Many similar stories were related to me at different times, but though for months I slept alone in the “haunted wing” I never saw any ghost, jin, or devil—except those clothed with flesh and blood; doubtless it was a privilege reserved for “True Believers.” There was, however, one incident; but I will relate that by and bye.
CHAPTER VIII.
Afghan Surgeons and Physicians.
Accidents from machinery in motion. The “dressers of wounds” in Afghanistan. Their methods of treating dislocations, fractures, and wounds, and the awful results of the same. The “Barber surgeons.” Tooth drawing and bleeding. The Hindustani “Doctors.” “Eye Doctors” and their work. The Hakims or Native Physicians. Treatment of disease by the People. Aspect in which European Physicians are viewed by the different Classes.
Machinery Accidents.
One morning soon after our arrival in Kabul, when I was at the Erg hospital, a messenger arrived in a great hurry to say a man had been injured at the Workshops. I jumped on my horse, which was waiting, and galloped off. Just outside the Workshop garden, on the road by the river bank, I saw the heavy portable engine with a crowd of people round it. Mr. Pyne was there in the middle of the crowd, and a man, one of the Afghan workmen, was lying on the ground. I examined the patient and found he was dead. Mr. Pyne was very upset and at first refused to believe it. He sent off a man to the shops for whisky, and begged me to send someone to the hospital for ammonia. I did so, though, of course, it was useless. They were moving the engine to the Salaam Khana or Durbar Hall to work the dynamo for the electric light there, but no one in the crowd seemed to have seen how the accident occurred, whether the man was crushed under the wheel or whether he had been struck on the head. There was no inquest, and post mortem examinations were not viewed with favour.
Later on, when the machinery was put together and some of it was in working order, accidents and deaths were, as might be expected, of frequent occurrence. In stepping over the shafting which ran across the entrance to one of the shops, about a foot above the ground, the long sheepskin postîn or coat would catch, and the wearer be whirled round and killed. Familiarity breeds contempt, and in spite of accidents it took a long time to educate the ordinary Afghan, after he had got over his first awe, up to the point of learning that machinery in motion should be approached with circumspection.
They had a way of putting their fingers under the punches of the cartridge machines, forgetting that the punch would inevitably come down at its appointed moment. It took one man in the palm, I remember, and I had to amputate his first and second finger and his thumb. Another got his hand between some steel rollers in motion, and but for the fact that Mr. Pyne was on the spot and at once threw the machine out of gear, the arm would have gone too. As it was, the skin was taken neatly and cleanly from the wrist and turned backwards like a glove over the finger tips. The bones of the hand were crushed, and I wished to amputate in the lower forearm; but the man, who was brought to the hospital, refused to have the hand taken off because he could move the fingers a little. I pointed out the danger he was running of further serious results, but he would not consent.
As he refused the only treatment that I felt was suitable, I could not undertake to treat him, and he was removed to his home in the city. I do not know who attended to his hurts, probably one of the native “dressers,” but four or five days afterwards he sent a friend to beg that I would come and remove the hand. Unfortunately, it was too late; “tetanus,” or lockjaw, had set in.