VIII
BEHIND THE TIMES
My first interview with Dr. James Winter was under dramaticcircumstances. It occurred at two in the morning in the bedroom of anold country house. I kicked him twice on the white waistcoat and knockedoff his gold spectacles, while he, with the aid of a female accomplice,stifled my angry cries in a flannel petticoat and thrust me into a warmbath. I am told that one of my parents, who happened to be present,remarked in a whisper that there was nothing the matter with my lungs. Icannot recall how Dr. Winter looked at the time for I had other thingsto think of, but his description of my own appearance is far fromflattering. A fluffy head, a body like a trussed goose, very bandy legs,and feet with the soles turned inwards--those are the main items whichhe can remember.
From this time onwards the epochs of my life were the periodicalassaults which Dr. Winter made upon me. He vaccinated me, he cut me foran abscess, he blistered me for mumps. It was a world of peace, and hethe one dark cloud that threatened. But at last there came a time ofreal illness--a time when I lay for months together inside mywicker-work basket bed, and then it was that I learned that that hardface could relax, that those country-made, creaking boots could stealvery gently to a bedside, and that that rough voice could thin into awhisper when it spoke to a sick child.
And now the child is himself a medical man, and yet Dr. Winter is thesame as ever. I can see no change since first I can remember him, savethat perhaps the brindled hair is a trifle whiter, and the hugeshoulders a little more bowed. He is a very tall man, though he loses acouple of inches from his stoop. That big back of his has curved itselfover sick beds until it has set in that shape. His face is of a walnutbrown, and tells of long winter drives over bleak country roads with thewind and the rain in his teeth. It looks smooth at a little distance,but as you approach him you see that it is shot with innumerable finewrinkles, like a last year's apple. They are hardly to be seen when heis in repose, but when he laughs his face breaks like a starred glass,and you realise then that, though he looks old, he must be older than helooks.
How old that is I could never discover. I have often tried to find out,and have struck his stream as high up as George the Fourth and even ofthe Regency, but without ever getting quite to the source. His mind musthave been open to impressions very early, but it must also have closedearly, for the politics of the day have little interest for him, whilehe is fiercely excited about questions which are entirely prehistoric.He shakes his head when he speaks of the first Reform Bill and expressesgrave doubts as to its wisdom, and I have heard him, when he was warmedby a glass of wine, say bitter things about Robert Peel and hisabandoning of the Corn Laws. The death of that statesman brought thehistory of England to a definite close, and Dr. Winter refers toeverything which had happened since then as to an insignificantanti-climax.
But it was only when I had myself become a medical man that I was ableto appreciate how entirely he is a survival of a past generation. He hadlearned his medicine under that obsolete and forgotten system by which ayouth was apprenticed to a surgeon, in the days when the study ofanatomy was often approached through a violated grave. His views uponhis own profession are even more reactionary than his politics. Fiftyyears have brought him little and deprived him of less. Vaccination waswell within the teaching of his youth, though I think he has a secretpreference for inoculation. Bleeding he would practise freely but forpublic opinion. Chloroform he regards as a dangerous innovation, and healways clicks with his tongue when it is mentioned. He has even beenknown to say vain things about Laennec, and to refer to the stethoscopeas "a newfangled French toy." He carries one in his hat out of deferenceto the expectations of his patients; but he is very hard of hearing, sothat it makes little difference whether he uses it or not.
He always reads, as a duty, his weekly medical paper, so that he has ageneral idea as to the advance of modern science. He persists in lookingupon it, however, as a huge and rather ludicrous experiment. The germtheory of disease set him chuckling for a long time, and his favouritejoke in the sick-room was to say, "Shut the door, or the germs will begetting in." As to the Darwinian theory, it struck him as being thecrowning joke of the century. "The children in the nursery and theancestors in the stable," he would cry, and laugh the tears out of hiseyes.
He is so very much behind the day that occasionally, as things moveround in their usual circle, he finds himself, to his own bewilderment,in the front of the fashion. Dietetic treatment, for example, had beenmuch in vogue in his youth, and he has more practical knowledge of itthan any one whom I have met. Massage, too, was familiar to him when itwas new to our generation. He had been trained also at a time wheninstruments were in a rudimentary state and when men learned to trustmore to their own fingers. He has a model surgical hand, muscular in thepalm, tapering in the fingers, "with an eye at the end of each." I shallnot easily forget how Dr. Patterson and I cut Sir John Sirwell, theCounty Member, and were unable to find the stone. It was a horriblemoment. Both our careers were at stake. And then it was that Dr. Winter,whom we had asked out of courtesy to be present, introduced into thewound a finger which seemed to our excited senses to be about nineinches long, and hooked out the stone at the end of it.
"It's always well to bring one in your waistcoat pocket," said he with achuckle, "but I suppose you youngsters are above all that."
We made him President of our Branch of the British Medical Association,but he resigned after the first meeting. "The young men are too much forme," he said. "I don't understand what they are talking about." Yet hispatients do very well. He has the healing touch--that magnetic thingwhich defies explanation or analysis, but which is a very evident factnone the less. His mere presence leaves the patient with morehopefulness and vitality. The sight of disease affects him as dust doesa careful housewife. It makes him angry and impatient. "Tut, tut, thiswill never do!" he cries, as he takes over a new case. He would shoodeath out of the room as though he were an intrusive hen. But when theintruder refuses to be dislodged, when the blood moves more slowly andthe eyes grow dimmer, then it is that Dr. Winter is of more avail thanall the drugs in his surgery. Dying folk cling to his hand as if thepresence of his bulk and vigour gives them more courage to face thechange; and that kindly, wind-beaten face has been the last earthlyimpression which many a sufferer has carried into the unknown.
When Dr. Patterson and I, both of us young, energetic, and up-to-date,settled in the district, we were most cordially received by the olddoctor, who would have been only too happy to be relieved of some of hispatients. The patients themselves, however, followed their owninclinations, which is a reprehensible way that patients have, so thatwe remained neglected with our modern instruments and our latestalkaloids, while he was serving out senna and calomel to all thecountry-side. We both of us loved the old fellow, but at the same time,in the privacy of our own intimate conversations, we could not helpcommenting upon this deplorable lack of judgment.
"It is all very well for the poorer people," said Patterson, "but afterall the educated classes have a right to expect that their medical manwill know the difference between a mitral murmur and a bronchitic rale.It's the judicial frame of mind, not the sympathetic, which is theessential one."
I thoroughly agreed with Patterson in what he said. It happened,however, that very shortly afterwards the epidemic of influenza brokeout, and we were all worked to death. One morning I met Patterson on myround, and found him looking rather pale and fagged out. He made thesame remark about me. I was in fact feeling far from well, and I layupon the sofa all afternoon with a splitting headache and pains in everyjoint. As evening closed in I could no longer disguise the fact that thescourge was upon me, and I felt that I should have medical advicewithout delay. It was of Patterson naturally that I thought, but somehowthe idea of him had suddenly become repugnant to me. I thought of hiscold, critical attitude, of his endless questions, of his tests and histappings. I wanted something more soothing--something more genial.
"Mrs. Hudson," said I to my
housekeeper, "would you kindly run along toold Dr. Winter and tell him that I should be obliged to him if he wouldstep round."
She was back with an answer presently.
"Dr. Winter will come round in an hour or so, sir, but he has just beencalled in to attend Dr. Patterson."
The Man from Archangel, and Other Tales of Adventure Page 8