Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 12

by Unknown

"You may at least try to sit," said I, calmly rising from the chair—a movement that operated upon him like magnetism—making him throw down the cloth he held in his hand, recoil still farther back, and scream again, loud and shrill.

I made a step forwards to him, which roused his fears still higher; for he was clearly possessed with the idea that I was to force him to sit, or to press him against the wall, and thus shatter him to pieces. The one mode of destruction was just as fearful as the other; and, as I took another step nearer him, he raised a yell that made the whole house ring, and, changing his position, with his back still to the wall, he glided swiftly aside, and seemed, by the furtive glance of his terrorstruck eye, to wish to make for the door—which, however, was guarded by his wife. By this time the two young men had started to their feet, so that he was surrounded by foes on every side; and as the utter desperation of his case thus seemed to increase, he became more and more terrified, repeating his screams at shorter intervals, and placing himself with a caution which, in his excited state, had a strange appearance, closer and closer to the wall. The sight was a grievous one to his wife, and far from an agreeable one to myself; but the apprentices—probably from a spirit of retaliation roused by a memory of former inflictions—enjoyed it with a cruel delight. Having thus far roused his terror, I thought it prudent not to stop short in an operation which, at whatever time performed, must necessarily be attended with all the pain he now suffered; and, throwing out a signal to one of the young men to stand by the chair, and to the other to come to my side, I made boldly towards him, and, notwithstanding of his heartrending screams and looks for pity, seized him by one arm, while the other was willingly laid hold of by my assistant.

At this period of the operation, I was rather importunately addressed by Mrs G——, whose feelings—for she was an irritable creature, and distractedly fond of her husband—overcame her.

"For heaven's sake, let him alone!" she cried. "The neighbours will think we are in reality murdering him. His screams go to my heart, and I cannot stand these wild looks. Heaven pity my unfortunate husband!"

"I am only performing my professional duty," I replied, loudly, to make myself heard in the midst of his screams. "You called me to him; and, if you really wish it, I will leave him to his fate. No man of his profession can do any good in the world by working on his legs. The disease is deep-rooted, and can only be overcome by strong remedies. I think I will cure him; and, if you stop us in the operation, the consequences will be entirely attributable to yourself."

I spoke at this length with the view, purposely, of keeping the patient for some time in the high state of terror to which he was roused; because I was satisfied that, in proportion to the height of his apprehension, was the chance of benefit to result from my expedient for curing him. The woman saw the affair in its proper light; and, though still greatly moved by his screams and pitiful looks, she forbore further entreaty or interference. The apprentices, meanwhile, were all alive and ready for action, expressing by their eloquent leers, which I could not repress, their pleasure in thus having an opportunity—such is human nature—of repaying their taskmaster for his severity, as well as of witnessing one of the most curious operations they had ever heard of. All this time the patient continued his screams—having, at intervals, recourse to exclamatory expostulation.

"Cruel fiends!" he cried, "will you dash me to pieces? Will nothing less serve you than to see a poor harmless being, who never injured one of you, reduced to atoms? And you, too, hard-hearted wretch, whose duty it is to protect me, stand there a witness of my destruction! Unheard-of misery, to have the tenement of an immortal soul reduced to particles no bigger than a farthing!"

We proceeded to drag him forwards, in spite of a resistance strengthened by the energy of terror and despair, and heedless of his cries of "Save me, save me! Death, death in any form but being dashed to shivers!" Having brought him to the chair, the back of which was held firmly by the other apprentice, we turned him round so as to make the bottom of it (composed of hard wood) as fair a mark as our eyes could judge. He was now, as he thought, on the brink of utter extermination; and I was afraid that the terror might have the effect on him which I have noticed in criminals at the moment when the fatal drop is to fall, and, by inducing a fit of syncope, destroy all our labours. It was, however, otherwise, though I never saw a patient on the eve of undergoing the amputation of a limb in such a condition of terror and agony. We were bound to disregard all this; and, having made my assistant understand that it was necessary to lift him (for a simple seating, without a fall, I was satisfied, would do no good), we raised him a foot or two, by the application of considerable strength, and let him down upon the bottom of the chair, with a crash. A louder scream than he had yet uttered announced his fancied death-blow.

"I am murdered! it is all over now!" he ejaculated, with a gasp, while his hands were busy groping about, to feel the pieces of broken glass, which must necessarily be scattered in every direction.

This operation, on his part, I wished to encourage, and liberated his arms, to give him greater scope, while we continued to hold him firmly down on the chair, till we satisfied him that he had received, and could receive, no injury, from pressing upon it with all the weight of his attenuated and sickly body. His groping was accompanied by a trembling that shook all his system; and I saw his terrorstruck eye wavering on the pivot of doubt, whether it might be inclined downwards to witness the wreck of his shivered body. Deep, convulsive sobs, the result of the restrained breath, broke from him in strange sounds, mixed with the groans of one who thought himself in the firm grasp of death. At length he ventured to add the testimony of his eyes to that of his hands; and, when he found that there were no pieces of glass lying about the chair and floor, he turned up the panicstruck orbs in my face, with an expression of mixed wonder and terror, that, to any one but myself, acting in a serious medical capacity, would have appeared ludicrous to an extent infringing upon the diaphragm. As we held him firmly down, in spite of his efforts to bound up, the false conviction, so firmly fixed in his brain, was apparently suffering a silent process of qualification; and the difficulty of reconciling the belief within with the actual state of safety without, was drawing him to the favourable condition of doubt, from which we might augur benefit. As the old conviction rose, at intervals, more strongly on him, his hands were again busy to ascertain the actual state of safety of his body; then his eye sought my face for an assurance in favour of the evidence of touch, and he was for a moment reconciled; again the false conception seized him, again he groped, and felt, and looked, and thus was he precipitated into a state of perplexity, from which he could not get himself disentangled, but from which he might ultimately, as I hoped, rise into a natural belief.