CHAPTER XXXVIII.
MY FIRST AMPUTATION.
It is easy in imagination, to be wise, especially at a distance. How many a surgical operation have I performed on paper; or still oftener, and with more assurance, in my own brain. The difficulties are much fewer than in the reality.
A fine young man came to me, one day, with a crushed thumb. He had been at work on a wool-carding machine, and through the most inexcusable carelessness had suffered his thumb to be drawn in. On a careful examination, I found the wound to be very severe, and, as I believed, requiring amputation.
But what could I do? I had no surgical instruments. Young medical men, in plain country places, are hardly expected to purchase these conveniences, except perhaps a lancet and the needful instruments for extracting teeth. I had, however, a keen penknife in my pocket, and without the smallest formality, I proceeded to separate the mangled thumb at the joint.
It was a very painful process, and as I now fully believe, quite an unnecessary one. But young men are not apt to see things in the same light with those who have had experience. They are not half as ready to rely on nature. They are inclined to think art will do every thing; nature, almost nothing. They frequently love to use the lancet, the knife, the scalpel, and the trephine. Of this fondness, however, I knew comparatively little. In the present instance, I simply saw it to be a doubtful, and as I thought, a hopeless case to attempt to save the thumb; and therefore, without much reflection, I removed it.
Now I shall never cease to feel a pang, whenever memory calls up this hasty act, as long as I live. Were life to be protracted to a thousand years, I should always reproach myself for it. And yet I am not aware that either the young man himself or his friends ever respected me the less for it. And so far was I from suffering in the eyes of society at large, I verily believe I was a gainer by it. But I respected myself less on account of it. I respect myself less to-day. I am fully conscious I was too hasty,—that had I waited a little, I might have been a means of saving his hand without much deformity. Nature, in such cases, left to herself, will work all but miracles, especially in the young, and in those who have a sound constitution.