a red streak, which widened, opened, like a hungry mouth.
Lucanus sickened, but he watched. Now the shining red muscles were exposed, sinewy, threaded with pulsing veins. Keptah pushed them aside deftly and gently, and said, “Now we will use the Egyptian hooks to ligature all blood vessels, to keep the field of operation as free as possible and to prevent bleeding to death. Observe these vessels, and the pulses of the heart which throb them! Is it not all perfect? Who can look on this and not reverence God in his heart? He has designed a man as wonderfully as He has designed the suns and their planets. Ah, be careful; use those small pads of linen to keep the wound open. Do not let your fingers touch any part of the wound, for there is poison on your fingers and in the air. The Egyptians knew that many hundreds of years ago, but the Greeks and Romans deride it, asking, ‘Where is the poison? We do not see it’. There are millions of things in the universe that men cannot see; nevertheless, they are there.”
Dear and Glorious Physician Page 19