Brother Martín looked haggard and thinner than before. He took personal responsibility for the prior’s suffering. He visited his room frequently, changing water that had just been changed, and refreshing herbs that had only just begun to boil in their aromatic pots. He came and went in hopes that his exhaustion might be looked on kindly by the Lord, that he might then concede the awaited miracle. He fasted. He then attended to each patient and locked himself into his cell to flog himself with the intensity of a torture device. He placed rough cloth over his wounds and ran back to Prior Lucas’s bedside.
Doctor Cuevas asked for the order to call a meeting, as an urgent decision had to be made. The leg had to be amputated before the gangrene spread to the thigh and ended the man’s life. The monks sobbed and beat their chests with heartfelt mea culpas. The doctor brought another colleague, who examined the patient and agreed that the surgical procedure was absolutely urgent. He promised to arrange for skilled surgeons to come and perform the amputation.
Brother Martín offered his services throughout and was on the alert for the slightest request to send him off like a lightning bolt. The superior’s cell—where the treatment would be performed—was supplied with washbasins, wide braziers, bandages, salves, oil, mallow leaves, ground garlic, and pitchers full of liquor. Francisco helped Martín, eager to be present for the procedure.
On a small table covered in white cloth they arranged the instruments: scalpel, saw, chisel, hammer, tongs, and needles. To one side, they placed half a dozen cauterizers, which were long steel spatulas with wooden handles.
Doctor Cuevas excused himself from attending the operation because as a doctor he did not wish to interfere with the skilled surgeon, who ordered that, from the evening before, the patient should be made to drink a glass of liquor every half hour. Several monks offered to keep vigil beside the prior through the night, and they faithfully administered the drink with the help of an hourglass.
Never had the priest had so much to drink. At first, it made his throat burn and he protested weakly. Then he began to realize that he liked it, and he smiled. The monks recognized, in this smile, a sign from the Lord, and they gave thanks for the imminent miracle. Father Lucas asked for more liquor before the allotted half hour had passed. They reminded him of the surgeon’s instructions. The superior said, “I shit on the surgeon,” and demanded to be satisfied. The monks feared this ominous choice between committing a sin of disobedience or a sin of negligence. One upheld, logically, that disobedience was worse, because it defied the superior of their order, while the negligence only involved a surgeon. He was so satisfied by his own reasoning that he walked toward the pitcher to indulge the patient’s growing vice. Another monk held him back by the sleeve. He said that, in this case, the sin of negligence was worse because it could cost a man’s life. Prior Lucas sat up in his bed as if he’d suddenly grown ten years younger; his nose red, eyes glittering, he shouted at them to stop saying stupid things and fill his glass once and for all. A struggle broke out among the monks and, while one pointed desperately at the clock, another handed over the liquor. The prior took the glass with trembling hands, gulped down the drink, burped, and let out a terrible blasphemy. In their shock, the priests crossed themselves, beat their chests, and called on the devil to leave the monastery.
In the morning, the surgeons arrived with a retinue of minor barbers. Prior Lucas could barely open his eyes. They lifted his light body, a fragile casing containing two liters of liquor. They placed him on the short operation table; his legs hung off. The main surgeon told them to bring a chair over so he could rest his heel on its high back. In this manner, the gangrenous leg extended into the air, well exposed.
The monks prayed more loudly than ever. Their pleas had to reach heaven before the scalpel reached the bone. A miracle was still possible. Martín and Francisco saw to the cauterizing tools, immersed in embers.
The infected leg was washed and dried. That was the last friendly gesture. The main surgeon authorized the start of the operation. The other surgeons flanked their patient, one on each side. They glanced at the instruments and crossed themselves. The one on the right wound a tourniquet around the knee and tightened it until the patient moaned through his drunken haze. The barbers focused on clamping down his other leg, along with his arms, head, and chest.
The gleaming scalpel sliced the flesh and circled the leg. The cut was clean and decisive. A few muscular fibers, however, refused to separate. The blade had to be moved back and forth as if working at a tough piece of meat. Prior Lucas shouted, “Son of a whore!” The surgeon continued his work as the prayers rose to swallow the vulgarities. Blood flowed heavily into the washbowl below the leg, which a barber monitored.
“Cauterizers!” the surgeon to the left commanded.
Martín took out the red, almost white steel, and handed it to the surgeon, who inserted it into the wound. The fire’s contact with the blood produced smoke and crackling sounds. Prior Lucas jumped, almost pushing off the assistant, and hurled out blasphemies.
“Saw!”
The surgeon on the left now carried out the work. He inserted the blade in the wound and made energetic movements back and forth. In four strokes, he sawed through the aged bone. Another surgeon was left holding the lower part of the now severed leg, pouring out blood.
“Cauterizer!”
Francisco handed it over and it was applied to the wound. The prior brayed a thundering “Damn it to hell!” and lost consciousness.
Martín passed over the next cauterizer, while Francisco stirred the embers where the rest of them remained. The cell was like a smoke-filled cooking pit. The main surgeon raised a candelabra and studied the cauterized stump between the clouds. He declared it ready to be bandaged.
A chorus of prayers gave thanks for the surgery’s happy result, which had been achieved in just six minutes. The black-and-red wound was covered with oil, while one of the barbers made the patient inhale garlic powder so he might recover consciousness.
In the afternoon, Doctor Cuevas arrived in his carriage. He advanced with great solemnity, as if grave problems geometrically increased his importance. He examined the patient, who was not yet awake. The prior’s breath exuded clouds of alcohol. His pulse was quick and labored. A sweet, cold sweat covered his body, which suggested that he would not have the fever that often followed such an operation. The wound did not stain the bandage, which proved that the cauterization had been successful. The doctor asked to see the man’s urine. “He has not urinated,” the monks responded. Doctor Cuevas stood up, gave the patient a last glance, and said that the sickness remained in the prior’s body.
Exclamations of surprise filled the room.
Martín, kneeling, asked what would be done with the amputated leg. The physician took out his perfumed handkerchief, grazed his nose, and said with displeasure, “It is to be buried, of course. What else could be done with it?” Then he spoke of post-operational complications and recommended various concoctions that should be administered carefully by the teaspoon, taking care to prevent choking.
Martín was suffering greatly. Where would he bury the piece of leg? He had wrapped it as if it were a precious relic. If the superior was a saint, then that foot would have miraculous powers. But he was a living saint; he could not attribute more powers to a portion of the man than to the man himself. He pressed the amputated foot against his chest as if it were a baby and placed it beside the image of Lord Jesus Christ in his cell, with the hope of receiving some form of guidance.
Then the three surgeons arrived. They examined the bandage and exchanged satisfied glances. The surgical intervention had been quick and perfect. They had done good work. They had only to wait for the patient to recover consciousness and begin to eat. The main surgeon asked about the amputated leg. Martín trembled, clasped his hands, and fell to his knees.
“I’ve put it away, as a relic,” he said.
The surgeons exchanged glances again. They understood that, in the face of suc
h a destiny, it would look bad to take the limb home and use it to practice anatomical dissection, as they had hoped to do. The church did not appreciate their macabre arts. The councils of Rheims, London, Letrán, Montpellier, and Tours decisively forbade the practice of medicine and surgery by priests, as well as the dissection of cadavers under any circumstances because Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine.
Lucas Albarracín did not return to consciousness. He went from drunkenness to death. His face bore the smile that had first broken through on the eve of his operation, as he’d enjoyed the liquor.
73
Back in Callao, Francisco opened the door of his father’s home—which had no lock, no bolt—and placed the saddlebag on the mattress. It contained a change of clothes and the Aphorisms of Hippocrates. The room was in order, as he had left it days before. The rusted nail where his father hung his sanbenito was glaringly bare.
“I’ll find him at the hospital,” he thought.
The death of Prior Lucas had stirred his fear over his own father’s health. He could not tolerate the stiffening of his skin, the ugly hunch in his back, the weakness of his voice, and the shaky gait with which his torturers had left him. He wanted to tell his father about the prior’s sad end and, above all, to talk about the brutal operation. Would he have recommended it? Would he have used the same technique?
He did indeed find Diego at the hospital. It was a relief to see him examining a patient’s chest. He had become an old man before his time, bent by suffering. Francisco wanted to embrace him, tell him that he loved him, and longed to absorb all his wisdom, all his kindness. He stayed by his side until his father became aware of his presence. They smiled at each other, exchanged pats on the arm, and moved out of earshot together. Francisco told him of his recent experience.
“Would you have called for the amputation?”
“I don’t know.” He scratched his head. “Doesn’t Hippocrates say Primum non nocere?”
“Wouldn’t he have been killed by the spreading gangrene, in any case?”
“Primum non nocere—from your description, Francisco, it seems that the superior was already very weak. He couldn’t endure the consumption of liquor, much less the amputation of a leg.”
He observed that his father, too, was weak. Was his sickly appearance comparable to the superior’s dying days?
“But he had to be helped,” the young man insisted. “Something had to be done.”
The corners of Diego’s eyelids creased. “A good doctor must recognize his limitations. Be wary of impossible successes, for they are paid for by the patient. Sometimes the only thing that can be done, since something must be done, is to help the patient to die well.”
“That doesn’t seem like good advice, Papá.”
“I thought the same at your age.”
The hospital was a dark building, with narrow, dusty windows and walls of adobe and stone. Its roof was little more than a lattice of long cane joined together by palm fronds. It consisted of three rooms lined with mats and mattresses. It could house many sick people. Callao was the main port of the Viceroyalty, and received exhausted crews. There were also many victims of fights. When survivors of a shipwreck came to port, not even the vestibule was free; two or three patients piled onto each mattress, and the hall was lined with straw for the rest. Those were exhausting days that demanded visits from monks and nuns to offer solace, hand out rations, and carry out the corpses. This was where Francisco received his practical training.
Diego squatted at the side of a middle-aged man whose face was disfigured by burns. He examined him carefully.
“You are better.”
The man smiled with gratitude.
“I’ll apply another layer of salve.” Diego glanced at his tray, which held several pots full of green, yellow, red, and ivory substances. He chose the last one. It looked like onion. He placed it gently on the damp sores.
“Is that onion?” Francisco whispered.
“Aha!”
“Wouldn’t he heal faster spontaneously?” Francisco said with a wink.
“In this case, onion wins. Shall I tell you?” He stood, with his son’s help, and walked toward another patient. “Ambroise Paré was a war surgeon. He was called on to attend to a gravely burned man and ran to fetch his usual salves. On the way, he ran into one of the prostitutes that accompanied the troop. She said that burns healed better with finely chopped onion. Paré, open to any kind of advice, tried out the method—”
He cut himself off, agitated. He breathed deeply four or five times and went on.
“The result was satisfactory. But, here’s the interesting part for you”—he raised his index finger—“another man would have said, ‘onion heals all burns.’ He, on the other hand, before claiming such a thing, asked himself, as you do now, ‘Might the wound not have healed faster without the onion?’ There you have a true doctor: he asks himself questions, always investigates. So what did he do? He tried again. How? Well, when he encountered a soldier with his face burned on both sides he applied onion to one cheek and nothing to the other. He proved that the side with the treatment healed faster.”
Diego sat down beside another wounded man. He had to rest. As he recovered his breath, he gazed at the patient, who had a high fever. A cross-eyed, disheveled barber was applying damp cloths to the patient’s head, chest, and thighs. A nut-sized bullet had torn into his left arm, causing large, tattered wounds. Don Diego removed the cloth. A vermilion crater appeared, edged with blue, golden blisters about to burst, and small worms dancing inside. With tweezers, he pulled them out one by one and threw them into the fire. The patient emitted incoherent sounds, his feverish delirium on the rise.
“You should cauterize that with boiling elderberry oil,” the barber reproached him.
Don Diego shook his head. He examined the pots on his tray and chose dry egg yolk, which he dusted into the opening. Then he grazed it with rose oil and turpentine.
“This is better.”
The barber frowned in disagreement.
“Keep on with the fresh cloth. And try to make him drink a lot of water. In a while I’ll return with silver nitrate.”
They went to the pharmacy in search of the substance. When they were far from the barber, Diego acknowledged that the wounded man was doing poorly. But he would not use the hot elderberry oil. They entered the pharmacy and he requested silver nitrate. The pharmacist was a bald man with a wide beard, who wore an ironsmith’s apron. He gestured for them to sit and wait.
Francisco settled onto a bench and relaxed his back. He inhaled the riot of scents that shouted through the pharmacy, and he felt suddenly happy. His father seemed to have recovered a modicum of strength and humor. It shone through when he worked as a doctor.
After some time the pharmacist filled a metal bowl with the silver nitrate. “Here, take this and go.”
They returned to the man with the gunshot wound. The coarse, cross-eyed barber was still applying damp cloths. The fever persisted. Don Diego lifted the bandage.
“I’ll apply this. It’s very effective.”
“He won’t get any better without cauterization,” the barber muttered in disgust.
Diego picked up the shaving brush as if it were a quill and dipped it in the bowl. He painted the wound from its damp center to the inflamed, uneven borders. The patient kept emitting hoarse groans, without seeming to notice the treatment he was receiving. Pleas for help rose around them. As soon as one patient received attentive care the others began to grow desperate. The doctor spoke to his son as he skillfully moved the brush. It was no sin to recognize that this procedure was invented by the Moors, who also discovered the beneficial properties of alcohol and mercury chloride.
“Did you know that?” Diego asked the barber.
“I’m no man of letters,” the barber said testily before leaving the room.
74
“Sin covers the world as mist covered the abyss before creation,” Inquisitor Gaitán murmured furiously. “The m
en who should fight it most energetically are the very ones who most irresponsibly surrender into its arms.”
The viceroy, for example, representative of the monarch that God anointed, is a disaster. He didn’t even send me a letter of thanks when I agreed—reluctantly—to shortening Diego Núñez da Silva’s prison sentence so he could be assigned to the hospital in Callao. And, what’s more, he is a sordid, hedonistic poet who doesn’t let a day pass without provoking our displeasure. What moral authority does he have? He’s already stained the virtue of many ladies and offended the dignity of several gentlemen. He favors his relatives and protégés too much. It’s true that he isn’t original in this regard. All the viceroys have been corrupt. All of them. Therefore, my hand will not shake when I sign my denunciation. I have well-documented proof.
This untamable sinner has named several of his ridiculous servants to high posts in the armada of the southern seas. He made his favorite, Luis Simón de Llorca, the captain of the galleon Santa María, head of the armada, and that Llorca is a thief who kept nine hundred pieces of merchandise off the books, in complicity with his benefactor. Something even more serious took place with his servant Martín de Santjust, who brought 1,900 bars of silver and a great deal of unregistered merchandise, and took years to pay for the cargo, which was less than it should have been. In that same line of corruption, another of his servants, Luis Antonio Valdivieso, hid fabulous illegal shipments under stores of gunpowder.
In addition, he handed the street fairs and mule markets over to his nephew, who returns the favor with a percentage of his gains. He has donated fertile land so that his relatives can enjoy income from it. There is no limit!
These iniquities could be stamped out by the Holy Office. But we are blocked on the civil side as well as on the ecclesiastical side. We are blocked out of fear. Why the fear? Because the sword strikes at the center of sin.
Against the Inquisition Page 28